#use up 1/3 a day while having mobile game grinding at same time feels a bit less pointless

[homiu-l]

would it be a complete waste of time for me to sit down and tidy up all my follower count in one seat

[roguemonsterfucker]

Not to sound insensitive on the tail of that post but. As someone who lives in an apartment and desperately wishes they could have horses, what are your game recs?

Not insensitive at all! 🥰 I'm always happy to talk horse games!

First off, I have a Somewhat Comprehensive List of Horse Games over on one of my side blogs. For just a general, mostly unbiased, list of games, that's a good place to go.

For my personal game recs... Well.

The game I play the most is Horse Isle 3, but I can't easily say I'd recommend it for... reasons.

Issues of management aside, HI3 is the most in-depth horse breeding simulator available to date. You can breed not only for different colors and markings, but due to the robust breeding system, you can breed for all sorts of shapes and sizes. It is very much a "make your own fun" type game, which doesn't appeal to everyone, and it can be stressful if you want to manage breeding projects because time passes whether you play or not and horses can die of old age.

If anyone does wish to join Horse Isle 3, please feel free to contact me so I can help you out. The way it's set up is actively hostile to new players and basically requires established players to help new folks in order for the new folks to make progress in their early days without mindlessly grinding for resources. Oh, also, feel free to use my referral code. 🤐

Aside from HI3, another game I've been playing a lot is Ranch of Rivershine. It's in the "cozy game" genre and it's completely single player (unlike HI3 which is an MMO). While Ranch of Rivershine doesn't have realistic genetics, it does have a wide range of beautiful coat colors and it's own genetics system that even I, someone obsessed with horse genetics, enjoy playing with. It's simple and straightforward, making it much easier to breed for the colors you want than a realistic genetics system would be.

The only other game I play regularly is Rival Stars: Horse Racing. It's very different from the other games as it's based around the sport of horse racing, with cross county and steeplechase being added more recently. There used to only be one breed, the Thoroughbred, but a very recent update added the Selle Francis and Arabian. There are lots of colors and patterns to breed for, but it has a completely nonsensical breeding system that really irritates me lol. But the horses can be quite stunning, which makes up for it... some of the time. 😂 I play on the PC, but there is a mobile version as well. The two are very different in some ways but the basis is the same. However, the mobile game will constantly push microtransactions on you and the PC game is a one time purchase with no transactions afterwards. I highly suggest the PC game, but you can always test the mobile version for free to see if you like it at all before buying the PC version.

Rival Stars is single player, but you can race against friends on PC with multiplayer game modes.

Honorable Mention: Star Stable Online.

I only pop on every once in a while to look at the pretty horses. It's a completely quest based game, and I used to enjoy the quests, but now I really just don't like it much. Aside from quests, it's mainly a game for collecting pretty horses. No breeding, just paying the premium currency to get new horses. It's really good if you just enjoy riding high quality horses around a pretty map (which I do sometimes!), but not good for much else for me. Since it's an MMO, there are a lot of social elements to it that others enjoy, but I'm antisocial so that holds no appeal for me.

So... All that to say...

My #1 recommendation right now is Ranch of Rivershine.

It's a bit grindy (which everyone seems to think is bad, but I like grindy lol), but it's super simple, super cute, and is just a nice and chill time. If the controls were more suited to how my hands work, I'd probably play it as much if not more than HI3.

Ranch of Rivershine also is an early access game that is regularly getting updates! There's a new update coming soon that will add foal training and personalities to the horses.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Or tell me what type of game you're looking for and I can see if I can find one that better suits you!

[compassrosegames]

Played This Week 2024.01.01-01.06

Got to play a couple of games this week, only one on PC while another couple on mobile.

PC

ASTRONEER - System Era Softworks (2016/12)

~ 1 Hour (~48 hours for the main story + extras)

This is an old favorite of mine, a game about exploration and mining that is much gentler than some of the other games in the genre that share similar mechanics. It was funky getting back into the mechanics of the game but it was still enjoyable and very engaging. Especially seeing all of the new stuff that they have added to the game since I last played seriously. While I do kind of miss it I have never completed the main story so I want to do that since unlike Space Engineer, Satisfactory, or Stationeers there is a little bit more of one that isn't hidden behind layers of base optimization.

Mobile

Sword Ling RPG - 854Game (???)

~idk? About an hour a day? so 6-8 hours mostly in the background

I have been slowly grinding through the stuff but holy shit is it overwhelming. Each little menu has like 2 or 3 things that can end up contributing to the player's Combat Power (CP). And that's before finding whole other heros who can each be equipped to add CP. Looks like this one really is gonna be a long haul.

TrainStation 2 - Pixel Federation Games (2019 CW)

~idk? probably about 6 hours total now?

It's hard to keep track of these fuckers. This is a cute little game that caught my attention because I like trains. Well, transit. Transportation. Whatever. I have spent a decent amount of time in Transtportation Fever 2 and this game brings a little nostalgia back from that style of gameplay, moving resources around. I may go deeper into my thoughts on it but it is a very comforting game that does interesting things with pacing transit times, especially in this the tutorial levels.

Monster Hunter Now - Niantic Inc. (2023/09)

~2 hours a day so ~12 hours this week?

I should really get a program logger installed to see how long I am playing these.

This particular game is made by Niantic of Pokemon Go fame. While I had been on Pokemon Go this caught my eye and has hooked me longer. Concept is the same only the player actually fights monsters from the Monster Hunter universe using weapons of various styles. I can definitely see where the learned a lot from the game-play weaknesses of Pokemon Go and really turned it into a game I don't mind walking around for. I do want to go into a deep dive on the differences between the two so I might do that over the next few weeks.

Lost Abroad Language Cafe - Lost Abroad Inc. (2022 CW, EA)

~ 0.5 hours

A little language game that I saw an ad on Reddit for. Despite early access this seems like a very interesting concept for learning basic grammar and politeness. I tried Japanese for a little bit and it was pretty fun. While I would like to put more time into it, it is in Early Access so not everything seems to be implemented yet, but I need to check. I have only played on my phone so I need to try it on my iPad to get the full experience where it seems to be intended. It has a very similar feel to Influent, but because there is a much smaller scale of words that are unlocked rather slowly through forced repetition and a relatively rapid speed of comprehension through that repetition make this a game that I want to keep my eye on. Gameplay takes place in chunks of 1, 2, or 5 minutes which make it a nice snack for any language learners.

Recap

So I actually played more than I thought. Which is nice. Unfortunately a lot of the mobile games kind of slide into the 'unconscious' play style where I might as well be doom scrolling for all of the attention I am paying to them. Lost Abroad being the one exception.

Anywho, which would y'all like to see further analysis of?

Have a good week y'all, see ya Sunday

[miss-kittys-magical-library]

The Ides of March

(A Darren Treacy x Jeanie Turner Mini-Series)

Chapter 1 - Come On Eileen

Word Count: 1125

Warnings: pure smut, language, alcohol use, canon divergent completely, **no spoilers**

A/N: On Saint Patrick's Day, Darren and Jeanie start receiving ominous, cryptic text messages claiming to be from the future. Play the game; save Darren. Jeanie's rules are simple enough: If Dazz can catch her out in Dublin, he can have her any way and anywhere he wants. So how did a night of wild sex and whiskey lead to murder?

Prolouge 

“We’ll play a game,” Jeanie had texted Darren.

“I know how this ends. I like both of my feet, and I've already lost a lung.”

“Funny! Come and find me out in Dublin. If you catch me, you can fuck me.”

“Like I won't be fucking ye already? Just enjoy the night, meet me at the pub. 3am”

Jeanie read Darren's last message. The card burned in her purse. Keep him away from Nidge, whatever you do.

“You can fuck me in public. Wherever. However.”

A few minutes later as Jeanie passed a joint to Ewan, her phone buzzed between her tits. “Up the arse?”

“Dazz”

“Red.” Then. “Thought I’d give it a go. Can I have a hint?”

(Talk everyone into the Temple club. Get Darren there, maybe with Tommy & Siobhan. I'll take care of the rest.)

“It's 3 Stories. Looks like a church. I'll be inside. Catch me if you can.”

Out in the narrow alley between The Temple and the adjacent alley, Jeanie scrolled through her phone for a number. She stepped outside with Ewan to get some air, four shots and a whiskey with Coke deep. Her finger found what she wanted.

“Hey! It's Jeanie. Chuck your old man, and come dancing with us! Or bring him, and let he and Dazz stare at their mobiles waiting for your uncle to call.”

“You mean the weasel? ;) Darren already left for The Temple. Ewan told him where. Tommy and I will meet you there in a bit.”

Jeanie's heart started to pound. Whatever it was these messages wanted, or wherever they were from, the game would work. If she had to use her pussy to keep Darren Treacy alive, it wouldn't be very hard. He was easily enticed by it.

Now Jeanie was lost in her own mobile. She heard a muffled greeting from Ewan’s deep Scottish brogue. Her back was towards him, but Darren (smelling of tequila himself) strong armed her and lifted her off the ground. Jeanie screamed in shock then delight before he set her down.

Jeanie made gestures towards Ewan to head back into the club. It took a few minutes, despite Darren's immediate desire to bite and kiss Jeanie, for the Scotsman to realize he was no longer wanted. He winked at Jeanie and made his way back inside.

“I t’ought t’is game would be harder.” Darren's hands roamed over Jeanie’s fishnet tights.

“You got Ewan to tell you where in the club we were, didn't you?” She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and closed her eyes. She got lost in his mouth on her neck. Her free hand urged him up her skirt.

Darren became a little more energetic. He tore at the fabric so Jeanie's tights were destroyed. His heavy breathing gave way to just the bare minimum of surprise when he realized she wasn't wearing panties under the fishnets.

“Naughty, bitch,” he growled in her ear as his fingers started to delve inside Jeanie. They pumped aggressively, his middle finger on her clit in swift circles.

Jeanie moaned, the whiskey coursed through her nerves. She didn't care that the streets of Dublin were crowded. That she was in a dirty, impossibly narrow alleyway with an Irish gang member. That she was sent divorce papers. That she was 29 today. Had she told anyone that she was 29 today? The American expat school teacher living in Scotland and Ireland getting finger fucked by a hitman on St. Paddy’s Day was almost 30.

“You left out dirty, Dazzler.”

Jeanie's hips moved on their own as she encouraged Darren to go deeper. Her nails sunk into the skin on his wrist, and they moved together. From one angle it just looked like a couple dirty dancing to the loud electric beat that poured out from the side entrance door. From the other, revellers would see a man with his hand completely lost inside a woman's skirt as her mouth hung open in ecstasy.

“Can't I ever look at ye when we fuck? I want t’see your face, darling.” His fingers went faster as he began to grind his erection into Jeanie's ass at the same time.

“No,” Jeanie had to fight around her moaning, “If we look at each other during this, it's not gonna be just fucking anymore.”

“I caught ye, and I was told I could fuck ye anyway and anywhere. Can't bend your own rules because you're afraid t’fall in love.” His hand no longer inside her.

Jeanie groaned. Why did he use logic?! It's not the falling in love, it's those eyes. Like all of Ireland was in them. They were impossible to describe because “hazel” wasn't enough.

“Finnnneeee,” she gave in. There was laughter in her voice. “Now please, fuck me before my chick boner dies!” She faced Darren but started to unbutton the dress shirt under her corset. “Wait wait. I don't want this to get ruined.”

“Where ye gonna put it?” Darren undid his belt and jeans. His hand gripped his cock, and he started to wank it.

“Fuck.. Ok I'll throw it away?” Jeanie tossed it.

“Good old Scots-Irish impulse,” Darren backed her into the wall. He lifted Jeanie's leg to plant her boot on the other building maybe three feet away.

The brick was cold against Jeanie's back as Darren plowed into her. She took a chance and lifted her other leg so that she was bent between the walls. Her hands clawed at the back of Darren's neck. His hands pushed and pulled her ass back on forth so their bodies crashed together. They fucked at breakneck speed.

Jeanie didn't look. Her eyes clenched shut as she relaxed and let Darren have his way. She could feel the ragged stone create a burn on her now bare shoulders as he slammed a few more times. His vice grip jerked her into his pelvis one last time as he came. His body shook with it.

Jeanie unfolded herself slowly. The adrenaline and alcohol did her head in. She fished her clutch out of the back of her skirt while Darren fixed his pants. He marveled at the hidden bag but only with a raise of his eyebrows. He didn't even notice, but licked his lips as she swiped a tissue inside herself and tucked it in his pocket.

“Parting gift,” she winked and blew a kiss. Then his phone buzzed.

