#Like even completely leaving aside the fact that you’re adding a stat

[9ofspades]

Glitterhearts has cute illustrations and fun stuff, but the rulebook is under the impression that there’s generally a fifty percent chance of success when you roll for a Basic Move 😶

If as a novice game designer you understand nothing else, please understand that writing for a rules-light system doesn't mean you don't need to know basic statistics. I've seen multiple Apocalypse Engine titles whose authors are clearly under the impression that every possible sum of 2d6 is equally probable. I've encountered at least one that included sum-of-2d6 based lookup tables with twelve entries.

[acrosstobear]

Callum Ilott talks racing accidents, tragedy and mental health

Callum Ilott pauses, takes a deep breath and prepares to answer.

It seems a pretty straightforward question to deliver a response to: are racing drivers affected after a crash or seeing a team-mate or rival have an accident? But it’s a deeply personal topic for the 22-year-old.

The Formula 1 rising star saw the aftermath of a tragic collision at Spa during his F2 days which claimed the life of his close friend Anthoine Hubert and seriously injured team-mate Juan Manuel Correa.

Ilott’s retort after taking some time to consider his thoughts shows the long-lasting effects of the heartbreaking incident. But it also begins to help reveal the psychology of racing drivers and how they deal with the inevitable dangers that come with driving at speeds of 200mph or more.

Callum Ilott opens up about the death of Anthoine Hubert

“To satisfy my own mental state I spent that whole evening and the next day analysing what happened,” the Ferrari Academy Driver said of the 2019 crash.

“In my mind I almost completely understood why it happened and it felt easier to accept it. I go through it and piece it together. I’d lost a good friend and my team-mate was fighting for his life. It was an ongoing process to deal with it.

“You can’t change what happened but he’d (Anthoine) changed me – not because of the accident – but because of how he was, how he influenced people and I took quite a few lessons from him. I took it upon myself to make changes, inspired by him.

“Everyone says ‘you’re doing it (racing) for him’, but I’d rather take the lessons that he gave me as it’s a greater impact than doing it for him. It can happen to anyone and you have to take every chance and moment you get in life, that was one of the lessons I took. It helped change my values and understanding of some things.”

Karting isn’t the safest but neither is rugby, says F1 talent

Like almost all professional drivers, the Cambridge-born talent started out in karting where he “enjoyed the speed” rather than feared it. His biggest concern was making mistakes.

Even though he saw people roll their karts and break their collarbones, his safety was more of a concern to his mum than himself as he continued to calculate and process the risk – a method that remains to this day.

Ilott said: “A lot of possibilities have to come together and at least nine times out of 10 you can get away with a crash and maybe one time you don’t.

“Karting wasn’t the safest thing but then you could say neither was rugby at school, all it takes is someone to do a high tackle or you fall funny and you could be in hospital or a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Anything can happen but I don’t look at things in a negative way.

“When it’s someone close to you that has an accident there’s obviously emotion attached to it. But it’s all facts and statistics for me. At the end of the day you’re in this sport and you’re in this position. If the stats were a bit higher then I think I would be concerned but at the moment you just hope it doesn’t happen to you. A lot of improvements continue to be made in terms of safety too.”

Alfa Romeo reserve relives dramatic Formula 1 test crash

So what happens when it’s you who is involved in an accident? When you have a massive smash that leaves you seriously injured or feeling incredibly lucky to be alive?

Ilott, a reserve for Alfa Romeo, had his biggest crash while testing for the team two years ago. He’d just set his best lap of the day at Barcelona on his F1 test debut when the rear snapped in a fast right-hander and sent him careering into the barriers at around 130mph.

“You have to crack back on,” admitted the 2020 F2 runner-up.

“Whilst you’ve got time you can feel sorry for yourself and punish yourself. It can be a greater lesson than moving on. For one week I don’t think anyone could really talk to me. Physically I was almost completely fine, I had a bit of pain in my back, but it was all mental. To me it was more related to my career.

“It was a big moment to have and then to have that end result, in crashing, so I was more worried about my career. In one or two weeks I was back in Formula 2, it was a distraction to get going again. You can get out of the spiral and get on with what you’re doing. You learn your lesson and take the best side of it.”

Being a passenger unsettles the Ferrari Academy starlet

The Adrian Flux-sponsored driver says it takes him within three corners to know the limit, within 5%, of the vehicle he is operating.

And he is sure that’s what sets professionals aside from anyone who steps behind the wheel of a car.

“Depending on the car and conditions, I will drive to how I feel safe,” concluded Ilott, set to make his IndyCar debut in America next weekend.

“On an Autobahn in Germany in the wet, I won’t go above 150kmh (93mph), at risk of aquaplaning. In dry, I can push to 300kmh (186mph) easily and as long as there’s no traffic I won’t worry. I’m aware of limits. I’m very happy to take a car to 300 and wouldn’t bat an eye, I’d quite enjoy it. If I was in the passenger seat, and someone took it to 300, I’d be very nervous.

“I’ve been on track days with friends and I’m helping them out a bit and straight away they go out and I’m like: ‘Woah, woah, woah, woah, you don’t realise how close you are to the limit already. You can’t push that much more and control the car’. A lot of people can drive but it’s always the last little bit and understanding what to do when it’s not perfect conditions.

“It’s very natural with us because we train. A marathon runner knows what pace they can run at all the time and what will last them until the end of the race. It’s the same as a cyclist – if they start to push over the limit they know when they’ll drop off at the end.

“I wouldn’t say we’re wired differently, racing drivers just know the limits of what we’re in and what we can do a lot more than other people. We’re very aware of the limits of each car we get in. It’s all calculated and you can feel and understand where that is and it automatically enters your brain. My body will say ‘that’s your limit’ and you just know depending on the conditions.”

What is professional racing driver Callum Ilott afraid of?

So does anything scare a man who flies around a track knowing one slight mistake could see him hurtling towards a tyre wall, giant slab of concrete or a huge metal barrier at high speed?

“I don’t like the unknown,” added Ilott who is dreaming of an F1 seat in 2022.

“When I was younger, I don’t mind it so much now, but when you’re snorkelling and you get to the edge of the reef and there’s the drop off – you’re staring down and you think ‘what the hell is down there, how far does it go?’

“It’s not the dark, but what’s inside it? Your mind becomes the enemy. Whatever you think is down there, is down there. That’s something I’ve gradually got used to because I’ve learned why. I don’t like spiders either, but I’m not scared of them.”

[plus-size-reader]

Cool

Noah Foster x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 1216 words

Warnings: none 

Summary: The reader is part of the ‘popular crowd’ but has a bit of an unconventional crush

I just love writing awkward Noah, I apologize. 

——————————————————————————————————

Frankly, Noah had no business at one of Brooke's parties.

It wasn't a scene that he needed to be at, and not the sort of thing that was within his comfort zone but that was exactly what drew you to him in the first place. He wasn't the kind of meathead jock that usually showed up to those things and you were interested in him.

You had never really talked to him, aside from a few group projects in English class and you wanted to know what his deal was.

So, you did the only sane thing you could think of at a high school party, after the death of a close friend. You plopped down beside him on the couch, careful not to spill your beer, and smiled.

It wasn't a foolproof method, of course, but it wasn't awful. If nothing else, it made you more available to him than you would have been standing across the room in close conversation with Brooke and Riley.

"Hey, you're Noah right? I'm Y/N, we have English together" you started, watching just how caught of guard he was at your talking to him. You were marginally hot, far too hot to ever be talking to him, and that was enough to sketch him out.

Still, when you smiled again, clearly waiting for him to say something, Noah knew that silence was only going to make him look like more of a crazy person.

"Cool, that's really cool" he tried, hoping that you wouldn't immediately get up and leave. He sometimes had that affect on women, especially those who he was attracted to. Noah just had awkward energy, and it was too much for a lot of people to handle.

Not you though.

You only giggled at his obvious nerves, hoping for the best. You were nervous too, of course, but you were just better at hiding it. You never really had a crush on a guy, it was usually the other way around, but not in this case.

It was lame, and your friends would never let you live it down but you were a bit of a secret geek. You loved video games, and horror movies, and all that kinds of stuff that Nina would never let you hear the end of if she was still alive.

She always made a joke of it all, tormenting anyone who didn't fit into her perfect existence but there had always been an exception for you. You had been friends all your lives; you, Nina, Brooke, and Emma, adding Riley into the mix a little later.

That was just the way it had always been, and that was never going to change but you couldn't be blamed for having interests outside of mani-pedis and ceaseless drama. It was part of who you were, but not all of it.

"Hey, I had a question about what you said in class the other day? About slasher movies" you hummed, gingerly trying to broach the subject without seeming super weird. You had always been really into those sorts of things, but didn't have many people to talk to about it before.

It could be really interesting to talk to someone about it that wouldn't think you were completely out of your mind.

"Who do you think is the most prolific serial slashers? Personally I think that there a tie between Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees but the body count doesn't really reflect that. Any thoughts?" you asked, taking a sip from your bottle neck, never once looking away from him.

Understandably, he was in shock.

He had never known pretty popular girls to have thoughts like that but you clearly did. He knew that for sure because you weren't wrong. There was a correlation between the murders and the the bodycount in those movies but nothing accounted for the lethal nature of some of the killers over the others.

In his opinion, Michael Myers was pretty high up on the list, due to his whole, being a faceless sociopath but the math didn't support that if that was what you were going for. That didn't even take into account the kill frequency and number of movies.

All interesting things to think about, for sure.

"Those are definitely good ones as far as stats go" he allowed, clearly just a little tipsy after however many he'd had at this point, not that you felt the need to say anything about it quite yet. You figured he knew what he was doing, and wouldn't overdue it.

Still, you felt like this conversation was coming to a natural end and you were worried that this would be all you two would ever have to talk about. After all, there wasn't a ton you had in common in the first place.

You just didn't want to go back to talking about Brooke's daddy issues quite yet.

"Hey, you wanna maybe get a coffee tomorrow? We could talk about it a little more" you suggested, gingerly playing with your fingers like you always did when you were nervous. As best you could tell, he could just say no and that would be it, but you hoped not.

You didn't want this to be all there was between you.

Noah faltered at that.

He wasn't really used to being asked out, or talked to at all by pretty girls who had no business caring about him at all. Not to mention that fact that he very rarely, if ever, was asked out at all. You were way out of his league, but maybe that didn't matter.

After all, no one said that two people had to be on the same level of attractiveness or skill to care about one another. It didn't matter if you didn't have very much in common, or if you ran in completely different social circles, there was a spark between you.

"Or not, I mean, if you don't want to" you shrugged, naturally taking his silence as refusal. You knew well enough to know that if he wanted to, he would have said yes by now.

Though, as soon as those words left your lips, Noah shook his head. Even in the little bit of a buzz he was currently harboring, he knew that this wasn't the sort of thing that he was going to pass up.

"No, no, that sounds great, but uh, are you sure you wanna do that? With me?" he clarified, shocked that you would do something like that. If only he knew that  you had to down quite a bit of Brooke's cheap kegger to even work up the nerve to ask.

He thought that you were out of his league, but never even gave your clear feelings for him a second thought. There had to be a reason you asked, after all. You wouldn't have just done that with anyone.

"Of course. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to, silly" you teased, earning a sort of awkward laugh from Noah, who was relieved at your response, though feeling just as awkward as before. He just had no game, no matter how hard he tried to be cool.

It just wasn't in the cards for him.

...But if that didn't bother you, he wasn't going to argue.

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #45: Mata Hari

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re building the living embodiment of clickbait, Mata Hari! If this post ends up getting five times as many notes as normal, it’s okay, I understand. Mata Hari is another bard/rogue combination, this time mixing the college of glamour with a mastermind. She can help out in combat, but her strongest points are going deep undercover to learn an enemy’s secrets.

You can read the level-by-level breakdown below the cut, or check out the summary spreadsheet here.

Race and Background

Mata Hari is a Human(though like the Phantom, if you want to spice it up Siren is a good place to start), giving her +1 to all stats. Mata Hari is the textbook example of a Charlatan, giving her proficiency in Deception and Sleight of Hand, as well as the Disguise and Forgery kits. She also has a False Identity she can assume, complete with disguises and documentation. Furthermore, she can forge documents she has seen before.

Stats

Your highest stat is Charisma: you’re so good at charming people they literally can’t tell you’re an enemy unless they’re told so, that’s pretty charming. You’re also a dancer, which requires a lot of Dexterity (or it would if dnd stats made sense). Next is your Wisdom, a good spy needs to know when they’re being watched. Follow this with Intelligence, you’re not unusually smart, but we need to keep your physical scores as low as possible. Constitution is next, because we’re never going to dump that if at all possible. Finally, we’re dumping strength, because dex builds don’t need it.

Class Levels

1. Rogue 1: We’re starting the build as a rogue because they have the most proficiencies, and they’re ones you want. At first level, you become proficient in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as Persuasion and Performance for obvious reasons, Stealth for even more obvious reasons, and Insight. You can’t string people along if you don’t know what they want.

First level rogues get Expertise in two skills, doubling their proficiency. Your Deception and Persuasion should be as strong as possible, so let’s start there. You probably won’t use your Sneak Attack that often, but it’s always there if you need some extra damage on a creature you have advantage over or an ally within 5′ of. Finally, your Thieves’ Cant lets you talk to other rogues without people catching on, assuming there are other rogues. Maybe you should coordinate with another party member.

2. Rogue 2: At second level you get your Cunning Action, letting you disengage, dash, or hide as a bonus action. Ideally the enemy won’t know you’re working against them, but a way to get out of danger without being turned into a shishkebab is always a good idea.

3. Rogue 3: At third level you become an official Mastermind, becoming a Master of Intrigue and a Master of Tactics. Master of Intrigue gives you proficiencies you already have, two languages, and the ability to mimic speech patterns and accents that you’ve heard for more than a minute. There isn’t a limit on how long you can copy an accent for, so that’s why Mata Hari started the game with a thick scottish accent, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it’s the only accent I know, shut up. As a Master of Tactics, you can Help as a bonus action, and it has a range of 30′.

4. Rogue 4: 30′ is some rookie numbers, and we can improve that by using our first ASI on the Tandem Tactician feat. This increases your helping range by 10′, and you can help two people at once if they’re targeting the same enemy. Toss in some thieves’ cant or a foreign language and you’ll be useful for your party no matter which side you appear to be on.

5. Bard 1: When you multiclass into bard, you  get one skill proficiency of your choice. Perception is a good choice-again, you need to know if anyone’s watching you before you do the whole “stealing state secrets” thing. You’re not making that mistake again.

First level bards have Spellcasting based on their charisma as well as Bardic Inspiration, a bunch of d6 you can throw at people to help them.

For spells, grab Friends, Unearthly Chorus, and Charm Person for extra charming action, Message because learning an enemy’s secrets doesn’t mean much if you can’t pass them off to your friends, Disguise Self to help you infiltrate no-humans-allowed areas, and Sleep for ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

6. Rogue 5: Your Uncanny Dodge lets you react to avoid half the damage of an attack. Getting hurt is bad, stop doing it.

7. Rogue 6: Your second round of Expertise boosts your Performance and Insight. You’re good at dancing, and stealing things from the saps watching you dance. Now you’re even better at doing both of those.

8. Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues gain Evasion, severely reducing the amount of damage you take from dexterity saving throw attacks. If you’re consorting with the enemy, some splash damage is going to hit you. Now it’ll hit you less!

9. Bard 2: You’re now a Jack of All Trades, adding half your proficiency to all nonproficient checks. You also learn how to sing a Song of Rest, adding a d6 to any healing your party does on short rests.

For your spell this level, grab Animal Friendship. Your charm might not hit most creatures, but it does work on Orion, so I’m counting it.

10. Rogue 8: Your next ASI is going to improve your Charisma for more charming and more Bard fun.

11. Bard 3: Speaking of Bard, here’s your last level in it. At third level you get Expertise in two more skills, pick Stealth and Sleight of Hand- you’re a spy, and those tend to help.

You also graduate from the College of Glamour at this level, giving you two more features. The Mantle of Inspiration lets you burn a bardic inspiration die as a bonus action to heal a couple people and let them move without causing attacks of opportunity. Is your wizard facing down a raging barbarian? Now they’re not.

You also learn to put on an Enthralling Performance, letting you charm a number of creatures once per short rest after you perform for a minute or more. They won’t fight for you unless they would anyway, but they’ll be good to you while they’re charmed.

Speaking of enthralling, Enthrall is your final bard spell. It causes any number of creatures within 60′ of you to make a wisdom save, and on a failure they have disadvantage against perceiving creatures who aren’t you. If you’re at the bar with your friends and your real friends show up, that could be a problem. This spell will keep everybody groovy for a while.

12. Rogue 9: You’re now an Insightful Manipulator, meaning if you chat up a creature for 1 minute outside of combat, you can learn two of the following characteristics: its Intelligence score, its Wisdom score, its Charisma score, or its class levels. You might also learn some of its history, and that last bit is the real goldmine here. You can’t be a fake manic pixie dream girl if you don’t know what hole in someone’s life you can pretend to fill.

13. Rogue 10: For this level’s ASI, you become a Linguist. This gives you a couple extra languages to pad out the number of countries you can pretend to be from, and more importantly lets you write down codes. Sometimes you need to talk to your party and you can’t get an opening for Message or Thieves’ Cant; this will help out.

14. Rogue 11: You now have Reliable Talent: any skill you’re proficient in will always have a roll of 10 or higher. This means your deception and persuasion rolls have a baseline of 24 that they’ll always be at or above, so your cover story is pretty much unbreakable.

15. Rogue 12: Max out your Charisma with this ASI for better lying, spells, and more inspiration.

16. Rogue 13: Thirteenth level masterminds learn Misdirection. If there’s an attack heading your way, and there’s a creature within 5′ of you between you and the attacker, you can react to make the attack hit them instead. This means if you play your cards right, your terrible AC is secretly someone else’s. Hang out around that guy in plate mail an get your party to send one attack your way each round, and he’ll be a pincushion in no time.

17. Rogue 14: You get Blindsense this level, letting you know the location of any creature within 10′ of you as long as you can hear. This isn’t particularly useful for this build, but you’re not one to turn down free things.

18. Rogue 15: You now have a Slippery Mind, giving you proficiency in Wisdom saves. Most of your stats aside from charisma aren’t great, so take what you can get.

19. Rogue 16: Use your last ASI to improve your Dexterity and Constitution. You aren’t using these that often, but if you go to stab the big bad in the back an miss, it would be really awkward.

20. Rogue 17: For your capstone level, you gain a Soul of Deceit. Your mind can’t be read unless you will it, and you can’t be magically compelled to tell the truth either. Falling into a zone of truth mid-job is a rookie mistake, one you won’t be making.

Pros: You’re an expert manipulator, knowing exactly what buttons to push to trick people into doing what you want. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about a fight breaking out, because your entire fighting style is letting someone else take care of it. Some advice here, a shove there, and soon enough you’re the only one still standing.

Cons: Your entire not-fighting style means you won’t get to use your sneak attack, and 9d6 damage per turn is a lot to just ignore. Skimping on bard levels leaves you with very little magic each day, and not getting the Font of Inspiration especially hurts. Finally, some games simply won’t work for you. Being a master of seduction doesn’t help when you’re fighting automatons. Also, like 90% of the evil groups in D&D are slavers; you probably don’t want to try and cozy up to them. Even when there’s an enemy army you can worm your way into, you might be forcing your DM to run two games at once, which they won’t appreciate. 

Next up: We’re finishing off the assassins with someone we’ve already built twice. Kind of.

[crystalmaeson]

Official Readme by Maeson

Pokemon Crystal Maeson - Public Version 1.0 - Internal Version 15.0.3

IT IS RECOMMENDED TO READ THIS WITH NOTEPAD++, BUT YOU DO YOU.

o--------o |Sections| o--------o

[1]  Installation [2]  Introduction [3]  General List of Changes [4]  Patch Differences [5]  Pokémon Changes [6]  Type Changes [7]  Move Changes [8]  Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits [9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes [10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns [11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House [12] Visual Changes [13] Credits

o-----------------o |[1]  Installation| o-----------------o

Patching a game is usually a very easy process, specially with IPS Patches.

There's a variety of programs that work with IPS files, but the most famous one is named Lunar IPS, also called LIPS.

This hack is to be patched on a Pokémon Crystal 1.1 ROM file.

More specifically, this rom: Pokemon - Crystal Version (UE) (V1.1) [C][!].gbc CRC-32 : 3358E30A

You open your patcher, and then point to it to the IPS patch and the original, unmodded ROM. It will apply it and inform you when it's finished, it should be quick.

Now, there's two versions of this hack, and each one has also two varieties.

CHOOSE ONLY ONE. To know which version you want, check the details at the not-surprisingly-named "Patch Differences" section.

And yes, the patch weights almost 75% of the original game.

o-----------------o |[2]  Introduction| o-----------------o

Hola, welcome to another ridiculously long readme of mine.

I go by the name Maeson and I made other hacks for a handful of other RPGs. For the most part what I usually aim for with these hacks is to create a different experience, tweaking what I can to give games that I've played time and time again a gameplay facelift to keep them fresh for me, sometimes also trying to improve aspects of a game that I think could make it more fun, varied, better paced or just more challenging after many playthroughs and knowing stuff by hand.

These hacks are made for me in first place, so they're shaped in a very personal manner and of course through my own tastes and ideas, but it should goewithout saying, I hope.

But anyway... What can I say about Pokémon?

My feelings toward the main series of Pokémon have changed a lot since its inception. Just like millions of other fans of video games, I lived the Pokémon craze back in the day, and I grew playing most of those games. I was there without fail up until the fifth Generation, then I started to get tired of the series gradually, and I sort of stop caring with time.

Thing is, I really didn't stop liking the Pokémon themselves, and I still enjoy spin-offs like the Trading Card Games or Mystery Dungeon games, and some like Pokémon Conquest and Pokken are quite cool crossovers, so there's still some appeal to me, even if it's waning with each day.

And hey, then you get things like Pokémon Snap, which it's one unique and very memorable game, one of the very, very few games about photography. it's a really chill, fun time overall.

...What it does not appeal to me all that much since a long time, though, is Game Freak and The Pokémon Company. The choices and "philosofies" they've been doing and following for several years now have been some of the most frustrating ones I've seen besides Square Enix, and their interviews equally leave some wonderfully baffling pearls of "wisdom".

They've done a remarkable job at making me wanting to distance myself more and more throughout this last decade, to the point that I lost pretty much all my appreciation for the franchise.

And it's not just with the main games, their choice of pushing aside console spin-offs for more and more mobile based Games As A Service (that usually failed and died quickly) also left us without many interesting games that could at least keep us somewhat happy.

And the less we talk about the lies, misinformation and the worrying use of younger audiences as a shield to deflect criticism from their business decisions, the better.

I... Just can't support or stand that anymore. I feel drained.

And I would have been completely away from this franchise, barring some old games, if not for one day finding that a collective of people were working on disassembly projects of older games.

I found them to be really interesting, and my mind kinda played with the idea of having a version of one of those old games with changes that I've been wanting and waiting to happen for many years. Who knows, I could even *attempt* to improve what was already there and even add more stuff to it.

Checking the available games with disassembly, I chose Pokémon Crystal, as it seemed the most complete and evolved project of all, in combination with also being one of the longer games thanks to the large post-game it originally had, plus being an earlier Generation game also gave me more room to do changes and improvements.

So little by little, with no idea of assembly, I kept hitting walls and messing around for a time, and what you downloaded is the result of spending the free time I had working in it... For quite some time. In fact it has been over 2 years of constant work, this started in 2018.

The aim of this hack is simple:

Create a new "balance", make the game more challenging, and iron out stuff I find could be improved, or I have the ability and knowledge to do while I add more value to certain aspects of the game. Make a version of Pokémon that I'd like to replay and have every monster be a fun addition to the team and a foe I just can't roll over with little to no thought, so I want to try all of them.

If you were expecting a new story, or a new region, or whatever pipe dream that most probably would end up incompleted and not stable, sorry to disappoint, but you won't find it here.

And no, I don't really care if this hack doesn't have an "epic" name. There's so many other more important things to care than that...

o----------------------------o |[3]  General List of Changes| o----------------------------o

Here you have a quick list with some of the biggest changes all around, but there are sections for most of them to talk more in detail.

· Attempt to reach a new balance. This has been said above, but what   it actually means is that elements as Types, Moves, Pokémon Stats and   such have been changed deeply to move away from the conventions of the   original games, making many species feel entirely different gameplay-wise.

  Among other things, this means no more disappointing creatures with bad   typing and many weaknesses, or low Base Stats filler. It also means parity   between the Types, with each one having the same number of Weaknesses and   Resistances. The intent is for every Fully Evolved Pokémon to feel useful   or, at the very, very least, usable in a way where you don't feel handicapping   yourself to the point you ask yourself if it is even worth doing it.

· Moves and TMS have been changed a lot in order to accomodate the Physical & Special Split,   each Type now has both Physical and Special moves of different Power tiers.

  Many old attacks have been removed and many others have been added. What moves each   evolutionary line learns also has been changed, in order to make all Pokémon have   decent movesets depending on what their archtype is.

· DVs (IVs on later generations) No longer matter on Stat Calculations. This means that   every member of the same species will have the same potential. This also means you can   have female Pokémon with good Attack, and Shiny Pokémon with good stats, what a novel concept.

  This way any monster you come across will be equal, so you can focus on having   fun, while still having to care of it by training, feeding him vitamins and fruits,   choosing the best moves for it in a given situation, making a balanced team, and   you know, the actual RPG bits instead of the RNG ones.

  If you liked the eugenics experiment experience the original games give you,   sorry but that's not here. I apologize for nothing.

· Trainers changed all around. Better AI than in the original game, more varied teams,     their Pokémon have Stat Exp, meaning that the further you go, the better trained their   Pokémon are, and better trained your own monsters should be. I also removed several   limitations imposed on NPC trainers to make them factually inferior to you. This is   made trying to make the game more challenging instead of the usual cake-walk.

  There's no ridiculous stuff like giving Hyper Beam to everything or illegal moves   for NPC trainer's Pokémon (although bear in mind, many Pokémon have changed types,   and many have changed movesets so their moves are the new "legal" moves, but   again, nothing impossible for you to have or to add fake difficulty).

  If you're asking yourself this, no, in this hack NPCs do not change Pokémon constantly,   that tends to drag the game too much. They still do it occasionally, but not at every   time Type matchups that go against them.

· Quite a few changes related to Items, from how strong some Healing Items are, to changing   Kurt Balls, changing the effect (or power of the effect) on several Held Items, new   types of berries, and others.

  Healing items are no longer useable in battle, neither for you or the NPC Trainers.   Battles must be won only with your Pokémon, their held items, and strategy.

  ...Or well, over-levelling through mind-numbing grinding.   We can't exactly get rid of that.

· Added a whole LOT of improvements here and there to make the game flow, feel and   play better.

  Things like changing how Item Storage works to have more space overall, much faster   egg hatching speeds, making every monster available in this hack, having the Pokédex   show you a bit of meaningful game information, as now it shows a species Base Stats   and also the Shiny variations, make saving a faster process, making TMs infinite   (but not abusable), improving the scrolling while moving around making the game   feel and look much better, large improvements on the Battle Tower, expanding the   Trainer House to be more interesting end-game stuff, adding Rematches, making   PokeGear rematches better, a way to change PC Boxes remotely, move tutors and   quite a few others.

