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crystalmaeson · 3 years

Text

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!

#Pokemon #Crystal Maeson #ROM hack #Maeson #RPG

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