Tommy and Siobhan came around the corner, and the younger one screamed in delight and broke in a run. As she drunkenly threw herself into Darren's arms, Jeanie slipped away unnoticed. He was busy trying to push Siobhan off into Tommy.

“Round 2, Dazzler. Catch me if you can. Next time make me cum too, selfish bastard.”

Tag: @robertsheehanownsmyass @firstpersonnarrator @bisexualnathanyoung @badsext @elliethesuperfruitlover @joz-stankovich @super-unpredictable98 @slutforrobbiebro @frogs--are--bitches @nightmonsters @rob-private

[jjuzoir]

Daily life at the Mankai Dorms [Act 1]!

A/N: another one that’s been on the folder this ones from like May this is embarrassing 💀 i never post imfhshde ALSO this takes place during act 1 so no Chikage (🤢) and no university for banju!

- Izumi and Omi wake up at 5:40AM weekdays, Izumi showers first while Omi organizes the kitchen, making sure to prep the space so he can start cooking early for the members.

- By 6:10 the two are ready (showered and all) and starting to cook breakfast, soon they’re joined by Sakyo for a while before he goes to take a shower (he mostly pesters Izumi about schedules and money poor Izumi).

- At 6:15, on the dot not a second late, Tasuku leaves to go on his morning jogs and Tsumugi is already working on the garden, he likes giving his plants a schedule and plays them music (mostly classical (though sometimes Homare insists his CD’s be played)).

- A few minutes before breakfast is ready, the remaining Uni students (read: Kazunari and Tsuzuru) are sitting at the table watching the news or are on their phones, Kazu is updating his followers about his schedule and Tsuzuru is texting his brothers about the weather so they make sure to bring a coat.

- At exactly 6:40 Sakyo wakes up the high school and middle school students and chaos officially ensues.

- Masumi and Sayaka are the first two to shower, since they have to arrive at 7:50 and their school is notoriously strict when it comes to schedules.

- Sayaka goes first and Masumi goes second, they wake him up a bit earlier than the rest because he tends to fall asleep standing in the shower and he can and will push everyone back by an hour give or take

- Yuki is next, followed by Muku, they have to arrive at 8:20 but both enjoy having a head start since they sometimes walk to school instead of getting a lift from one of the older members.

- By 7:15 1/2 of the boys are ready and breakfast is served, Izumi and Sayaka start organizing the bags and lunches. Sayaka insists on leaving notes for the lunches for everyone, it’s very cute and at first Itaru was very against it but he warmed up to the idea the more it happened.

- Taichi makes a run for the bathroom and gets ready quickly, he does take some time with his hair but Sakyo pulls him by the ear to sit down and eat because if he didn’t he would spend the whole morning gelling his hair.

- Tenma goes in next, nothing much happens with him, he’s rather chill, yes he’ll make a mess but he’ll (try his best to) clean but overall; Tenma is a good bathroom user 20/20.

- Then, Banri strikes; he takes 20 minutes (when he’s feeling nice) to get ready because he knows Juza’s classes start earlier than his, Juza gets pissed and knocks the door open and pushes Banri (who’s probably been done for 10 minutes but stays in to piss everyone off) out- it happens almost everyday and Sakyo tried buying an alarm clock but it ended up breaking after Juza threw it at Banri’s head one morning.

- By then it’s 7:35 and Taichi, Juza, and Tenma leave- Izumi hands Juza a big lunch and snacks as a sorry gift for Banri since he often misses breakfast because of the other boy.

- During the whole chaos, Itaru wakes up and gets ready to leave for work, he crams himself in after Juza leaves the bathroom- Itaru either gives the middle schoolers or the Hanasaki students a lift (not really the others since Hanasaki and St. Flora is on the way to his work).

- Izumi and Omi will give the boys their lunches and help them with their bags, this is also the time when Muku ends up freaking out about possibly forgetting something and Yuki needs to assure him there are no missing assignments or extra cardboard to bring to class.

- By 8:30 Tsumugi joins them in the kitchen as they clean the place up. Since most of the loud members are gone by then, it’s fairly quiet but you can hear Homare ranting about his latest poem if you strain your ear enough.

- After that, the rest (aka; Hisoka, Azuma, Homare, Tasuku, Tsumugi, Citron, and Misumi.) take their mornings slowly- Izumi will be out for the rest of the morning stuck in meetings while Sakyo bounces around town doing whatever yakuza do (idk I’m not part of the mafia).

- Omi and Tsuzuru head to classes alongside Kazu at 10:30, though sometimes the green-eyed boy will leave earlier if he’s going out with friends or has a project (art students things).

- Depending on the day, Omi or Izumi will arrive and make lunch or they’ll go out to eat at one of the cafes nearby (I feel like Veludo has many cafes and bars, it makes sense since it’s a hotspot for theater and art lovers so it’s only natural a lot of places would open up).

- Tasuku can be seen walking alongside Veludo helping other troupes, sometimes Tsumugi will join him; if you wanted you could probably play a game of how many theaters can you see Tasuku in a day (Citron once claimed he saw him at 30 but Tsuzuru doesn’t belive him).

- If not alongside Tasuku, Tsumugi will be preparing the work for his students and tending to the garden, though sometimes he enjoys going out into town and visiting cafes and flower shops. He’s well liked around the elderly women population, very good with old ladies.

- Citron will spend the rest of the morning outside of the dorms experiencing Japanese culture and/or helping the vendors in Veludo, if he wanted he could help the dorm save up a years’s worth of groceries with all the favors he’s done.

- By 12:00PM most of the members are outside of the dorms and, if she hasn’t arrived earlier us to shorter work days, Izumi arrives from her meetings (though there are the odd days she’s out for longer).

- At around the same time, Misumi will start his triangle hunt, comes back with gifts and then goes to work at a circus (he has a clown card and I’m sure he’d make a good acrobat or flexible man... I think) or whatever, sometimes the schedule will change depending on what’s around the area. No one understands Misumi’s schedule but he says it’s made to be as triangular as a schedule can be (I belive him).

- Hisoka and Azuma stay in the dorms until work starts for both of them which is often later than most, Homare comes back at this time from his meetings with publishers but will leave again. He likes going to museums and art expositions often, might take Azuma out with him if the silver-head isn’t busy.

- By then it’s 2:40-3:00 and Omi comes back, normally without Kazunari (who’s out with friends) or Tsuzuru (who’s working part time somewhere).

- Izumi and Omi will start making snacks for the students, first come the St Flora boys at 3:30, then Hanasaki high 3:45, and finally the remaining students at 4:00. Normally at the same time, Tsumugi will go to his students and start his classes.

- Misumi pops up, now done with his job, with some triangle gifts, he also manages to somehow cram some other part time job during his absence (like truck loading). It’s very weird but he brings in money so no one can really complain, he seems to enjoy it too.

- Sakyo arrives and makes sure the students (uni or not) have done their homework and lets them spend the rest of the afternoon practicing if they’ve got a performance coming up or doing whatever as long as they aren’t too noisy or do anything dumb (his wishes are almost never fulfilled).

- By the time all the students have worked to Sakyo’s standard (aka finished all of their homework for the next month basically), it’s 5:00 and Tsuzuru and Hisoka will come back home.

- Hisoka tends to work around the evening instead of early in the morning, it’s an odd time to work (especially since he works odd jobs mostly) but it keeps him busy and with a steady income.

- At 6:00 Kazunari and Tasuku come back, Tsumugi and Azuma will follow a few minutes later.

- By then, most of the dorm is back (excluding Itaru, the household desk worker), and practice starts with the whole troupe- depending on who’s practicing Izumi will make dinner with either Omi or Tsuzuru.

- Official full-troupe pratice starts at 7 and ends at 9 during weekdays, though it’s not rare to find people practicing during the day/outside of the schedule.

- Depending on if the Spring troupe has a performance or not, Itaru will arrive at 8 or 6, if it’s at 8 he’ll go straight to his room and play games, if it’s at 6 and he’s got a play he’ll head to the practice room and play mobile games during breaks; the grind doesn’t stop when your Itaru Chigasaki and there’s an event going.

- By 9:15 dinner is ready and the whole dorm comes together and eats like a family!!

- Once they're done it’s 10pm and the students are sent to their rooms to get ready to sleep unless they’re on cleaning duty (20-26 plates don’t clean themselves and Sakyo refuses to buy a dishwasher he says it’s too expensive), it takes 30 minutes to clean the place up and by 11PM Izumi and Sakyo are making rounds to make sure the high schoolers are in their room sleeping.

- By 12PM the whole mankai dorm is asleep, except Itaru who’s probably gaming… and Homare who could’ve gotten an inspirational rush at 1AM… or Tsuzuru while he works on a script… or Misumi who’s stuck trying to take out a triangle sticker out of some magazine he found.

- It depends on the day of the week, the moon cycle, and if Misumi prayed to the triangle gods.

[ruluxe]

First Line Tag Game II

tagged by @spaztictwitch 

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening lines then tag 10 of your favorite authors.

Tagging Sam because if this is the only way to get more fic out of you then believe I’m gonna exploit it. Also @hadenxcharm @kuroosden bc I know there is more fic ya’ll are holdin out on us

1. Just the One [wip/shinoyama]: The news of Shino’s death devastates Yamagi and the conversation with Eugene he has afterwards doesn’t do anything to help ease the painful ache in his chest. [2017, Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans]

3. Beyond Event Horizon [abandoned/klance/past!sheith]: Bixby’s limit ends on a long and winding dirt road in the middle of nowhere with nothing but dry desert plains and mountains that pierce the sky in the far distance. [2016, Voltron Legendary Defender]

2. Grind the Dirt [marker/wip]: This isn't how it’s supposed to go, Marco thinks as Striker's tonfa clips the edge of his jaw and the taste of blood explodes across his tongue. His shoulder's been dislocated, his lips are cracked and bloodied and every bone in his body suddenly feels as fragile as glass. [2016, Gangsta.]

4. Anemones & Agony [wip/picture perfect verse!imahana]: The thing about rules is that they're made to be broken. At least, that's Hanamiya's defiant outlook on everything, rebellious in his form with every task he's made to execute. [2016, Kuroko no Basuke]

5. What the Night Knows [klance]: He comes to Lance in the still of night, when the entire ship is quiet save for the surprisingly soft whir of its engine. [2016, Voltron Legendary Defender]

6. Within Reach [aokaga]: As a child, Aomine had always been entranced by the stars in the sky. There were so many of them; so many constellations and far-off galaxies that always held endless possibilities for his imagination to run wild. [2016, Kuroko no Basuke]

7. Save the Last Dance [8059/yamagoku]: Weddings were never Hayato’s thing; the expectancy of socially interacting, having to keep the same false smile plastered on his face and having drunk girls asking him for dances he cannot refuse. [2016, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!]

8. My Dream Was Actually You [aokaga]: The crowd’s roars and cheers for their victory are deafening. So loud that Aomine can't hear the sound of his own heart thudding against his chest or the rush of adrenaline pounding in his ears. When he looks up at stands, he can see Satsuki giving him a thumbs up alongside Tetsu. It makes him roll his eyes but his mouth slides too easily into a grin nowadays. [2016, Kuroko no Basuke]

9. Tides that Bind [matsuhana]: Everything goes still. For a fraction of a second it’s like Issei is suspended in a timeless space, giving him a moment to stop and take a breath. The sun has begun to disappear into the ocean, the thin crest of orange light bleeding out into the purple sky, streaking it with hues of yellow. The clouds are still, cotton swirls of pink against the backdrop of serenity. The water beneath is calm and rippling shimmering gold tides that kiss the sand to the same tune of Issei’s breathing. [2016, Haikyuu!!]

10. Untitled [wip/aokaga/some kind of royal/medieval knight au]: It begins with the warmth of the sun beaming on worn bodies pressed against one another wrapped in unnecessarily extravagant satin. There are scars spread across skin, mapped out like fissures and crevices of ancient and forgotten battlefields. [2016, Kuroko no Basuke]

11. Untitled [wip/matsuhana/Purge au]: Takahiro has always marched to the beat of his own drum but today, March 22nd, he marches to the beat of the drums signifying the countdown to commencement. [2016, Haikyuu!!]

12. If the World Fell at Our Feet [iwaoi]: The atmosphere is dry and static-charged like a spark at any given time would set the air aflame. The wind picks up, kicks sand into a hurricane that spins across the baron wasteland. It smells of heat and sulfur and iron like a volcano on the verge of eruption. [2016, Haikyuu!!]