There's many things more, but that's what the individual sections are for.

o-----------------------o |[4]  Patch Differences | o-----------------------o

Now, there are four patches, so let's explain this quickly.

First, we have the Original versions, and the Alternative versions, these last ones offer a tweaked experience in case you want to play this hack again with some differences.

In which ways it is different?

Well, the Starters have been swapped, so when you begin a new game, you get to choose between Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle.

MUCH bigger difference, though, is that all the Gym trainers, the Leaders, other important NPCS and the Elite Four no longer have their teams limited to following the thematic "Type" standards.

Other trainers such as the Rival also have different teams, (and like the original patch, he develops a different team depending on the starter they steal).

Without that restriction each of those trainers have way more varied teams, making the game less predicable because you can no longer coast on the Type disadvantages most of the Pokémon of a Gym Leader share.

This of course changes how you make your teams. You no longer "have" to bring "this or that Type" because later on the road there's a Gym weak to it. It's more about making a team that you feel it can withstand anything it may come.

The order of certain Ingame Trades have also been changed.

There's other smaller changes to make the bigger ones sit well, such as small text edits or change the order of the Pokédex.

But Original and Alternative are divided in two too, one that I'll call "Intended Versions" and the other two are "Items in Battle" variations.

The "Intended Versions" disables healing Items in battle and it forces Set options, meaning you don't get free switches after knocking out a foe Pokémon. You can't change the option, because it's not even there anymore.

That's how I'd like people to play my hack, but knowing how some people can be, there's an extra patch, "Items in Battle", that gives you the possibility of using Items and to change the battle option, but there's a price to pay.

If you choose to play with enabled Items/Switch in battle, a few Items will be unavailable to you, the price of several Items will increase, and the HP they restore will be lowered. Also, NPC Trainers will also use Items.

That's simply because Items can be easily abused, and that is the opposite of what I wanted in this hack. If you choose the "right" to abuse Items during battle, then I have the right to make adjustments to annoy you with your choice.

It's not like Hyper Potions will heal 1 HP or anything crazy like that, but because in my hack you can't use Items in battles, they're more powerful than the usual vanilla items so you could recover better between battles.

The items you lose access to are all new, by the way. A set of consumable Held Items that raise a stat whenever the holder is attacked or under other circustances, similar to the berries in the Third Generation, albeit they're activated differently.

Another change is limited access to a team-healing item that I made, and restores all your Pokémon to perfect shape. Intended to be used in a pinch, like being lost in a cave, or between hard fights, but you can only have in small amounts. In the Original patch, you can carry 3 of them, but only 1 on the "Items in Battle" versions.

You're free to choose how to play. Of course, you only apply one patch.

If for some reason you started a game with one version, for example, with the patch for Items in Battle, and you later on want to go to the No Items in Battle version, you can actually use that save file and not start again.

But I recommend you to save first in a Pokémon Center before doing so. Once you did that, patch a clean ROM and rename the .SAV file into whatever the new patched rom is. Now you can continue with your game. Remember to always make backups before doing anything of this sort.

I do not recommend changing between the Original and Alternate versions.

Lastly, trading and battling with vanilla Pokémon Crystal is not going to work. Not only many of the fixes made already impossible to be compatible with Vanilla Pokémon Crystal, but the gigantic load of changes I made to the game would render any attempt become a glitchy mess.

But you can trade and battle with other copies of this hack, and the four versions of the patches should be compatible with each other for both trading and battling. I'd recommend using the No Items versions because it gives you access to those extra Held Items, though.

o--------------------o |[5]  Pokémon Changes| o--------------------o

Probably the most obvious and central change, these creatures are the core of the franchise after all.

As you may imagine, there have been changes to most aspects of them. While some of those have their sections to talk about, Base Stats are probably the most important one here.

That is because for the most part there is parity in Base Stat Total for all evolutionary lines in this game.

Pokémon to me has become a rather painful series of games to look back, because there has never been that much of an interest to improve or balance out their creations to make a more varied, balanced and fun experience, and when they try to do something is more on the lines of "adding" to fix instead of improving what's there already.

And don't get me wrong, trying to get "perfect balance" is impossible with such a large amount of creatures, but at the same time, Game Freak has done very, very little in this regard, most other developers would at least try something, specially if they had the decades of game releases Game Freak has had.  

But back on track. This is why in this hack, almost every non-Starter, non-Legendary fully evolved monster has a Base Stat Total of 650, making each all of them feel have the same potential overall.

This means there will be no "early useless Pokémon", nor so called "Filler".

And yes, this means your beloved Tyranitar, Dragonite, and such have the same potential as a Raticate or a Wigglytuff. On the other hand, this also means you don't need to train a Pupitar or Dragonair to ridiculous levels to have them evolve into their final forms.

If you ask yourself "why such high Base Stat Total", well, its simple: The higher the roof, the more space you have to scale stats. The more space you have to scale stats, the better you can "personalize" stats for the different species.

Besides, the Base Stat Total stops being important when everybody is at the same "level".

Now, that's for "normal Pokémon". The first two Generations had two trios of "pseudo-legendary" monsters, those being Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, and Raikou, Entei and Suicune. These critters have 660 Base Stat Total.

Starters also have a total of 660. This is mainly because starters are usually the back bone of most player's teams (although I usually roll without them), and I saw fitting for them to be slightly stronger. But fear not, because those extra points don't really make much difference, as they're used to make them more well rounded instead of just dumping them on their highest stats.

Finally, true Legendary Pokémon keep their 700 Base Stat Total of the original games. To this day I never used legendaries beyond wanting to see their back sprites, never cared about them, so they have the least number of changes, really.

Some other changes are:

·Many Pokémon had their overall archetypes changed besides their Stats improved.  Furret is now a Fast Special Attacker, for example.

·Almost every Pokémon now has a 50% Male/Female Ratio, except for the Nidorans,  Tauros and Miltank. Pokémon like Blissey, Chansey, or the Hitmon-family  now can be both male and female. Magnemite, Voltorb and such are still genderless.

·The two Legendary Trios have genders and can in fact breed, thus they can be  seen almost as normal Pokémon.

·The Pokédex had the entries for each Pokémon modified. This is because now it shows  actually useful information instead of the continuously repeated "scientific" info  that usually is full of lies and ridiculous stuff that could make an Indian Elephant  have a headache, but hey, it may not be the Pokédex info, it may just be a bit too  close to a Magcargo and it's experiencing how one feels being next to the Sun.

 Happens to us all sometimes.

 Now, the first page of each species shows its Weaknesses and Resistances while  the second page of each one now points out the Base Stat spreads it has,  which is a much, much more useful ingame data, specially when this hacks  aims to change heavily most things related to battling and "the RPG elements".

 Oh, and by the way, if you press Select while looking at a Pokémon's Data,  you'll activate "Shiny Mode", and every Pokémon shown will be seen with their  Shiny Colors!

·Talking about Shiny Pokémon, those are far more common. While I personally don't care  too much about them, specially nowadays when they've become so... Uneventful and common,  not to mention how much they've been related with hacking and cheating, Pokémon being  shiny lost appeal to me, yet they're still a big thing for many players, so why not make  them easier to obtain?

 The means for finding a Shiny Pokémon in Generation II were rough. REALLY rough. With  the way it works now, you should find quite a few of them throughout your adventure, and  also finding female shiny Pokémon should also be a more common occurrence than before.

 You're bound to find a fair share of them. This being a modded game, it doesn't really  matter if they're not as rare or hard to find.

 NPC trainers will have Shiny monsters here and there, so you should also have the chance!

·As you already know, wild Pokémon may be holding items. In the original game,  many species had nothing with them. Now, most species have them, and the variety  is much, much bigger. Not only that, the chances for finding Pokémon with items  has increased.

 Now there's a 50% of not having an item, 40% of having a "common" item, and  10% of holding a "rare" item. Better than the 2% on the original.

 Lastly, I've made another improvement in held items. Now, whenever you battle  with a wild monster that has an Item, an little icon (similar to the one in the party menu)  will appear on the enemy's HUD. Specifically between the Pokeball icon that appears  when you fight a monster that you already have in your Pokédex, and the Gender icon.

 Again, only for WILD creatures.  If monsters have items in trainer battles is a secret to everybody!

·A big one, already mentioned in the introduction:  DVs (or IVs, if you rather call them that) NO LONGER FACTOR INTO STAT CALCULATIONS!!

 This means that now only Base Stats and Stat Exp matter in each Pokémon statistics.  Oh, and by the way, the formula to calculate stats has changed very slightly.  Remember that +5 bonus at the end of the calculations? Now it's a 6.  That means that a 100 Base stat (Not HP) of a fully trained monster is 300 and not 299.

 This also means you can now have Female Pokémon with good Attack power, and Shiny  Pokémon no longer are weak, two rather big things for me at least.

 No more you will have to waste hours of your life breeding and abandoning  dozens if not hundreds of Pokémon for good DVs (what a great lesson!).  NPC Trainers also get good Pokémon too, making things better for everybody.

·Evolution has been streamlined and homogenized. This means that Pokémon that  evolved by trades, special events, and such have simpler, more direct ways  to do so now. But also, all Pokémon evolver on similar levels.

 After all, if they are supposed on equal footing in Power, they should  also be on the same level on this matter too.

 Here's a few examples:

 Pokémon with three stages evolve at levels 20 and 32.

 Pidgey evolves to Pidgeotto at level 20, and to Pidgeot at level 32.  Chikorita evolves to Bayleef at level 20, and to Meganium at level 32.  Dratini evolves to Dragonair at level 20, and to Dragonite at level 32.

 Pokémon with two stages evolve between levels 22 and 24.

 Rattata evolves into Raticate at level 23.  Venonat evolves into Venomoth at level 24.  Rhyhorn evolves into Rhydon at level 24.  Hoothoot evolves into Noctowl at level 22.

 Of course, there are a couple of exceptions. Caterpie and Weedle  are still the fastest evolving lines, and of course Pokémon that  evolve through stones can do so anytime you want.

 Oh, and by the way, in this hack, you WANT to evolve when Pokémon want to.  You won't get much from stopping an evolution, and with Pokémon that evolve  through stones and such, you should do it before too late.

 This is because many species learn better techniques at the same level they evolve,  and it would be a waste to not learn them.

 You can find at which levels are recommended Pokémon to evolve through stones in  the specific Pokémon Stat list txt. But if you want to make it easy:

 If the Pokémon has two evolutionary stages > Use the stone at Level 22 or 23.  If the Pokémon has three evolutionary stages > use the stone at level 30 or 32 (to reach the last stage).

 That said, if you feel like not evolving for whatever reason, you've not lost everything.  The game has a Move Reminder, and you'll be able to remember freely any move from a species  learnset.

 Oh, and the Time Capsule seems to work as long as you of course follow the rules.  But a few notes:

 Any Pokémon you bring from Generation 1 may have their moves changed upon  arriving your game. The moves may turn into a very uncharacteristic one for  the Pokémon, because I repurposed many moves into new ones.

 The stats of the Pokémon will change from Gen 1 to Gen 2, and most notably,  the HP of any Pokémon that reaches Gen 2 will not be fully healed, because  of the change in stats, but there's no problem at all as far as functionality,  just heal.  

 That said, have in mind there's NO NEED to use the Time Machine.  You do so under your responsibility.

o-----------------o |[6]  Type Changes| o-----------------o

Yet another big shake to the, in my personal point of view, rather badly balanced formula.

I'm not going to discuss or waste time with this. This is how it works here:

Defensive wise, each type now is weak to two other types, while resistant to three, one of them being itself. There are NO immunities. Every type is equal as far as weaknesses and resistances, except for Normal.

Normal has no weaknesses or resistances, period.

Offensive wise, each Type is effective against two Types, and is resisted by three, one it being itself. Normal does not hit for Super Effective damage nor does it get resisted.

So, among other things, Ghost will get hurt by Normal and Fighting moves, Normal will get hit by Ghost, Dragon is no longer weak to itself, and Ice is not such an awful and pathetic defensive Type that exists to be mocked.

Oh, the Fairy Type has been added too, but how it works doesn't exactly resemble the original game, just like the other Types.

Now, because I know how certain part of the community can act (and let's not kid ourselves pretending it doesn't happen), to make myself clear and blunt:

 I don't care if you think Type X should be weak/resistant to type Y.  I don't care if you don't want to learn new Type Matchups.  I don't care what Game Freak does with types now or in the future.

I'm not Game Freak and I have made this wanting to break away from their norm, I don't have to follow any rules, not theirs, not yours.

Making a more even ground for all types, trying to make each monster good, so I could play with all of them and have fun was one of the important things for me, and to reach that goal I made as many changes as I saw fit.

You're free to stop reading and go look for another hack if this will bother you that much.

End of the "serious" moment. Good? Great, let's continue!

With this change, every Pokémon will always have more good points than bad points, not to mention that the maximum number of weaknesses a Pokémon can have is 4, and if it has 4 weaknesses, to compensate it will have 6 resistances.

Another thing I want to point out is that the number of Normal Type Pokémon has been lowered. While there are still a bunch of them, it's a way lower number, making many of these previously Normal Pokémon have completely different Type Combinations. I mean, I'm sure you won't miss all the Normal/Flying types. I hope so at least.

If you think Normal Type not having weaknesses could be "broken", far from it, specially since, as I said, in this hack having *more good points* is a given for any non-Normal Pokémon. But of course that's just talking. They can make for great members, in one of my several test-playthroughs, a Furret was one of my best Pokémon all thoughout the game.

There is an image in the RAR file with a Type Table to show you how Types work now, but beyond that, in Violet City's Pokémon Academy, there are two books that teach you the differen Types and their strong and weak points.

And then, if you're so lazy to figure it out, the weaknesses and resistances for each individual species is listed on the Stats text file.

And theeen, if you're even lazier than that, you can also check the Pokedex Entry of a given *captured* Pokémon, as it gives you useful info such as this.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that you have a number of ways to find out how types work. Use them to your advantage.

Oh, lastly, in this hack there are NO Pokémon with double weaknesses. I've never liked them to be honest, and to me just show how unappealing some types were designed to be that they make such awful combinations.

I still remember how excited people were for Aurorus until they saw its typing, and then it all turned into either jokes at its weaknesses or pure disapppointment.

No fun.

o-----------------o |[7]  Move Changes| o-----------------o

Alongside the previous two changes, the Moves have been changed A LOT too.

Instead of just "copying" what Game Freak has done in later generations, this hack had in mind to actually modify moves in ways to make them more interesting based on the limitations of the GBC games, and also another little thing:

There is a Physical/Special Split in this hack, so one of the big changes of this hack was to give each Type a number of both, Physical and Special moves to cover different Power levels so Pokémon can have good STAB moves that go along with their stats.

After all, that was probably the best thing Generation IV did for me. While it took some toys from some Pokémon (like Elemental Punches from Alakazam), it really was a big change for the better for most species.

So for example, we have Rock Slide for Rock Pokémon with high Attack, and Rock Launch for Rock Pokémon with high Special Attack. For this, many old moves were removed and reworked into new moves, mostly moves that were redundant and exactly the same as other moves (Like Whirlwind and Roar, or Wrap and Bind, they're the exact same thing).

While this gives every type and every Pokémon solid Stab moves, the limitation of 254 moves makes it so I can't add many "wild" and unique moves, but oh well, it's already much, much better than what it was originally on Generation II.

...No, really, I forgot how rough and unfair the move list was in old Generations, with some Types having almost no good moves at all, or moves that Pokémon couldn't take advantage of because their Stats and their Types didn't match. Hoo boy...  

Another big change is that most attacks now have secondary effects, and very often, the lower the Power of a move, the higher is the chance to inflict those secondary effects.

For example, Fire Breath (New move) has a 15% Chance of causing Burn and 70 Power, but Flamethrower only has 10% chance of causing burn and 95 Power. This makes moves with lower Power a bit more useful.

As you may imagine, Pokémon Movesets have been changed tremendously, not only for those critters that had their Types and Stat distributions changed, but also to accomodate all the modifications related to Moves.

Movesets in this hack are in no way attempting to copy later generations of official games, specially since Generation 2 Movesets were incredibly sad to look back.

Instead, they're focused on attempting to give what that certain species needs. So no Pokémon will be let without good STAB moves, and you also won't see Pokémon that are obviously Physical attackers getting Special moves or viceversa.

A handful of moves also got their priority changed.

Safeguard, Haze, Mist, Transformation and Bide now go before other moves. This change actually shakes up battles a bit, it was fun to see the AI read my moves from time to time and prevent Status, and hey, with Transform having priority now Ditto is more usable too!

A list of the moves, what they do, and their other data is in its own TXT file, although with ingame descriptions, it is not necessary.

As far as TMs and HMs, things also have changed.

TMs no longer get consumed when used, so they have infinite uses. The Moves they teach have also changed for the majority of TMS, with most of them teaching both Physical and Special "end-game" moves. There's also a total of 55 TMS now.

None of them can be found in shops, you must find them by exploring or obtained from an NPC.

HMs have also changed a bit, making them more useful. Cut now is a 70 Power Normal move with a High Critical Ratio, and Fly is a strong move with 110 Power that causes Recoil damage. Flash causes damage and can lower Accuracy. Strength is now is Fighting type and causes Flinch. And Whirlpool is a bit more powerful and now takes more HP at the end of turns, so its a rather cool combo alongside Toxic on bulky Pokémon.

Also, HMs can be forgotten like normal attacks, so you can swap attacks easily in case you want, and unlike in Gen. 1, because you can't drop them, you can't get stuck.

Or rather, you wouldn't get stuck, because there's another change. These moves:

Headbutt Rock Smash Cut         Surf Strength Waterfall Whirlpool

Don't need to be known by a Pokémon to be used in the overworld! You only need a Pokémon capable of learning such move, and the needed Medal in the case of the HMs.

That only leaves Flash and Fly out of that list, right?

About Flash:

I also added an item that will let you light dark caves so you don't need to have a Pokémon with Flash, but you get it quite a bit later than the HM. Just look around Mahogany after things calmed down.

It can be assigned to Select for quick use, too!

About Fly:

There's a small sidequest you can do later in the game that will net you a special object. This item will let you use a different version of Fly. Mechanically, it's the same, you can fly to places you've explored. Animation-wise is different, though.

Because all of this, you no longer need to have any HM on any Pokémon unless you want it (because most of them are actually respectable attacking moves), which gives much more freedom to parties and movesets!

o----------------------------------------o |[8] Stat Experience, Vitamins and Fruits| o----------------------------------------o

TLDR VERSION: Use Vitamins, use Fruits. They improve your Pokemon's stats, and          you need to take care of your team to withstand other trainers          which have properly trained monsters. Use them intelligently,          don't waste them with Pokémon you don't want to have in your team,      at least early on when you have limited resources.

         Vitamins are no longer as limited in effect, or as expensive.          Fruits are new, and are twice as good as Vitamins.

Pokémon games have a system in which, through adquiring certain points through different means, a creature can improve its Stats. In Generations 1 and 2, these are called Stat Experience. This is a system Game Freak has never informed the players about at all, and the games never came even close to mention it in any trully useful detail, so bare with me if this is your first time with this stuff, although I doubt you found this hack knowing nothing about it.

Stat Experience points can range from 0 (Empty) to 65535 (Maximized). Unlike later generations, In Gen. I and II, you can maximize the experience of all the stats.

Stat Experience points are divided and exclusive for each stat. HP, Attack, Defense and Speed have their own Stat Exp Table. Special Attack and Special Defense share the same Stat Exp Table. So reaching 65535 Stat Exp in each Stat will make your Pokémon perfect stat-wise. Even Pokémon at Level 100 can get Stat Experience, but to gain the effects, they need to be stored on the PC so their real Stats can get updated with the current Stat Exp. they have at that moment.

The ways you get Stat Exp are these:

By battling -Each time one of your Pokémon defeats another, the Base Stats of the enemy's species          is added to your Stat Exp in each stat. This is the slowest way, but it's also free,          and will raise your stats by just playing through the game.

     If you defeat, let's say, a Caterpie, it has these Base Stats:

HP 75, Attack 60, Defense 70, Speed 95, Special Attack 90, Special Defense 70.      As I said, Special Attack and Defense use the same Stat Exp Table. The game takes      the Base Stat related to Special Attack, so in this case, your Pokémon will be      awarded 90 Special Stat Exp Points, alongside the rest.      Training only through battles is not only pointless when you have other means,      but also incredibly tedious. While in my hack Pokémon have higher stats that make      training this way faster, battling for Stat Exp should only be relied on when      you've already fed your Pokémon Vitamin and Fruits, to get those last Stat Exp Points      needed for a Perfect Stat.

     But of course, any Stat Exp gained through battles is benefitial, just don't battle      *only* for the Stat Exp unless, as I said it's to finish Stat Exp training!      By the way, there's a special condition named Pokerús, which is a benefitial virus      that will double the amount of Stat Exp you get from battles. This is very rare      to get, and you will be noticed by a PKMN Center Nurse. The games don't tell you  what it does exactly either...

     It can be very useful, and it propagates through your Pokémon team, and disappears      after some time. If you ever get Pokerús, try to keep a Pokémon with active Pokerús      on your PC so you can pass it to other Pokémon. But as I said, it's very rare!

By Vitamins -Vitamins in the original game were pretty useless. They raised very little, and they      could only be used up to some point, which is less than half way the Stat Exp total.

     In this hack, though, they're much better, and even necessary, as the people living      in Johto and Kanto have *actually* trained their Pokémon properly and they have Stat      Exp, so they'll be stronger and more challenging, and after a certain point, all      trainers you'll find will have maximized Pokémon, like any trainer worth their salt      would be doing.

     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp Points per use, and they can be used until the      Stat Exp of the Stat that you want to raise reaches 51.456, at which point, the      Pokémon wont get any benefit from it (it won't be wasted, so don't worry).

     To make it easier to understand, let's put it this way:

     An untrained (either just catched, or just hatched) Pokémon will have 0 Stat Exp on      everything. If you feed it HP UPs, it will be able to eat 6:

     10.240 1 HP Up      20.480 2 HP Up      30.720 3 HP Up      40.960 4 HP Up      51.200 5 HP Up > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one.      61.440 6 HP Up > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!               You can get the rest by battling.

     If you're used to Effort Values from Gen 3 onwards, let's make it even easier:

     The way it works, each modern EV means 256 Stat Exp, so if it's easier for you, just      divide Stat Exp by 256:

     Each Vitamin gives 10.240 Stat Exp, that means 40 EV.      The limit of Stat Exp is 51.456, that means 201 EV.

     So with a Pokémon without EVs, you can go from 0 to 240 EV through vitamins.

     You can obviously give Vitamins to a Pokémon you've been battling with no problem,      but an untrained Pokémon is better to use as an example.

     Their price is much lower so you can keep up with enemy trainers, although they      cost enough to make each purchase a bit of an investment early into the game.

By Fruits   - Fruits are almost exactly the same as Vitamins, but they give twice the Stat Exp.

     Each one gives 20.480 Stat Exp (Or 80 EV if you want it that way), and the limit      is 41.216 Stat Points (or 161 EV). This means that your Pokémon can eat up to      three Fruits in a stat to jump for 0 Stat Exp to 61.440 (or 0 to 240 EV) and      almost maximize it. Let's again use an example of raising HP with Fruit now:

     20.480 1 Salty Fruit      40.960 2 Salty Fruit > Doesn't go pass the limit so you can eat another one      61.440 3 Salty Fruit > Passed the limit, so you can't feed more, but it's almost Maximized!

     Thus, fruits are much better overall than Vitamins, but they're scarce, and should      be better used for Pokémon you know they have little to no training in a certain Stat.

     You can combine Vitamins and Fruit without problem, but if you do, first use your      Fruits, then the Vitamins so you don't waste Fruits unnecessarily.

Why the limit - If you're asking why the limit is 51.456, or 240 EV for Vitamins, and 41.216 or 161 EVs for Fruits, it is simple to answer: If you feed a Vitamin/Fruit to a Pokémon in a way that would go over 65535, a bug would happen and the Stat Exp of that Pokémon would roll back to 0. I think it's obvious why that would suck. So, by putting these limits you're safe from that to happen, but you also get very close to maximize a stat. It's the best balance I could achieve.

o--------------------------------o |[9]  Mechanic & Gameplay Changes| o--------------------------------o

Already said that under the hood, there are many, many other changes. Some (not all of them, not by a long shot) changes are as follows:

· The Clock Reset function now has a much easier button combination to open it.  The combination is like this:

 1: Hold    Select + Down  2: Release Down while holding Reset.  3: With Reset Held, now hold Up too.  4: Release Select. The Reset Clock menu will open.

 It requires less buttons, making it easier to do, or able to do at all  depending where you are playing. You still need to input the password,  though, removing that would let you abuse certain things very easily.

· Prices for several things have been lowered on the "Intended" Versions of this hack.  Because you no longer can abuse Items to progress, I saw no real reason to  make you pay as much as usual. You're still going to need them, because the  need for healing between battles is still a thing.

 Another reason to do this is because you will also spend much more money than  usual on Vitamins and other stuff to properly train and prepare your team.  

· Catching Pokémon grants you Experience now! The Exp. is the same as if it was  defeated, and every Pokémon that fought in said battle will get a share of it.

· The Odd Egg will always give you a Shiny Pokémon between 7 ramdonly selected  species, and both genders. Each Species get a unique move, instead of all of  them getting the same (now non-existing) move.

· Talking about Eggs, Pokémon now hatch much, much faster, so there's less  walking up and down through Goldenrod. Not only that, but Egg Moves also  changed all around. Pokémon also lay Eggs faster, and Nidorina &  Nidoqueen can now breed, alongside both "legendary" trios.

 Now each basic species has between 3 or 4 Egg Moves for the most part  they are different from vanilla, and basic Starter Pokémon have 5 Egg Moves.

· Trainer AI has been much improved. Now they know much better what they do, and they  can priorize stuff like Status Effects, they take better advantage of weaknesses and  resistances.

 They also carry Items with them, if you play with the patch that lets you  items in Battle, of course.

 Trainers also have properly trained monsters, with Stat Exp increasing throughout  the game. Feeding your team vitamins and fruits is now important to stay on toes  with them. Of course, there is more variety in species of monsters used by NPCs,  their levels are higher, and team sizes have increased a bit.

 Making each trainer a full 6 Pokémon team would drag the game, though, and probably  couldn't fit, I already was suffering the lack of space with what I added, because  when adding Stat Exp, custom Movesets, and such the space gets used way too fast.

 Also, the game was very, very unfair to the NPC trainers.  Not only were they hard-coded to fail more often, have mediocre AI, and Low-Level Pokémon,  you also got your Stats and Types boosted as you got Badges, so they became completely  inferior and disappointing... At least, if you want to have any challenge.

 That's why any bonus that Badges give you was stripped down. No Stat Boost, no Type Boost.  This will make the game far more fair and chalenging, in turn making it more enjoyable if  you look for having to think and put a bit of effort, which is, you know, the point of  this entire hack.

 Another thing changed is the money that many types of trainers reward you by beating them.  In this hack you have many more things to buy as mentioned above, from Vitamins, to  Held Items, to Decorations, and more Healing Items because of the higher difficulty,  so a better income was needed.

 On the other hand, if you lose, which is much more plausible now, you won't get your money  halved. Instead, you lose money depending on the number of badges you have, like more recent  games. It's much more fair early on, specially in this hack since it is expected of you to  buy vitamins and held items for your monsters as you go through the game, besides all the  other items.

· Stat increase percentages have been changed.

 Stat-improving moves like Accelerate or Meditate, and Stat-decreasing moves like  Growl or Scary Face can go from Level 0 (normal stat), to Level +6 or -6,  depending if it increases or decreases a stat.

Before o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  28%  35%  45%  50%  66%  100%  150%  200%   250%  300%  350%  400%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o Now o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o |Level -6   -5   -4   -3   -2   -1   0     1     2      3     4     5     6   | |Perc. 25%  30%  35%  45%  60%  75%  100%  130%  160%   190%  220%  250%  300%| o-----------------------------------------------------------------------------o

 This has been changed for one main reason: to make better balance between critters,  Stats are now higher. With stats being higher, stat-increasing would get too broken,  specially with +1 bonus being a whole 50% increase. So bonuses are softer now, but  so is stat-reducing -1 Level, so it's not too harsh.

· Item Storing Changes

 For starters, there's two new pockets, one for Berries and Fruits in which 13 kinds of items go in it,  the already known berries, plus the new Fruits used for powering up your monsters. Fits all of them.

 The other new pocket is for Battle items, specifically Held Items. There are several dozen of them,  and having such type of items be mixed with consumable and healing items was a bit of a mess,  even more if you have an organization obsession and want everything neatly grouped.

 Every item of this type fits in this pocket, that's over 50 different types of Items!

 Apricorns are now stored in your Ball Pocket, and there's space to have every ball plus Apricorn,  so they will never become a nuissance to you by filling your bag like before.

 Item Pocket now can store 35 different objects instead of 20, and because Berries/Fruits, Apricorns,  and Held Items do not take space in this pocket anymore you have much more freedom.

 There's one catch, though, now you can only store 30 types of items in the PC, instead of 50.  It won't be much of a problem because you don't need to store any Berry, Fruit, Apricorn, Ball,  or Held Item, so I think it's a good compromise.

 Another change is, as mentioned above, about wild Pokémon. Now, many different species will  hold items. These range from Berries and Fruits, to sell-able Items, Apricorns and a few others.

 This not only will make getting new monsters more interesting, but will also make way, way  more useful the move Thief, and also the new Peck, which also has the effect of taking the  item the foe holds.

· The Pokegear Map has seen a huge facelift. Not only is a bit prettier to look at,  it's also more informative, with standout places or landmarks pointed out in the  map. I even added different little icons to quickly see which poblated areas are  Towns or Cities, just because why not.

· A new Building in Goldenrod has been opened. This place will sell to you all  the Decoration items you previously would get through Mystery Gift or through your Mom.

 Some of the dolls also have been changed, to offer something new, because the game  now is not limited to the original Pokémon icons for the Party Menu. This is also  true for the bigger dolls.

 Talking about that, your Mom will no longer buy you Decoration items, and the items  it buys are now much more useful and simply put, better than Super Potions and such.

· A Move Reminder has been added to the game, but unlike how Move Reminders work  in vanilla games, here it will let you remember moves from a species, as many times  as you want, for free.

 This is because this hack, having higher difficulty than your usual Pokémon game, may  require you to reshuffle your Movesets or try different strategies, and I WANT you to  do so, punishing you with constant farming of Items to change Movesets so you can try  different things sounds very counter-intuitive to me.

 To make this even more useful, each fully evolved creature can remember a number  of Moves from prior evolutionary forms too.

 The types of Moves they'll retain from earlier forms are usually moves related to  Stat changes, Status Effects, and Attacks that may have special traits or effects.

 Basically, Pidgeot won't be able to remember Wing Attack, which is a simple, straightforward  Attack move, but it will remember Quick Attack and Peck, the first one having Priority,  and the second one having the new effect of stealing Items from other Pokémon.

 You can find the Move Reminder in both Johto, and Kanto.  In Johto, he lives with the other useful NPCs, Name Rater and Move Deleter in Goldenrod.  In Kanto, you can find a similar group of NPCs in Lavender Town.

· Pokegear Rematches are now much stronger, they have more Pokémon and more varied,  and often enough their Pokémon have nicknames.

 To give you an idea, many Pokegear trainers will end up with teams of Lvl 80 Pokémon!  So be very careful when fighting again these trainers, they may surprise you!

 Also, a big change in how they work: Originally, if you didn't rematch a trainer  and you kept playing, when you came back to it, it would challenge you with a very  outdated team.

 This is because they only get better if you fight them earlier each time.  This is no how it works anymore. They upgrade their teams as you advance through  the game, and you could very well meet them for the first time after battling them  originally and find out they have a full team of very strong Pokémon.

 This makes Pokegear rematches far, far more interesting and better paced.

 Talking about rematches, I added end-game rematches to the game.    Once you beat Red for the first time, a whole bunch of new battles gets unlocked:  The Pokémon League levels get bumped, with some changes on their teams.  Counting your Rival's rematch, levels range from 80 to 85.

 All Gym Leaders end up their training, and they await you to fight in Lvl 100 Rematches.  If they didn't have originally, every Leader will have a full team, and all of them have  some changes to their teams.

 The default trainer in the Trainer's House in Viridian City also goes from Lvl 70, to Lvl 100.  And there's a few extra Lvl 100 battles that I'll let you discover, although they're  not precissely hidden!

 If you ask yourself why Lvl 100, well, that's to make sure you don't win by overlevelling them.  Once you beat Red, you also unlock a way to Level Up your Pokémon much faster.  Just check the Battle Tower once you do so, although be warned, it requires some effort!

· Buena's Password had its rewards changed, now it's more useful overall.

· Ingame Pokémon trades are different, and they ask for hard-to-get monsters, but give you  very nice ones in exchange, I hope you like them.

· Bill's grandfather has seen some neat changes. His time killer of seeing Pokémon you bring  to him stays, but not quite the same as it originally was. Now he'll tell you riddles that  talk about a certain Pokémon, and if you guess them correctly by showing him the right  species, he'll gift you some very neat Held Items for your pals!  He put quite of effort in those riddles, they even rhyme!

· Fishing has been tweaked a bit.

 Now the chances for Pokémon to bit are higher (who wants to press Select several times for nothing?)  and the Pokémon available by fishing are much more varied, yes, even the Old Rod.

 Levels are also higher. Old Rod ~10, Good Rod ~20, Super Rod ~40.  

 Talking about the Old Rod, now you can get it sooner, before even getting the first Medal.  The Fishing Guru has moved to the gate that connectes Route 31 with Violet City.  This expands which Pokémon you can get early on, and more options is better.

 ...Unless you're me, then it just makes it harder to choose which monsters you want to have.

· Fruit Trees now give 2 Berries/Fruits/Apricorns each day!

· On Violet, Azalea and Goldenrod cities you can find the new Berry Scouts.  These green-cladded folks will sell you the basic Status-Healing Berries,  in order to help accomodate you a bit on the higher difficulty of this hack  compared to the usual stuff.

 The price on the "Items in battle available" patches are a bit higher.

· While there's absolutely zero intention of creating a new "story" or "region", there  are new maps here and there. For Example, there's an actual Viridian Forest again,  with trainers, Items and such, even!

 Other maps got extended a bit here and there, maybe to hide something...!  Some areas also have changes made to look or feel better to explore.  Others have been extended to feel more like a full place.

 The Gyms also had changes. It's interesting how... "small", and simple most of them where.  I expanded most, give some light puzzles to most of the ones that didn't have anything  going on (I even rescued unused map movement for one of them!) to make them slightly  more interesting.

 Of course, please don't expect Zelda-level dungeons or anything like that.  ...Although that could be a pretty cool thing as its own game!

· Because I made quite a few changes in the Types of the Pokémon,  I reformatted Bill's PC a bit. Now when browsing around your monsters,  you can see their types on the upper left side of the screen.

· I changed a few textbox frames, some to fix them up a bit,  and two of them are entirely new. I like Frame 5 myself.

· The order of the Pockets in your Bag differs when youre outside  Battle and when you're in middle of one.

 This is to make the Poké Ball pocket right next to the default  Item pocket, instead of being 3 pushes away to the right.

· Status Effects no longer are shown with 3 letter "words".  Now they have their own little Icons, which make things cleaner  both in Battle and specially on the Party menu.

· Of course, I decapitalized all the text I found.  What a tedious thing...

· Smashable Rocks now can give stone-type Items alongside  being a way to find certain Pokémon.

· Once you heal Moo Moo, one of the twins opens up a  little shop!

 She'll be able to make Berry Juice for you, and  you have two ways of doing it, for convenience.

 Talking about Held-healing Items, RageCandyBar have  been also reworked to be eaten during battle.

 They're more powerful than Gold Berries, but less  than Berry Juice.

· Many things have been fixed. For example:

 Daisy's Haircut was buggy and could in fact reduce Happiness, has been fixed.  Magikarps in Lake of Rage were in fact smaller than normal and not bigger,  and other Magikarp related bugs also existed all around. Fixed.  A bug where Defense could be lowered by attacking a Substitute with a -Def move existed, now is fixed.  A bug where Mirror Coat and Counter would damage foe after they used an item existed, now is fixed.  A bug that made supposedly fleeing Pokémon not able to flee is fixed. Now Fast Balls are more useful.  A bug that made a foe under Nightmare's effect still be hurt if it was healed with items is fixed.  A bug where the HP Bar would deplete way slower than intended existed. Yes, you're reading right.  The speed at which the HP Bar emptied, specially at higher levels, was not intentional, making  high level battles way, way slower. This has been fixed and is much better, albeit not Gen. 3 "fast".

 Other bugs and stuff has been fixed too.

There's more things I could put here, but when you spend so long doing something you start to forget each individual thing...

o-------------------------------------------------o |[10] New Kurt Balls, new ways to obtain Apricorns| o-------------------------------------------------o

Yes, every Kurt Ball has been replaced. Why?

Well, actually, for the first year and a half of "development" of this hack, Kurt Balls were pretty much as they were originally, with exception of changing one for more utility, improving their effects to make them overall better and fixing the quite-a-few glitches related to them.

But during the many tests I (and a few friends) did, all the feedback I got is that they did not use them much, if at all, because how situational they are, and because you can only get them in limited amounts.

So I decided to create a new set of Balls with very simple yet very effective effects. Each of these new Poké Balls offer a x3 Catch Multiplier if used on a certain Type of Pokémon, with each new Ball being useful for 3 different Types each.

For example, the Poké Ball made with Red Apricorns (named Red Ball to simplify things), will work best while trying to catch Fire, Fighting or Ground Pokémon! Other example would be the Pink Ball will do so with Poison, Psychic, or Fairy ones.

There's no tricks, nor complexities. If the types match, you get a stronger effect than an Ultra Ball. This makes each one way more versatile, every Apricorn as useful as the rest.

Descriptions of each new Ball points to which types are most effective.

Now, because I want people to use these Balls more often, there are a few more ways to obtain these Items. The first and most simple is getting Apricorns from Trees, from which you get two for every one each day.

Pokémon themselves also carry Apricorns, as many species hold them randomly.

But I also added a new face to Johto, a traveling monk! He's easily recognizable thanks to his sandogasa (a traditional traveling hat). Because he travels around Johto, each day you'll find him in a different spot, and each day will offer to trade 5 Apricorn of a certain color for one specific Item. The Items he ask for can be obtained from wild Pokémon, and sometimes found somewhere lying on the floor.

For Red or Green Apricorns, he asks for a Tiny Mushroom. for Blue, Yellow or Pink Apricorns, he asks for a Pearl. For White or Black Apricorns, he asks for a Stardust.

Tiny Mushrooms can be held by Pokémon such as Paras, Ledyba, Oddish, Vulpix and others. Pearls can be held by Pokémon such as Shellder, Horsea, Seadra, Octillery and Corsola. Stardust can be held by Pokémon such as Geodude, Jigglypuff, Phanpy, Staryu and Tentacool.

Of course those are just a few examples, there are more. I hope with all this, Kurt's custom Poké Balls are more useful all around.

o--------------------------------------------------------o |[11] The New and Improved Battle Tower and Trainer House| o--------------------------------------------------------o

The Battle Tower was the first time Game Freak offered anything sort of similar to a Challenge Mode inside the main games. We got Pokémon Stadium 1 and 2, which were great little things, designed to be a battle simulator, with different rules and difficulties, among other things like mini-games.

But the Battle Tower was a bit... Lacking. And HARD.

This is because, for one, the trainers you met here had a quite low variety of Pokémon, so it kinda became a bit boring (I guess Game Freak knew most Pokémon had middling stats!).

On the other hand, the monsters here sported pretty much PERFECT stats, and with strong moves along with them.

This last sentence is worth noting because in older generations, training your Pokémon to their fullest potential, A.K.A. giving them the max Stat Exp. was a total pain and a ludicriously slow process. And trying to get good DVs (old IVs) was a much, much, much worse process than that.

You couldn't make use of ANY mechanic to get Pokémon with good DVs, they were random, and unlike more recent Generations, you could not improve a Pokémon DVs by using items or such. You had no control besides soft resetting ad nauseam. If it sounds bad it's because it is.

So to have a chance not only you needed High DV monsters (pretty much impossible by normal rules), but also fully trained and with the best moves possible.  And you only got ONE SINGLE TM for many moves, and Pokémon learnsets were for the most party pretty lacking if looking at them from a competitive point of view, so you were screwed there, as you may imagine.

All in all, it was often seen as unfair and just not very fun. And if you wanted to try it anyway, add to that that the rewards were laughable. Vitamins that you could buy, and didn't help you at all because they became useless quickly, they only helped for less than half of the Stat. Exp total!

But here's the thing: I love the concept! The idea of having 3 monsters each, with the same level, where only your strategy, knowdlege and adaptibility can take you out of trouble, sounds great!

Even more, maybe if you got something worth your time as a reward it could be even more fun!

That's why a good chunk of the effort of this hack was about trying to balance types, moves, Pokémon and such. And also why the Battle Tower got so many changes!

So let's list the changes:

For starters, each of the ten Levels of the Tower got their Pokémon changed, both to update the new stats, but also to give much, much needed variety to the types of monsters you would see, as originally the game sported just a small number of different species.

Instead of 7 battles per round, now you have quicker rounds of 3. This makes for a much more brisk pace, a far less frustrating event if you lose, and easier to pick up and play.

About difficulty, it should still be a good challenge, although this time, there is some balance, as now you can properly train your monsters through vitamins and fruits, TMs hold a good selection of high-Power moves and they're infinite and of course DVs/IVs are the same for everybody.

Oh, and you can remember old moves, too!

There's also two Shops available for players, in which you can buy a selection of Held Items so you can prepare yourself to challenge the Tower, or to progress through the game, as trainers will start using Held Items more and more once you reach this point in the game.

Up to that point is the basic stuff... But the Battle Tower has also opened several shops and services, and there's even a bit of a progression system built into it, too!

Whenever you participate in the Battle Tower and come out victorious, you'll be rewarded a new type of Item: Battle Medals!

You get three for each victiorous round (so each three battles).

These objects are, basically, the coin of exchange for almost any service inside the Battle Tower. They are stored in your Item Pocket and can be used in a variety of ways.

For one, they're pricey objects, each one sells for 12.000P, thus they can cover costs for training Pokémon. Selling all 3 you win nets you 36.000P, which is pretty good if you realize you can buy enough Vitamins to fully feed a Pokémon in three different Stats (or four if you use Special Atk/Def Vitamins!).

So two good rounds of Battle Tower lets you set up the Stat Exp. of a Pokémon really, really quickly! Or you can buy other stuff with it, too. But that's just a bonus compared to their real use!

In the Main Hall of the Battle Tower, a new Receptionist hangs out close to the Battle Tower's usual lady that takes you to the battles themselves. This new NPC can reward you with a Silver or Gold Trophy in exchange for a number of Battle Medals. They're shiny decorations for your room... And hold some use.

The Battle Tower has been expanded and now there are new rooms that host several services. One of them, and one I'm rather excited to manage to put in the game is a Reward Shop that exchanges Battle Medals for Special Eggs!

Do you remember the event Pokémon from the Stadium games?

They were gifted to you after accomplishing something, and in Stadium 2, they had moves they couldn't learn normally. It was a nice little thing, and always made me feel curious about Pokémon with Moves that couldn't learn normally. You know, what new strategies could I come up with and such.

This service is located in a room behind the Main Hall. There, a Receptionist will take one of your Battle Medals and will gift you an Egg with a special Pokémon that knows a unique move!

There's a total of 50 different species you can get through these Eggs, and the one you get for each medal is selected at random. And every species has the same chances, no dishonest stuff like 0.0001% to get a certain Pokémon, like a Gatcha game.

Oh, and if you're one of those, don't waste your time resetting trying to get Shiny Pokémon from these Eggs... Believe me, it won't work.

Another service is the inclusion of Move Tutors!

There are two Tutors and each one can teach 4 Moves each. Seven of those are unique to Tutors, with an Eighth Move being Toxic, a TM you get veeery late, so I added it for earlier access, as some Pokémon (like defensive ones) do benefit from it or need it to work well.

Tutor Moves can only be learnt by Fully Evolved Pokémon, and you can do so only in exchange for one Battle Medal.

The move selection is composed of Non-Damaging moves to give more utility and so they can be applied to all Pokémon in one way or another, unlike damaging moves, and I would have liked to have more, but I hit the limit before the entire game gets corrupt, so these will have to do!

Both of these features not only offer much, much better rewards for your victories in the Battle Tower, ones that not only can be enjoyed throughout the rest of the game making it more entertaining, but also give you a chance to get a few monsters earlier and gives new possibilites to make teams to challenge the Battle Tower too.

...And that's not all you can do here now!

Besides normal Move Tutors, the Battle Tower has also hired a very special NPC: The Egg Elder... Or in other words, an Egg Move Tutor!

Basically, in exchange for 3 Battle Medals, this old man can teach a Pokémon an Egg Move that its evolution line can learn through breeding with other Pokémon!

And yes, any member. Pidgeot and Pidgeotto can learn moves that a bred Pidgey could hinerit, so no worries on that front!

This way you won't longer feel like your early-game teammates (or any Pokémon for that matter) feel gimped or "lesser" because don't have this or that move only available through breeding.

In a way it's like every species has its own specific Tutor Moves!

But let's continue.

The receptionist in the main hall (the one who gives trophies) also offers a new Key Item: The Box Changer. It does what it says, it gives you the ability to switch the Box on Bill's PC anywhere you want. Just remember that you still save your game when changing boxes this way.

Once you reach the "endgame", meaning, after defeating Red, two other Receptionists will open up new services. And are neat ones!

The first one is a Rare Candy shop! You will be able to exchange one Battle Medal for 5 Rare Candies. This will let you manage the Levels of your Pokémon faster, either to battle the new Lvl 100 Rematches, or to Level up your monsters to reach the Levels required for Battle Tower Rooms.

The other, it's quite different but way more interesting too.

You see, a new group of candies capable of changing the Level of a Pokémon to a fixed one now exist! There's Candies for Levels 10, 30, 50 and 80!

No matter what Level the monster is, it will change into the Level of the Candy!

If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 4 Pokémon, it will become Level 30. And If you give a Level 30 Candy to a Level 82 Pokémon, it will also become Level 30!

This is mostly for a reason: To be able to use your favourite pals in any Level of the Battle Tower!

Once a Pokémon Level goes up, it no longer can access the Battle Rooms of lower Levels, and if you wanted to use a monster of a specific species you already raised, you were forced to train another one. But no longer you will need to do that!

Now any Pokémon can battle in any Battle Room by using these new Candies in combination with Rare Candies, and you can perfectly control the level of your team for this challenge while also needing a bit of a resource (Battle Medals) to make use of it.

Not to mention, Level 80 Candies can make HUGE time savers for training Pokémon for those Level 100 Rematches, specially if we're talking about bred Pokémon, or Pokémon from Battle Tower's Special Eggs!

Now, be warned, you CAN NOT make use of all these features from the beginning!

Remember those Trophies I talked about? Yeah, they do more than look nice in your room. Each one unlocks features of the Tower!

Once you win the Silver Trophy, you unlock: Move Tutors  (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Rare Candy Shop  (You need to beat Red too). Level 30 Candies (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 50 Candies (You need beat the Elite Four too).

Once you win the Gold Trophy, you unlock: Egg Move Tutor   (Accessible the moment you get the Trophy). Level 80 Candy   (You need to beat Red too).

So yeah, you must prove yourself and get the Trophies to use all the Battle Tower has to offer.

But don't fret! There's not really much grinding to do. You'll see that the number of Medals needed to obtain each is pretty reasonable for what they unlock.

The game does not ask for hundreds of them for each, not even close! I know how tedious is to collect Battle Points for an Item or one-time use TM back in Generation IV.

And hey, if for some reason you still need a bit of a push, you can win Battle Medals by participating on Buena's Password.

They cost 2 points, you can get one Medal every two days. It's a much slower pace than actually fighting, but it certainly adds up if you play often.

And you also get a handful of them in Kanto, a certain NPC will gift you a bunch if you manage to do something, and some Gym Leaders will gift you one too.

Lastly, also in Kanto, there's the Trainer House.

Originally it was a cool little feature in which you could battle the Pokémon Team that a friend had when you two did a Mistery Gift.

Because I don't expect people going around doing IR connections with a Romhack, the Trainer House has been changed around.

I really don't want to say much, but here's this:

Normally, you can battle a special Trainer daily in this building. But once you've beaten the strongest trainer in all the land, levels are raised, and you can take Lvl 100 battles... With the difference that the Pokémon used in these new battles change depending on the day of the week!

And if you win, you also obtain Battle Medals!

It's a little extra end-game thing alongside the other end-game additions.

o-------------------o |[12] Visual Changes| o-------------------o

Many, many visual changes have been made throughout the game to make the world a bit more cohesive, to make Pokémon look better, or to simple improve stuff here and there.

Pretty much every Pokémon not named Unown got their colors changed, for ones that look better, closer to the original colors of a particular species, and also got their sprites touched up and cleaned up.

Because the games were originally designed to be displayed on the tiny screen of a GB, the graphic artists would try and take advantage to use the 4 colors available to a Pokémon sprite to give it more details. With the advent of the GBC, now they could use colors too, and because the screen wasn't backlighted, they needed to use stronger, more saturated and often darker colors.

The issue is that nowadays these games are pretty much always played on backlighted screens that are also much, much bigger than the original Game Boy's screen, so these graphics that originally looked fine now I don't find they've aged as well with the ways we play them today.

Now, let's be fair here. This is not a criticism for the sprites or the artists. These sprites were made to be seen under a specific hardware, and they worked with what they had, and the gigantic jump in design quality from Generation 1 to Generation 2 is to be applauded.

But at the same time, I think it's fair to say that there's nothing that says they can not be revised and/or improved. That's why I took the horridly tedious job of cleaning up every single sprite (and each of their animated frames) to make them look more clean when played on bigger screens.

I also took the liberty to tweak many of the colors used for Shiny Pokémon. This is something I've seen many people point out throughout the years, and it's true that the use of color for Shiny palettes leaves quite a bit to be desired, with many Pokémon being painted with what I saw called "Puke Green", and others having really dark and simply not appealing combinations of colors that sometimes would make the sprites look worse.

Several of those examples could be Blastoise, Raichu, Aipom or Golbat, and this last one even gets its shading screwed up. Or something like Rhydon, that looks exactly like the official art, while its normal color is much darker; with Pokémon like Phanpy, Sunkern, Xatu, Scyther and others looking very similar to their default colors.

Just have in mind I'm working with the limitations of the GBC and 4 Colors per sprite, so I do what I can do, although it's surprising what nice colors the GBC can display compared to the ones they used, but of course, I'm not doing this to be seen on real hardware, so I do not have that limitation.

You can check a couple of examples in the pictures inside the RAR file for both, sprite improvements and Shiny changes.

I also improved all the Back Sprites too, to keep consistency. And some Pokémon got entirely different sprites, such as Mr. Mime, or Wigglytuff, as there was better designs elsewhere, like Mr. Mime's Silver sprite. It's so much better in my eyes. And yes, they have animations.

Oh, and a handful of Pokémon got redesigns here and there. Don't panic, the changes where made only to humanoid Pokémon to remove incoherent stuff like Machoke and Machamps' underwear or the boxing gear of Hitmonchan.

This is because as time has passed it "snowballed" into a gigantic ball of nonsense. Now, it's not that I hate Pokémon with human-made things on them, for example we could make logical arguments on why they have them in the first place.

Very early Pokémon (back when it was Capsule Monsters) had a lot of very... morally dubious stuff in it. Trainers had whips, the monsters were sold in cages and there was a pretty clear aura of animal abuse in it all. The artwork was intriguing... And a bit worrying.  

When you find out about that stuff it can make sense that humans would put things to restrict their Pokémon like the "strength-reducing" underwear for the Machop tree. Who knows, maybe that's why Pokémon such as Primeape have what looks like shackles on their limbs too.

And back in generation 1, there was only ONE Hitmonchan, given to you by a human. We can simply think the objects it wears are given to it by that person, and it would make sense. Jynx is also another Pokémon which can only be received once, also given by a human and looks like one, maybe there's something going on too.

And all those examples would be fine but then they're turned into nonsense when you can find these Pokémon living in nature with all that stuff on them, or they magically appear when evolving. It just feels... dumb to me, it is something that I could see other developers adress in different ways, but here they just where completely forgotten.

Because this thing is tailored-made for me, I decided to change it.  

And talking about Jynx, when the beta sprite leaked from Red & Green leaks among others, it was pretty exciting to see that this Pokémon once upon a time was very different, with more of a yeti-like design, which can be traced to  japanese Kaiju tv shows, like many early Pokémon designs such as Nidoking (look up Baragon). It apparently had a name that was a very easy to see nudge at Ultraman.

You can read about it here (and also see a bit of the darker Capsule Monsters stuff I mentioned above, but you can also search for early concept art):

https://helixchamber.com/2019/02/16/what-dreams-may-come/

During the development of the hack I went so far as to create sprites to change Jynx into this Yeti-thing, but as time went on I did not feel very satisfied, it felt like a random addition that felt out of place.

I thought of going back to the original Jynx, but I ended sending the entire evolutionary line away and substituting it with another Ice Pokémon from the third Generation.  

...Anyway, moving on from that, each species has its own unique icon on the menu and the overworld too, which is a great thing to give flavour to the game, and seems like a new standard for Pokémon Crystal hacks (with good reason).

The overworld also got some big changes to improve visually, and sometimes, gameplay wise. Besides visuals, some places also changed in design a bit, for a number of different reasons.

For example some Kanto cities had their design changed to look more on par with Johto, as if you compare maps between places, and Gen. 1 and 2, you'll see they kinda look off and weird, as if it didn't have the same time and effort put into it compared to Johto (they didn't).