13. Home for the Holidays [zhanyi]: Zheng Xi once read somewhere that the warmth and joy of Christmas brings people closer to each other. He's always been close with his family, so he's never really known what it feels like to be alone on Christmas, never known the true depth in the meaning of those words. [2016, 19 Days]

14. Saying Goodbye [zhanyi]: He smells nice. It's a thought Jian Yi shouldn't be having — not now — not when he's trying to forget, not now when he's asking for forgiveness and forgetfulness from the boy that holds him in an embrace that Jian Yi has already etched deep into his memory. He smells nice and he's warm. [2015, 19 Days] 

15. The Most Beautiful Sight [wip/sourin]: Sousuke's back is to him when he enters the waiting room; the large hospital window and the glow of the rising sun frames him in an almost holy divinity. From Rin's vantage point, Sousuke looks like he's staring out at the sorbet streaks of the early morning sky contemplating their existence. Rin knows that Sousuke doesn't see the beauty of the sunrise, he's likely brooding, trying to mask the nervous fret that has noticeably drawn tension in the other's shoulders. [2016, Free!]

16. Simplicity [saigenos]: The gold of Genos' eyes flicker under the dim flood of the orange street lamp. They seem to almost glow through the fog like headlights, and Saitama finds himself staring — but admittedly that's all he can do right now. [2015, One Punch Man]

17. Don’t Need an Excuse [aokaga]: “Hey… Tai.” “Yeah?” Aomine pauses his game and glances over his shoulder. Kagami’s lying on the couch absorbed in an article he’s reading in a magazine. He’s chewing on his bottom lip the way he does when he’s concentrating. He sounds a million miles away. “I love you.” This gets Kagami to shut his magazine, turn his head in Aomine’s direction, enough for Aomine to see the look of perplexity scribbled across his face. “What did you do?” [2015, Kuroko no Basuke]

18. In the End, It’s Enough [aokaga, past!/unrequited!aokise]: It's not as warm in the stadium as Kise had thought it would be when he slips through the heavy doors quietly as not to disturb the audience. The screeching of rubber against laminate echoes through the space as do the bellowing voices of the players on the court. It's been a while since he's been to one of these games. [2015, Kuroko no Basuke]

19. Entwined [marker]: It seems fitting that things would end like this; Striker can't say he expected any other outcome. The heat of Spas' breath at his cheek is fading, each billow of breath gets more shallow with each exhale. Striker's limbs are starting to give out, he can feel the exertion in his legs as they struggle to keep him and Spas' added weight upright. The warmth of the other's blood seeping through his skin is comforting; his own beginning to congeal in the corners of his eyes and along the line of his nose. The sharp tang of metal is all Striker can smell, even with his nose pressed to Spas' skin. [2015, Gangsta.]

20. The Game [galahau]: The ropes aren't tight enough to cut into his wrists, but they burn friction along his skin when he struggles against his restraints. Galahad watches Hausen with bated breath, watches as the other drags a lube-slicked finger down the length of his cock. 

WAY LONGER THIS TIME OOPS also, here... I noticed that my writing style is so fucking inconsistent :’)

[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!

[vagabondanon]

For posterity; Grand Summoners X KLK Collaboration Limited Time Side Story

Spoilers ahead for Kill La Kill itself, the Side story in GS, and shockingly Kill La Kill: If. An overview of a story only available for a limited time.

It may be surprising to many, if not practically all fans of the show, that Kill la Kill: if was not the first video game story to star a certain pair of scissor crossed sisters (that I might care too much about and will continue to obsess over any and all content for, which led me to downloading a gacha game and grinding for days to level them and their equipment for no other reason than it was them.), and a handful of their closest compatriots/equipment options. Kill La Kill was featured in a (relatively) short crossover story in Good Smile’s mobile game “Grand Summoners”. In it you could (eventually when the event was rerun and all content was put out on the NA version) spend Gems/”alchemy stones” to “summon” Ryuko, Satsuki, and Mako as units. Senketsu, Junketsu, Guts, Mako’s two star fight club uniform, Mako’s brass knuckle, Ryuko’s scissor blade, Bakuzan, Mako’s fight club baseball bat, and the completed Rending Scissors (titled “The Snippity Snips” for some as yet unknown, but probably awful, reasons) as support “Equips” that can be carried by any unit with compatible sized/typed slots. Sukuyo Mankanshoku’s croquettes also featured as a consumable item that dropped as mission loot for minor stat buffs if consumed by your four unit squad before any mission. (Equipment refresh 2% faster, base skill refresh 2% faster).

While the stats themselves are interesting as they provide direct numerical valuation of everything listed above in terms of what they can do Offensively, Defensively, etc the story itself is the focus of this post. Because it turns out that out of everybody that knew about it nobody else cared enough to preserve it in whole. (And as I have learned from experience, if you like something save it. Before you wake up one morning and find 1/3 of it has been deleted off the face of the earth) And it could only be accessed for a limited time before it was removed, and again basically nobody seems to either know or care that it actually had more than just pixelated cameos at all. (KLK game marketing tho, for real. Twice now.)

So I present a record for the Library, Grand summoners X KLK, a “too long, I can’t read it anymore anyway, so tell me what happened”; I got you.

(”Stickers” were given for log in streaks that you can post as the only form of communication in multiplayer modes/lobbys.)

The story opens with two of the GS main characters, Rayas and his possible love interest(?, that is at times vague) Mira, out hunting a monster that purportedly had a vitality so high it was unkillable. Upon finally finding the thing the monster hunters as a group had corralled into a forest they are interrupted by a flash of white light. That drops Ryuko, Satsuki, and Mako in full combat readiness between them and the monster.

(Lower right stickers are Rayas and Mira. Our characters on this wild ride.) 

Confusion ensues all around.

The monster runs off to escape, but not before Senketsu (and Satsuki somehow) could "feel” the monster was empowered by Life Fibers. Ryuko blames Satsuki and becomes suspicious of her involvement because of their presence there. (Ryuko constantly tries to pick up the fight they, per Mako, had been having before they got dragged in. What fight? No idea. Fight club Mako is there, but the post fight club Ryuko and Satsuki are not. Except Ryuko can be upgraded to full Kisaragi. How? No idea.) Satsuki refutes being responsible. She also talks down to everyone. (For reasons somewhat unknown.) In KLK fashion the conversations that follow dip into the absurd. Satsuki's text font is so large at times her lines broke the speech box (though this seems to have been fixed in the cutscenes that can be downloaded today as record provided for beating it while the event was on), before going off in search of answers/on the hunt. Ryuko insults the kinda gary-stu mc by calling him “a geezer” (He claims to only be 25 in shocked response), demands he not gawk at her by minding his own business, and ran off after Satsuki. Mako follows Ryuko to keep from being left behind.

Leaving the GS MCs to give confused ellipses laden speech not sure what just happened, and this continues throughout the story.

(Interesting line from them though, the girls officially have 0 magic in full Kamui. So life fibers confirmed as entirely nature/science/organic based/origin? If this story has any weight.)

Also apparently Satsuki is so in tune with/knowledgeable of Fibers she can sense them. Or maybe Junketsu could. It isn’t specified how Satsuki is picking up what Senketsu is without being able to hear him. The “Life Fiber resonance” as it is called guides them either way. The chase leads deep into a forest/jungle full of dense vegetation (which in the missions slows them down leading to loads of fights against mobs of fiber altered orcs, monsters, and human bandits that get stronger the further they go. All controlled by life fibers.)

Ryuko doesn't know what the word vegetation means.

Mako took a nap as they waited for the GS MCs to catch up so they could get some answers as to where they were, and what they could be facing, after Satsuki points out they are not on Earth.

Between remarks during the missions themselves and in the cutscenes the cast attempts to figure what the Fibers are doing when they link up again. They figure life fibers can't break space or time (when weak, or not an OLF, as we learn in KLK: if) so no teleporting or time travel without magic at that time. So chase is deemed possible, but “so long as a single cell of a randomly infused organism exists the whole can regenerate” leading to more grueling fights the deeper they go toward the “source”. Over the same missions Ryuko butts heads with Mira, pointing to a dislike of tsunderes, as she hates when people are not upfront with her. Cast notes that they have similar voices as they argue eventually, but over time they find common ground to drop hostilities after the discussion.

When they reach the big monster again the GS MCs offer to fight it first, they are obliged. Ryuko actually wants to fight Kaiju though to the point she is actively looking forward to fighting giant monsters. Mako from the beginning thinks “Monster Land” is a theme park as she roots everyone on (she is a support character with buffs/healing equipment). Satsuki wishes to see how “magic” works, and if its effective. During the missions leading up to and including the boss fight Ryuko is confronted on if she would do “what it takes” as things ramp up in seriousness, to which she confirms that she has no issues killing targets to win if necessary. As you go through missions which involve mowing humanoids down by the dozen.

(Did not expect that, but given her life it's reasonable to expect that no Kiryuins have truly clean hands. I don’t suspect she has actually killed anyone before. Though that might not be for lack of trying, or simply lack of caring for opponents after any particularly nasty beat downs that may or may not have been shown to us when she reached high school in flashback.)

The first main boss (of two) is a giant quadrupedal demon like monster (”Betelgeuse” model in game colored differently) with spines on its body, altered seemingly loosely based on Senketsu. They share Yellow Orange “eyes”, some shapes, majority body coloration, and it possesses red clawed feet/hands/spines. Guarded by three dire wolves. (battle oddly enough took place in a desert canyon map, not forest as the cutscenes show they should have been in. Probably just a copy paste of the boss's regular arena.)

Once it is weakened/dropped Ryuko uses Sen'i Sōshitsu, but Senketsu fails to absorb the life fibers in it. The cast notes they see strings beyond the edge of the screen (which we can’t) and corpse though, which (likely) led from it to the true final boss that appears from there shortly afterword.

The final boss was a giant green bipedal monster with a vertical mouth that splits its face, which is based on a bright red boss in the main story (Beta-3), which was artificially created by one of the in game story factions through magi-tech. So one of those surviving living war machines likely got picked by Life fibers as a host in this new world they found themselves. It was powered by “Magically enhanced Life fibers” of some sort. (The battle itself was particularly difficult because the character's “top” ability, “Arts”, are powered by a substance called “Battle Ether” that is generated while in combat by using base moves. In this battle there was a substantial decrees in Battle ether production, likely trying to mimic the monster absorbing all free energy around it. Both Bio, or magically.)

This was also another boss fight that took place in an arena that shouldn't be there as it was inside a lab like structure full of green circuit looking lines over all the surfaces. Again likely because that was the “original” boss's arena. Once it is defeated it drops to the forest floor and reverts into a pile of fibers like the OLF in the show when its core got cut, just red instead of orange.

Mira and Ryuko have a moment ribbing “Ms. President”. Rayas just wants to know what is going on. (He won’t really understand it all.)

Satsuki can somehow read/anticipate people's wills, and life fibers exhibit a will through “vibrations in their strings” (Banshi vibrate? Wut.). She reads the vibrations by stabbing her sword down into the mass and holding the hilt.

Satsuki proclaims the life fibers were made to “fix seams” and somehow activates the monster's magic-infused life-fiber corpse to repair a hole in space and time itself. The monster was figured to be what likely dragged them all there in the first place through that hole to provide fibers from their Kamui it wanted. The hole in reality is propped open until they all passed through back to their own world where it is fixed permanently. After which the GS characters proclaim them immensely brave for literally running into a hole in reality without any hesitation.

Thus ended the Side Story.

Not sure who who wrote the script so its hard to tell how much of their given words are “true to cannon”. But it was credited as involving Nakashima who was directly on hand to make the first long explanation promo video on the JP YT channel. Who honestly knows at this point. But time wise it must have been made during production of KLK: if, which leads back to some very interesting consistent points.

Per KLK if: Life Fibers can in fact fuck with space, time, and reality itself. Though this is a power Satsuki was unaware of, (consistent with GS side story) even if she was the catalyst for initiating it in IF’s case through Junketsu's link to the OLF. Junketsu being Ragyo’s original “final” Kamui this was likely a function Ragyo prepared for her life after Earth. It would explain why she was so willing to give up the planet and everyone on it instead of seeking to rule it at least, she could literally just create her own reality and be its true god. Per how KLK: if ends by dumping “existences/minds” back to true reality at different times through the flashes of white light, with only the faintest of memories in the strongest of minds involved, they also very likely explained how this GS story can both feature fight club Mako and not change official “canon”. Or at least I thought it couldn't, before If once again set down that Life Fibers are the most powerful force in existence basically making up the “fabric of reality” itself on a whim.

Is the GS story retroactively canon if IF is canon?

Did Nakashima use the GS story as a test bed for KLK:IF ideas he had in the works?

Will we see more reality hopping for even more spin off stories?

Can these two finally have a happy reality as a couple?

:Shrug:

If you want to see all almost 30 minutes of prerendered cutscenes that remains for yourself in all their limited animation, and honestly somewhat questionably translated/proofread, glory I recorded them and threw that here: https://youtu.be/s3FneXNL8eQ

(Apologies for any sounds on top of the game’s already exceptionally loud music. I have never recorded from android before, I have no idea how to mute mics in the Google games app thing, and it picked up some air con being funky near the middle for a sec.)

[clarencenicholsonata]

8 Best Business YouTube Channels to Sharpen Your Entrepreneur Skills

As one of the biggest search engines in the world, and one of the biggest video libraries in the world, YouTube is also one of the best resources for self-education, motivation or just some good old fashioned inspiration.

These can be particularly useful in the fast-paced world of business and leadership. As anyone in the realm will tell you, that one word covers innumerable disciplines, across marketing, project management, psychology, and sales.

Looking for recommendations, we found the same ones repeated ad nauseum: Forbes, Entrepreneur and TED. While these are great publications and channels, we wanted to shine a light on some other fantastic leaders, producing thought-provoking video on pushing ahead in the market (and in life!)

Here are our top 8 best business YouTube channels.

1. Jamie Turner’s 60 Second Marketer

Channel description:

"Want to learn more about business, marketing, and leadership? If so, you've come to the right place. I'm a keynote speaker, author, and CEO who is also a recipient of the Socialnomics “Top Keynote Speaker” award (along with Tony Robbins, Ariana Huffington, and Richard Branson). My client list has included The Coca-Cola Company, AT&T, Microsoft, Verizon, SAP, T-Mobile, and Holiday Inn. I'm also a regular guest on CNN and HLN where I contribute segments on marketing, persuasion, and leadership."

Our description:

You may have heard that soft skills are what will be more in demand as artificial intelligence becomes smarter and smarter. Jamie Turner knows this and hones in on the make-or-break skills that will take you, as a business leader, ahead of the game (or break your business from the inside.)

Turner knows these topics from the inside out, as a CEO himself and global speaker. His YouTube channel is a chance to get insider tips from someone at the top of the game, in bite-sized segments. Backed by names like the Forbes, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal and CNN, you can be sure you’re getting quality insights.

2. Marie Forleo’s marieTV

Channel description:

"Marie is the host of the award-winning online show, MarieTV. Each episode is designed to help you realize your greatest potential and use your unique talents to change the world. Listed under Inc’s 500 fastest growing companies, Marie creates online training programs that serve people all over the world. Her work reaches readers in over 195 countries worldwide, and her online modern business school, B-School, serves over 50,000 entrepreneurs. Marie’s been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, Forbes.com and The New York Times among others. If you want to turn your dream into a profitable reality, you’ve come to the right place."

Our description:

That the most popular video is Marie and famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins should tell you need to know. She is known as a life coach, and this is a central part of her YouTube channel. While her advice centers around business, it is in a motivational spirit.

With guests like Brene Brown and Elizabeth Gilbert, the insights you get are undoubtedly going to help fuel your success and help manage your time and guide your business. However, it may not be the channel for cold hard strategy or logistics planning, if that’s what you’re going for.

3. Behind the Brand

Channel description:

"Behind the Brand is a show about innovators, entrepreneurs and the stories behind their success. It's like a backstage pass inside the minds, companies, and lifestyles of some of the smartest and most interesting people on the planet. Each episode, I talk with successful people from eclectic areas like those who build big businesses and brands, to athletes, celebrities, artists and more, so that YOU can learn their secrets."

Our description:

With interviewees like Demi Lovato and Cesar Milan as well as Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, Behind the Brand very much revolved around very big names and very large influencers. If you’re looking for nitty-gritty details on how to run your business, this may not be your channel, but if you’re looking for big stories from larger-than-life figures, Behind the Brand has got you covered.

4. Startup Grind

Channel description:

"Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in over 120 countries."

Our description:

Startup Grind is the channel from the very popular conference from which it takes its name. It's filmed talks from leading thinkers from the startup world (and the not-so-startup world), on today’s hottest topics.

It’s wide-ranging in the subjects it tackles and how long it spends on each (videos can be 20-minute sit-downs or hour-long talks).

The scope of talks can be a bit dizzying, and it can be easy to get lost in the library.

Additionally, there are some questions of ethics: one talk on how to create habit-forming apps attracted comments about whether or not habit-forming apps were even a good idea in today's day and age.

5. Moz

Channel description:

"Moz: Marketing Analytics Software for SEO, Links, Social, and Brand • A Vibrant Online Marketing Community • Resources for Learning Inbound Marketing"

Our description:

Moz has made its name in the market not just for its technical prowess (which is formidable), but for its friendly, approachable tone and ability to explain and educate marketers and practitioners about the ever-changing world of SEO and inbound marketing.

This is on great display on their video channel, where Moz mixes their classic brand of friendliness and approachability (there are bring-your-dog-to-work-day videos) with up to date and informative tutorials on the latest in digital online marketing.

Moz, however, also doesn’t stretch too far outside its realm of expertise. You should come here for inbound marketing and searchability topics, and not expect otherwise.

6. Google Small Business

Channel description:

"We provide small business owners with tips, tools, and resources to grow their businesses online."

Our description:

As the decider in who gets seen and who doesn’t in the world of online search, getting an insider look at what the thought leaders at Google Small Business say is not a bad idea.

While their stories are largely human interest, there are also how-to's about crucial skills. From topics as broad as online branding to tips for taking photos for your business listing.

7. Inc.

Channel description:

"Inc. Magazine delivers advice, tools, and services to help business owners and CEOs grow their businesses more successfully. You'll find information and advice covering virtually every business and management tasks including marketing, sales, finding capital, managing people, and much more."

Our description:

Inc. offers something for everyone. If you’re looking for a brand that caters to more than CEOs, Inc. has tips for every career level.

8. SEMRush

Channel description:

"Welcome to the official SEMrush Youtube channel. Your video resource for all things SEMrush. Here, you'll find video tutorials, webinars, pro tips and more.”

Our description:

Another technical channel for those who prefer know-how videos to stories or motivation, SEMrush focuses on the nuts and bolts of getting seen online, including ad targeting, SEO, PPC and everything else you feel like you should know, but were too afraid to ask.

While this is probably the most technically oriented channel on this list, there are also some fun videos to take a break with, like Marketing Actually: 4 Stories by Marketers in Love and Most Popular Halloween Costumes 2018.

There you have it: the 8 best business YouTube channels you can start watching today.

Are there any channels you love that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8230801 https://ift.tt/2pmubrW via IFTTT

[ib-suffering]

Update #3

Sooo this is a continuation of my other two updates that I posted recently. If you haven't read those and are interested in reading my thoughts on my exams, the results, and the advice I may have on any of the courses I took; they're not too far down on my blog, so they shouldn't be too hard to find (and I'm not just saying this bc I couldn't get the urls to hyperlink them on mobile 😅). But I did promise that I would finish my updates with information on my first year of college and what I've been up to recently.

Alrighty, so I spent my first year of college at Boise State University (I'll probably shorten it to BSU for most of this post).

For those of you who have never heard of Boise State, let me give you the highlights. Smack dab in the middle of downtown Boise, Idaho lies Idaho's top research institution. Which is promotional talk for: "We're a college football giant that also happens to have some sciences and liberal arts." BSU is obsessed with their football team, the players admired like celebrities, and game days turning most of the small city into a ghost town, the exception being the the small campus. That being said, BSU is very much a party school, even though it is technically a dry campus (a mistake, if you ask me, given the thousands of dollars they could make serving alcohol at games, but I digress). Boise itself is a beautiful city, and the convenience of campus being downtown and the beautiful weather from April-October makes it a treat to live in. Campus is beautiful, being right on the Boise River (which became a place I frequented when I needed a minute to myself). And Idaho itself is a beautiful state, though most of it is empty hills/farm land. This was a hard transition for me. Though my family is from Iowa (a state very similar to Idaho in many respects), I have spent most of my life in Vegas, a city that has been dubbed "the city that never sleeps" for a reason. Boise is much quieter. Most places close around 8, the rest at 10. And for someone who would take a break from homework to go grab a drink from the convenience store at 1 am, this was a shock for me. And I was very much still in that 11pm to 3 am grind from high school. Aside from that, I had mostly great professors. I am a bio major. And am planning on adding on anthropology as a second major. I bonded fast with my bio professors. I was very friendly with my comm prof, my profs, and my anthro profs. I had an on-going friendly hockey rivalry with one of my bio profs and the student teacher for my anthro class (Go Knights Go!). One of my anthro profs even offered me the opportunity to work further with him on a project I had for his classes. He was impressed with my work and I adored him as a teacher and was excited to work one-on-one with him, especially since he has a reputation for being a harsh grader. If I could impress someone like that, then I was excited to do so over and over again.

So here's the tough part to admit. I'm not at BSU right now. I'm in Vegas (which, for those that do not know, is home for me). And not in school. And know that this is difficult for me. I went from the constant grind of the IB program to sitting at home trying to get my life together. And it's been hard to accept this. Especially, especially because of the amazing opportunity I was offered. I was so proud to have been offered this as a freshman. But, I know that I have made the right choice. And my professor was very understanding, for which I am grateful, and I hope you will be too. And more than anything, I want you to take something from this story that I am about to tell. I know this has been a long post so far, and if you're still here, thank you. But stay buckled, because we're at the beginning of a saga. There will be some highs and some lows, a lot of drama with some comedic relief, and a story of friendship, how it may bitterly end or triumph over all other things. Enjoy.

Allow me to introduce you to our cast (Names will be shortened to a letter or two to keep things relatively anonymous. Shit does go down and there will be secret sharing in the hope that I can give valid advice in its wake):

L- a roommate of mine

M- another roommate

A- another roommate

C- yet another roommate, but she joins the cast a bit later

J- a great friend, met at BSU but he also happens to be from Vegas

R- an unlikely friend

T- M's friend

AG- a small group of army guys that join in later

K-potential love-interest

And I think that'll do. Now, onto the story!

I lived in a suite-style dorm. Four of us lived there, each of with individual rooms. The basic layout was two bedrooms and a bathroom on each side of the dorm with a living room, laundry unit, and kitchen in the middle. M and I shared one side while A and L shared the other. All of us were relatively shy and were placed together randomly as we hadn't used the roommate-selection app the school used. But we didn't have much issue at the beginning. I first bonded with A, introducing her to another friend early on. M and I bonded quickly as well seeing as we shared our own hall. L is fairly shy, so it took awhile longer, but it turned out that her and I just naturally click and still have a fantastic friendship to this day (Read: the same cannot be said for others in this story). L, M, and I easily worked around each other, with each other. A spent most time in her room or at work, but things still seemed pleasant with her. However, she didn't seem like she wanted to hang out with us whenever we did things as a group, so we stopped knocking on her door to ask.

Over the next many weeks, things grew more tense. It was gradual, so none of us were fully aware at the time, but looking back, it was obvious. M invited me to go with her to T's apartment one night. Her and I were interested in drinking (side note: it's up to you imo if you wish to drink in college, but I will insist: always have someone sober around. They will make sure you are safe the the location you are at, get home safe, and will be there for you to help you through your lowest moments and to recount them with you in the morning). T had alcohol. We partaked a little, and I got to get to know T and his roommate, K. It was a good night.

The next night, however, was the breaking point. M and I went over to T and K's again, but this time they took us to a party a floor below their's. We definitely had more to drink that night. I discovered my bartending skills that night, M found her limit and blacked out, and K and I got to hang out a bit more. K had a sober friend that drove us back to the dorm that night. They also helped us upstairs (remember, sober friend). M and I were definitely loud and giggling, and A came out her room to yell at us about not being able to sleep because of our behavior and our upstairs neighbors partying (a nightly occurrence). She went back to her room, slamming the door behind her. L also came out of her room, but instead of yelling at us, she help us through the drunkenness and eventual vomiting, staying up the whole night to do so.

The favour was repaid when M and I picked her up from her first party and walked her home. We stayed by the bathroom all night to make sure she was okay. And it was good to be able to repay the favour.

A felt alienated. And as I said before, that night was the breaking point. The next day, M, L, and I woke up to a letter on our kitchen table outlining her grievances. She didn't feel like our friend. We didn't invite her out anymore, we weren't there for her when she needed us, and she felt like it had to do with our drinking and her not wanting to.

The three of us sat on my side of the dorm, with the hall door closed. And we read the letter and talked it through. We felt bad that she felt that way, but we knew that we never intended that. And that we couldn't be blamed for it all. And that a letter shouldn't have been left for us. That if we were going to resolve this, we would do it in person. This is lesson number two. Resolve things face to face. Children fight through notes/texts/letters. As adults, we knew that we had to sit down together and talk it through. It's hard. You will be nervous. But it made that conversation better. We invited her out and it was awkward. But we went down the list. We made compromises, we learned more about each other. And though things were still tense afterwards, no one felt uncomfortable in their own home. And that's what mattered.