Places like Celadon and Fuchsia City for example look rather different, although they keep their overall structure, they just got a bit more going for them.

Also there's a few improvements on sprites. For example, I drew new sprites for when you're surfing, similar to those in Gen 3 with your character over a undefined Pokémon. And yes, they're different for both the male and female player characters.

There's also HUGE CHANGES in how information is displayed in several points, with the biggest improvement being the Pokémon's Stats Page. It took me quite some time to get it to look nicer and more organized / easier to read, and I even expanded it by adding a fourth Stat Screen to show some extra "for fun" info.

The font was also changed for a thin yet wider one, to make it less empty between letters, and also more consistent with the different characters, like numbers.

Also, HUGE, HUGE thanks to HyperDriveGuy's amazing work and effort, a way of improving the scrolling and movement on the overworld to make it much more smooth and, to be blunt, less disgustingly choppy if you're used to smooth scrolls.

This change to me is like magic, it makes the game feel so much better! To be fair, finding this improvement refueled my interest in continuing this hack, so thanks again HyperDriveGuy, your work is not just great, it also really did drive this guy forward, pun no intended... Or maybe a bit.

That said, coding this introduced some bugs, some of them harmless, and others being progress-halting or even game-breaking. But fret not, as I managed to fix them all with a bit of work, some trial and error, an a lot of luck, but it was all worth it because the result is a much more fluid experience that translates into a more fun game.

Overall, the game uses much less aggressive colors too, because 99% of the people that may play this (which that would make a total of 4 to 5 individuals, probably) will do it on a lighted screen. Also there's little touches here and there.

Another tiny change that makes a bit of a difference in the long run is battle effects. Most of them on Gen 2 used the same palette: Gray tones! Well, that's not that way anymore.

Most of the effects now have color added to them, and make battles look a bit more fun. A few effects were changed visually, even. For example, Pokémon no longer see "chickens" when confused. Now Pidgeys fly around their poor heads!

The Trainer's card also got a bit prettier, specially the Badges section. Oh, I also added a third page to your Trainer's Card, showing your progress through Kanto's Gyms. You only need to press Right while on Johto's Badge screen when you get at least one Badge from Kanto!

Asymmetrical Badges also spin correctly. Funny enough, the game has coded that function in, but it is only assigned to a medal that was symetrical (Clair's badge). Sounds silly, but once you start seeing Game Freaks coding it's... Actually par for the course, in a way.

o-----------------------o |[13] Tips and Questions| o-----------------------o

Tips: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What type of beginning you want? Each starter is going to change your early hours.

Taking in mind how things work in the Original version of this hack, Cyndaquil would make your first steps more easy than the other two, as his Fire/Rock typing would make him effective against the first two Gyms, while Chikorita's Grass/Ground typing would make it a bit harder than normal. Totodile, with its Water/Ice typing would be a medium difficulty.

But of course, the point of the game is to make more friends and balance your team! You could also ignore the starters and make your team without them. That's how I usually roll.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can get an Exp. Share very early on.

Once you brought the Egg to Prof. Elm, and you're ready to go away on your adventure, go back home and leave 2.000P with your mother. Once you battle once (With Youngster Joey on Route 30), she will call you, telling you she bought something for you. It can come in handy this early!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about saving with your mother, she will buy many useful items, so it's in your best interest to send her money from the beginning!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ During your first few Gyms, look for people in green clothes near the towns and cities' main Sign. These people will sell to you Berries to heal Status Effects!

They will come in handy to prepare against the trainers and leaders there!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't waste your Fruits and Vitamins without having in mind what team you want! This becomes more important the further you go, because NPC trainers will have trained Pokémon either you've raised your own properly or not.

As you get more money, or get more fruits you'll be able to quickly prepare Pokémon, but early on you need to think ahead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Talking about team, while I tried to make all Pokémon good and be on the same Level, that doesn't change the fact that having a balanced team can make things smoother.

Making a team of only slow, defensive Pokémon, or only quick but frail monsters can make things harder for you at certain points. Although, of course, you could just play with your favourites and tough it up. That's what I usually do.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take advantage of Pokémon such as Meowth or Spearow, capable of learning stealing moves! They will help you to get ahold of many items, that you can either use or sell to make a profit.

Also, be aware of said Pokémon, as they may steal something you have!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Experiment! Because TMs are infinite, HM moves can be forgotten easily, and you have access to the Move Reminder freely, you're given the chance to try all sorts of combinations for a given species. Not to mention, the further you advance through the Battle Tower, the more options you'll have through Move Tutors and the Egg Elder to teach new moves, thus increasing the number of strategies for each species!

You'll only need to watch out for "Event" moves, such as the Odd Egg Pokémon, or the Special Eggs gifted in the Battle Tower, as each have a unique move and you cannot remind it if forgotten.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check the Game Corner on Goldenrod when you arrive!

They've expanded the number of prices you can get. For one, you can get HP restoring Berries there, with Golden Berries being really useful early on, and they're not that expensive.

Even more, new species of Pokémon have been added, and they're Pokémon hard to come by during the early parts of the adventure! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Can you get every single Pokémon in the game? How can I get Mew?

Yes, of course, what would be the point of a Pokémon Hack if you couldn't get every monster available in it by yourself?

There's a lot more variety early on, both so you can get your team-making juices boil sooner, and because different people like different monsters, and having a bigger variety helps with making more people happy.

Although for Mew, you'll have to buy my exclusive and new Park Ball Plus and send it to your game through my exclusive Park Ball Plus-To-GBC Link Cable(tm), or upload it to my exclusive service PokéMaeson Hostage Holdings, previous payment of course, and then you can connect your game magically to it through Infrared connection.

Really, it just works. Wait, are you going to play this on an emulator? Tough luck then, no Mew for you.

...Nah, it's somewhere in the game, you just have to find it, like the rest.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Are you going to do more Pokémon Hacks?

Niet. Nee. Ahneo. Tidak. Nej. Nope.

...What I mean is, don't count on that. The amount of time I put into this is so big that I could have made several other things, the testing has been killing me the most. I have   reached the point of burnout, I've been working on this almost on a daily basis for years. You can't imagine how many times this thing has been reworked and changed over time. Beyond that, my love for the franchise has pretty much being forced to disappear.

And even if I wanted to do more, I wouldn't be able to use any other disassembly project thanks to current DevkitPro versions being incompatible with 32 Bit systems; I'm not going to get a new computer only to do more of this, and going back to the older "Hacking Tools" is not a very welcoming idea, mostly because they're so much more limited and risky to use.  

So, sorry but no, I have no intention, I have no energy, I have no passion for it anymore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

o------------o |[13] Credits| o------------o This wouldn't exist without a lot of people involved with the Pokémon Rom hacking community.  

Thanks and Credits to every single person on PRET, a community dealing with disassembly for many Pokémon games. These projects look like THE WAY going forward, how awesome they are.

Check it Here: https://github.com/pret -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to Rangi42, and all people on places like the Skeetendo and Pokecommunity forums, and many others that shared their findings and information about ASM, going so far to make great tutorials to teach stupid people like me how to do do a whole lot of things, fix several of the bugs in the game, and many other things.

Check it here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal   https://hax.iimarckus.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, and of course, credits and thanks to Rangi42 again for Polished Map, an amazing utility for map editing, very complete and absolutely essential.

Check it here: https://github.com/Rangi42/polished-map -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to the TPP Anniversary Crystal 251 Project to create the code for the Move Reminder, which I adapted to my hack. I couldn't even have known where to start with it, and my hack is only better thanks to it. Also for giving me an idea of how to make Caught Data be shown in the Stats Page. My approach to how the information is displayed is different, but again, without TPP I couldn't have know where to start.

Check it Here: https://github.com/TwitchPlaysPokemon/tppcrystal251pub -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks and Credits to HyperDriveGuy for its example and implementation of "60 Frames per second" project, which created a new way of programming a Run Button, but even more incredible, it made the scrolling of the game as you walk, run, and ride so, so much more smooth. It's amazing.

Check it here: https://github.com/hyperdriveguy/pokecrystal-60fps-example -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Chamber, Soloo993, Blue Emerald, Lake, Neslug and Pikachu25 for their Pokemon Icons. While I did a number of them myself, I also used a good amount made by them, and also remade some of them from their initial work, so they deserve the credits!

You can see their work here: https://github.com/pret/pokecrystal/wiki/screenshots/minidex.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/pret/pokecrystal/screenshots/minidex.png

Also, if you play my hack and find any of the icons or tweaked sprites I made good enough to use it yourself, go right ahead. Just give credit and you're good to go, don't even ask. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits and Special thanks to Vice04 for helping me test my hack over the years. May you never be assaulted by Level 168 Slowbros ever again.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music Credits:

Credits to FroggestSpirit for "Hoenn Wild Battle" and  "Hoenn Trainer Battle" themes.

You can find FroggestSpirit music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/froggestspirit -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm for "Hoenn Rival Battle", "Route 101", "Cipher Peon Battle", "X/Y Rival", "Hoenn Champion Battle" and "Shoal Cave" themes.

You can find Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm music in this Soundcloud link, check it out: https://soundcloud.com/mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits to TriteHexagon for his Night Theme music for cities and his tutorial on how to implement them in the game. His ASM files and his Soundcloud can be found here:

https://pastebin.com/u/TriteHexagon https://soundcloud.com/user-930339535 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope I'm not forgetting anyone, it's way too much people hacking around the world!

[lenle-g]

give me a cute short fic of jeff and alan together!!!!!!!!!!!!!! like some father son bonding moment and I know jeff boy hasn't appeared yet but I need the content

Ask Meme: I wish you would write a fic where…

Well, this… this is 90% not cute (with a cute ending tho I promise) but here on the Len blog it’s feels or death lads, feels or death. Also this is supposing the Space BoysTM and Scott goon the Rescue mission, and leave Gordon and Virgil to keep up with rescues onEarth.

His voice is morebooming than Alan remembers it. When he laughs he laughs with his whole body,shoulders shaking, knee slapping. He wonders if the grey of his eyes were alwaysthat shade? Were his lungs always so expansive? His tone so rich with love?

“Oh my god.Boys. Boys I can’t believe it, I…” Jeff’s got Scott’s arms around his shouldersand John, who honestly might actually be, oh god is that, laughing?, captured in a mean headlock. “You kids haven’t changed at all. Have you all beenok? Eating alright?” There’s a tussle between the three of them as Jeff goes toscrub his fist against ginger locks and John, with all the composure of a boyquarter of his age and an minute fraction of his usual sensibility actually squeals.

“Ha! Johnny! Who went and swapped your legs out for string noodles! Huh? Geez kid!” John struggles to freehimself absolutely ineffectually against his Father’s thick arms as he getscompletely ignored as Jeff turns to scrutinise Scott.

“Right then Scotty, how’re the Thunderbirds? Wereyou able to keep up operations? Lord Creighton Ward promised to be at yourservice if anything ever should happen but I can’t say I anticipated this.”Laughing he gestures at the dark, empty expanse of space above them. At thesharp silhouette the Zero-X2 makes parked alongside the wreck of the old one. “Boys,I can’t believe you’ve…”

It’s then he looks up at Alan,standing a little apart from them. The youngest Tracy is eyeing them almost nervously. His stare frozen inwide and disbelieving. There’s a pause of quiet between them as Jeff simply regardsthe young man and the young man regards him.

Jeff frowns.

“Alan?” He callsout, loosening his grip on John enough for his spaceson to wiggle free, hairrumpled and expression unsettlingly pleased about it.

Alan doesn’t move.There’s a beat of time. Scott frowns sharply at him, making gestures to comeover here right now from behind Jeff’s back.

There’s another pause.

“Hey, Allie?” Jefftries again, puzzled. “Is that you over there Sprout?” As if Lucy’s blues could possiblybelong to anyone but one of his sons. “Com’ere kiddo.”

Alan has only blurryhalf memories of the man stood before him with his arms open and there’sa tight, twisting sensation somewhere inside him that feels an awful lotlike the vessels of his heart tying themselves in knots.

“Dad?” There’s nothing Alan can do aboutthe way his voice breaks on the vowel. Nothing he can do about the way hishands are trembling.

His last fuzzy half memories of this man are of beingcarried up the stairs cradled close to a broad, warm chest. Of his Father’sheartbeat, strong and solid under his tiny hand. Of fingers in ducking-downblond hair and the press of a kiss to his forehead. Of a ‘goodnight, sleep tight, see you in the morning light’ that neverhappened.

“Oh Alan.” Jeff’s arms drop. His voice is very soft and is familiar inthe way only a faded photograph can be. His voice had become just a memory,something that Alan realises he thought he’d never hear again.It’s another one of his Dad’s ghosts.

Because that’s nothing new. Whenhis Father had disappeared Alan kept seeing his ghost everywhere. Not in any literal sense, but instead in the thingshe’d left behind. In the empty desk in the hall, the chair where only he wouldsit, in the bits and pieces of their Father’s life that Grandma, gradually overthe years, began to pack away. Alan remembers how the sight of John wearing oneof Dad’s old pullovers would twist something sharply in his chest. How so manylittle things that before would have brought to mind happiness and safety andthe warmth of his Father’s arms instead triggered a sharp, deeply burrowedanguish in him. He’s tried to put on a brave front, to hide his reactions fromhis brothers, never quite sure if they feel what he’s feeling too. They must, afterall, losing someone you love can’t be done lightly. But he’s never been braveenough to ask.

Loss is isolating like that.

John, his closest brother, had thrown himself intowork. Into stats and schematics and rescues. He became as much part ofThunderbird Five as Five was of him and the part of Alan that aches for hisFather aches for the old John too.The John before he’d had to pair up with Gordon and use pranks to get his attention. The one who spent time with himplaying games and joined in with his hobbies, the one before everything becameabout training. About preparing their youngest brother to face the perils ofspace and save lives. About making sure that if they sent him up into the blackhe’d come back again.

Everything was so, so different now, and he hasthis selfish, awful fear that’s been building the whole trip that theirFather’s sudden return into their lives will throw everything off all overagain. Alan doubts things will go back to the way they were before: after all,they’re all different and older and wiser now. Scott’s the only Field CommanderAlan’s ever known and they youngest Tracy doesn’t know if he’s ok with changingthat - let alone if Scott himself could ever step aside again. And yes, he doeswant John home more often, he wants to have his brother physically around and maybe Dad can make that happen but he doesn’twant John to lose something so importantto him. Their Father had just seemed so critical of John’s appearance and…What if Dad tries to force John down from orbit?  Alan knows his brother is up there, not justbecause he adores it, but because it’s more importantfor him to be up there saving lives than down on Earth playing video games withhim.

Alan feels, frankly, kind of ill.

He can pinpoint in his head the exact moment that Johnbecame so distant from him and it involved an explosion over the South Pacificand The Hood’s dark laughter breaking up the recording. He’d been asleep whenit actually happened. But he’d seen the tapes.

They’d all seen the tapes.

And Alan would have given anything to see hisFather again instead.

And now here he is. And Alan Tracy doesn’t have a clue what he should do.

He becomes viscerally aware of the fact he’sshaking.

“Allie? Son? What’s wrong?” Jeff separates himselffrom Scott and John, both of whom are regarding their younger brother with a quiet understanding.Their Father crouches down next to his baby boy, aiming to level their heightsbut finding, surprised, that it puts him lower than Alan’s eye line. “I’m here now, yeah? I’mnot sure I agree with their decision to bring you out here when it could havebeen so dangerous, but your brothers did a great job piloting the new Zero-Xand…”

“I piloted it.” It’s the first time since theinitial shock that Alan’s properly found his voice and it comes out squeaky.  “I… I flew the Zero-X2, D-Dad.”

A hand falls on Jeff’s shoulder, gently pulling himslightly out of Alan’s personal space. Alan relaxes only minutely.

“You’re looking at the most talented young pilotthe world has ever seen.” John tells their Father, with perfect sincerity.“Alan is a fully fledged member of International Rescue and has been runningmissions for three years now. We trained him ourselves. I don’t have enoughflight experience and Scott doesn’t have enough spacetime racked up for this.” John’shand settles on his little brother’s shoulder and Alan feels a rush of gratitudetoward him that takes his breath away. “He was the right man for the mission.”

Jeff looks from John to Alan and back, disbeliefclear on his face. He takes a moment to just stare openly at Alan, taking inthose wide, familiar baby blues and the soft blond curl of his hair. This youngman is so different to the child he left behind and Jeff is hit with the suddenrealisation that he’s missed a lot ofhis youngest boy’s growing up. There’s a firmness to Alan’s jawline now. He’s lostmuch of the baby fat from his cheeks and he’s taller, so much taller. If heshoots up much more he’ll not only surpass Gordon but maybe even Virgil.

“I…. kid.”There’s an awkward fumble where Jeff seems lost for words but then wide, warmarms pull Alan from John’s side and wrap tight around the kid’s shoulders,pulling him in to that broad, familiar chest. “I’m so proud of you.” Jeff chokes on the syllables and something in Alanbreaks down.

There’s a deep gasping sob from the littlest Tracy.

“I thought you were gone.” The teens fingers curl tight in the thick material of hisFather’s old International Rescue blues. “I woke up in the morning and theytold me you were g-g…” There’s a uncomfortable hitch in Alan’s chest and hebreaks down into monosyllables and broken sobs.

“Hey hey,” Jeff’s fingers smooth reassuringlythrough his baby boy’s hair, “its ok Allie. It’s all ok now. I’m here. You didit kid, you absolutely did it. I’m here.”

And actually, Alan thinks, as he buries his face inhis Dad’s shoulder and clings to him like he never wants to let go again, that’sall that’s really important.

Everything else will work itself out.

Dad is here.

[morshtalon]

Dragon Quest II

Well, it's been a while since I wrote a review on something. I've played a number of games in the meantime, but none of them really gave me anything I felt was worth talking about or that hasn't been talked about before, so I just keep them in the backburner of my mind for possible future reference.

However, I feel like current circumstances make for a good time to dig up one of the games I wanted to share my thoughts on for a long time, and that I had beaten before even writing the first review I've ever "published". That game is Dragon Quest II.

Part of the reason why I held off on it for so long is that I don't think my review of the first game is all that great, and another part is that, again, I don't feel like I've bunched up enough good stuff to say, even though I really wanted to talk about it ever since I played it.

But hey, by far and wide my post popular post is technically related to Dragon Quest II, so why not cut to the chase and do it, right?

Anyway, to say that the first game took off in popularity is an understatement, it being the seminal harbinger of an entire genre of gaming that would soon take the world by storm. You would think that means this would be the time-old tale of "runaway success game making company executives pressure developers into slaving away at a sequel with suffocating deadlines". However, planning for DQII apparently began before DQI was released. 1986 was a different time, I guess. A time when the industry was fledgling enough that it wasn't that much more than a group of dudes banding together to bring an idea to life, and then - not a moment of hesitation after that idea comes to fruition - immediately start brainstorming ways in which they can build on it to give birth to new, more complex explorations of the concepts they had just tackled.

I believe this is why it's good to go back and play these games in their original versions, in chronological release order. Nowadays, it's virtually impossible to innovate. Back then, almost every big-time franchise was always finding ways to breathe fresh air into the structure of their games. Though Dragon Quest isn't the most innovative when compared to the likes of Final Fantasy, they were still making great strides into the codification of the type of game they had pioneered. With that knowledge in mind, one can really appreciate the evolution by going back and exploring these things as they grew with the times. And hey, Final Fantasy still wasn't around by the time DQII came out, so once again, they had to rely on ideas from western RPGs they liked.

In my opinion, II is the first jRPG that actually feels good to play, if you can put yourself into the mindset of an 80's gamer. The designers felt the 1v1 battles of the first title were boring - a sentiment which I share - and put in different groups of enemies as well as extra party members for you to find. One thing that some of these old RPGs that only let you target a group of enemies does is drawing only one enemy sprite on-screen to represent the entire group. Surprisingly, this game does not do that, even though it predates all the ones that do. It draws every enemy on-screen, which doesn't seem like much nowadays, but it's very appreciated nonetheless. Sure, it came at the cost of battle backgrounds (all fights in this game are set against pure blackness), but they did the right thing. The party itself follows what would become a typical archetype of 3-person groups: One character who is a jack-of-all-stats, balanced between physical prowess and magic, one who is focused on physical combat (in this game, this character actually has no magic capabilities whatsoever), and one who is a pure mage. Perhaps surprisingly, because these structures hadn't become tropes yet, the main character is the physical one, and he's also pretty much the most reliable party member by a reasonable margin, even though all he can do is attack normally. Balance issues aside (we'll talk about that later), I honestly sort of dig this arrangement. It's a little bit of a breath of fresh air to see the main character in an RPG rely completely on his weapons, and in the future, in any DQ title that has a reasonable degree of character customization, I always try to make the protagonist a physical powerhouse, to match the one from this game. It hardly ever works, but hey, it just goes for show that I enjoyed it while playing. Given that the other party members join you as you progress through the game at specific points, that also means the complexity of magic spells is added to your arsenal slowly, getting you used to it without feeling overwhelming. Sure, the game is simple enough that it wouldn't be overwhelming regardless of how they had set up the pacing, but I never felt like any of the times I struggled were because of insufficient knowledge of the game mechanics. So, the battles are fun enough, and they feel just right in terms of complexity vs. focus. The strategies to win are simple - really, the whole game is very simple - but it does its job well, and it allowed the developers to have near-perfect control of the game's difficulty curve. As a result, it is also - almost up to the end of the game - pretty nice, even if the whole thing is on the challenging end of things. At the end, it gets... A little special. We'll get to that later.

Let's take a step back and look at the gameplay outside battles. First of all, the story is... sparse, to say the least. Not as much as the one in the first game, and supplemented in the international version by a frankly kick-ass introduction that gives the experience a certain tone and atmosphere I appreciate a lot, but still, it's 1987. jRPGs were... not so much about the story back then, if you can believe that. In fact, they were more like an extension of a point-and-click adventure game. DQII is, essentially, a big fetch quest. In a different story, one that has enough plot points that you can sense a type of underlying narrative progression, I would not enjoy having the game interrupted by a blatant collectathon. However, the fetch quest aspect is basically the soul of this entire game. The extremely loose story paves the way for an experience that boils down to pure exploration and combat, with light elements of puzzle-solving woven in, using the fetch quest premise simply as a background to leave the developers with fertile soil to plant their little tricks and enigmas without worrying too much about how it would all connect rationally. And here, we witness an aspect of old games that could only spring about as a byproduct of limited graphics, ill-defined representations of the setting's reality, and a healthy disregard for common sense, things that were the style at the time. The puzzles, and sometimes just the exploration, violate logic quite heavily. Traversing through a monster-infested castle to get to a point that is technically outside the castle, but you can't just walk around it because most of the outside grass tiles are exit tiles that warp you back to the world map? Sure, why not? Having dedicated "teleport-room" maps that only serve the explicit purpose of housing a teleporter to another part of the world, except for one which also houses a chest with an essential item if you walk along the right border of the map, but not the identical-looking left one? Mario 2 hid a goal post inside a secret too, so yeah! Throw that in! Stairs down in a brick islet surrounded by water which brings you to a room that's... Also at water level? We hardly have enough tiles to go around, let alone a set to represent underwater or underground rooms, so whatever! Nobody cares! And, honestly, I truly don't care, either. If a game is up to, let's say, willfully forgo a bit of logic in order to formulate a creative puzzle to play around with your expectations, then all the more power to it. I honestly feel like puzzles nowadays are too sectioned-off, contained within a single room in a single dungeon, ready for the player to walk in, solve it, move on to the next point in the flowchart and never think about it twice. When puzzles are woven in so closely with the world, requiring the player to think outside the box at all times, as they're out there exploring, it makes the whole game feel like it's working together to make a point, and helps reduce that feeling one gets when playing RPGs where there are very separate elements of gameplay that... Don't really connect to each other very well. Sure, you're blatantly aware you're playing a videogame at all times, and it's not super great for immersion, but this was a time when there just... wasn't enough memory for immersion. It was a constraint that naturally gave way to challenges that capitalized on its own limitations, and therefore, created a type of immersion of its own, where the player is completely sucked into their own thoughts, holding a notebook with a rough sketch of the world map in their hand (yeah, I might have done that), taking notes and thinking where in the world could that last crest possibly be?! I think DQII hit that sweet spot of looseness vs. clarity in the narrative that helped these wild, nonsensical elements flourish. I really don't know how other people react to this sort of thing, but I don't care. I had a good time with it, and soon after this game, everything RPG started to become more focused on story. That's definitely not a bad thing, but I felt a kind of clear, developer-to-player kind of communication from these small bits of wrongness that made me more aware of the time, effort and creativity put into it by the people who were making it. I realized that, were I in the shoes of the dude who was making all this crazy stuff, I'd be stoked to see my friends trying to solve them. I'm not trying to be sentimental, that's how I honestly felt while playing that part with the teleporter and the chest. In any case, I appreciated it.

Then you get to the road to Rhone.

Though, apparently, the game was not pressured into deadlines by higher-ups, I did read something about one of the guys in the team offhandedly setting a deadline that turned out to be just that little bit too tight, requiring it to be delayed from November 1986 to January 1987. This, along with the fact that, at the time, the second title in a franchise had the habit of being designed for people who were hardcore fans of the first game in that series, might go a little ways into explaining why everything starting from the road to Rhone is absolutely fucking brutal. Every element of the game that, previously, was a tad questionable, leaving that little itch of worry in the back of your head, returns here with the express intent to make your life miserable. I have a high tolerance for difficulty, one that is even higher for RPGs where, for the most part, there are always ways to slightly circumvent it and make your life easier. The simplicity of design in DQII means that this is not the case here, and from this point on you're expected to not only have the skill and familiarity you've accrued while playing, but also a very healthy amount of luck to go with you, otherwise you will die. And rest assured, you WILL die. In fact, due to the specific way in which the player's mortality rate skyrockets in Rhone, it's almost not even a matter of the game being "hard" in the traditional sense, because it doesn't exactly require you to be strong enough or smart enough anymore, it just requires you to be patient enough to slowly trudge through the mountain of corpses of your former attempts until you figure out how to minimize your risks to the lowest degree they possibly can be minimized, then hitting that sweet spot of luck and control that finally allows you to reach the end of the game. This particular way of handling things means that, after you hit about level 30 with the main character, further leveling will only render you negligibly less likely to die, and the effects are not strong enough from level to level to even be clearly noticed. But what exactly makes it so hard? The answer is primarily RNG. When you reach the end, you will begin to notice just how much RNG there is through the whole game. Starting off, the turn order is entirely random. There is an agility stat, but I never found any evidence of it actually factoring into who goes first in battle (instead, it's a carryover from DQI that calculates your base defense). If there are more than three enemies, you're at a disadvantage, but even if there aren't, a stray run of bad luck - which is guaranteed to happen given the density of random encounters - means you're gonna have to scramble with enemy attacks, and they are perfectly capable of leaving you in such a state that it would take a miracle to put yourself back in shape, if they don't just wipe you out instantly. Now, remember, two of your three characters have magic. However, at this point in the game, enemies have a large amount of magic resistance to all kinds of different spells, and magic resistance in this game means that there is a chance the spell simply won't work. If it does, it deals full damage. If it doesn't, it deals none at all. I don't know about you, but I almost never take my chances with low-accuracy, gimmicky stuff in other games. This one renders all spells like that given enough time. If you decide to rely on physical strength, the main character is the only one who will bring you any significant results. The pure mage at this point in the game is far more efficient at support casting than direct damage, and the balanced character is - memetically, at this point - incompetent at both, and also sucks as a physical fighter, so once again, you're boned on that front. All of a sudden, running away becomes an alluring strategy. However, once again, there is an ever-prevalent random factor to it, so the pressure is on in all fronts. The game becomes a challenge of carefully planning out how to simply survive each encounter. Do you take the chance and run? If you fail, you'll be wailed on by the full force of the enemy party, and will likely be too weak to attempt mounting a resistance. Do you take the bait and unleash the full force of your attacks? What if they all target different enemies in the group? You won't deal enough damage to kill one of them, so you'll suffer heavy retaliation and waste precious MP that could be spent on healing spells. Did you win or escape successfully? You've only lost about 20% of your health, but some encounters can relieve you of the remaining 80% before you can even act, so do you spend MP healing or do you trudge on because you already don't have that many to go around? If you make the wrong decision at any of these break points - and rest assured, there won't be a shortage of them - you'll either die or get so close to death it will be almost irrelevant to keep going. And then, it's back to the last save point. Rinse and repeat many times until you clear the road and get to Rhone proper, for one final save point and one last, grueling stretch of game before the final boss. Here, the game introduces enemies that have, no joke, a move that kills your entire party and has 100% accuracy. Typing it out, it sounds like hyperbole, like i'm salty that I died so much and am exaggerating the things the game does in order to trick myself into believing that it was super impossible times infinity, but no, it's true. To be fair, there isn't a high chance the enemy will perform this move, but when they do, there's absolutely nothing you can do to save yourself. Just reset the game when the screen turns red. Other than that, the rest of the lovely cast of enemies rounding up the final waves are more than capable of just killing you the regular way, so keep your wits about you like you did back in the cave and grind yourself up until the stat bonuses start getting negligible, because now, you need to face five bosses in a row. Right, okay, technically you can go back and heal yourself right before the last one, but I didn't know that, so if you're an idiot like me, try to get ahold of a Wizard Ring, as well. It's the only way to heal MP, and can be used multiple times until - you guessed it - it randomly decides to break. After that, you just have to contend with two bosses that use a move that heals all their HP when it gets low, so you also have to roughly keep track of their state in your mind so you can unleash a full round of attack before they can get in that heal. Unless your spell doesn't hit them, of course. Or they happen to go first. Or you just barely miss the threshold of HP that will actually kill them. Oh, and be careful! One of the other bosses also knows the instant death move. He won't use it often, but 30 or so attempts in, you're likely to see it once or twice.

Then, the final boss can randomly spawn with a number of hit points between 75% and 100% of his assigned value (every enemy does that), and you're gonna deal an average of about 15% damage per turn to it. Sounds easy at first, but he will take you out in either one or two moves, and...

...Here's the motherload...

...He has a 1 in 16 chance of casting the full heal move at any point in the battle. And he WILL do that the first 2 or 3 times you get to him, sucking you dry of resources and smashing your face all the way back to the save point to try the 5 bosses again, so it's back to grinding attempts until you have another mostly hopeless shot at him.

But when you get him, man...

When you do it...

*sigh*

Anyway, this was a long, rambling, focus-shifting tangent just to correctly capture the degree of luck and randomness that constitutes the final stretch of Dragon Quest II. How does it impact the rest of the game? Well, I still appreciate it for what it did right, and there's a small, strange part of me that actually thinks the insane difficulty perfectly fits the stakes that the game set up, but it is, nevertheless, very hard. And once again, it's the kind of hard that is virtually impossible to circumvent. For any average, non-god-tier player, there is no alternate way of tackling the simple-looking, but highly controlled challenges in this game that trivializes it. You can't change your party, you can't buy extra spells, you can't really use stat-up items to change stat configurations in any significant way. You just have to keep trying and hope it works, and for the first few dozen times, it won't, so you'll just have to deal with it.

Still, it shows, even up to the end, that the DQ team has a certain grasp of consistency in design that will slowly grow and adapt as the series embraces new complexities through the years. DQII stands as somewhat of a black sheep in the series (as the second titles of old franchises often do), but I think it has its place, and it's surely a wild ride. Also, if you can get yourself into the mindset of late 80's design, I can assure you it won't ever be boring. Maddening, sure, but not boring. It's more fun in the midgame, in my opinion, as for someone who is very used to RPGs, it can be exceesingly simplistic at the start and too hopelessly uncontrollable at the end, but I feel it deserves a score of 7 out of 10. It's pure gameplay, and, for what it's worth, you WILL get an intense experience. Just be ready to shake, a lot. And pad your walls.

[chemicalmagecraft]

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 7

A/N: Writer's block is officially my worst enemy and can go die. My official second and third worst enemies, by the way, are tests and hairdressers.

Sorry about the delay in getting this out, but finals and gradation happened and then there's the fact that I have a tendency to slack off for a couple of days after graduation bECAUSE I'M FREE! And then I had to get a job...

Edit: Thank you for that, Magnussen osbourne, I didn't catch it at all.

xoxoxo

"Do you think I'll make it?" I fretted. I knew I got a lot of points, but I couldn't help but worry I might not get in. At least completing the quest had made my level go up from eighteen to twenty...

"Guuuuh!" A sigh cut into my worrying. I turned to see an incorporeal Dune lying down on my bed and fiddling with an ethereal sniper rifle that I have no idea where she got. She was really fond of the rifle for some reason, so I just asked her to just not have it out when she's visible. "You do realize that you got like forty points, right, Master?" she asked, then pointed her rifle at me. "And I'd eat my rifle if you didn't get any bonus points for saving that one girl with the gravity hands."

"Disagree with harshness," Halitus muttered from where he was sitting on my desk, "agree with sentiment."

"Yeah, so stop worryin'," Dune told me. "Maybe you should look in that magic book of yours to calm yourself down."

I nodded. I had 11,300 Skill Fragments, which really wasn't anything to sneeze at. I pulled out my Skill Grimoir to see if there was anything that I might want to buy. Only one really stuck out to me that I didn't think I could figure out without the book, a skill called Illusion Barrier. It said something about letting me make enemies, which seemed like it might be useful. At least, it seemed like it could be a good way to level up, especially that part where it said that I could make monsters. I was only level twenty despite my stats being higher than even Kacchan's, so leveling for me seemed to only work from fighting and quests, which meant that getting the bonuses to HP and MP for each level up would be a little difficult without easy access to enemies. Plus, it wasn't really that expensive at 500 SF. I clicked it, pressed yes on the confirmation, then dismissed the book when I was done. I frowned as I looked over the new skill in my mind. "That's odd..." I muttered.

"What?" Halitus asked.

"The way the skill is performed, I don't really get how it does what it does," I answered, then thought for a moment. "Though to be fair, I'm pretty new to magic."

"Well?" Dune asked. "Use it!" She'd sat up and was looking at me expectantly. I did as she asked and... nothing seemed to happen, aside from a slight drop in MP. To be fair, I'd used the empty setting because I didn't want to be immediately attacked by monsters, but I was expecting at least something. I looked around to see if my room was any different, but couldn't spot anything. Still, though, something felt off.

"Update," Halitus muttered.

"There's something weeeeird here, Izuku," Dune added nervously.

"What's wrong," I asked.

"Everyone's gone," Halitus stated.

"What!?" I asked.

"They vanished when you used your new skill," Dune clarified. I looked at my minimap and saw that the dots that symbolized other people had just gone. I looked outside. Even the animals were gone. I ran downstairs to see that Mom had just vanished in the middle of cooking dinner, as evidenced by the unattended food. "I really hope that this is just Illusion Barrier," I muttered before dropping the skill. To my relief, I saw Mom standing there after a layer of reality seemed to shatter and drop away.

"Ah!" she shouted. "You scared me, Izuku!" She blinked and then asked, "Did you just teleport, sweetie?"

"Sorry," I apologized. "That wasn't exactly teleportation, but..." I thought for a moment. "Can I test something?" I asked.

"Sure, sweetie, but could you please explain what's going on?"

I nodded. "I got a new skill called Illusion Barrier and I want to see if it works like I think it works," I explained, then pointed to a cup on the table. "Could you please watch that cup for me?" When she nodded, I activated Illusion Barrier and she disappeared. Or rather, I disappeared, leaving her behind. I immediately took the cup, tossed it into the air, caught it, and canceled Illusion Barrier. The cup shattered along with the skill as I returned to reality.

"What was I supposed to be looking for?" Mom asked.

"I wanted to know what would happen to an object that I touch in the Illusion Barrier," I explained. "If you didn't see anything, then that means that using it causes me to exist on another layer of reality, which makes the skill useful for so much more than just grinding. I could use it for stealth, hostage-rescuing, dodging attacks, and possibly more if I could figure out a way to see the real world within the barrier..."

"Ummm… I have no idea what you're talking about, honey, but as long as you're being safe, I'm glad," Mom told me. "Dinner will be ready soon, so why don't you stay down here?"

xoxoxo

I stared at my Skill Grimoir, frowning. I wanted to find a way to see through the Illusion Barrier without dropping it, but I didn't really know how. "I can't really make skills out of nowhere," I muttered, half to myself and half to my elementals. "With the buffs that I'd made, I used the base of Healing Hands, and the other skills I was able to make with mana manipulation and perhaps Mana Affinity thanks to their simplicity. With this, however, I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do. I figured I wouldn't even need any sort of remote viewing-type spell after I got you guys thanks to how useful are." At this comment both of my elementals thanked me for the complement. "Even then, I don't even know if modifying remote viewing is even the right thing to use for that. Considering the fact that it's called Illusion Barrier, some form of truesight might be needed..." Before I could start figuring out some form of remote viewing or truesight, Mom burst through the door looking really frantic.

"Izuku, you got a letter from Yuuei!" she said, holding up a letter. I'm not sure, but I feel like at that moment my face matched hers.

"OH MY GOSH!" I said, then snatched the letter. "THANKSFORBRINGINGTHISTOMEI'MJUSTGOINGTOGOTOMYROOMTOOPENITUPI'LLTELLYOUHOWITWENTLOVEYOUBYE!" I shouted as I rushed to my room. As soon as I closed the door, I ran over to my desk, turned on the lamp, and ripped open the letter. A small, circular device fell out and began to emit light from the top. I gasped when the light projected into a screen showing All Might's smiling face.

"I'M HERE IN THIS HOLOGRAM!" He shouted exuberantly. "I'm sorry I didn't contact you sooner, young man, but I had paperwork to do!"

"Why are you-" I started to ask, then was cut off by All Might continuing, probably because that was a recording and not a holophone.

"I'm glad you asked, young man! See, I've been hired as a teacher at my alma mater, Yuuei!" A voice that I didn't quite hear came from somewhere offscreen, accompanied by a hand. "Hm? What's that? I've got to do how many?" He turned back to face me. "Sorry to cut this short, young man, but I have to make this quick! Not only did you get thirty-eight villain points from the robots you destroyed, but you also got sixty rescue points from saving your fellow examinee, for a whopping total of ninety-eight!"

"Rescue points?" I asked, despite the fact that it was a recording.

"Why yes, rescue points! It was the entrance exam for a hero school, was it not? Yes, a student's resolve to rescue others, even if they should lose out on the opportunity to get a few more points, is something that should be rewarded! And you, who was willing to destroy the monstous zero-pointer to save someone, have shown a heroic spirit that the staff of Yuuei would be remiss to turn away!" I started to tear up as his grin grew wider. "That's right, Midoriya Izuku. Welcome to your hero academia." I cried tears of joy as the hologram shut off. I let myself cry for a few minutes from the sheer realization that I was going to the school that I'd wanted to get in to for almost all of my life, and had been told that I had no chance of ever getting into. When I was done, I dried my eyes and looked over the papers that were in the envelope. Just the standard hero school forms and a letter from the principal congratulating me on how I'd been accepted into Yuuei. I might have teared up some more from that. I signed my parts on the forms and went outside. Mom was standing in front of the door with a nervous look on her face. I smiled, answering the question that was written all over her face. When she was done crying, I handed her the envelope and said, "There's some forms in there that you need to sign and mail back, plus the designs for my hero costume. I signed mine, so I'm going to do some training to make sure that I'm ready for Yuuei."

Mom smiled. "Of course, honey. I'm so proud of you. Go, do your magic."

xoxoxo

I looked around from the roof of my house. With everyone gone and the sun down, it looked like a ghost town. The skeletons shambling around really only added to that. After having tested to make absolutely sure that Illusion Barrier left me completely divorced from reality and I wouldn't just randomly destroy things from within the barrier, which would be bad, I'd used the other setting: Skeletons. While the barrier was completely empty at first, small cracks opened in the ground that each allowed a single skeleton with no equipment to climb out before closing. After just a few minutes of that, skeletons littered the streets in all directions. They weren't very tough according to Observe, but there were a lot of them, so I bravely retreated to the safety of my roof, where thy couldn't climb and didn't seem to want to spawn. "You do realize that you're gonna haveta start fighting at some point, right?" a now-tangible Dune told me as she looked down the scope of her rifle.

I nodded. "I'm going to, but I want to try something first." I concentrated on my magic. I might not have been able to automatically find a way to peer through the Illusion Barrier, but I felt like finding some form of eyesight-enhancing skill might have been a good place to start. I channeled magic to my eyes in a similar way to my enhancement skills, making sure to not overload them because I could tell that that wouldn't be pleasant. After a few seconds of careful magic-working, my vision blurred and then sharpened, to the point where I could hone in on individual details on the closer skeletons and could see the farther skeletons clearly despite it being nighttime. Ping!

A skill has been created through a special action! Infusing your eyes with mana has created the skill 'Hawkeye' to enhance vision!

Hawkeye (Active) LV1 EXP 0.00% MP 50

One's eyesight is an incredibly powerful tool that is to be cherished. This skill allows the user to see with more clarity than normal, greatly enhancing the gift of sight.

Additional 50 MP used per minute.

The skill wasn't quite what I was looking for, but it felt like a step in the right direction. Even still, the ability to enhance my sight was definitely a useful skill that I wanted to cultivate. But first... "Did the skill I just got do something to my eyes?" I asked my elementals.

"Green glow," Halitus remarked. "Larger pupils."

I nodded. "So using Hawkeye in public is out of the question..." That just meant I'd have to get creative. I looked at one of the skeletons that was far away. "Could either one of you hit that one skeleton?" I asked as I transmitted the image to them.

"On it," Dune said as she cocked her rifle. The reason why I asked them was because, unlike me, they seemed to not have any drop in MP used for magic anywhere in their range, unlike me. As I watched the skeleton, I heard her pull the trigger, which somehow caused a spear of rock to protrude out of the ground and at the skeleton, launching its ribcage away and destroying it. I nodded. "Hey, how 'bout you try to to kill one of them now?" she asked.

I activated my Earth Aura in answer, then jumped off the roof to an area that was denser than normal with skeletons and used Earth Burst when I landed. Bones flew everywhere before dissolving into dust. From that, I got almost half as much SF as I'd spent on Illusion Barrier. Even with Born Lucky, the skeletons weren't worth much EXP and SF thanks to being weak, the highest being at level five, but there were a lot of them. My Sense Danger and Bloodthirst skills warned me that more skeletons were coming, so I activated Earth Aura again. The cracks in the ground that signaled the skeletons spawning opened up and the bony arms shot out. Before the rest of the skeletons could climb out, I stomped my foot, sending out a shockwave that killed the skeletons before they could even finish spawning. Unfortunately, the large amount of noise I'd made caused the rest of the skeletons to come after me. "Nope," I said, then switched to Air Aura and parkoured back up to my roof.

I looked down at the angry mob of skeletons looking up at me expectantly and said, "I really hope that these skeletons are as easy to kill as in Skyrim..." I thought for a moment about how to best make an AOE attack without dropping down there again to use Elemental Burst. I held my hands out and condensed air mana in the same way that I made Spiral Mana Bomb. When it was fully charged, I shot it into the crowd with surprising speed. The new spell, which I called Tornado Bomb, lived up to its name when it made a swirling wave of air so strong that it ripped all of the skeletons apart. As their bones disintegrated, I got 741 SF and another level up. After I dismissed the text boxes, I noticed that their dust wasn't disappearing, just swirling around in the last eddies of the Tornado Bomb. As I watched, the swirling of the dust picked up speed, then started flying towards the small crater from where the bomb hit. A crack that was much larger than the others opened up and the dust began to pour inside it. When all of the dust had poured into the crack, a large armored hand shot out of it. A skeleton clad in full samurai armour that was definitely over two meters tall climbed out.

Spirit of a Fallen Warrior

LV 34

Skeletal Samurai

I gulped. Sure, I had pretty high stats, but this was my first time facing any enemy with such a high level aside from friendly spars with Kacchan. The samurai drew his katana and pointed it at me. For a second, I thought about running away, but shook my head and abandoned the thought almost as soon as it came. I'd be a horrible hero if I decided to run from any fight that looked like there was a chance for me to lose. The first thing I did was layer all of my buffs. Using Observe, I noted that it had a low DEX compared to its other stats. I turned Air Aura back on, made a katana of my own, and jumped at the samurai. I managed to land behind him and turned to swing my sword at him, meeting his blade as it came down on me. 

"Halitus! Dune!" I shouted. Spears of earth shot at the skeleton as the wind picked up and pushed it off of me. While it was off balance I swung at the elbow of its sword arm, hoping to cut it off. I cut through the armor and the bone, but the arm refused to fall. A quick Observe told me that that took a small chunk off its health, though. The skeleton swiped at me again and I jumped backwards before I could be cut. From there, I sent a volley of Air Slashes at the samurai. They didn't do much, but they did manage to take some more health off, which was a win. I exchanged the Air Aura on my blade for Fire Aura and dashed back at the skeleton. We struck swords again, but this time its sword started to glow red from the flames. I willed my fire to grow hotter and slowly cut through the softened metal. When I cut all the way through, I used Power Strike to make my sword swing faster as I chopped into its neck. Like with before, my sword cut through a bone but didn't disable the skeleton, probably because it was already in pieces but still held itself together with magic. Before I could get back, the skeleton cut me with the remnant of its sword. Fortunately, my Physical Endurance was already almost level one hundred from me biting myself over the course of ten months, so it didn't hurt too much. I jumped back and started to heal myself. The skeleton charged at me, but because it was so slow I was able to dodge easily and stick my sword in it again. This time I overloaded the Fire Aura and let go. I jumped back as the Fire Burst engulfed the samurai, making use of Hawkeye to keep an eye on it through the flames. Thankfully, the skeleton was almost out of HP, so I just shot Mana Bolts at it until it died, which was surprisingly effective. When its HP reached zero, it fell over from the force of the last Mana Bolt and started crumbling. Thankfully, this time the dust actually disappeared, leaving behind a scroll and giving me a level up. I picked up the scroll, which caused a window to appear.

You have picked up the skill book for the skill 'Vacuum Slice.' Would you like too learn it?

"Huh," I said. "I guess that this is another form of the Skill Grimoir," I muttered. "Does this mean that Illusion Barrier is working with my Quirk?" As I was inspecting it, I vaguely felt something roughly tapping me on the back, but I brushed it off. "I guess that that was where my confusion was coming from," I mused. "It wouldn't be the first skill of mine that works with my Quirk, but this is the first time that I know of that a skill was modified..." I was tapped on the back again. "What is it?" I asked as I turned around. I saw a group of skeletons pounding on my back as hard as they could, which apparently wasn't very hard. I checked and saw that I still had Defense up and Regeneration on for a few more seconds, so I was taking one or two damage from the hits and just immediately healing it off. "Huh," I said. I renewed my buffs to make sure they couldn't do anything to me and switched to Earth Aura just in case. Because the skeletons couldn't actually hurt me, I learned Vacuum Slice, causing the scroll to dissolve like the words in my Skill Grimoir. Vacuum Slice actually didn't seem like that bad of a skill. It was almost the exact same thing as my Air Slash, but it wasn't air-element and cost less. The only problem was that I could only use it with a sword or some other kind of blade as a medium. It seemed like I could also use it to enhance my sword by not letting go of it. I tested that theory by creating my trusty katana and slicing through the skeletons. I then realized that I had no baseline to how hard a skeleton was to cut with Bound Blade alone and ran over to another skeleton to cut it. "It does let me cut things easier," I muttered.

I decided that I was probably okay on fighting skeletons for the night and ducked into a bush so I could switch Illusion Barriers. Without the skeletons to impede me, I simply walked home. On the way home, I brought up my skill menu to to see if how my skills were doing.

xoxoxo

"Should water ever rise up to drown you, call me for help," the small girl in blue ninja garb said before melting into water.

"Of course I will, Rayne," I told her. Unlike the last two times, I didn't even feel tired. I immediately summoned her back, though. Thanks to Summon Basic Elemental upgrading to Summon Lesser Elemental, she looked like she was about ten years old, not eight. My other two elementals also looked older, and for whatever reason Dune had gained some gray spots to her camo. Rayne had light blue clothing, like Halitus, though she had navy blue as well as sky blue and her hair was the same colors as her clothes. Her hair was done up in two buns with yellow ornaments on them. She had a scarf made of some strange white material that made it look like it was made of seafoam or something and small white circular sunglasses that didn't cover her eyes at all. "Hello again," I said.

"Hi!" she said cheerfully. "What do you need me for?" she asked then unsheathed her sword what the heck? "Do you need me to stab anything?" Her tone was still totally cheerful even as she brandished the wave-themed ninja sword she'd pulled out of its sheath on her back.

"A-ah! That-that won't be necessary! I just wanted to talk!" I quickly explained.

"Awww," she complained. "I wanted to stab something!"

"Weapon buddies!" Dune shouted and waved her gun in the air in a way that I didn't even need to know anything about gun safety to know that that was the exact opposite of gun safety.

"Weapon buddies!" Rayne agreed. She waved her sword around with Dune. I was really glad that I'd decided to do the ritual in the Illusion Barrier.

I edged over to where Halitus was sitting. "I think we should let them finish before we start talking," I said.

"Yes," he agreed.

xoxoxo

A/N: And now we know what happens if someone grinds for ten months before getting ID Create. By the way, I called it Illusion Barrier and not ID Create like in The Gamer is because I think Illusion Barrier sounds cooler than ID Create. Sue me. And sorry about that last scene being rather abrupt, but I didn't really know how to introduce Rayne better.

By the way, I made a Tumblr (lol meta). It's the same as my username if you were curious. You guys should probably send questions there if you want them answered. And if you make fanart and want to show it to me, that'd be perfection.

And I'm not saying Pastor Tommy McMurtry is sexually attracted to pumpkins, I'm just saying that we don't really know for sure (look up Mr. Atheist if you don't get it). Happy rainbow month, everyone.

[danbevanwriting]

The Ranking of Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy II

After the runaway success of Final Fantasy, Square wanted to capitalise on it and release a sequel as soon as they could. As such, Final Fantasy II was made a mere year later for the NES for Japan only. What made this sequel special is in how little it actually resembles its predecessor. Instead of taking the easy route, Square decided to change how the combat system worked, worked in a more elaborate story with more in the way of characters, and crafted a whole new world. Very impressive work considering the single year gap. Some assets were understandably re-used (such as character sprites being close to identical to FFI) but there was a fair amount of original designs too. Of course, none of this came without a price...

All of the above sounds pretty good on paper, right? Well, I'll start with the combat system. More specifically, the leveling system. Experience as a leveling up system is gone, and in its place is a system that levels up stats and abilities with their use. So, as an example, you level up your sword skill by using swords in battle, and you level up your intelligence or MP by casting magic (magic costs points to use now rather than the charge system in the last game, which is an improvement in my eyes). Again, on paper this sounds pretty good and logical! However the amount of time it takes to level up these skills to a high degree is insane, requiring literally thousands of casts to reach anywhere close to top level magic, and each spell has to level up individually. This means if you want to cast high level elemental magic for the 3 major elements (fire, ice, lightning) then you'd have to cast each about 3,000 times. The same issue applies to the weapons too, which means that despite there being a whole host of different weapon types, you are at a complete disadvantage if you level anything other than swords, bows, or axes as most of the types have little to no late game tier weapons. This is probably why the encounter rate in this game is so high. It's far higher that FFI from what I can tell, or at least it feels significantly higher. The constant battles make the game feel like a chore to get through, draining you of your resources in game and patience out.

Another flaw with this system is that to be able to increase your maximum HP or MP then you have to take damage or use MP in battle and finish the fight. This leads to a problem with the way the game calculates the damage taken. If one of your characters takes damage in battle but you heal it up during the fight, it'll negate the damage taken and not count for the trigger to increase maximum HP. The way this is all calculated means that a common 'power levelling' tactic is to fight the weakest enemies in the game, beat the ever loving crap out of yourselves for as long as you can, then finish the fight, resulting in massive stat increases. This easy work around means that the game can become trivialised pretty easily. It also makes the game in general very unsatisfying to play as the game is either way too hard or way too easy due to a lack of balancing and huge difficulty spikes for the unprepared. Instead the gameplay is an exercise in tedium rather than being enjoyable like the first game due to level ups not feeling as good as they did in FFI nor the exploration aspect of the game being very enjoyable either.

The exploration aspect of the game is the same as the first game: world map, towns, dungeons. The world map aspect is pretty standard and follows in the same vein as the first with the same sort of transportation options open to the player. I only have a couple of issues with it to be honest, both of which are relatively minor. Firstly it's deceptively small, which means that the game requires you to back track through a lot of it with quests sending you back and forth across the same parts of the world and getting you back to a home base of sorts. Not a massive issue as it is not a bad thing, thematically, to return to the base of the resistance between missions. This does slow the pacing of the game right down though. Secondly, the map has an issue with signposting difficult enemies. For example in the last game, as the map was significantly larger, harder enemies were gated in to zones you could only get to with the use of a vehicle or tool locked behind a dungeon or boss. Not the case here. It's very easy early on in the game to wander just a little bit to too far to the West and get one-shot by enemies meant to be fought a lot later in the game. It does give the world a more hostile feeling but it's not exactly fair either. The towns that litter the world map are fine, nothing too interesting of note as they all are pretty similar, although I do like how they change throughout the game at times, such as Fynn being re-occupied by normal citizens when you liberate it from the empire and Altair showing signs of damage after it's attacked. Helping exploration a bit is the key word system which lets you learn and ask key words to certain NPCs. It is somewhat limited in scope however and isn't utilised as well as it could have, but this was a NES game after all so I wouldn't have expected anything too amazing. The fact it is in this game at all and utilised how it is is impressive in itself, honestly.