Fast forward to the end of the semester. A moved out. It wasn't because of us, she also had family problems and she wanted to move in with her boyfriend in Texas. We understood and left things on amicable terms. They're engaged now. I'm happy for them.

January. New semester. M, L, and I are living well. T comes over occasionally. K does too, he's also our alc plug. Him and I are still talking, but not much is happening there. I haven't mentioned C yet, but we met her the previous semester, but start hanging out more this semester. She knows that A moved out and is interested in moving in with us. We originally agreed, but after talking about it amongst the three of us, we weren't sure about it. Nevertheless, she moves in.

And it seems to be going well, and we made friends with J through a friend of her's. We host people often, and I play bartender. One of these nights, we run into K and invite him and a neighbor over to play cards. K and I flirt a little, but I was also busy hosting. C and K meet for the first time here.

They start hanging out a bit, and I don't think much of it. Then, she starts gushing over him, talking about his eyes and what their kids would look like. It felt obvious that she was far more into him than I was. So I was nice about it, and let it be.

She ended up just sleeping with him and dropping him only to trash talk him to M, L, and I. This is not the only time she had done this to the guys we had met and become friends with, including T and J, who we met through a guy she did this to. T and J were pretty much her only fails. I bring this up because it had an affect on the rest of us. I'm all for doing whatever you want as long as everyone consents, but this was not just affecting her and it was toxic.

It was difficult to make friends. It stirred up drama. And it lead to the next breaking point. In February, (for context, this is just a few weeks after she moved in), the AG drove out to stay with us for a weekend. C was interested in one of them. So was M. He was interested in M. C is getting upset over this, and decides to demand that M leave for the rest of the weekend. I didn't want her to, but C was already talking shit about me to other people and I didn't want to stir up more drama. Neither did L. I guess we hadn't learned our lesson.

M moved out. And this time it was completely our fault. And I felt awful. I tried to apologize. L did too. But the damage was done. And the bond that I had formed with M was instantaneously gone. I understood it was for the better and M left us with one request: do something about C.

L and I left that night. She wanted to go home for the night, feeling sick about the whole thing. I asked to go along. I didn't have classes the next day. We spent almost the whole night driving around talking it through. M was right, but we didn't know where to start with C. So we sat there, exploring the city, sober as could be (literally and metaphorically), and made a pact that we wouldn't let the same happen to either one of us.

We couldn't be direct about it. A talk wouldn't help. Actions speak louder than words. Because not only were L and I more strict. Not allowing ourselves give in to her whims, but we also had J. He especially didn't given in. And that frustrated her. L spent more time on her own, talking to me when she could. That frustrated her. I spent more time on my own, getting more work done. Shutting myself into my hall and letting the guilt sink in. I even invited over M and T to chat and collect her forgotten things while she was away. I wasn't going to be there to allow her to use us for her habits. And that frustrated her. She wanted the attention and she got none. And lo-and-behold, she started shit talking me again. To L. And everyone she met. It did nothing.

Here comes in R. He was the next one in a string of guys that she was using and cheating on. We didn't expect for him to be around long. None of them were, but C headed home for a weekend and suggested we invite him to hang out. Okay. I did. And both times he came over were great, he easily slipped into a friendship with L, J, and I.

He asked L and I to be honest with him. He felt insecure about the relationship he had with C. Though we were hesitant to say anything, he insisted that he would rather have the truth.

Okay. Have it.

And we knew he'd be better for it. And he was. And so was our friendship. And C was pissed. But she didn't know it was us who said anything. But she decided that he left her for L. And accused her of it.

Nope. He just needed us to be good friends. And he stuck around. And that infuriated her. And we found it easier to stand up against her fits because of it. Don't want him around? Sorry, he's our friend. And maybe you think we're horrible people for that, but we had put up with enough. And it was about time we fulfilled our promise to M.

And soon enough, C moved out. Not because of us, but other reasons. And R kinda moved in (not that our RA knew). R, J, L, and I were happy amongst ourselves for what was the last month of the school year.

Now, that was a lot. I know, I'm sorry. But I hope it was at least an interesting read. It wasn't everything that happened. And I purposely left some stuff out. Though I made an effort to keep things anon, some secrets are not mine to tell. Even if you'll never know these individuals, but especially because you don't know them.

While all of this was happening, I made poor decisions otherwise in regards to drinking. My friends back home were worried. My mental health was going down fast. Previously discussed events may have contributed, but I did push aside self-care in high school in favour of doing school work. And with a less-occupied mind in college, the symptoms only grew worse and perhaps that lead to more drinking. I'm not sure, but I do know that I wasn't doing well at all by the time spring break rolled around. And I worried those closest to me. And they made that clear this summer.

On top of that, BSU is out-of-state for me. And those problems from home didn't go away. And my experience was made worse by that, the events described here and many more, and my financials. I know most in America struggle to pay for school, but it was such a burden on me. It made it difficult to sleep at night, the focus on work, and loomed over every experience I had.

So, the lesson to be learned here is this: take care of yourself. Know your limits. I know it's easier said than done, but it's the only thing that will get you through college. I needed out of an environment that was causing me grief and guilt. I needed to address the problems I had been putting off. And I needed to be realistic about the types of stress I can handle. School, though stressful at times, is an easier stress to handle because the solution is relatively easy to achieve. Financial stressors are difficult to handle because they're long term and can affect how I live the rest of my life (not to say school doesn't, but you can go back to school at 40 but most of us will still be paying for the schooling we got at 18 when we're 40). I still owe BSU money, but not much. And I'm working on paying it off. And then I want to transfer in-state. Get the cheap tuition. My scholarship. And more stability.

BSU wasn't all bad, but it wasn't good for me either. And there's no shame in taking a break and transferring elsewhere. And I had to convince myself of that. And it's still hard to cope with the idea some days. But I'm happier overall. And I've maintained my friendships with L, R, and J. And they all understand.

Again, I'm sorry this was such a long read. But I hope you've gained something from this. If anybody actually read this far... In fact, if you had, could you do me a solid and leave a reply or drop something in my inbox? It'll be nice to know if someone actually read all of this. And thank you so much if you had. I really appreciate it.

[shannrussell-blog1]

New Year’s resolutions, do you stick to yours? According to the Sydney Morning Herald, around 50 per cent of Australians make a New Year’s resolution, with an 88 per cent failure rate.

With stats like this it’s pretty easy to give up on them, isn’t it?

But that failure rate probably has something to do with the fact that the goals we set are unrealistic. Are you really going to drink green smoothies every day or run 20km a week? Probably not!

The article makes the suggestion that resolutions should:

Set achievable goals instead of ideal goals.

Expect setbacks.

Don’t use excuses or setbacks to put it off for another year.

Well, I propose another tip. Make your resolutions fun and in line with the things you enjoy doing. Why go to the gym when you could go hiking instead?

Here are my suggestions for some New Year’s resolutions to consider for next year:

1. I will get fit

Getting fit or losing weight is probably the most common New Year’s resolution. And for many, that means taking out an expensive gym membership or signing up with a personal trainer.

But getting fit this year needn’t be arduous or expensive. Dust off your hiking boots and hit your local walking trail. The crunch of the gravelly track under your feet, the tweeting of birds, the smell of eucalyptus in the air. It’s so much more motivating than heading to a windowless room full of exercise equipment. It’s also cheaper too!

And, with long summer days at your avail, there is no excuse to not go for a hike after work.

You don’t have to head far, just find a trail and start walking. Image: Sea to Summit

2. I will spend more time with friends and family

Camping is a great way to spend time with friends and family. At home, there are TVs, gaming consoles, computers, work, and chores that easily distract us and consume out time. In the middle of the Australian bush, where mobile reception is flaky or non-existent, and the closest thing to wireless is the thing you have your AM radio streaming through.

You have more time and space to connect with those you love. Camping is also a great way to rest the body and mind and do a great deal of nothing.

3. I will eat better

Eating better isn’t only about cutting carbs or calories or sugar. It’s about eating real, wholesome food that you have cooked from scratch. And what better place to cook from scratch and eat well than when you’re out camping. Camp cooking isn’t all beans, bacon, and toast.

We have written heaps on the subject of camp cooking, here are some of our most popular blogs:

Delicious Camp Oven Damper

Cooking Without Perishable Ingredients

How to Shop, Pack and Prepare Food for Touring Adventures

How to Cook Roast Pork in a Camp Oven

Meal Planning for Outback 4WD Adventures

Remember, the odd treat like a pie from a country bakery is all part of a happy life. Don’t be too harsh on yourself.

Cooking over a fire with a cast iron camp oven makes everything taste better. Image: Cast Iron Boys

4. I will travel more

Perhaps that tour of Europe or trip across the USA is a while off, but travel needn’t take you abroad. How much of your own country have you actually explored? Go on. Be honest. Don’t feel bad, I’m in the same boat. I have only explored a tiny portion of my own state let alone the rest of the country.

Travel close, but travel regularly. On weekends rather than sitting in front of the TV, go for a drive. Or a walk. Or a cycle. See things you haven’t seen before. It’ll be fun. Promise. Take plenty of photos too.

5. I will keep my gear organised and clean

So, you’ve been out camping for a week. You get home, offload the gear, and it’s back to the grind. Your gear is stowed away until next time and that’s that.

Bad form, that’s what it is.

To keep your camping gear in tip-top condition, so it lasts a long time, it’s important to properly maintain and store it. Make sure your tent is completely dry before you put it away. And vacuum or sweep it out properly. With your sleeping mats – unroll them and keep them under the bed, and your sleeping bags shouldn’t be kept bundled up in the stuff sack as it will affect the fill.

Instead, take them out of the sack and keep them in a cool, dry place in a large pillow case or in the case of Sea to Summit sleeping bags, their own breathable storage bag.

Also, now that you’ve got a bit of time off over the holiday period, it’s a great time to actually wash your down sleeping bag, patch up that tent that’s been out of action for a while, or re-condition and clean up those beaten up hiking boots.

Store your gear properly on and off the trail. Image: Sea to Summit

6. I will replace or upgrade that thing that really needs it

We all have a piece of camping or hiking gear that we should really just retire and replace. For me, it’s an old el’ cheapo 1 person hiking tent. It’s been a great tent over the years but the floor has holes in it, it smells funky, the zips busted, and it doesn’t keep the rain out anymore.

I could continue to repair it, but there comes a point. Treat yourself. Or ask a loved one to treat you for your birthday, mother’s or father’s day.

7. I will try something new

Never been on an overnight hike before? Try it! You’ve got a flash 4WD but have never taken it over a sand dune? Give it a shot! (Make sure you know what you’re doing first.) You often go hiking with the other half but have never headed out alone? Go on, see what it’s like (safety first, though).

Make the next year of adventure and outdoors. Visit some places you haven’t visited before. Try things you never thought you would try. Eat well. Keep the body moving. And be sure to just lay back under the sky from time to time and let the mind frolic with the clouds.

You’ll look back at it at the end of the year and will be proud of what you’ve achieved. I’m sure of it.

  Have you made any new year’s resolutions for the year? Share them below. 

The post 7 New Year’s Resolutions for Campers & Hikers appeared first on Snowys Blog.

[subversivesmile]

☰

x | Munday Meme Extraordinaire

☰ - Fun random fact about the mun!

Every time someone asks me a random fact I immediately forget all facts about my life.

No, I’m kidding. Or well, I’m not, but that’s not really a great random fact. So instead I’m going to go with my latest achievement. Yesterday evening I finally beat Tyranny after ~31 hours of play (according to Steam), which is a god damn accomplishment because I NEVER finish games. Like I’m the sort of person who plays a game for a while then gets distracted by another one and never comes back to finish the first. Of course, it also doesn’t help that I’m really bad at a lot of genres, so it’s just difficult for me to beat games in general. RPGs (whether CRPGs or more mainstream ones), like Tyranny, are probably just about the only games I ever beat, since they require just time rather than skill (especially since I usually play at relatively low difficulties so I can feel OP).

In fact, I’d guess that I’ve beaten less than 10% of the games I’ve played, and 5% of the games in my Steam library. Since I’m now curious, I’m going to go through and list the ones I’ve played, and bold the ones I’ve beaten, so that I can come up with an ACTUAL percentage.

For the record, all RTSes or multiplayer titles will be left out unless they have a single player campaign, in which case, that’s what I’m referring to by whether or not I’ve beaten the game. (example: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is well-known for being a great tactics game, but it also has a complex campaign line made up of multiple branches that come together for a story. Since I’ve not beaten it (though I’ve been periodically replaying it over the years), I can’t consider the game ‘beaten’ even though I’ve won quite a few normal games against the AI on easy difficulty.