The dungeons are a different story though, and is part of the major failing of this game. You'll spend the vast majority of the play time crawling through these dungeons which take a few different shapes but are mostly caves and stone fortresses. The tile sets look fine but the way that the dungeons themselves are designed is among the worst I've ever played. They're so tedious. Not only are they complex to a fault, having many twisting paths and dead ends that provide little to no reward, but they seem to be designed to create as much ire in the player as possible. Throughout all the dungeons there are doors, either in corners or at the end of a corridor with a few of them in a row, but unfortunately these doors more than often lead to empty rooms which drop you in to the middle of them. Not only is it annoying that there's nothing in the rooms (especially when you choose the wrong door out of several next to each other, only one of which progresses the dungeon), the encounter rate in these rooms is tweaked incredibly high. This means that it is more than possible to encounter enemies with every step you take back to the door which can be lethal if you're in the wrong situation or get a bad mix of enemies. Not helping the dungeons is the boring music, which certainly doesn't negate the tedium.

The music in general is rather lackluster to be honest. The only music pieces I can think of that are good are the normal battle theme, the over world theme, and the rebel theme that plays when you're in the rebel base. Everything else is really boring, or repetitive, or just bizarre like the boss theme. Seriously, what is up with that boss theme?(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fprhlzyl30s) The one used for later game bosses is better but still not incredible or very memorable. Honestly that's a word that can sum up the majority of the soundtrack despite how repetitive it is: forgettable. This is where the Chocobos are introduced for the first time, but they somehow ruin that through the music which is literally just one bar long and is repeated ad nauseam, and I don't think I need to explain why that is so terrible...

The story of the game ranges from boring to 'okay'. Characters are more than mere cardboard cut-outs like in FFI but they still aren't amazingly fleshed out. There isn't much in the way of character development for the main characters, despite them being distinct characters this time around. You never really learn much about Firion, Guy, or Maria during the whole game other than they're orphans and really don't like the empire because they destroyed their home. This is a shame as they are obviously with the party the whole game and just get nothing to say really. The supporting characters aren't too much better either. Through the game you get extra party members that take up the fourth slot in your party, however you'll quickly learn that this is sometimes just a death sentence for them, or you'll learn just to simply not care about them at all. Often times the party member will come in weak and underpowered, meaning you have to baby sit them as they gain levels, only for them to leave the party forever (taking all equipment with them) or they die to save the three protagonists in a dramatic moment. While it does provide a context for the fight and shows how desperate the war on the empire is, but it's also dramatically repetitive. Of course this is a really good story for a NES game and has far more complexities than anything else at the time. But now the story is mostly just not engaging. The story is mostly predictable, characters are mostly one note, the big bad, the Emperor, is pretty flat and starts the trend of Final Fantasy antagonists either being only one part of a bigger unseen picture, or coming back from the dead because 'evil magic'. Honestly I don't think there's a single memorable character here, and there isn't much I could tell you about the ones I do remember, aside from Minwu looks cool and unique? The story starts surprisingly strong though, with an unwinnable fight to wipe the party in order to set the tone and the pace of the story is pretty snappy too, setting you off in to the world and making decent progress with exposing or routing the empire from towns and even destroying their Dreadnought ship. Unfortunately the story's pace just nose dives after that, padding the story out with a world spanning fetch quest where the story just treads water until the end with boring long dungeons and an ending which is rather flat.

In conclusion, Final Fantasy II isn't very good. It's boring, frustrating, repetitive, tedious, but also has a couple of bright spots in the premise and the idea of the levelling up system. I played through this game on the PSP/ mobile version which is far less frustrating than the original or PS1 version. In the original game on NES, the frustrating stat increase system was even more annoying with a stat degradation that would take away points from skills or stats that weren't used for a while. I think that would have made me quit the game pretty early on to be quite honest. The original also only ever let you save your game outside, and with the length of some of these dungeons combined with the high encounter rate would also lead to an ungodly amount of stress and frustration.

So how does this game compare to the rest of the series so far? Well comparing the game to FFI alone, this is a night and day difference. You can tell this game was made quickly as the developers seemed to have forgot to make the gameplay fun before they focused on telling a more complex tale within a video game. Not only is this a bad Final Fantasy, it's a bad RPG, and is the black sheep of the series for a reason. Obviously this is going to the bottom of the list, where I predict it will stay for the rest of this series.

And that's it for Final Fantasy II! I won't lie, I'm glad to see the back of it. It's part of why I took so long getting this done, I lost a lot of motivation to get through the game due to some of the rubbish the game threw my way. It's only up from here though! Just for the record too, I plan to do all direct sequels in this series too, which means I'll be reviewing and rating Final Fantasies IV: The After Years, X-2, XIII-2, and XIII: Lightning Returns. The only one I probably won't touch is XII: Revenant Wings due to me mostly just being uninterested in it. Anyway, thank you for reading, and please look forward to when I review and rate Final Fantasy III!

Current Rankings:

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II

[crystalelemental]

Notoriously the least favorite new dex in the entire series, largely due to genwunner mentality.  It drives me crazy how many people are mad about some Pokemon this generation.  You're mad about the wrong ones!  Yes, there are things that are Not Great in this dex, but leave the usual disliked Pokemon alone!  Plus, I will appreciate any generation that forces me to use the new stuff for at least the main game.  I so desperately wish they kept that in later generations, but nope.

TOP 15: 15) Sigilyph - It's like Xatu for me.  It's a unique design choice, with a really cool battle role.   Magic Guard allows it to burn itself, and Psycho Shift can pass that to the opponent.  Cosmic Power buffs defenses, and then you just stall out until you can unleash Stored Power.  Critical hits are the biggest problem for this thing, aside from routine power creep and Dark types shutting down its one attack.  The Burn nerf also did not help, doubling the amount of turns it has to stall with this strategy.  But the niche it does hold is still great, and while Smogon can tell me this set sucks until they're blue in the face, I personally will always remember it for this hysterical combo.

14) Swoobat - I love Swoobat.  It's such a cute little bat creature, with its signature attack that does it literally no favors at all.  Simple + Calm Mind is also particularly fun, or it would be if it had the stats to take a hit long enough to set that up.  Mostly though, it's just a charming and cute bat.

13) Vanilluxe line - Vanilluxe is a good Pokemon, you all are just mean.   It's an adorable ice cream cone Pokemon, with the ice cream part being accumulated snow.  It's a precious concept, and the only real bad part about it is its movepool. I love Vanilluxe and its evolutions, and you should too.

12) Gigalith line - I love the whole line.  Boldore gets special mention, due to the presence of Rochelle in my Pokemon White Nuzlock.  Gigalith itself stands out as an intimidating mass of rock, with a beautiful shiny form and surprisingly well-oriented stats for a wall.  Getting Sandstorm as an ability also helped it out a lot, giving a much-needed buff to special defense.  It's got a lot going for it.

11) Haxorus line - Dragon type evolution lines, up to this point, tend to emphasize raw attack power over all else.  You had some exceptions, in that Flygon was more balanced and Altaria was more defensive, but for the most part Dragons have physical offense.  Haxorus takes this to its logical conclusion, being unreasonably strong, and having an intimidating design to match.  Despite this, it doesn't quite go the route of Garchomp or Salamence, where it looks entirely scary.  It looks intimidating, but it also looks friendlier, somehow.  I know its face is an axe, but it doesn't have quite the same air of menace.

10) Mienshao - It's rare a Fighting type makes my list of favorites, but Mienshao earns this spot based on elegant design among a typing that's usually hulking brutes.  I also really loved Regenerator + Life Orb as a combo, it just seemed so obvious.

9) Reshiram - Much like Dialga, this was an easy pick for me.  Unfortunately, when I asked for the game, I got the one with Zekrom.  Not that I was that mad, Zekrom is cool enough, but Reshiram is my favorite of the two.   Fire/Dragon is a great one, and the fact that it's the embodiment of truth is a fantastic concept. The story role for Zekrom and Reshiram is also fantastic, being set with the first real ideological rival you had, N.  Combined with an elegant and beautiful design, Reshiram definitely stands out for me among the box legends in the series.

8) Chandelure - I'm not a big fan of Litwick, or even of Lampent, but Chandelure is a quality final stage Pokemon.  It's such an elaborate and wonderful look, being sufficiently spooky yet elegant in its own right.  Ghost/Fire is also an incredible typing, allowing for very few things to resist its powerful special attacks.  It's a great Pokemon, and one of the many excellent ghost types from this gen.

7) Gothitelle - Obviously, I'm a big fan of psychic types, and Gothitelle is definitely up there on the list for me.  I like the gothic look, and its role as something that can see lifespans is both interesting and tragic for it.  It's also the signature Pokemon of Caitlin, which...man, I loved Caitlin's role in battle tower as it was, and seeing her as an elite four member, with this Pokemon as her best, was divine.

6) Leavanny line - Among the many Pokemon I wish had better competitive utility, Leavanny is definitely up there.  It's such a nice Pokemon with a great design through its whole evolutionary chain, only to end up with a terrible typing and few benefits beyond that.  What it does offer is being adorable, and apparently fashioning clothes for other Pokemon out of silk.  I love this creature so much.

5) Frillish - Listen, if you don't like Frillish, something's not right.   It's such a cute Pokemon, in both male and female forms.  It's one of the few Pokemon that has a distinction along gender that I appreciate.   Water/Ghost is also a fantastic typing, and it gets a lot of good tools to make use of it, including Will-o-Wisp and Recover.  Such a fun and pretty Pokemon...  Jellicent is also great, but aesthetics don't appeal nearly as much.

4) Musharna line - Musharna and Munna are adorable little Pokemon, and I love their connection to the whole Dream World mechanic that was introduced this generation.  They have a great role in the story, producing the mist that allows a professor to examine dreams, but they're also just precious little creature in their own right.  Not particularly strong in battle, and unfortunately don't work to much on that whole manipulation of dreams concept, but definitely a fun concept to work with.

3) Meloetta - Who would've thought a mythic legend would ever come along that outranked Celebi?  Being a Pokemon based in song, it gets the fantastic Psychic/Normal typing, allowing it to get complete immunity to Ghost types.  It's a precious tiny singer...who can morph into a powerful step dancer that brutalizes its common weaknesses as a Fighting/Normal type.  Nothing in this world is greater than the feeling of someone switching into Meloetta with Tyranitar expecting to tank, only for it to then transform to its Pirouette form and style all over it.  It's such a unique Pokemon to use in battle, and one of the best concepts as a singer/dancer.

2) Cinccino - Another really snazzy Pokemon.  Cinccino's many tail-scarves makes it look divine, and having multi-hit moves certainly sets it apart from most. I'm also a huge fan of King's Rock + Skill Link moves.  It's a vile, evil combo. 41% flinch on all your moves is incredible, and it allowed my weaker teams to sometimes do stupid things, like that time Cinccino beat a Heatran through sheer power of flinch.  It's a great and unique normal type, with a great design.

1) Lilligant - The best grass type.  Lilligant is a beautiful, wonderful Pokemon. It's a dancer, and so it learns a lot of dance-based moves, with an ability that shuts down confusion to allow for Petal Dance to be even more devastating.  The design is what sells it the most, being a regal-looking plant that has to hop around because she has no feet.   It's beautiful and lovely and wonderful, and has access to the best boosting move in the game.

BOTTOM 10: 10) Samurott - Dewott was so cool.  Dewott was the coolest, my actual favorite of the starters, until Samurott.  "Steve, you know it stands on its hind legs too, watch the anime loser."  Listen.  I know it can.   But its sprite and its general stance are not upright.  It is a quadruped with the ability to stand upright, and that's very different from being bipedal, and we all know it.  I wanted something better than this.  It's like the inverse of the usual fire-type complaint of people wanting it to remain a quadruped; I wanted it to stand upright and be more samurai-like.  It didn't do that, and it also didn't do anything to create any sort of battle role for itself.  Disappointing.

9) Seismitoad - I love Tympole.  I mean I adore it.  I was so ready for a nice evolution line like Politoed, or at least an acceptable one like Poliwrath.  But no. We get this thing.  Water/Ground, with fairly average stats, does not cut it anymore.  The design is what really bothers me.  From my adorable tadpole creature that's all musical, to this big wart-covered toad creature that...I guess hits the warts to make sound?  It's not as good.  Nowhere near.  Unacceptable final evolution stage.

8) Pignite - Yes, specifically.  Emboar at least looks rad, and Tepig is still cute.   Pignite is the awkward middle child, much like Quilladin.  But unlike Quilladin, Pignite's biggest shame is being the third generation in a row of Fire/Fighting type.  If it hadn't gained that typing, I might be easier on it, but it was the showing that this generation's starters were going to be nowhere near as interesting any anything before, or after it.

7) Unfezant - I really do not like the design of this thing at all, and adding to it that it's about as stock and standard an early-game bird as you can get, and there's really nothing interesting about it.  I would definitely way it's the least interesting regional bird.

6) Beheeyem line - I honestly forget about this Pokemon.  I honest to god forget it, every single time.  Just an alien thing.  No explanation, it's just...an alien thing. What are you?  Why are you here?  What is even going on anymore, and why do you have so little defined battle role that I can forget that there's a literal alien just walking around?

5) Scrafty - I don't like its aesthetic.  I don't like the punk aesthetic at all.  It does nothing for me.  I'm also supremely pissed about Fighting/Dark type.  Before Fairies showed up, this was devastating for a Psychic-lover like me.  When Drapion covered Poison types, that was fine.  Poison wasn't that good, and it could use the help.  But Fighting types?  Fighting types are my food, and this bastard prevents that.   Add to it that Dark became incredibly common as a coverage type on Fighting types, and it's just a whole mess for my favorite type. I'm glad Fairy type blasted your ass back down the totem pole.

4) Simisage/Simisear - Believe it or not, Simipour, I think, is just cute enough to avoid my ire.  These two, however, are not.  I've stated it before, but I don't like monkeys.  I also don't like that these Pokemon have virtually no battle use. Their stats are bad and their movepools are bad.  I also don't remember how to get them beyond the free one you get before the first gym, where they exist to counter the first gym's type choice and do nothing else. I could keep going, but that seems like overkill.

3) Sawk/Throh - I decided to combine the two, because I can't decide which I like less.  In a similar vein to the next entry, their designs are what bother me. Kung Fu Burt and Ernie.  Okay, sure.  Why are these things even here?  Did we really need more Fighting types?  I know it's a whole "mirror to gen 1" thing with the fresh start, but maybe it would've been better to not try to make knock-off Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee.

2) Conkeldurr line - Not quite the bottom of the barrel, but close enough that it makes little difference.  Conkeldurr is exactly what I dislike about the Fighting type.  Its design is not good.  Its stats are perfectly calibrated to hit hard and take physical hits.  It gets recovery from Drain Punch, Dark-type moves to wreck every Psychic that tries to stop it, priority in Mach Punch, fantastic coverage options, and I just...I hate that it's good.  I hate it.  Because it looks so bad, and the things that make it good, in my mind, make it too good.  It shouldn't be able to answer every single Psychic type in the game.  It should be able to answer status play that tries to wear it down.  But it does all of this flawlessly and I hate it.  You basically have to be a Fairy type or a really strong Flying type, and I just want this thing dead already!

1) Landorus-Therian - If you have to ask, you haven't been here long.  Lando-T is the bane of my damned existence.  I don't like its look.  I don't like that its ability meshes perfectly with its battle role.  I don't like that, competitively, Smogon has it on 50%+ of teams depending on the season, and yet it's still obviously out of the question that it could ever be too good and need to be banned.  I hate this thing beyond all other Pokemon.  It would've just been a form I'd never use under normal circumstances, but instead, because of fan reception and competitive play, it's probably my most disliked Pokemon, and one of maybe five I actively hate.

[housebeleren]

Theros Beyond Death Limited: Premium Uncommons

Time for the Uncommons of Threos Beyond Death! 

White

Archon is costly, but it’s likely going to be the biggest evasive threat on the board, and by the time you get it out, it shouldn’t be difficult at all to get value out of the death trigger, if your opponent does remove it right away. Seems like a pretty easy 2-for-1, which is what you need your Uncommon 6-drops to do. 3.0/5

Banishing Light takes care of literally any threat on the board, for a very reasonable price. Yes, it can be undone with Enchantment removal, but there’s not so much running around that it’s extremely likely. This is better than usual in this set because it also triggers Constellation, and Exile is much better than sending to the grave, because of Escape.. Take highly. 3.5/5

Knocking out all abilities is a critical part of this card, and is a large part of what makes it playable. This will completely neutralize any bomb Creature for 4 turns, which is a lot of action for only 2 mana. I’d still usually rather have the Banishing Light, but this is not bad at all. 3.0/5

I like that there are multiple ways to recover used Enchantments at Uncommon in this set. It makes for deep interactions that are tons of fun. This teller of tales is a decently sized body on his own, and the option to put a Dreadful Apathy back on top of your deck is big game. It reminds me a little of the Choking Restraints/Ironclad Slayer combo from Eldritch Moon limited. I’m a fan. 3.0/5

At Uncommon, White gets a lot of strong interaction and some reasonably costed cards with lots of potential for creative plays. This is exciting, because White is frequently a super straightforward color in Limited, but it’s clear there’s room for depth and subtlety in the color that is very refreshing to see.

Blue

This is basically a 3/2 that dies and leaves behind a 2/3. And that is really solid value for only 3 mana. A vanilla 3/2 for 3 is playable filler anyway, and will usually trade reasonably. I suspect this will go undervalued by a lot of people. 3.0/5

Aside from having absolutely gorgeous art, Callaphe is a pretty strong turn 3 play. It doesn’t take much for her to be a 4/3 or bigger, at which point she’s great value for the cost, and she taxes all targeted removal against her, as a bonus. Add the fact that she triggers Constellation and adds 2 for Devotion, and I’m pretty well sold. 3.0/5

It’s one mana more than Banishing Light, but it’s just about as effective, though it doesn’t clear abilities, which is unfortunate. Even so, it’s pretty close to unconditional removal, which is much needed in Blue. 3.0/5

This is a card you’d play as an ordinary creature anyway, with the base stats. But this is one of the few ways in the set to truly abuse Constellation, and it will also let you reset your Enchantment-based removal to scale up to bigger targets as the game goes on. And that’s not even mentioning that there are several good ETB triggers to reuse. I’m suspecting this will be really good. It’s the successor to Riptide Chimera, but this one trades stats for being optional, which I’m very okay with. 3.5/5

If Ravnica Allegiance taught us anything, it was to not underestimate Faerie Duelist, which won combats and completely warped the combat calculus around its existence. At Uncommon, this will be less, well, common, but the effect is still potent and shouldn’t be ignored. It’s less consistent, but the upside is higher, and a 1/3 is more playable on its own stats than a 1/2. 3.0/5

Blue got a ton of action at Uncommon, which somewhat makes up for my initial impression that the Commons were a little underwhelming. That said, the variance on the Uncommons is much higher, as there are a few that I think will be fairly weak, so snap up these good ones when you see them.

Black

There is no doubt this will be good. Even at 4 mana, it’s playable, and the cost reduction is just a bonus. Premium removal, for sure. 3.5/5

The first Saga to make the cut for me, I suspect this will be pretty good. Creature powers aren’t crazy high in this set, so you should have some good targets for this, and it will be very difficult for them to avoid having to discard something useful if you cast this on curve. Completely obliterating any Escape they may have going on is a great upside, and very relevant. I’d basically always run this, and maybe side it out against the R/G Ferocious deck or something. 3.0/5

Gary’s back! You definitely want a little devotion on the table before casting this, but once you have another few Black Creatures out, this can be a huge life swing. Definitely an incentive to go deep in the color, but not a great reason to pivot if you’re already going somewhere else. 3.0/5

Play this for the 2/1 Deathtouch. The Escape enabling is just a perk. 3.0/5

Pharika’s Spawn seems like it could be pretty close to a Mythic Uncommon. A 3/4 for 4 is fine, if unexciting, but the Escape is where the real action is. For 6 mana and just a few cards from your ‘yard, you get a 5/6 that comes with an edict attached, and that is big game. Assuming it trades once upfront, this is a completely believable 3-for-1. Sometimes, it won’t end up quite that good, but the potential is also there for it to be even better. If you can get repeated Escapes out of this, I don’t see how you’re losing. One of the best Escape payoffs in the set, and I’m starting pretty high on it. I could imagine this getting up to a 4.0 if the format is right for it. But for now, it’s a 3.5/5

Black knocked it out of the park in Uncommons. There were even more I could have picked, but I wanted to limit it to 5 highlighted cards. Given its strong showing at Common as well, I suspect Black will be a powerhouse color. Of all the colors, Black stands out to me as probably the best candidate for mono drafting, since it really doesn’t need much help to be great. If Black is wide open and you can draft mono-Black devotion, I expect that to be great.

Red

I like the Demigods with variable power rather than toughness, and I also like the ones that cost 1CC rather than CC, since they’ll be easier to cast on curve. Anax here threatens a lot of power on his own, but his ability is pretty fierce as well. By himself, he’ll at least always leave behind a 1/1 when he dies, but it has the potential to get really nuts in in the sacrifice deck. I suspect he will play better than he looks at first blush. 3.0/5

A 2/1 for 2 that chucks a Shock when it dies? Sign me up, this is exactly what both aggro and sacrifice decks want, so I suspect these will get snatched up fast. 3.0/5

Okay, this one I admit I’m a bit unsure of. A 4/2 for 3 would normally be around a 2.0, but this one has some extra going for it. The fact that its ability can hit any target is huge, because it can snipe off opposing X/1s or be that one extra point to take down larger creatures with some of Red’s Instant speed removal. And eventually, it’s going to trade with something itself, so I’ll give it the initial benefit of the doubt. It is definitely way better in the R/U Flash deck than in just a normal deck, so adjust your expectations downward accordingly. 3.0/5

Funny how far Scry 1 goes. While I’d generally rather see Lightning Strike, adding the Scry keeps this from feeling bad at Uncommon. It’s strong, flexible removal, and you’ll like it. 3.0/5

Red did decently in the Uncommon department. Like with its Commons, many of the cards feel situational, like they’ll be better in some decks than others, so my gut is telling me that, barring the bombs at Rare & Mythic, Red will be at its best as a support color, and probably not a great candidate for mono drafting (unlike Black, which seems bonkers if you can draft it alone).

Green

I like this. There aren’t very many 1-toughness creatures with Flying, so if you cast it for 1, it’ll mostly be a chump block. But the Escape is pretty sweet, because a 4/5 with Reach is a massively bigger deal than a measly 1/2. This can be an easy 2-for-1 against many decks, and has even a little more ceiling than that. 3.0/5

A 2/3 for 2 would already be pretty playable. Add that it’s an Enchantment in the color that cares the most, that it shuts off counters at no cost, and that it has a late-game mana sink, and you’ve got a potential powerhouse on your hands. My guess is that it will rarely be amazing, but the potential is there, and it will always be at least good. 3.0/5

On its own, this swings as a 3/4 Trample for only 3 mana, and that’s pretty solid. Being able to move its bonus around as the game develops keeps this relevant, and I suspect it will play very well. 3.0/5

Affectionate Indrik is back, and it was good then. I have no reason to suspect it won’t be now, even if I don’t love that Green keeps getting Fight on ETB. 3.0/5

Renata seems great. On her own, she’s a little underpowered, but pumping up all your future creatures is incredibly solid, and it’s unlikely this card will disappoint. 3.0/5

Green feels quite solid. There are very few cards that feel unplayable, and many of the cards are just good on there own, without help. The color seems flexible and reasonably deep, which is a great sign.

Gold & Colorless

For the Gold cards, there’s just the one signpost for each pair at Uncommon, so I’ll go through all of them.

Most of the Black pairings seem to be centered around the Graveyard, and it’s probably the best color to be in if you want to go deep on Escape. Green-Black has a little self mill, a little top of library filter, and some sacrifice to help fill the ‘yard for your powerful Escape creatures. The Acolyte here is exactly what the colors want, and is a great Gravedigger variant for the archetype. 3.0/5

Black-Blue goes heavy on the self-mill, but outside of Escape, there really isn’t any payoff for doing so. Other than this cutie, of course. It’s a cheap and evasive threat, and can easily fuel your Escape cards. I do wish it were a 2/2, since there are some cards that punish one toughness in the set (Wrap in Flames, for example). Still, you’ll usually play this. 3.0/5

Eutropia seems great. The card she reminds me of the most is Skyrider Patrol from M19, which was one of my favorite cards in the set. Most of the Green-based color pairings care about Enchantments, so it shouldn’t be too hard to peck through lots of damage with Eutropia helping you out. 3.0/5

Red/White is a throwback to the Heroic mechanic from original Theros. (Which they very cutely seeded with Feather & Co. in War of the Spark.) For this round on Theros, Red/White is also the go-wide pairing of the set, with the Herioc triggers this time serving as team pump spells. Hero of the Nyxborn is already a good deal, creating two bodies for 3 mana, and if you’re in the colors, it shouldn’t be hard to get a few good combat tricks to make it even spicier. 3.0/5

I like that they’ve been exploring new ways to do Blue/Red besides just “Instants & Sorceries Matter”. After U/R Draw 2 in Eldraine, U/R Flash is a great compliment in this set that feels right (and fuels my argument that Red should be moved to secondary in Flash, and Green should have Flash restricted somewhat, for balance purposes). Anyway, the Chimera here is great. Well-costed on its own, and a great trigger once you start slinging spells on your opponent’s turn. I’m a fan. 3.0/5

White/Black is another Escape archetype, but with some Enchantment recursion to be found on the Uncommon & above rarities. As for this card, I really wish this were 4 mana. I honestly think Wizards needs to allow reanimation to be a touch more aggressively costed, and let White have a little more unconditional reanimation, again for balance reasons. This card does give me some hope that they recognize the need. For Limited, as is, this is a harder to cast Rise from the Grave, but with the added upside that you’ll occasionally be able to snag back a Dreadful Apathy and get some extra removal. It’s decent, but not as good as most of the other cards in this batch. 2.5/5

But seriously, I’m for Resurrection in Standard. I think it’s completely fine in power level, and would be great for White to reclaim some of the pie.

Green/White is the primary “Auras Matter” color pair, which makes perfect sense. Siona, aside from being FIERCE. AS. FUCK., is a fantastic card for the archetype. She digs deep, making the odds pretty decent that you’ll find an Aura to grab, at which point she’s already worth her cost. If you can grab a Dreadful Apathy with this, even better. (The fact that I keep mentioning that card makes me wonder if I should rate it even higher...) And occasionally she’ll phone a friend, which is just all upside. 3.0/5 (with potential to go higher in the right build)

Sacrifice? For Black/Red? Groundbreaking.