Abzu

Age of Empires II

Age of Mythology

Age of Wonders III

Antichamber

Aquaria (gotten so close, like probably 80%, but then got stuck)

Baldur’s Gate

The Banner Saga

Bastion

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Brutal Legend

Chroma Squad (got SOOO close. Got to right before the final boss battle, then my game glitched and wouldn’t let me continue, and it was so disheartening I haven’t gone back. I know the bug’s fixed now, so I’ll probably replay it someday, but...)

Cinders (though I’ve only gotten one ending out of like 7+)

Costume Quest

Costume Quest 2

Cthulhu Saves The World (main campaign only, not the new game+ mode)

Divinity: Original Sin (so many attempts made, but it’s better with two players, and that always leads to the other person I’m playing with losing interest, or scheduling conflicts for play sessions, or whatever.)

DLC Quest (this game is less than two hours long so I’m not sure if it counts, but.)

Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dust: An Elysian Tail

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim (hahahahaha. ha. h a.)

Epistory: Typing Chronicles (got to a point I’m just not good enough to progress, sadly. fucking amazing game though.)

Evoland

Forced Showdown (have beaten the first campaign, not able to beat second one yet. I probably will never be good enough for that, though.)

Gravity Ghost

Guild of Dungeoneering

Hatoful Boyfriend (gotten one ending. that’s enough.)

Heroes of Might and Magic III

Hunie Cam Studio (have beaten it and gotten the highest ranking of dick trophy, if I recall correctly.)

ittle Dew

Knights of Pen and Paper (beat it on mobile before it was the +1 edition, have not cleared all the new content that’s been added since)

Lego Marvel

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Long Live the Queen (is it even possible to beat this game without a walkthrough...)

lumino city

Magicka

The Marvellous Miss Take

Mass Effect

No Man’s Sky (have not reached center of the galaxy, due to spending time grinding out the language of one of the aliens, which I did fully complete.)

Ori and the Blind Forest

Paper Sorcerer (almost done with, I think)

Party Hard (beat it a bit after release, have not beaten the new content that came out since.)

Pillars of Eternity (probably would have beaten if it I didn’t keep restarting the damn game every time. I’ve beaten the first act once, and the first 3-5 areas probably a couple dozen times...)

Putt Putt Goes To The Moon (beaten this probably hundreds of times as a kid, plus a few times as an adult)

Putt Putt Travels Through Time

Rack n’ Ruin

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Renowned Explorers: International Society (have beaten the release version a couple times, have not beaten the new content)

Reverse Crawl

Saint’s Row IV

Scribblenauts Unmasked

Seduce Me the Otome (no judging pls.)

Shadowrun Returns

Shadowrun Dragonfall (I got really far then lost a bunch of progress, I forget why, and didn’t feel like doing the same missions I’d just done. Someday I’ll play it again and beat it.)

Snakebird

Solitairica

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Stacking

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (unfortunately I can’t get the resolution fix to work on my current computer, so playing this is reserved for when I visit my parents, since it works on their computer. thankfully, I can transfer my save file easily via email.)

Stardew Valley

thomas was alone

To The Moon

Transistor (someday. some fucking day)

Trine

Trine 2

Tyranny (still planning new playthroughs to finish the game with all 4 endings possible)

UnEpic (I think this is beatable and not JUST roguelite?)

War for the Overworld

The Witcher

The Witcher 2

The Wolf Among Us

The Yawhg (have played through to the ending once, have not gotten other endings.)

So, I’ve played 74 out of 276 games in my library. Of those 74, I’ve beaten.. 23 of them, or 20 if you consider only getting one ending in a visual novel to be cheating (which is probably true to be fair). >_>

...That’s actually not as bad as I thought, all things considered.

Not included on the above list, games I’ve played very very briefly and either lost interest in or was too bad at:

Assassin’s Creed (can’t remember which one I played, but I gave up and switched ot watching the movie versions on youtube)

Ascendant

Batman Arkham games (see Assassin’s Creed)

Broken Age

Final Fantasy.... 13, I think. I hated the stupid ‘stars on battle’ mechanics because, due to my OCD, I could NOT handle not getting 5 stars. like I’d just keep trying the same battles over and over and over again and not getting 5 stars and getting frustrated and just. It was probably the game I’ve hated most of all time.

The Magic Circle

Mass Effect 2 (someday I’ll get around to this again... And then ten years later I’ll get around to 3...)

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Pony Island (not sure how far I got, but someday I’ll come back to this)

Portal

The Witcher 3 (the FoV makes me sick and it’s not worth the effort to mod the files, since honestly, it’s a bit gorey for my tastes anyway. I’m STILL mad I can’t refund this since the steam refund policy came out a day too late...)

[foxmanlyman]

Top 10 Games I Will Forever Adore

Ever since I was a little kid, I gamed. From small little flash games on Neopets to popular MMOs, to mobile games and old CD Roms, I believe that games will always be a part of my life. However, just like the changing of seasons, games come and go. However, no matter how long it will be, I will never forget these following games. 

No spoilers, and also this list won’t go in-depth really. It’s more of a personal journey if nothing else.

10 - Legend Of Zelda: Windwaker

Windwaker was an amazing game back in the days of the Gamecube era. It was released in 2002 December 13th in Japan originally and I was only around 4 years old at the time. My Uncle began to show me games that he was excited to see, so when it came out in late March in 2003, he bought it ASAP.  

At first, I wasn’t interested in the game and shrugged it off, but my Uncle insisted that I at least watch him play. And so, I did and became almost mesmerized by the cel-shaded graphics, the toony characters, and the whole environment of the game. 

I could never get into the original games because I never saw the point of following a  character who can't kill chickens and was just a dungeon crawler (to me at the time), but this game was an excellent introduction into what the Zelda games were about - Adventure, fighting, sometimes stealth, and action! I partially blame this game for my obsession with adventure games now. 

Still to this day, I have my save and the game, and go back on it from time to time just to enjoy the game as it were. I haven't gotten the HD remake still, but I might once my disc starts to nope out on me.

9 - Ar:PieL

Releasing around 2015, this game was a dungeon crawler with a quirk: The characters resembled real-life animals, and it had very nice character models that looked very interesting.  

If it wasn't for the game below this one, I probably wouldn't of bat an eye at it, but I'm glad I did. The powers each character had felt fluid in battle, and whether it be a difficult boss or just mobs, there was always fast-paced combat and also unique enemies to look at. Each NPC felt very unique with characteristics of animals or other things (like the nurse which looked to be similar to a marionette). 

I know, I keep saying that everything looks unique, but it really does. It has a fairy tale vibe to it, it's bright and colorful and chooses to have their darker moments when it does. It's one of those games that makes me want to learn Korean just to read what is going on in the story.

Currently, the game is only out for Korea and Japan, but I hope it does come to NA one day or other places because it's a nice gem in dungeon crawling games. 

8 - Rusty Hearts

Before I even poked Dungeon Fighters Online, I looked at Rusty Hearts that came out in 2011 due to the style of the game. Honestly, I don’t remember much from the game except the dark environment and fun fighting, grinding room through room and eagerly waiting to see the next step in the story. 

Unfortunately, it closed down 2014, but some people are bringing it back potentially soon. I can't wait until it comes back to feel the nostalgia and the game that began my love for dungeon crawling games in the first place, because for such a long time I just didn't like them and never gave them much a chance. 

7 - Momodora Series

Created by r_rdein , The Momodora series in most cases begins in a similar scenario: things are going down and a sacrificial maiden must come to the rescue and save the day in a nutshell. Before it was more pixel-ly, but in the newest game, the graphics are a huge step up. 

Combat is simple, but you need to know when to dodge and when to strike or it could cost your life in the game. Each game has something a bit different, but as you play through each one, you can see the quality of games going up relatively well. The difficulty and world-building in the newer game were a nice sight to see, and the earlier games were very difficult but fun and left me a sense of accomplishment with every victory. 

Each story was very fun to go through, and I hope there will be more added in the Momodora series, or maybe even a remake of the older ones in the style of Reverie Under The Moonlight. The game’s story and the premise was so simple, but at the same time said so much.

6 - Animal Crossing Series

Oh boy, this takes me back. When this came out in 2001, my Uncle got this and said we could live in a town together when I grow up. Fast forward to 2004, where my Uncle was preparing this town and basically getting a bunch of Bells, almost everything in the town was spic and span. After realizing how much I was getting into adventure games and cartoony games like Windwaker in 2003, he decided it was time to show me this bad boy.

At first, I'm going to be honest. I didn't see the point of the game. It was boring, just planting flowers, working for Nook, and designing your house and clothes and whatnot. However, I kept playing it because my Uncle said it was a relaxing game. When I was upset, I went on and calmed myself down, and suddenly I started getting invested into the characters and environment. When people moved out, I got sad and promised to write them, and I grinded to get weeds out of the town. When the new additions came after, and my Uncle and I played the next one on the DS, it was so cool to catch butterflies and fish and just have a relaxing session from the usual violence or fighting. 

But then it would be the last Animal Crossing game I would play with my Uncle. I still go to the original game still and fix the town like my Uncle fixed it back then, and in the DS game I fix both towns. My 3DS game was stolen (along with the 3DS), so I need to get that game again, but this game will always be bittersweet and make me happy to be living a simple and happy life... Until Resetti yells at me for forgetting to save. 

5 - Harvest Moon + Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley

As I got into more life-based games, Harvest Moon came to the rescue and allowed me to make my own farm and eventually raise a family. The town was filled with a lot of memorable people - specifically the goddess and also the mayors in the games. Each day was tasking and balancing everyday work and social life felt almost as hard as real life!

The sprites were so adorable, and I loved when they helped out on the farm, but as the later editions of the Harvest Moon franchise came out, the towns began to feel...Emptier... The NPCs a little less memorable. This is where Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley came along, and brought what I remembered and loved about Harvest Moon. In Stardew Valley, it felt a tad more depressing, but both games were a breath of fresh air with their own quirks to stand out and also be fun.

I hope Harvest Moon brings back the feelings that I felt before, because I still like to play the games - whether they be 3D or Pixellated.

4 - Silent Hill 1-3 (3 Specifically)

Showing up in 2003 was a beautiful game I wasn't allowed to play until I was 8 years old. Everyone will tell you most likely about Silent Hill 2 being the best game in the Franchise. I agree, the second one was amazing, but my personal preference favors the third game specifically because of how it connects Silent Hill 1 to their game. As I said up there, I won't spoil, but the imagery and the whole feeling is genuinely frightening and scary, and emits a true sense of danger and paranoia with it's soundtrack, monsters, and even grim cutscenes. The endings are very nicely made along with bosses in the game. 

Silent Hill 2 was a great game as well, but the issue with it was that I didn't see an outright connection with the first game. Where the first game told a narrative that was finding your daughter (I'll leave it at that), the second felt more like a question of morality while having self-discovery. Maybe it's just me, but how Silent Hill 3 tied in to the first game is almost seamless after you play through and realize what's truly going on.

 The graphics to this day look great, and will forever inspire the horror enthusiast inside of me. As for the HD remake of the game... Er... I don't like to talk about that. It didn't exist guys, mmmkay? 

3 - Nier Automata

Woah, a 2017 game on this list? Why so recent?

The Nier series and mixed two of my favorite things: hack-and-slash combat and bullet hell elements. In the newest game, NieR: Automata, it just improves upon that and with the many things I can't give away because everything I want to say spoils a lot of it. It feels like a true steam/cyberpunk game and I don't feel awkward going through hacking games and hack-and-slash combat. The world is small, but is also dynamic and changes so much.

You grow a connection to the world it built, and it questions morality and duty and a lot more regarding humanity, individuality, fear, companionship... Oh, so much I want to tell you about this game but can't. Many will get turned off by the bullet hell mechanics, as well as the style and the appearance of the characters. If you give this game a try though, it's such a trip and I can't wait for the DLC that’s coming out soon~

Why I put this game instead of the original Nier here is solely due to how many questions it put on my morality and humanity, and I felt so much of a connection to this one more than the previous game.

2 - Phantasy Star Online 2 (And other Phantasy Star Games)

Here’s to a game that will never come out in NA! With SEA's server closing down and NA's continuously being delayed, it's more than likely this will never come out officially for us. However, the JP game is there and a tweaker to give us the ability to play and understand most of the game is almost like a breath of fresh air. 