Seriously, though, I am eager for Wizards to surprise me with Black/Red sometime. I’ll give it a pass this set, since there is a minor Graveyard theme, so it’s a natural fit. Spectacle in Ravnica Allegiance was such a breath of fresh air for this color pair. But anyhoo, this card. He’s pretty solid. He threatens a lot of damage, and will be very difficult to block, so I’m suspecting he’ll be good. 3.0/5

White/Blue is a very ambiguous archetype this time around, basically just “tempo”. That said, this card threatens to run away with the game very quickly, and will be absolutely bonkers put on a flier or other evasive threat. I seriously wonder if this will bring back the Curious Obsession deck in Standard, except in White/Blue. For Limited, if you can get at least one hit in with this, you’ve saved yourself from getting 2-for-1′d too badly, so I’ll start with the assumption that this is good, and revise down from there. 3.0/5

Last but not least, Red/Green is doing “Ferocious” this time, which I really enjoy as a semi-deciduous theme. Warden of the Chained is a decent payoff for having other 4+ Power creatures, but is a little frustrating if you don’t have very many of them in the deck. You’ll always play this, but it strikes me as a little weaker than some of the others. 2.5/5

Phew... that’s it for the Gold Signpost cards. Just a couple Artifacts to touch on:

I love this. It’s basically an Icy Manipulator, but it costs a little more to activate, but then frees up your mana after you’ve done so. It can also permanently tap down a creature with a tap to activate ability, something Icy couldn’t do. Every deck will be happy to run this. 3.0/5

I feel like they’re finally getting Vehicles right. 4 mana is a touch more than you want for a 3/3, but First Strike, Trample, and Haste are a lot of keywords, and it’s super easy to crew. I don’t know if it will be great, but it’s definitely playable. 2.5/5

The Rest of the Uncommons

Let’s blaze through the remaining cards, lightning round style. (out of 5)

Alseid of Life’s Bounty - I suspect lots of people will run this card who shouldn’t. Sure, it can sacrifice itself to protect a bigger bomb from removal, but it just doesn’t do enough on its own to really warrant much excitement. 1.5

The Birth of Meletis - This does a lot of things, and... none of them are particularly great? Very weird collection of effects. 1.5

Commanding Presence - This is a lot of effects for one Aura, and it should be possible to either get through or take out a blocker the turn you play this, mitigating the 2-for-1 potential. 2.5

Dawn Evangel - Figuring out when this triggers and what it can get back is a feat unto itself. It’s pretty narrow, to be honest, and so I’m really just looking at this as a 2/3 Enchantment creature for Constellation. 2.0

Daxos, Blessed by the Sun - I like Daxos more for constructed, since there aren’t any lifegain triggers in this set to really make this great. He’s solid, just not incredible. 2.5

Favored of Iroas - I like the concept here. Problem is, it shouldn’t be too hard to predict when you’re holding up a Flash Enchantment as a trick, so a lot of the time, it’ll just be a 2/2. Maybe I’m wrong. 2.0

Hero of the Winds - I really wish this were a 2/4 to begin with. 2.0

Phalanx Tactics - Probably the best Heroic enabler in the set, this is perfect for go-wide, but mediocre if you aren’t in the colors. 2.5

Reverent Hoplite - I want at leaset 3 tokens out of this before I feel good about it. Which, shouldn’t be difficult in mono-White, but could be frustrating in most decks. 2.5

Glimpse of Freedom - I don’t really think this is the format for this card. If you’re in Blue/Red, it’s an Instant, so that’s a thing. The escape is expensive enough to likely not come up often. 2.0

Medomai’s Prophecy - This, on the other hand, is a lot of action for 2 mana, even if it is spread out over several turns. Nonbos with self-mill somewhat, but a cheap Divination if you do it right. 2.5

Sage of Mysteries - Gorgeous art. My guess is this usually isn’t worth it, but occasionally you might be able to build a legitimate mill deck around this. And if you see your opponent is self-milling, it’s a great strategy to pivot into. 2.0

Sea God’s Scorn - I’ve been burned with the six mana bounce spells before, so not again. My hunch is this will be playable, but not every deck will want it. 2.5

Shoal Kraken - Seems solid. Possibly will play better than I think, but reminds me of Sage of the Falls, which was only great sometimes. 2.5

Stinging Lionfish - If you get really deep on Flash, this could go up significantly. Most of the time, I’m expecting it to be just fine. 2.5

Sweet Oblivion - Combined with Sage of Mysteries, a true mill deck could be viable. But I wouldn’t run this just to mill myself. 1.5

Whirlwind Denial - Convolute is as Convolute does. 2.0

Agonizing Remorse - In a set with Gods, it would be foolish to assume this is unplayable. But definitely don’t assume it’s premium removal, because it’s not. 2.0

Cling to Dust - This strikes me as pretty decent sideboard hate for a good Escape deck. But I wouldn’t main deck it. 1.5

Enemy of Enlightenment - By the time you get this out, your opponent can work around the discard.  But a 5/5 flier is big, so there’s that. The removal in the set seems good enough to dampen this a bit. 2.5

Hateful Eidolon - There aren’t tons of Auras that make me think this is super worth playing, but if you draft like 3 or more Mire’s Grasp, this gets really cute really fast. There’s a deck for this, but it’s not every deck. 2.0

Inevitable End - Usually this will just be a slow kill spell, but occasionally if you put it on a bomb, they’ll sacrifice other things just to keep that alive. It’s conditional removal, but still removal. 2.5

Minion’s Return - This being an Enchantment-Matters set makes me like this a lot more than I usually do, and there’s potential for combos with Hateful Eidolon & some of the White recursion. 2.5

Tymaret, Chosen from Death - Difficult to cast on curve, but a reasonable drop at any time. Great hate for Escape decks, but remember, you can’t exile an Escape card once they’ve declared they’re casting it. 2.5

Underworld Dreams - Save it for Constructed. 1.0

Blood Aspirant - In the dedicated R/B Sacrifice deck, this could be a thing, but it starts too puny and the expense is pretty high. 2.0

Dreamshaper Shaman - I get it, but this honestly feels more like a casual Commander card than something for Limited. For Limited, it’s mostly a big body. 2.0

Escape Velocity - This again strikes me more as something for Constructed, something a deck like Izzet Drakes might like. For Limited, it’s cute, but not particularly great. 1.5

Furious Rise - The upside on this is pretty great in the dedicated Ferocious deck. I’d give it a go. 2.5

Heroes of the Revel - Decent stats for the cost, and another Heroic enabler. Good in the archetype, mediocre elsewhere. 2.5

Impending Doom - The name of this card really doesn’t match the flavor, but whatever. It’s a solid Aura for aggressive decks, good in the Heroic build, but a liability if you’re not wanting to attack. 2.0

Skophos Maze-Warden - Ignore the wall of text, this is a 3/4 for 4 with the “Flowstone” ability. Which is pretty solid on its own. If you get the maze, it’s cute, but definitely not necessary to play this. 2.5

The Triumph of Anax - This is one of the hardest cards to evaluate in the whole set. My hunch is it will often not work out quite the way you hope, and one or more chapters will end up getting wasted to removal or by not having good targets. I’m starting pessimistic until I see otherwise. 1.5

Underworld Fires - Can be a way to clean up stragglers after combat, and will be good against decks like Heroic go-wide. There’s potential, but I might start it as a sideboard pick until the format shakes out. 2.0

The Binding of the Titans - This card takes a while to do much useful, but it gets there, and it’s a pretty cheap inclusion. Some decks will want it. 2.5

Hydra’s Growth - This can absolutely run away with the game if left unchecked, so I’d generally run it in G/W Auras or decks with heavy Constellation or Heroic triggers. But it is risky until about 3 turns in, so take it with a grain of salt. 2.5

Klothys’s Design - Oh, how much better this would be if it granted Trample. As is, it’s a reasonable top-end finisher, but some decks will find it dead more often than not. 2.0

Mystic Repeal - Enough Enchantments are running around for this to consistently have targets, and it avoids enabling Escape as well. I’d rather have a Return to Nature for flexibility, but this will do in a pinch. 2.0

Nessian Hornbeetle - I like this little guy as a payoff for the Ferocious deck, and there’s virtually no downside to including him. 3.0

Nessian Wanderer - A two drop that can smooth a land-light hand is reasonable, but you could skip it and probably not notice. 2.0

Setessan Petitioner - You’re rarely going to gain more than around 4 life with this, but once you get above about that point, this starts getting good. If you manage to draft mono-Green, I’d slam this, but in most 2-color decks it’s pretty replaceable. 2.0

Wolfwillow Haven - There’s not much need to ramp in this format, but if you’re heavy Green, it can do work for both Devotion and casting double & triple Green casting costs. The ability is too costly to get excited about, though at least it feeds itself. I’d generally skip this except maybe in mono Green with a good Devotion payoff. 1.5

Mirror Shield - Mostly a flavor win, I don’t see lots of reason for this in the format. Side it in against the all Moss Viper deck. You could also side it in against control decks to hedge against removal. 1.5

Soul-Guide Lantern - This will be a brutal sideboard against the heavy Escape deck, but that’s mainly where I see it. 1.5

Field of Ruin - Save it for Constructed. Nothing in this format is worth destroying aside from maayyybe Labyrinth of Skophos. 0.5

That’s it for the Uncommons. Very few dead picks, lots of good options and a few fun buildarounds. Overall, a good looking set, I think. Up next, the Rares & Mythics!

[michaelandy101-blog]

How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work

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How to Design Content Remarketing Campaigns That Actually Work

You know content marketing works, so you’ve been plugging away at blog posts, ebooks, and other valuable, educational content for your potential customers.

And people come — they find your content in search results and in their social media feeds. But they may not fill out a form and become a lead right then and there. It’s not always because they’re not interested in your message — so how do you recapture those viewers who left your site?

Recapturing audience attention to turn lookers into leads is an effective marketing tactic, and if you’re not doing it, you’re leaving money on the table.

Let me outline for you the sections I’m going to cover in this post:

What the Heck is Remarketing?

What Is the Google Display Network?

Remarketing Campaign Examples

How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign

What the Heck Is Remarketing?

At its core, remarketing is the process of tagging your site visitors and targeting them with content after they leave your site in an effort to reengage them and bring them back to your site.

Remarketing gives you the opportunity to appear in front of people who have already expressed an interest in your website. They could be checking their email, reading the news, watching a YouTube video… and there you are, with something new and awesome to show them. It could be a reminder to complete an action they had started, or a new piece of content to further a buying decision, and so on.

Remarketing provides the opportunity to:

Turn bounced website visitors into leads.

Increase brand recall (and thus increase branded searches).

Increase repeat visitor rates and engagement.

Increase the effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.

A common stat in the industry is that 96% of people who visit a website leave without completing the action the marketer would have liked them to take. Remarketing gives you a second chance to make that first impression (and even a third, and a fourth). We can’t afford to be forgettable — we have to make our content more sticky.

Alright, so we understand both the problem and the opportunity. Now, let’s dive into the solution. You’re going to learn how to use remarketing strategies with the Google Display Network to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your inbound marketing efforts.

What Is the Google Display Network?

The Google Display Network is a group of websites where your Google display (banner) ads can appear.

More than 2 million sites are in the network, including heavily trafficked ones such as YouTube. Google estimates that the GDN can reach 90% of people on the internet.

Who you reach and how often will depend on your ad targeting (more on that later).

Remarking Campaign Examples

To further underscore the opportunity that remarketing has to offer, there are some really cool campaign types that you can dig into.

Online Activity

By far the most common remarketing tactic is creating an audience based on their behavior on your website. Your options here are virtually endless — with parameters such as by number of page views (indicating a high level of interest) or by which pages viewed (indicating intent).

Here are some ideas for using this type of campaign:

Targeting by Buyer’s Journey Stage

Your blog posts are earlier in the buyer’s journey than other pages on your site. That means you’d match their intent with an ad that moves them further down their journey rather than one that sells. Targeting by topic or category-say you run a bakery. Why run general ads to audiences that landed on your wedding-related content? Instead, you’d target them with more personalized ads around wedding cakes and desserts.

Targeting by Intent

Aside from just topic, there’s a lot you can learn from your audience’s site behavior. For example, visiting a product page indicates interest, but not making it to checkout could mean a price objection or other friction. This means you need to sweeten the deal in some way (like a promo or discount).

Past Purchases

You can also target those that did make it through your purchasing process and target them with ads to earn an upsell.

YouTube TrueView

The human race spends billions of hours every month watching YouTube ads. You may have your own YouTube content, but perhaps your viewing metrics aren’t quite as high as you’d like them to be, or perhaps your users have no idea you have interesting video content to share.

Using YouTube TrueView ads, you can target your audiences as they are watching other videos on YouTube.

Take the screenshot below, for example. I’m trying to watch a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle video and it’s showing me an ad for a tourism company in Italy. Why? Because I was planning a trip to Florence at the time I took this screenshot, and they’re remarketing to me.

The cool thing about TrueView videos is that you only pay if people view your video content. There’s no cost if the person clicks on the “skip ad” button. If you’re creating video content, why wouldn’t you pay a few bucks to promote it?

Video Views

Speaking of YouTube, your visitors don’t even need to make it to your website in order for you to retarget them. If you have a solid YouTube presence, you can create an audience based on video views. If someone watched one of your videos, you can create a display campaign that shows them your ads even beyond the YouTube platform.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Here’s another interesting but advanced thing you can do. It’s a little complicated, but I promise it’s awesome. It’s called Remarking Lists for Search Ads.

RLSA lets you target people in your audiences with customized ads when they perform searches for specific keywords on Google. 

Say, for example, someone visits your site. You tag them, and now they’re in one of your audiences.

That person then searches for a competitor of yours. This probably means they’re doing some comparison shopping.

Using RLSA, you can target that comparison shopper with a specific ad, like a 10% discount code or something similar. Knowing that the person visited specific pages on your site and is now performing specific searches, it’s possible to come up with very specific and compelling ad copy.

Bonus: Remarketing With Facebook

Noticeably absent from the GDN is Facebook, the other big player on the web, and that’s because they have their own remarketing system through Facebook Custom Audiences.

It works in much the same way — the difference being that ads are shown to users within the Facebook platform.

How to Set Up a Remarketing Campaign With Google Ads

Like I said earlier, using the GDN for remarketing gives you a great deal of reach. Generally, you can find your tagged site visitors on the network many times per day, several days per week, and across many different sites. 

1. Define your audience.

One of your first steps in remarketing is to define the specific audience(s) you want to remarket to. For example, you could create an audience for people who visited your blog or for people who visited specific pages on your website, like your pricing page. This will enable you to reach out to just those people with offers and messaging to suit their interests.

To define an audience, create a new remarketing list in Google Ad. Google will take care of setting all of the cookies; all you need to do is specify which website visitors to include or exclude from your audience. 

Segmenting different lists of users enables you to show different ads, depending on which section of your site they visited.

A secondary benefit is that you can bid more aggressively to get more impressions and higher ad positions, and to get visitors to the higher value sections of your website. For example, your data might show that visitors to your pricing or product page are more valuable than your blog visitors.

Another creative remarketing strategy for content marketers is to define audience categories in Google Ads based on the different post categories in your blog. If you already have a ton of blog content that is classified by topic, leverage those existing classifications in your remarketing audience definition strategy.

3. Set audience membership duration.

In remarketing, the audience membership duration is the number of days that you follow a user around with your ads. For example, if I set my audience membership duration to 60 days, then users who visit my site will see my ads for 60 days. You can test and tweak this number to see what’s right for your audience.

Ad fatigue is a real thing in every industry and across every medium: TV, radio, print … and, yes, display ads. 

Now, I’d like to address a concern I’ve heard from some fellow marketers: that overly aggressive remarketing will make your prospective customer feel uncomfortable. Let’s look at a few facts and see just how “creepy” remarketing really is.

According to Kenshoo, retargeting can lift ad engagement rates up to 400%, 60% of consumers are neutral about the topic of retargeting ads, and 25% say they actually like them. Wishpond reports that the average click-through rate for retargeted ads is 10 times that of a regular display ad, and retargeting can lead to a 726% lift in site visitation after four weeks of exposure.

So, be bold! People visited your site for a reason, and past browsing history is among the strongest predictors of future purchasing intent. It’s worth testing out remarketing with relatively higher impression caps and membership durations and seeing what happens. As long as your offers and messaging are on target and you’re providing value, it’s not creepy. I would suggest:

Try setting your audience membership duration to an amount equal to 3x your average sale cycle length.

If it typically takes an average of one week to go from first touch to sale, set the audience membership duration to three weeks.

Don’t worry too much about impression caps. (Remember, more impressions means higher conversion rates. Consider rotating though multiple ads per campaign to combat ad fatigue.)

3. Create a killer ad.

Now that we’ve talked about defining an audience to remarket to, let’s focus on how to create killer remarketing ads.

Understand Ad Formats on the GDN

There are several different display ad formats on the Google Display Network, some of which are shown below.

Image Source

Type Dimensions Mobile 300×250, 320×50, 320×100, 250×250, 200×200 Desktop 300×250, 336×280, 728×90, 300×600, 160×600, 970×90, 468×60

Ad formats matter to marketers because of how the ad auction works. Different ad formats do not compete against each other for positioning, as shown in this screenshot:

Write Copy That Resonates Emotionally

According to neurosciencemarketing.com, an emotional approach in advertising is nearly twice as effective as a rational approach. The same emotions that draw people to your content will drive people to click on your ads. 

The key here is to create ads that resonate with users on an emotional level. Stay away from boring, plain, informational ads that look the same as every other ad out there. Instead, create ads that appeal to your audience on an emotional level.

Content marketers are uniquely qualified to become fabulous PPC marketers. Why? Because so much of the success and failure of PPC marketing relies on the creativity of your ads.

For example, look at these ads for a search of “Big Data Solutions” — the ads are essentially all the same:

Content marketers, on the other hand, tend to have a few creative bones in their bodies. I call this a Google Ads Jackpot because it reminds me of hitting a row of lucky 7s in Vegas — I just hit a Big Data Solutions jackpot! If you can come up with an emotionally charged, totally different and stand-out ad, you can blow away the competition.

4. Perform ongoing CTR optimization.

Google doesn’t make money by showing ads no one clicks on, so it makes sense for them to show ads that are more likely to get clicks. They use an algorithm called Quality Score to determine which ads to show, what position each will display in, and how much to charge the advertiser for each ad click.

To provide an incentive for advertisers to create great ads, they give out huge discounts for ads with high clickthrough rates… and dish out huge penalties for ads with low clickthrough rates.

This all sounds good in theory, but how do you create an ad with high clickthrough rate?

1. Send people to your high-value offers. 

What should you be featuring in your image ads? The most common tactic is to simply promote your highest value offers, like a free trial of your product, a request for a demo, etc. This is my top-performing ad: 

Of course it has a cute puppy. How could it not? Make people love your ads, not dread them.

2. Do a conversion path analysis.

The goal here is to figure out which pages on your site, if visited during a user’s session, result in a much higher probability of the user converting to a lead or a sale. For example, the highest converting page on your site could be your product overview page. Come up with a list like this one and target those pages in your remarketing audience.

3. Send people to your best content.

Check out this ad from my colleague Marty Weintraub at AimClear, which sends anyone who clicks to his PPC analyses.

But how do you know what content to feature in your ads?

4. Analyze social shares on your blog content.

If you analyze your blog content, what you’ll usually find is that around 5% of your pages generate half of the shares on social media.

For example, I analyzed all of the articles on one business blog over the last year and found that on average, a typical article gets several hundred shares on social media. However, the top 5% of articles gets tens of thousands of social shares. Not surprisingly, we found that the same stories that work well on social media also tend to do very well as featured content within ads.

5. Get strategic with bid management.

Now that you have remarketing audiences and ads down to a science, let’s turn our attention to bid management strategies. 

Remember, in PPC marketing, you have to pay for each click. The advertiser specifies a maximum cost per click that they’re willing to pay, but the key here is not to buy every possible click. Rather, you want to be super picky and just cherry-pick the clicks that are the most relevant to your business. The way to do this is through bid management.

It doesn’t make any sense to remarket ads to everyone in your audience. Why? Because not everyone who visits your website is a qualified buyer.

With Google Ads, you can overlay user demographic information on top of your remarketing audiences to find the needles in the haystack. For example, someone from Zimbabwe could visit your site — but they can’t convert if you can’t ship there.

Here’s when it comes in handy to know a thing or two about your target customer persona.

What are the ages?

Parental status?

Where do they live?

Gender?

What time do they search for your products?

What is their income?

You can be very picky, and just bid for the people in your audience who also meet your demographic filters.

You’ve done your research, you know your topic, you have something interesting and entertaining to say — but sometimes you need that extra push. As individuals and brands have become publishers, the game has been upped big time. Competition is fierce.

With remarketing, we at WordStream increased our repeat visitors by 50%, tripled our average time on site, and saw a huge increase in direct visits to our site.

In short, content remarketing enabled us to maximize the value of every piece of content we put out. We were able to get each piece in front of the audience with the most intent, at the right time, and via the right channels.

You can achieve this kind of success too with a killer remarketing campaign and the right advertising plan.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Nincada Family

290: Nincada

One of the more obvious instances of the blatant reuse of an animal, Nincada is our second jab at making a cicada Pokemon! While Paras and Parasect are steep competition, sadly Nincada doesn’t quite reach those levels of amazing. But it's still a competent design. It's notably more accurate to the real thing than Paras was. If that's your bag, here's Nincada as your rather literal translation from cicada to Pokemon.

It does also interestingly have the Bug/Ground typing, obviously in reference to how cicada nymphs hide out underground until they mature enough to be obnoxiously loud for everybody. While it is disappointing Bug/Ground is also a very rare type combination like Bug/Water, at least Nincada not keeping its typing from evolving makes significantly more sense than a pond skater losing its Water half.

Personal Score: 7.5/10

Not too shabby a design.

291: Ninjask

Life is kinder to Ninjask than it is to Parasect, as Ninjask get to become fully developed cicada adults, sprouting wings and everything. And Ninjask is pretty sweet too, though what you would expect of a mature cicada Pokemon. It's a solid design all around though, and I really dig me the color scheme of black with gold and red.

Ninjask is trying to pass off as a ninja cicada. Which, I can't say I've ever seen it. (Maybe that's what they want me to think?) If anything the helmet and red eyes just gives me Kamen Rider vibes. And the “visor” sort of look calls Super Sentai characters to mind as well. I think they could’ve gotten away with making it a superhero bug.

Personal Score: 7.5/10

These two would be pretty run-of-the-mill, leaning toward positive cicada Pokemon just by themselves.

You see them everywhere around the late spring and summer. Cicadas are quite famous for leaving their shed nymph skin everywhere. It’s such a well-known piece of cicada personality, it’s a no-brainer to implement that in some way for a Cicada Pokemon. And it’s downright one of the coolest irl-animal-to-Pokemon adaptations even to this day.

292: Shedinja

Now we're REALLY in the meat and potatoes of what the Nincada line has to offer. When you have space in your party and a Pokeball to hold it in, the skin Nincada sheds to become Ninjask becomes its very own Pokemon, the Bug/Ghost Shedinja! And that right there is about the single coolest evolutionary interaction out of all 802 Pokemon. And this cold, lifeless floating husk of a Pokemon is so damn neat and is one of the most genius ideas in the entire series.

And even idea aside, Shedinja is damn cool in design too. It looks “empty” like it aught to, its drably colored, and its unemoting face makes it look eerie as hell. I think it’s even an added bonus that no part of Shedinja’s body can individually move. No arms or legs, no neck. It’s just a solid husk of haunted shed insect skin and actually nothing more. The little halo is just he cherry on top to round off this thing as a creepy but graceful fallen angel sort of thing. And how cool is it that the torn skin fans out to form its “wings”?!

Speaking of that tear in its back, that hole in its back is quite the subject for creepiness in its Pokedex entries, stating that if you stare into that hole, it'll suck our your soul. Though considering you’re looking right at the thing’s back most of the time if you decide to train one, it actually sounds like an in-universe piece of superstition that got spread around. Which is a pretty cool headcanon I can hang onto, if nothing else. What would be really creepy is playing the game completely blind and oblivious to Shedinja's existence. Then, when you evolve a Nincada, and then next time you look at your party, you find you have a Pokemon in your party that wasn't there before. And not only that, but its a ghostly, dead version of the Pokemon you most recently evolved. That's the stuff creepypastas are made of.

Shedinja's also quite unique on a gameplay level. It's the only Pokemon with 1 hit point. Even at level 100, and no matter how many IVs or EVs you cram into its HP stat. It's also the only Pokemon with the Wonder Guard ability, making it completely immune to any attacking move that isn't super effective against it. It's just such a shame this gimmick makes Shedinja incredibly difficult to use, because Wonder Guard still does not protect it from non-attack hazards like spikes, weather, or status effects. It's an idea that sounds broken at first, but Shedinja is actually very easy to take down, sadly. As much as I absolutely adore the thing, actually training one doesn’t sound like it’d be all that fun. And that sucks.

Shedinja is a great introduction into what is now one of my favorite types. Prior, Ghost hasn't wowed me that much, but Shedinja is a great show of just what kind of Pokemon the type is capable of. And even for a while, Shedinja was my absolute favorite Ghost type until we got a few later ones. Hell, Shedinja is a great show of how creative Pokemon can be, because little Pokemon reach the kind of creative genius that is Shedinja. And that's obviously not meant as a complaint for Pokemon's peak of creativity being 292 out of 802 of the things, that's just me singing high praise for Shedinja. Will the next time we get a Bug/Ghost type be just as good? We'll have to see. For now, Shedinja is a fantastic Pokemon.

And I think it really goes to show that Pokemon shouldn't be limited to one Pokemon per animal, even for something as specific as a cicada. Here we got three vastly different flavors of cicada for people to enjoy. And obviously, if Gamefreak arbitrarily decided “Well, we already made a cicada Pokemon, so let’s not do another one,” we wouldn’t have SHEDINJA. And if there's a neat way to make a fourth cicada, I'm all for it. In fact, let me throw my own cicada monster in there.

So with my own Bug/Psychic Psychada, that's FOUR cicada Pokemon that are all hugely varied, and are all different typings from each other. AND they all have vastly different themes based on the different aspects of cicadas. Dirt-dwellers? Check. Speedy fliers? Check. The left-behind skin? Check. So loud and obnoxious that it even becomes visually noisy? Well, that’s a check for me at least. If animals need to be retreaded for the sake of a cool idea, Gamefreak should have at it.

Personal Score: 10/10

May you go down as one of Pokemon's best ideas.

Overall:

What can be said about Shedinja that isn't just a giant wave of praise? And how must it feel for Ninjask to be overshadowed by your dead, shed skin as far as the fandom is concerned?

[Archive]

[supremeuppityone]

Written for Klaroline Valentine's Day Bingo 2020 @kcvalentinesbingo

Prompt: “The candles caught what on fire?”

Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.

Warning: Smut. Angst.

Please review here.

           It was shameful how quickly Caroline’s heart dropped when she spied the delicate vintage earrings in the black velvet box Klaus gave her. There’s no reason to be disappointed, she chastised herself. The diamond and pearl chandelier earrings clearly had been chosen based on her tastes, and knowing her boyfriend, he spared no expense. Except she’d briefly thought it could be an engagement ring.

           It had been more than a year since they started seeing each other, and it seemed as though they’d been moving toward a bigger commitment over the past few months. They’d even discussed the possibility of finding a place together when Caroline’s lease was up later that year. Maybe they weren’t ready. “Klaus, these are beautiful. Thank you,” she quickly told him, reaching up to give him a soft kiss.

           Klaus pulled her close, deepening the kiss with a low growl of approval. “You are beautiful,” he murmured, playfully nibbling on her ear. She felt the hard line of his cock through his trousers, and suddenly didn’t care that they were in his office where anyone could interrupt. “You’ll have to be quiet, sweetheart. I can’t recall if I locked the door.” Roughly pushing up her skirt to cup her mound, his smirk was delightfully wicked. “And it seems my fingers are quite busy.”