The game originally game out in 2012, and what got me so immersed in it was how beautiful the game looked to me. A lot would argue that the game looks outdated compared to games that came out now, especially with hands not having bones or animations really, but you can make a truly different and special character and switch your class at anytime. You aren't bound at all to a class, and there are so many emotes and powers to use. Each weapon is a different playstyle, and you can achieve weapons you can use even if the class isn't your main.

Add to the fact the game is literally an alternate reality and more things story-wise I can't go into right now, it's like a dream game for me. Bosses are immense and tough, and just recently they released level 80 to get to, and the way to uncap yourself from the level before is rather challenging.

In the other games, like PSP, I enjoyed the lore and going to other planets, acting like a galactic pirate CAST (a robot). You can design your room, listen to music, and there's so many collabs and fashion to douse yourself in, now a battle arena, challenge miles, and just a lot to sink your teeth in for a F2P game.

Runner Ups: 

Black Desert Online- 

A beautiful but heavily grindy game. The combat is probably the best thing about this game, but a lot of things that has happened still leaves me slightly cautious about the publishers/devs. 

 ArcheAge-

Very original and a great class system, and you could make your own music and sail. My favorite was the ocean creatures lurking in the depths of the sea and surpising you! Similar to BDO, the publishers and devs made me cautious about the game and their business practices left me saddened. 

 Dark Cloud 2-

A forgotten gem to many, but got me so interested into time travel and effects from past-to-future events. The story and characters were so different at the time too, and was a trip for me. 

Touhou-

What got me originally into bullet hell games. The characters are enjoyable to see, the graphics don’t kill my eyes as they spray bullets into my face, and the best girl was in that game: Cirno!  

and Amazing Island-

It’s super mario party mixed with pokemon and you could make a lot of variations in the monster creation. I appreciated the game a lot and hope it pops up as a PC port similar to Jet Set Radio.

1 - Mabinogi

 What? How is a game from 2008 in first place you ask?

The year was probably one of the worst years for me in my entire life, but still I was drawn to this game. It was early 2009, and I came across this weird game called "Mabinogi." I had no idea what it was about, but someone from Talesrunner suggested it to me. Just at the character creation I felt excited and began my story for my character: An adventurer to save Erinn from all the evil-do-ers. Bear with me, I was a kid at the time. It began with a small roleplaying adventure, but suddenly grew into more than that. Almost like a second life.

As the years continued on, they added so much to the game like guns, ninja gear, a battle bard, things that wouldn't fit anywhere but fit in this game, and you weren't limited to a class. You could learn and do almost anything, and customization kept getting better as well. A large heap of my friends came from this game, and I could never find something to fill the gap that Mabinogi leaves in me every time I try to quit. It keeps bringing me back because of how different the game felt. The story went from cute to intense to weird to a... Shakespeare play? (Yes, that was a thing) There was just so much packed into this game.

 When Mabi 2, or Vindictus was announced, I was hoping a revamped version of Mabinogi. Instead, we got... Well, what you know of Vindictus: dungeon crawling fighting game.... A good game, but not at all like the Mabinogi I know and love. 

At the moment, a game named Peria Chronicles looks to be the game that might be similar to Mabinogi in some ways, but I'm not truly sure. I genuinely hope that a game like Mabinogi, or a revamp of the game with new-gen graphics shows up and brings the same amazement that Mabinogi brought to both the child and adult me, and I will forever love this game, as it has me in such a tight grasp. 

Well, that was my list for my top 10 games I will forever adore.  Thanks for reading!  This was genuinely so hard to make, because there's so many games I wanted to include into this list (like Portal, for example, or even Nights). However, these games mostly made it to the list because it made a deep personal connection and helped shape me or make me question myself, and I'm happy to be playing these games. I hope that more beautiful games come out, and that there will be more games that will influence and shape me even more. 

Do you guys have any games that imprinted on you so much? 

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Ashen Wolves

To my followers, sorry for posting this a second time, but I need to test something. If it helps, I edited out some of the grammar issues.

I finished up the Ashen Wolves DLC for Fire Emblem Three Houses about a week ago and man, do I have some feelings about it.

There was honestly more I disliked about it than liked, but at the same time I don’t think it was a complete waste of my time either. The fact that you can only get this DLC if you had the season pass is also something I don’t like, even if I got the pass months ago. I don’t think I could recommend this DLC save for the bonus features and extra classes in the pack, but… Well, let me break down my thoughts a bit here.

The New Classes

Let’s start with something easy like the classes. Overall I think the new classes have their utility, but are in general pretty niche. Mind you, I say this as a casual player just looking at basic utility unit and effort it takes to get them, so it’s possible the more hardcore players will say that War Monk Raphael is the new meta, but to break things down a little…

War Monk

I’m glad we finally have a female-brawling class, or at least class for females to get into, but it comes at a cost. You need a a decent rank in brawling and white magic to use this class, and very few characters have the stats for the that. This has that Mortal Savant problem of a physical or magical character grinding in stat they’re weak in to become a middling hybrid class. Granted, unlike Mortal Savant you can get these classes at level 20, but would anyone really power-level your healer in brawling just to punch things? Or spam characters like Petra or Ingrid in Faith just to have weak heals? I mean, there’s meme-ing and New Game +, but realistically this class feels pointless. Balthus’s heals were pathetic in the DLC and didn’t sell me on this being a hybrid class, or at least not a good one. You’d either get a healer with weak punches, or a fighter with weak heals. (Edit: I’ve just made Lysithea a War Cleric and it’s absolutely hilarious how busted she is with Aura Knuckles. However, that’s one New Game+ so my point still stands.) And while I’ll admit Holy Knight Ferdinand’s weak heals honestly saved me a few times on my Crimson Flower campaign, statistically it’s kind of pointless.

Trickster

Trickster is actually pretty good since it’s a mid-game class that most magic and physical classes can reach, as most magic users also have a decent to high ability in swords as well for some odd reason. Manuela finally has a class to naturally spec into around mid-game that works for her default weapon line, you could also sneak Marianne and Lysithea in there too if you wanted, but overall this class is pretty good. It’s not too niche, it can be worked into during the early and mid game, and while you do have at least unlock thief, that’s not a difficult class to spec into at all. The only real downside is wasting a intermediate certificate to unlock the thief class, and that’s not much of an issue save for time. Overall a good class.

Valkyrie and Dark Flier

Valkyrie and Dark Flyer are female-only classes in a game where I’ve already complained about gender-locked classes. That said, they’re okay. Nice to have a mid-game caster that has more than four movement, but this is still gender-locked, so I can’t have Lindhart flying around spamming warp, canto, and the like. Valkyrie also gives Lysithea something that compliments her dark magic use, but nothing else I can say aside from that. They’re glass canons. Powerful, but can’t take much of a hit. Their canto abilities make keeping them safe a lot easier than most casters.

The Ashen Wolves themselves, as units in the DLC, were a little underwhelming outside of their utility. Like I said, Bathus has weak heals, but his self-healing made him a tank… but that’s a skill most brawlers can get naturally. Yuri was the most useful thanks to his Canto Ring and Foul Play, but Constance and Hapi just felt like more mobile Lysethias, and while Lysethia is great, these maps didn’t really let them one-shot anything like their class functions want them to.

But moving on.

Story

So… a story about the secret fourth house in Fire Emblem Three Houses…

Okay, to make it short, the story is bad.

It’s not terrible, it’s not Fire Emblem Conquest levels of dumb plotholes, but it’s still bad. This game jumped some hoops make the Ashen Wolves work into the lore and story, only to stumble and fall. But before I tackle all that, let’s at least open with something nice, so…

The Good

I’m doing the good in list form because, frankly, there isn’t a lot of good to begin with, but I do want to acknowledge the good that’s in here.

Having a side story involving all 3 house leaders is a good idea. The lack of interaction between them in the main game made it hard to believe the three were friends.

The designs and personalities of the Ashen Wolves themselves are great. Everyone feels unique and don’t bleed into another character, an amazing feat given the size of the cast.

I surprisingly like Yuri quite a bit as a character, if a little annoyed by his blatant secret-keeping and obvious heel-turn later throughout the story.

Abyss in general is an idea I can get behind. Garreg Mach already had secret underground tombs and sanctuaries, so I can buy it having a secret society of undesirables underneath too, as well as protectors in the form of the Wolves.

The final boss was actually pretty fun, both in terms of challenge and mechanics… not a story detail, but it’s also something good.

The Bad

Okay… where to begin?

The actual plot stuff… dear lord. 

For context, Cindered Shadows revolves around three things: the Rite of Rising, a botched resurrection ritual during the early days of Garreg Mach. The Four Apostles, four mystics with special crests that conducted the Rite of Rising and were exiled after failing to resurrect Sothis. And Byleth’s mother Sitri, a nun of the church that died soon after having Byleth who also had a secret admirer in the form of Abyss’s benefactor. All three of these points feel tacked on for the sole purpose of having a fourth house exist. The descendants of the four apostles just happening to be in the same place? Byleth’s mom just happening to have a random admirer as the main villain? The fact that a second type of resurrection ritual existing that just happened to never to be mentioned? Now, I’ve only finished Crimson Flower, the route that did the least amount of world-building and setting explanation, but even I recognize that some hoops are being jumped here. It feels like there’s a lot of world-building either being ignored or retconned so that the Four Apostles make sense within the lore. Especially since all four Ashen Wolves just happen to be descendants of the them. That’s just poor writing to me.

Yuri pulling that double heel and face-turn at the end was also dumb. Yuri being a rouge and scoundrel with secret motives is fine, that’s basically his character at a glance. However, that makes the heel-turn obvious, especially when it happens within the last three chapters of the side story. Again, it just feels like bad writing to have the obvious rouge character turn on you at the last minute. Yes, there were some hints that he was playing both sides, but still. The shady guy being shady isn’t really much of a plot twist, and while that isn’t bad in itself the fact that the writers try to frame it as clever, or at least as an honest surprise just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall, it feels like what was going to be a simple story about Abyss and the people there turned into something more complicated for the sake of giving it more importance, and that irritates me.

And the gameplay? The maps themselves? Let’s talk about that next.

The Maps and Gameplay

There’s a video by a Bismix that summarizes my feelings perfectly:

“So how was Cindered Shadows?”

“Foul Play was cool.”

And you know what? Foul Play was cool. A special movement skill that swaps places with a unit at decent range. Combined with the Canto ring it was a damn handy tool to move around Edelgard and Lindhart. But aside from that, I have a question for the Old Guard of Fire Emblem. The folks that have been playing this since that old GBA title that featured Eliwood.

Do you like getting kicked in the dick? Repeatedly?

Because that’s what these levels felt like. A map full of Assassins with high Avoid, magic users with high damage, and every unit having Silver Weapons. Is there a reason for this aside from challenge? Is there a reason to be this disadvantaged after chapter 3? And the reinforcement, don’t even get me started on the reinforcements. Chapter 2, 3, and 4 were complete bullshit because of them. Three waves of reinforcements and the Death Knight? A 1-in-3 chance of summoning reinforcements with a stats debuff for pulling the wrong lever? An escape map that features an entire army of reinforcements at the very last section? There’s challenge, and then there’s this.

I’ll ask again Old Guard, do you like getting kicked in the dick repeatedly?

Because whenever I see nonsense like that I remember the complaints about current Fire Emblem games being too easy. And while I’ll admit to not being a hardcore fan of this series, I doubt that the game was meant to induce so many unfair advantages and rage-inducing moments toward the enemy for the sake of challenge. I had to set this game down at least five times while playing through this DLC. I don’t find it a challenge to face a mountain of enemies that only four characters on my team can realistically fight, and only 3 of them actual able to hit said enemies. I don’t see feeding half the map to Byleth, Dimitri, and Balthus because they’re the few units that can take the hits and get kills to be skillful. I don’t get how spamming reinforcements after a long and difficult map is adding challenge. 

The only map that had an interesting gimmick was the final boss. Their map-wide attack displaced your entire army and summoned two phantoms that would be sacrificed to heal the boss at the end of your next turn if you didn’t kill them in time. However, the phantoms could be killed by most of your party in one or two rounds, and they dropped heal potions for your party to share and use to prep for the next phase. That map was a matter of prioritizing which units to tank the phantoms damage, trade blows, heal with the potions obtained, and get into position to do major damage to the boss when it was on cooldown. It was fun once I learned the pattern and a challenge as you couldn’t just spam the same units to take out the phantoms due to the party displacement. It was fun, interesting, and required on-the-fly strategy, the only map to really do so.

This… is leading me down something off-topic, so I’ll simply say that adding challenge in a turn-based RPG should always be based on gimmicks and special rules to keep the gameplay interesting, rarely should raising numbers be the main way of adding challenge.

With that out the way I’ll get to my last point, which is…

Small Nitpicks that Only Bug Allen

I’d usually state this portion first, but this DLC had so many bigger issues that I feel it’d be best to use my nitpicks as a cooldown rather than a warm-up. Thankfully my nitpicks are more so my preferences than actual nitpicks, as most small issues I have with this DLC are issues that came from the original. That said:

I feel like Ashe and Hilda should had been switched out for Mercedes and Raphael. We really needed at least one more decent healer in that group, and as I said before, Bathus and Yuri’s heals are pathetically weak. Either that or Lindhart should have had the Warp spell. Raph would had another decent tank that wasn’t as much of a glass canon as Hilda. Yes, we had Edelgard, but I would had preferred Raph do the tanking.

Jeralt and Sothis should had been involved in this DLC. I don’t care that they were trying to keep the canon point ambiguous, it should had happened. If Byleth wasn’t going to react to their mother’s dead corpse then I sure as hell would had liked to see either Sothis or Jeralt do so. Again, I don’t like Byleth, but that lack of emotion on their part really kills moments like this.

I would had liked it if they didn’t lock skills. Chapter 3 and 4 wouldn’t had been so suffering if Lindhart could warp Edelgard a few times. Again, getting kicked in the dick isn’t my idea of fun or challenging.

So, with all that out of the way I think I can move on to my last point, which is:

In the Future

Like I usually say, I find it pointless to try and “fix” a story that’s already been told, but I see nothing wrong with make suggestions for the future.

That said I’d like to see the next story DLC focus more on the culture and world of Fodlan. We only know about these places by name and their students, not much else. A DLC that covers the five-year gap would be nice, something that doesn’t have Byleth in it would be nice too. Fire Emblem Fates had a few Corrin-less DLC maps, and Fire Emblem Echoes had some side stories without Alm and Celica. I think it could work. A story DLC on the church and specifically Sothis would be great too. A story map that showed how Dimitri lost his eye. A prologue map showing all the houses meeting up before Byleth came into the picture. A playable map of the Battle of Red Cliffs, things like that.

If we get more classes in future DLC then please no more gender-locked classes is all I have to say. Anyway, that’s all I got for now. Maybe now I’ll actually finish the Gacha Rambling…

Or maybe I’ll do a thesis on Granbelm, which ever comes first.

[apkrich-blog]

Age of Magic Mod Apk Download + Unlocked Everything

New Post has been published on https://www.apkrich.com/age-of-magic-mod-apk-download-unlocked-everything/

Age of Magic Mod Apk Download + Unlocked Everything

Age of Magic Apk Mod is a Role Playing new mobile turn-based fantasy RPG about legions of epic heroes fighting on the remnants of an ancient magical world. Age of Magic Latest version has god mod, damage and unlocked everything. This game has your own squad of 5 heroes and discovers their stories in Campaign mode, defeat other players in unforgettable PvP battles to reach the top of the Arena or Tournament. It’s time to prove your skills in the infamous Tomb of Horrors: a grim lair easy to enter, but hard to leave alive!

Age of Magic Latest Version Features

1. GREAT STORY CAMPAIGNS

Age of Magic has the powers of light and darkness. You’ll meet legendary heroes and fight epic battles with terrifying enemies.

2. SUPER LEGENDARY HEROES

You can collect over 60+ epic heroes, level them up and gear them out with powerful weapons and armor, and upgrade their abilities, rarity and use them in different strategies and form your dream team of heroes to build the strongest party in the world.

3. FAST-PACED BATTLEFIELD

Now you’ve to lead your party into quick but tactical turn-based epic battles in grand arenas where the visuals are stunning and every choice counts in this game. Here are some user reviews:

Bogdan Jelenkovic: One of the best RPG games. My favorite thing here is that no hero is wasted because there are contents u can use all of them. FOR DEVELOPERS!!! 1. Include some contents where 2-3 players can make a party and with 10-15 heroes together fight against some bosses 2. Real-time PvP with pick and ban system 3. Fire guys who made chat script, delete it completely and employ someone who can make a good chat Focus on new contents, most of the people quit this kind of games because they are too repetitive

Dushyanth Sachan: It’s just a cash grab, you can’t enjoy this game without spending money. I’m at level 28 and the game has already become a nightmare the enemies are tough as hell, and upgrading heroes and skills are way too slow if you don’t spend money. I had to grind for resources for a week just to clear a level I was stuck at and guess what the very next battle is twice as tough, this is absolutely ridiculous and totally unacceptable.

Elinam Anansi: I have played this game for one day but this game is already getting too much harder than another freemium game. like you have to buy resources and upgrade your hero just to feel how to play it in a normal way (not too easy but not too hard) otherwise you have to grind which is pretty boring.

Juan Gonzalez: game is really fun and interesting. unlike other kinds of games that make it really hard to get characters and power up which is almost forcing u to spend money, this game doesn’t but u can if u want to be powerful really fast. Great contents and events, a must download the game.

Rasharos: It’s an amazing game with great potential. Not too easy, not too hard. I just believe story dialogues representation could use some help, looks kinda odd. Excited what this game turns to be in the future.

Georgi Georgiev: Great and difficult game!! It’s not for kids who love to win easily every battle. You have to use your brain because everything has a tactic. The game is not paid to win because you can achieve everything without spending a single coin.

Jervin Mark Caco: Nice game. Good graphics and nice story but the skill’s damage are too low and also Ronan shield skill has a bug because the effect of it in the allies are random but stated in the description it will give shield on the lowest hp ally. In addition, this game is pay to win, lack of heroes and you can’t even get heroes easily.

BURCIN BORAN: I love this game. its been 1.month and I am level 49 now. didn’t spend any money till now. my only suggestions are 1- practice mode. I want to try my new heroes to see their abilities. also when my energy finishes, sometimes I just want to play without gain anything. 2- healers are too powerful. some teams have 2 or 3 healers and it’s really boring to play against them.

Yaşar Gökay Üzümcü: Graphical experiences are awesome. The turn-based strategical camera is passive. Heroic skills are inadequate for an addictive and stimulative RPG game. Refill of energies is absolutely sickening!!!

Neeloy Biswas: It would be great if I could get some compensation😁… I am accumulating all the necessary things to get Azariel… but really.thanks for your active response to resolve the problem. we enjoy playing the game. you guys can give a little ad while launching the game to get some money… it’s just a suggestion.

Marvin Cox: Love this game. Don’t have to pay to play to be good which is very fair and refreshing. Also, there is more to come which keeps us all interested. Still fighting my way through the great story. great characters, great game. worthy of a download.

Franklin Carter: I am impressed with this game. Don’t need to pay to play, just give up a few minutes each day and ‘REALLY’ play when You have time, and You can advance… Cool graphics and original storyline give this game an A+ rating from me…

Garrett Wuthrich: TLDR: Game is OK. Good graphics and decent fight mechanics, but it’s a grind if you’re not willing to pay. After Chapter 1 and about level 20, the game becomes a hard grind of an RPG. Which isn’t good when you’re forced to wait for energy to accumulate based on real-world time to do anything, otherwise you can just buy your way through the grind. Combined with, IMO, not being enough content and the real-time wait to perform actions/events, the game feels like a struggle I’m not willing to pay.

Ben Hull: very well designed, have played similar games to this in the past and by far this is the best one I have played yet. graphics are very nice and smooth and I also like the light and dark concept. overall ….. Great game 🙂

Andy Snuffles: The gameplay is good, art style and animations are good, but not very fun to play as progression slows to a crawl very quickly. the grind is much worse than other games with a similar model and weeks into playing I still have the same 5 light characters I had on day 1. The dark characters are way less individual and fleshed out which makes me not want to play them.

Zachary Mills: Great graphics, the game gets you up to speed pretty fast and is fun. But something about the currency, market, equips, and leveling up system seems sloppy to me. Can’t give any direct suggestions to improve the game, other than maybe focus on more skills or an actual skill tree perhaps? This game is definitely worth playing and fun, just not sure how long ill continue playing.

Faronta Tate: Game is fun and addictive, especially if you’re into RPG role playing type games. The gameplay is similar to Marvel Strike Force. As you progress you unlock new characters and abilities as well as increasing your level and ability levels. There are clans, PvP, raids, light and dark storylines and other modes to play. You will eventually hit a wall slowing your progress drastically. Putting money into the game, of course, will speed up progression, if you don’t it will become a very long grind.

Hafiz Azmi: it’s a very good game to play. it has a storyline that keeps the game interesting. I love it but I must say the in-game price is too much for us down in the east. as much as I want to buy the healer elf, it just cost me a bomb to purchase it. rm140 is like 1/10 of our country minimum salary 🤣 it’s not going to happen. anyway, I did purchase the bunny though ni like it. it had helped a lot, especially in the early game.

Michael Doran: I’ve been playing Age of Magic for a few weeks now and I really enjoy the graphics and the gameplay. I’ve just done your most recent update (Jan 2019) and now the game won’t even load… Managed to solve not loading problem by uninstalling the game and re-installing it, a bit tedious but it worked.

Download APK

Additional Information

App Download Version 1.10.1 Last Updated April 5, 2019 Apk Size 58 MB Offered By Playkot LTD Category Role Playing Content Rating Rated for 7+ Support Android Version Android 4.4 and up Installs 1,000,000+ Play Store Available

Age of Magic App Permissions

This app has access to:

Photos/Media/Files

read the contents of your USB storage

modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

Wi-Fi connection information

view Wi-Fi connections

view network connections

full network access

prevent device from sleeping

Google Play license check

[365footballorg-blog]

Healthy Yangel Herrera "really important" to NYCFC's playoff run

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October 30, 201811:32AM EDT

BRONX, N.Y. — Yangel Herrera has lived in New York City for less than two years, but he already feels like a New Yorker.

It’s unclear if he’s got a favorite pizzeria or bagel joint, but in many ways, the Venezuelan midfielder has that prototypical New York attitude. Take his rehab from a broken ankle, for example. While others said he was done for the season, Herrera wouldn’t accept that answer. He put his head down and “worked a lot in the shadows,” according to NYCFC captain David Villa, to get himself back on the field.

On Sunday, in a 3-1 win over the Philadelphia Union on Decision Day presented by AT&T, Herrera was in the NYCFC starting XI for the first time in five months. And while the plan from coach Dome Torrent was for Herrera to play about 60-70 minutes, the 20-year-old midfielder had other ideas and played the entire 90 minutes for the first time since a 2-2 draw against LAFC on May 13.

Is there a concern that Herrera won’t be able to recharge his battery in time for Wednesday’s Knockout Round game (7 pm ET | FS1, UniMás in US; TVAS, TSN in Canada — Full TV & Streaming info) against the same Union?

Fuggedaboutit.

“I felt great,” Herrera told MLSsoccer.com after training at Yankee Stadium Monday morning. “I was originally supposed to play 60-70 minutes, but I ended up playing 90 because I felt great. I physically feel really good.”

While other playoff-bound MLS players have logged a lot of miles during a grueling eight-month regular season, Herrera is fresher than most. Of course, he would have preferred to be on the field than in the gym rehabbing his ankle for the majority of the season.

“It was really hard,” said Herrera, who was selected No. 4 on the 22 Under 22 list this year. “It was five months, it was a long time, but I kept working hard. I wanted to come back and come back exactly how I have come back with the physical form I have.”

Herrera’s return from that horrific ankle injury in Houston on May 25 has also energized NYCFC at just the right time of the season.

On Sunday, Herrera was influential in the middle of the park, a stark contrast to the first meeting between the teams in August when the Union bossed the midfield in a 2-0 victory.

“He’s one of the best players, not only on our team, but one of the best players in the league without a doubt in his position. He has an amazing future and he’s really important for us,” Villa said. “We need him. Another guy could think, ‘OK, I broke my ankle, I’m 20 years old and we’ll see next year.’

ExtraTime Radio previews NYC-PHI

“When the people said probably you don’t play, he was focused and said, ‘I will play in the playoffs, I want to work to play.’ He worked a lot in the shadows and we say thank you to him because he’s a really important player for us.”

Herrera, whose second year-long loan from Manchester City will expire in December, said he doesn’t know what the future will bring beyond the Audi 2018 MLS Cup Playoffs. He’s also not looking beyond this postseason, one he believes NYCFC can make a deep run in.

“I think the expectations are very good, I think we can go very far,” Herrera said. “I think we can definitely get to the Conference Final and to the Cup as well.”

Grinding, lofty expectations, a bit of swagger? Yup, Herrera is becoming a New Yorker more and more each day.

“Yes,” Herrera said when asked if he feels tied to the Big Apple. “I’ve been here almost two years and I do feel like part of New York City.”

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Healthy Yangel Herrera “really important” to NYCFC's playoff run was originally published on 365 Football