           She spread her thighs, inviting him to play. He loved to play. There was a sweetness to his movements, and the way he curled his fingers inside left her panting for more. “Just a bit more,” he urged, increasing the pressure until she bit down on his shoulder, leaving a rosy lipstick smear on his charcoal pinstriped dress shirt.

           As Caroline came down from her high, she attacked his zipper, anxious to feel all of him. “Fuck me, Klaus,” she panted against his lips. This. Just this. His naughty grin, the heat in his gaze — it was all for her. She wrapped him up in her fist, taking her time with those smooth, hot strokes that made him grunt and sigh into her neck.

           Klaus lifted her against the tall book case, driving into her as she clung to the top. His guttural moan lit a fire inside and she already could feel her thighs shake with need. “Caroline,” he gasped, gripping her thighs until they bruised, riding them both to completion.

           While she couldn’t deny the sex was explosive, it was the moments immediately following that felt the most intimate. He gathered her up in his arms, settling them both into his enormous chair and pressing a gentle kiss to her temple. “New Orleans.” At her questioning eyebrow, he explained, “Let’s take a long weekend. I’ll have Greta book us a suite at the Hotel Monteleone.”

           “I was supposed to write a brand analysis brief and review the product team’s competitor playbook strategies,” Caroline commented with a sigh of regret. At his shameless puppy dog eyes, she lightly brushed back the damp curls from his forehead, telling him, “You are a terrible influence. And I love you for that.”

           Dropping a kiss to her nose, he promised, “By this time tomorrow, we’ll be drinking Armand de Brignac with raspberries.”

           The last time they’d gone to New Orleans, they only left the room to visit an art gallery opening. The time before that, they didn’t leave the room at all. Caroline fought down a blush when she started thinking of all the delicious moments in their future. “Then I should race home to pack after my last meeting.”

           Her phone interrupted them, forcing her to break off their celebratory kiss with a groan of frustration. The screeching in her ear was so garbled, she only caught a few disconcerting words, prompting her to yell, “Wait — the candles caught what on fire? Seriously?!” Hearing mostly muffled cursing and random crashes in the background, she quickly said, “Never mind — just try to keep everyone calm until I get there.” She ended the call with an irritated huff, explaining to a confused Klaus, “That was Rebekah. Apparently, Kol got drunk at the reception and knocked over several candle centerpieces, catching the stage on fire right before the keynote speaker’s address.”

           “Was anyone hurt,” Klaus asked sharply, pulling out his phone to start engaging the correct combination of security, maintenance, and lawyers to handle yet another one of his idiot brother’s fuck-ups.

           Caroline shook her head, straightening her clothes as she headed toward the door. “Just Kol’s ego. I’ll head over there and get the situation under control.”

           “Honestly, it’s moments like these that I truly question the ‘family above all’ motto my siblings and I share.” With a frustrated sigh, he blinked at his phone, adding, “I’ll be right behind you — Enzo wants me to stop by legal to discuss something urgent.”

           “What’s more urgent than your brother setting a fire at our quarterly sales meeting?”  

           Running his fingers through his disheveled curls, he replied tiredly, “I’ll let you know, sweetheart.”             

                           _________________________________________

           She’d expected a stampede of angry, hysterical people, but Caroline had overlooked one indisputable truth: The sales department never attended a quarterly meeting sober. Instead, she was greeted by boisterous laughter as several groups decided to head down the street to a karaoke bar while the company sorted out the mess Kol had made. Kol had the audacity to grin cheekily at her as he slipped out with the crowd before Rebekah could chase after him.

           She loved Klaus and admired his business savvy, but his inability to recognize that nepotism was running Mikaelson Inc. right into the ground would be his downfall. Their downfall unless she ever found the courage to tell him.

           “Finally,” Rebekah called out when she spied Caroline. “I’ve no time to handle this absolute rubbish.”

           She eyed Klaus’ sister critically, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Why not? Hot date?”

           Stumbling in her heels, the woman scoffed. “You know as well as I that my brother’s bumbling mishap wasn’t the worst thing to happen to our organization today. Salvatech’s unexpected product announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

           Pausing to give instructions to security to finish locking down the area while waiting on maintenance to begin cleanup, she considered Rebekah’s words. She wasn’t wrong — Salvatech, their biggest competitor, had announced earlier that day their plans to unveil a new product six weeks ahead of schedule, which meant that Mikaelson Inc. would be scrambling to get their latest release ready in time for the global tech conference. She could picture the Salvatore brothers’ slimy grins they no doubt wore when they gave that interview, pointedly giving the reporter soundbites that were subtle digs at Mikaelson Inc.

           She’d already pulled most of her team to start working on their own press release, something to pacify their stakeholders while also energizing the market base. No way was she letting those sleazy Salvatores have the last word. “Tell me your plan,” she asked Rebekah, thinking it was time they set aside their petty differences and get their teams working together to salvage this latest media mishap.

           Green eyes widened in alarm as she whirled around to face Caroline. “My plan?”

           “Seriously?! Rebekah, you’re the creative director for external marketing. If you don’t have a plan to fight the Salvatores’ latest bullshit, then you should march your skinny ass down to HR and resign. We only can handle one incompetent Mikaelson at a time, and it’s apparently Kol’s turn. Again.”

           Rebekah seemed to visibly relax at her words, her lightly condescending tone returning to normal as she scoffed, “Of course I do. My staff is finalizing our verbiage now. They like to deliver a flawless marketing plan. Unlike others I could name.”

           She refused to take the bait. Klaus’ sister clearly was referencing the time Caroline had allowed Elena the intern to write a section of web content only to learn after it was posted that she’d pulled stats from their archives rather than the latest projections. “Good. Then my team will need less overtime than usual to make your team’s messaging coherent.”

           Before she could trade more barbs, she received a text message from Klaus. “My office. Now.” Taken aback, she frowned, wondering what could’ve happened with legal that he’d be so abrupt with her. She took a quick glance around the room, somewhat satisfied that the workers had Kol’s mess under control, and then she left, not bothering to give Rebekah an explanation.

           Before she pushed open Klaus’ door, a part of her wondered if they’d continue what they started earlier. They tried to keep office trysts to a minimum, but the temptation to be a bit naughty in such a buttoned-up environment was too hard to resist. Unfortunately, the smile dropped from her face as soon as she saw him. She’d witnessed his fury during meetings, and always tried to smooth over the rough edges of his temper with his subordinates when she could. But she’d never been on the receiving end before.    

           “What’s wrong,” she asked tentatively, instinctively taking a step toward him because he’d never seemed so far away.

           Fists curled at his sides, the look he threw her was pure loathing. “What’s wrong is that legal just told me the most peculiar tale. About you. Perhaps you’d like to hear it, love?”

           “What are you — I don’t understand.”

           “The Salvatores’ new product is suspiciously similar to our microchip prototype. In fact, it’s so similar that our legal department is convinced they only could’ve built it if they first acquired our product schematics,” Klaus seethed, his voice barely above a whisper. “After a bit of digging, it appears that you’ve been emailing Stefan Salvatore for quite some time.” At her astonished expression, he chuckled darkly, adding, “How long has this been going on, hmm? Tell, me what dirty little deeds did that talentless wanker have to perform to get you to betray this company? To betray me?!”

           Caroline shook her head, trying to make sense of Klaus’ accusations. She’d only seen Stefan across crowded venues at tech conventions, but had never spoken to him, much less engaged in corporate espionage or something more intimate. She’d been set up. “Klaus, I would never, ever betray you or this company. I don’t even know Stefan! Clearly, my emails were hacked; someone’s setting me up!”

           “A likely story,” he replied, storming over to his wall safe and angrily spinning the dial. “I keep the USBs of all prototypes in here as a security measure. None of our staff has access until the plans have been finalized. But you’ve been in here numerous times when I’ve opened the safe. It’s not much of a leap to imagine you’ve manipulated countless interactions with me to gain access to the combination.”

           “You don’t put much stock in my loyalty, do you?! First I’m a thief and then I’m a whore? Fuck you, Klaus! I don’t steal and I certainly don’t whore myself out for the sake of my career,” she spat, just barely fighting back angry tears. How could he turn on her like this? How could he think so little of her?

           Klaus pounded his fists onto the top of his desk, pushing off everything in a furious swipe. Over the flat beeping noise of his phone knocked off its hook, he raged, “You knew you were about to be exposed! It’s why you acted so peculiar earlier when I gave you the earrings! I imagine you and Stefan had quite the laugh about how you scored yet another fancy bauble from me!”

           “Stop it! None of this is true! I’ve never cheated on you and I didn’t steal company secrets,” Caroline yelled, her heart little more than a painful, cold little lump as the truth sunk in — Klaus didn’t trust her. He never did.

           Her voice was a harsh whisper as she revealed, “And the reason I was acting weird when you gave me the earrings is because I thought you were going to propose.” She angrily wiped away tears as she flatly said, “Obviously, that was stupid.”

           Klaus looked momentarily stricken, but quickly masked his expression, running a hand across his jaw. In a hollow voice, he said, “Miss Forbes, you’re on administrative leave pending a formal review of the allegations. Security has cleared your office of all Mikaelson Inc. property and will escort you downstairs once you’ve gathered your personal belongings.”

           Caroline couldn’t stop staring at the rosy lipstick smear she’d left on his dress shirt. Only hours ago they’d been so happy. It was a careless, giddy moment immortalized in that lipstick smear and undoubtedly he’d have his assistant take that suit to the cleaners as soon as possible. Or, he’d just toss it out. Like he did to her. She managed to march out of his office with her head high, pausing at the threshold to tell him coldly, “Go to hell, Mr. Mikaelson.”

                       _________________________________________

           So much for that suite in New Orleans.

           Despite the photographs and colorful art on the walls, her office had never seemed more cold and impersonal. Maybe it was the fact that her laptop was missing, or the fact that she knew security had been in there without her permission. She hastily started packing up her items, not wanting to be there any longer than necessary. Caroline allowed herself a final look out her window, the soft glow of the security lamps outside illuminating the landscape enough for her to see the centuries-old rock bridge that curved across the White Oak River. When she’d first been promoted, it had been quite the ego trip to move into this corner office with its impressive views, and she’d felt a sense of accomplishment that nearly rivaled when she first received her degree. Now what?  

           A sudden movement caught her eye, and she noticed two figures holding hands as they walked along the bridge. They paused briefly to share a kiss, and Caroline let out a gasp of surprise when she realized it was Rebekah and Stefan.

           So much for family above all.

[ladala99]

Pokemon XD: A Modern Review

Something I see somewhat often is people wishing there were more games like Pokemon Colosseum and XD. Up until recently, I was really confused by this: the main draw of these games were POKEMON IN 3D! and we have that in the main series now, so what’s the point?

Well, I got to wanting a Lucky Egg in Gen III, and decided out of playing the entirety of the copy of XD I never got to, and going on a frustrating Chansey hunt in FireRed, XD would be the more enjoyable course of action.

I’ve just recently finally obtained my prize after a long and harsh game, and I now understand why people miss it. It’s not the 3D (but it certainly doesn’t hurt), it’s the battles. It provides a fundamentally different experience to the main series, even now, and now I join those wishing for something else like it.

But as great as it is, it has its flaws. I’m going to review it now in the context of now, and see how it holds up to GameFreak’s latest games.

Graphics

I’ll start off the review by looking at the graphics. Simply stated: they don’t compare with the Alola games.

The polygon count is low, especially for Gen I Pokemon. Their models were not updated from the Stadium series, and it shows. Trainers appear in battles, always behind the Pokemon, and they just look ugly. Although there are a couple of interesting designs (notably Lovrina, who looks a lot like a certain Team Skull Admin), for the most part they’re dull and unremarkable.

The environments are also not very interesting-looking in comparison. Alola is vibrant and has a few different landscapes. XD takes place in a desert, and mainly indoors in places that look made of tin. There’s a couple pretty places, but you don’t spend that much time in them in comparison to the ugly places.

One plus though, is the animations of the Pokemon. They take a long time, but they are filled with personality that the main series never matches. Especially the more cartoony animations of the Gen I and II Pokemon from the Stadium games, such as Misdreavus disappearing into its necklace and Vileplume melting when fainting.

Story

It’s probably unfair to compare XD to Alola, but I’m going to anyway. XD’s story is almost non-existent. Spoilers follow for XD if you care, so skip this section if you do.

It starts off with your friendly professor being kidnapped after he has designed a Snag Machine for the remote possibility that Cipher will be back. Surprise surprise, they are back. After rescuing him, you just go to various places where they’re stated to be in hopes to stop their clearly evil plans and snag their Shadow Pokemon. They’re also talking about this amazing un-purifyable Pokemon that they’re trying to make.

They do all sorts of evil things, like turning Pokemon from the destroyed SS Libra Shadow (where are their trainers?), having two bases, and attempting to replace everyone in a town with imposters. I seriously don’t know what the last has to do with anything other than giving you another place to go.

You annoy them enough and eventually they reveal that their main base is on this place called Citadark Isle. You go there, snagging every Shadow Pokemon you can, find out that their unpurifiable Shadow Pokemon is Lugia, Snag it and all of their leader Greevil’s team, and Cipher is stopped for good.

Also, after you defeat Greevil, it turns out his bodyguards are his sons and one didn’t really want to be evil. There’s a touching moment that was never foreshadowed, and the credits play. Like, I didn’t care about these guys at all.

Compare this to Sun and Moon where I care deeply about nearly everyone involved, especially those on the evil teams, and it’s a no-brainer which is better. Cinematics in Sun and Moon also are far superior, as characters other than the protagonist emote during cutscenes, and there are actual camera tricks used. Say what you want about your ability to skip them, but since I don’t play the same game in a row too often, and I always read the dialogue, Sun and Moon do way better.

Gameplay - Shadow Pokemon

I’m actually going to cut Gameplay into a few sections because there’s many aspects to it. The first is Shadow Pokemon.

In main series, including Sun and Moon, when you enter a battle, you have a single goal. If it’s a wild battle, it might be to gain experience or it may be to capture the opposing Pokemon. If it’s a trainer battle, you want to win.

In XD (and Colosseum), you do both in the same battle. And that is one thing that makes these battles much more intense. It’s often easy to win. It’s not so easy to have your attention divided between defeating certain Pokemon and not defeating others. Surviving against Pokemon who hit you with Super Effective attacks 100% of the time while not trying to defeat them, relying on luck that they’ll stay in the ball.

And here’s where one of the mechanics from Gen III that was changed in Gen IV really messes with you: if a Pokemon is defeated, the next is immediately sent out, and if you have both Pokemon targeting a single slot, your second Pokemon will attack the next Pokemon to come out. Which may be a Shadow Pokemon with extremely low defensive stats.

That combined with some battles which must be fought in a row, and you get a pretty naturally difficult game.

Gameplay - Double Battles

This one isn’t better or worse - just different. And different is good! After you catch your first Shadow Pokemon, every battle in the game (aside from some Battle CDs) is a Double Battle. Double Battles have different tactics to Singles, and thus different Pokemon are good in them.

It also really helps with multitasking when capturing Shadow Pokemon. Throw a ball and see if it works, and if it doesn’t, have an attack aimed at it. Or throw balls trying to get the Shadow Pokemon out of the fight while you aim attacks at the non-Shadow.

Double battles also leave your opponents able to take advantage of Double Battle strategies. Some as simple as using Rain Dance when they have a Water-type also on the field, while others include using Earthquake when all their other Pokemon have Levitate or are Flying-type.

Gameplay - Pokemon Variety

For a game where you can nearly only obtain Pokemon by stealing them from others, there’s a pretty hefty list of unique species available, even before the final dungeon.

This includes 46 unique Shadow Pokemon, 9 Pokemon from Poke Spots, and 4 Pokemon from in-game trades all before the final dungeon.

For comparison, Kanto has 79 unique Pokemon families in the entire Pokedex, including Legendaries and Pokemon only available late-game. Add in all 36 endgame Shadow Pokemon, and we have ourselves a Pokedex of considerable size!

Obviously, that’s not anywhere near how many are available in Alola, but considering how many Pokemon total there were then, it was a pretty impressive number!

Gameplay - Difficulty

The AI is idiotic. I found that most of the time, when an opponent has a move that’s Super Effective on one of my Pokemon, and Not Very Effective on the other, they’ll use it on the Pokemon it’s Not Very Effective against.

Which is great because of all the other things stacked against you. I used a team of purified Pokemon after the beginning, which meant I had no defense against Shadow Pokemon. The fact that the non-Shadows were being idiots made my survivability easier.

What’s not fun is the level curve, especially on Citadark Isle. It starts out in the low 30s and ends at six Shadow Pokemon around level 50. There are not enough trainers to make up this difference, so unless you’re using the Shadow Pokemon you’re snagging along the way, you’ll need to take extensive trips to Mt. Battle to get your level up, and that isn’t fun.

Sun and Moon do way better in this regard, with the dynamic experience system. Simply having that would have made XD a lot more doable without extensive grinding sections.

In general, though, Shadow Pokemon fights make XD hard. Totem Pokemon fights make Sun and Moon hard. There’s more Shadow Pokemon fights in XD than Totem Pokemon fights in Sun and Moon, so XD is in general harder. Perhaps not in individual fights, however.

Gameplay - Tutorial

XD has a tutorial, but it’s completely optional and kinda out-of-the-way. You can do some Battle Sims in the first area that teach the basics, but they’re kinda tedious to do.

I’d say it’s better for veterans than Sun and Moon, but definitely worse for newcomers. But the Stadium series (which XD is a successor to) was never for newcomers anyways, so it’s not really needed. It’s a good bone to throw at newcomers so they aren’t completely lost, though.

Gameplay - Progress

Definitely one of XD’s weaknesses is how difficult it is to gauge how far you are into the game. The main series has a definite amount of badges (or Trials), so you know, depending on how many badges you currently have, relatively how far into the game you are. Similarly, in Alola, you know there are four islands and seven/eight trials.  You can tell how far you are by how many trials you have done.

There is no gauge like that in XD. You can kinda tell when you’re getting far into the game because your map starts looking full, but still more locations are added beyond that. The closest gauge is the Shadow Monitor, but you only get the data for the Shadow Pokemon you haven’t found yet right before you enter the final level. And it’s pretty obvious that it’s the final level.

Now, not every game has this sort of progress gauge, so it’s not a bad thing to lack. Still, I found myself seeking out guides not because I didn’t know what to do, but because I wanted to know how much I had left. The game sends you on so many quests that seem irrelevant that it was hard to tell if it was ramping up, or if I still had a long ways to go.

Gameplay - The Lucky Egg

I’m just going to mention that in order to get the Lucky Egg, you not only have to complete the story, but also finish a round in a facility that matches your level, and your opponents have EV trained and IV bred Pokemon. They also have actual strategy (luck-based ones in this round) and AI that doesn’t hold back.

Also, there’s nothing between the end and it, and the lowest level the opponents can be is 10 levels higher than Lugia.

I imported an in-game team that I made that abuses Sandstorm and I feel like I earned that Lucky Egg. It took a few, extremely frustrating, tries. And that was after an extended visit to Mt. Battle because they were only level 54-56.

Conclusion

XD, while it doesn’t look as great as Sun and Moon, is a unique experience which doesn’t disappoint. It even gets frustratingly difficult at times. I was shouting “Oh, come on!” at my screen so many times, when I really only did that twice in Ultra Moon (both times against Necrozma).

What stands out the most, though, is that it isn’t a game for beginners. GameFreak has said that the 2019 titles will be aimed at veterans, so I wonder how those will compare.

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Ellis Signing, Sekera Injured Again, Rankings Explained (Aug 15)

Ellis Signing, Sekera Injured Again, Rankings Explained, plus more…

There were two significant news items on Tuesday, both involving defensemen from the Western Conference.

The Nashville Predators have locked up another key piece of their top-flight defense, agreeing to an eight-year extension for $50 million with Ryan Ellis starting in 2019-20. If you haven’t seen it already, Ellis made NHL.com’s Top 20 Defensemen list, checking in at number 20. It should be status quo for the Preds, who also boast fellow top-20 d-men P.K. Subban and Roman Josi in their top 4 (along with Mattias Ekholm). Some Preds’ salary cap facts:  

The Predators' top four defense next season (P.K. Subban, Roman Josi, Ryan Ellis and Mattias Ekholm) will cost a combined $19.25 million. Even when Ellis' new contract kicks in, it'll be $23 million.

— Adam Vingan (@AdamVingan) August 14, 2018

Ryan Ellis' new contract does NOT include any trade protection (NTC/NMC). The Predators have one player (Pekka Rinne) who does, the fewest in the NHL.

— Adam Vingan (@AdamVingan) August 14, 2018

In spite of missing the first half of the season due to a knee injury, Ellis finished the season with 32 points. This worked out to 0.73 points per game, which was 11th in the NHL among d-men and slightly ahead of teammates Subban and Josi. We can’t really rank Ellis ahead of Subban and Josi in fantasy, however, simply because of the lack of power-play time (unless the Preds decide to move Ellis to the first unit). Only 5 of Ellis’ 32 points came on the man advantage in 2017-18. That move to the first unit or a Subban/Josi injury would cause Ellis’ fantasy value to go through the roof.

This depth on defense all but assures that the Preds will take their time with 2016 first-round pick Dante Fabbro. He will be eased into the Preds’ lineup once he leaves college, which could happen as early as March. There was some crazy talk in these parts (Vancouver) about the Preds not being able to sign Fabbro (a la Jimmy Vesey) and watching him choose his hometown team. But with the way that the Preds develop NHL-level defensemen, Fabbro would be silly to turn his back on the team that drafted him.

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Now, the not-so-good news from a team that hasn’t had a lot of good news on defense over the last decade. It looks like Andrej Sekera will start the season on IR for the second consecutive time, as the Oilers have announced that he recently underwent surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon.

The Sekera injury turns up the heat on the Oilers in terms of getting a deal done with RFA Darnell Nurse, another critical top-4 defensemen. Don’t be surprised if the Oilers add an inexpensive veteran defenseman as well for depth purposes. However, the name that immediately comes to mind for fantasy keeper owners is Evan Bouchard, who now seems all the more likely to at least start the season on a nine-game trial.

Ethan Bear’s name might not jump out at you as much as Bouchard’s (although Ethan Bear is one of the better hockey names out there), yet Bear is also a player to watch here. A point-per-game scorer during his final two seasons in the WHL, Bear was called up by the Oilers in March and impressed, logging an average of nearly two minutes per game on the power play. Bear’s chances of starting the season in Edmonton also improve because of the Sekera injury.

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Here I’m going to respond to a couple of comments on the Sunday Ramblings where I discussed the ESPN Fantasy Hockey rankings. Nothing bad, just wanted to expand on the points that were made.

Wes: “That ESPN list lost all credibility to me the moment I saw Reilly Smith ranked above players like Patrik Laine and Jack Eichel. Just saying.”

For the record, I agree with Wes in that there’s no way Smith should be listed ahead of Eichel and Laine. To expand on his point, ESPN lists Smith at 51 (RW10), Laine at 57 (RW11), and Eichel at 62 (C25). So what I’ll try to do is explain why ESPN happened to rank Smith, who is on his fourth NHL team over a seven-year NHL career, ahead of two of hockey’s brightest young stars.  

Player

GP

G

A

+/-

PIM

PPP

ATOI

SOG

Reilly Smith

67

22

38

31

24

14

17:55

162

Jack Eichel

67

25

39

-25

32

20

20:09

246

Patrik Laine

82

44

26

8

24

31

16:29

241

Mark Scheifele

60

23

37

19

18

16

20:41

125

            A fair comparison can be made between Eichel and Smith, as both played the same number of games. In fact, if we were to do a blind Player A/Player B comparison on goals and assists alone, you might be shocked that Eichel and Smith turned out almost identically. Add in just plus/minus and Smith was the more valuable player last season. In fact, Eichel just narrowly edged out Smith in one league format that I play in that counts only goals, assists, plus/minus, and time on ice.

I don’t have an explanation as to why Smith would have ranked ahead of Laine, aside from Smith having more assists and slightly more icetime (and the fact that ranking players can be an grueling task which can lend itself to mistakes). Smith records fewer power-play points and far fewer shots on goal than both Eichel and Laine. Plus any fantasy owner with a reasonable amount of intelligence would know that both Eichel and Laine possess much higher scoring upside than Smith. In most league formats they should be drafted as such, but this is a good exercise in understanding what fantasy limitations a marquee name might have.

chimp82x: “Scheifele doesn't shoot and doesn't offer much at all in the way of peripherals.”

Mark Scheifele is listed by the World Wide Leader at 81 (C30), a number that I also thought was quite low. Although 125 shots is quite low for a player of Scheifele’s scoring ability, keep in mind that he missed 22 games due to injury in 2017-18. Over his previous three seasons, Scheifele has taken an average of 170, 194, and 160 shots on goal, an average of 175 shots per season, or about 2.27 shots per game if you factor in his games played. That’s slightly higher than the 2.08 shots he averaged last season. So over a full season, that still checks out to under 200 shots on goal.

This could very well change this season on a high-powered Jets’ offense, but Scheifele has never reached 20 power-play points in a season. Perhaps had he stayed healthy for a full season, he would have hit that total in 2017-18. Scheifele is a fixture on the first-unit power play, where Blake Wheeler racked up 40 PPP and Patrik Laine reached 31 PPP. But although Scheifele might appear that he is not pulling his weight on the first-unit power play, he probably isn’t going anywhere. So this is a number that has room for improvement.

Scheifele is also not an overly physical player who would accrue roughly 40 penalty minutes and 50 hits. So he isn’t exactly helping you there either, but you’re not drafting him for those stats anyway.

Maybe ESPN undershot on Scheifele a bit, but there’s a very valid point in there that his multicategory value might not be as high as what you might think.

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Here are recent results from the entry draft in my keeper league. This draft started over the weekend and was completed via message board on Monday evening. It is a one-round draft with 12 picks – one for each team.

Rasmus Dahlin

Andrei Svechnikov

Filip Zadina

Quinn Hughes

Brady Tkachuk

Noah Dobson

Oliver Wahlstrom

Evan Bouchard

Adam Boqvist

Ty Smith

Vitali Kravtsov

Joel Farabee (my pick)

Notable omissions were the two early first-round surprise picks in Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Barrett Hayton. I would say scoring upside is not the only reason, though. Both are listed as centers, which in a CBS league is a huge disadvantage because there are a ton of forwards listed as centers (eg. Mitch Marner and Max Domi are only listed as centers and not as wingers). So you don’t necessarily want to draft the 2018 draft’s third overall pick and fifth overall pick in those respective slots if you hold a similar draft to mine.

If you would like to check out my draft-eligible player rankings completed right after the draft, see the June 26 Ramblings.

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An update on my draft lottery idea, which I mentioned back in the May 2 Ramblings. The league took a vote, with eight owners voting for the lottery and just one owner voting against. We needed a two-thirds majority to change to the draft lottery, so it was passed relatively easily. The one owner who voted against was even on board with one of the ideas for conducting the lottery, so no one in the league seemed dead set against the idea. I don’t know what format we will use yet, but I’m hoping that the owners agree to vote in a mini-Final Four-style vote for four different ideas.

If you are thinking about adding a draft lottery to your league, do it! And make it fun! Heck, make the voting for the idea fun too!

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For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-ellis-signing-sekera-injured-again-rankings-explained-aug-15/