Hack Series: Pokémon Photonic Sun & Prismatic Moon

[Buffel Saft]

I've been playing through this (rebalanced ver) for the last week or so and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. The first island was a bit of a pushover but the second island was *really* hard and it felt like a true achievement to get past the trials and the kahuna - I even had to break out the showdown damage calculator and plan my strategies out.

The levelling curve is however really unforgiving even in the context of being a difficulty hack - for example, the second trial is over ten levels above the best grass available, and you really do need those extra levels wiith how hard the Araquanid hits. I ended up just putting an exp modifier on because I didn't want to grind for an hour.

Getting some pokemon, especially later in the game, is also kinda annoying in some places. The Ralts family is a good example, if you want a megavoir/megallade later you havee to go all the way back to the first route and level a level 3 Ralts up all the way to the rest of your team, as the evolved forms don't appear anywhere else in the wild.

Otherwise, USUM with this hack has genuinely become my favourite Pokemon game after BlazeBlack 2. It's so good.

Thanks, glad you're enjoying the hack so far! Always makes my day reading feedback like this.

In hindsight the gap between trainers/totems and wild Pokemon is a bit much, especially as there's no good way to grind if needed. The curve being based on the exp share is a big part of the problem, as wild mon levels are based on your party's level when you first enter a route, and that tends to get a lot higher after all the trainers are cleared, resulting in a big gap between the two.

Not too much I could do about the Ralts issue, there's only so much room in the grass! Would've been nice if USUM had something like the Lumiose restaurants in XY to help with levelling new party members though.

It's hard to beat BBVW2 - that and Renegade Platinum are easily my favourite Pokemon games.

 

[ARCEUS493ZELDA]

i forget if i or anyone else ever mentioned this but one of my favorite experiences with this hack so far was actually the youngster joey moment at the trainer's school, i loved how you not only gave him both rattatas but even afterwards you had him mention them being the "top percentage" just like old times back in gen 2........ i tell ya its the little things like that that i enjoy the most

 

[Buffel Saft]

i forget if i or anyone else ever mentioned this but one of my favorite experiences with this hack so far was actually the youngster joey moment at the trainer's school, i loved how you not only gave him both rattatas but even afterwards you had him mention them being the "top percentage" just like old times back in gen 2........ i tell ya its the little things like that that i enjoy the most

Haha, I can't take credit for the "top percentage" line, he actually says that in vanilla USUM. Couldn't resist giving him the double Rattata team though, saw that name in the trainer editor and that was clearly the only option!

 

[KarebuKupa]

Is there some sort of bug with Mega-mence's Aerilate? I used a boosted Double-Edge against a Team Skull grunt's Roserade in Po Town, Same level, and Salamence failed to OHKO it.

This should be impossible, even if the Roserade had a Bold nature and 252 HP/Def, Neutral 252 Atk Mega Mence is guaranteed a knockout on such a Roserade.
Any idea on what's going on?

 

[Buffel Saft]

Is there some sort of bug with Mega-mence's Aerilate? I used a boosted Double-Edge against a Team Skull grunt's Roserade in Po Town, Same level, and Salamence failed to OHKO it.

This should be impossible, even if the Roserade had a Bold nature and 252 HP/Def, Neutral 252 Atk Mega Mence is guaranteed a knockout on such a Roserade.
Any idea on what's going on?

It's highly unlikely there's a bug with Aerilate - the hack only changes data tables, nothing that affects damage calculation or abilities. It's very strange that Roserade survived that though, the only way it can do so is with a Sash and it definitely doesn't have one. Could be an issue with your ROM - I know there's at least one pre-patched version of the hack around that is somehow incredibly broken - but if you've got a good copy and patched it yourself that's probably not the issue. I'll test the hack just in case though.

 

[gabrre]

The boss battles have custom EVs isnt? i need to know what evs they use, cause i will start a nuzlocke. Can you provide please? i only find theirs team on the docs

 

[Buffel Saft]

The boss battles have custom EVs isnt? i need to know what evs they use, cause i will start a nuzlocke. Can you provide please? i only find theirs team on the docs

Yes they do have custom EVs, but it's not just the boss battles. Most regular trainers also have EVs past a certain point in the game. I'm not willing to add EV spreads to the documents, but if you really want to see them they can be viewed in pk3DS.

 

[Volnatius]

Can someone give me help with beating the first Dexio fight? I can somewhat defeat his Mr. Mime but that Slowpoke simply heals away all damage I do to it. Any advice?

Seems like I will have a hard time if all trainers are now like this 😅.

 

[Buffel Saft]

Can someone give me help with beating the first Dexio fight? I can somewhat defeat his Mr. Mime but that Slowpoke simply heals away all damage I do to it. Any advice?

Seems like I will have a hard time if all trainers are now like this 😅.

What's your team? Slowpoke's got bad special defense, so hitting it with super effective special attacks is the fastest way to deal with it. You can get Electroweb and Shock Wave from the Melemele move tutor, though you might not have anything that can learn those.

 

[Dias200]

Heya again o/ So I was playing the rom from the start again (lost save file due to pc needing factory reset) and I realized that Wurmple still evolves at "random" to Cascoon or Silcoon. So a suggestion I have for the hack is to make Wurmple evolve to each form by some different method. I don't know which method would be best tho >.< Also, not sure where else to ask this so might as well ask here: How is your Emerald hack comming along? Last time I remember you talking about it, I was like "This will be awesome, can't wait for it be released!" in my head xD

 

[Buffel Saft]

Heya again o/ So I was playing the rom from the start again (lost save file due to pc needing factory reset) and I realized that Wurmple still evolves at "random" to Cascoon or Silcoon. So a suggestion I have for the hack is to make Wurmple evolve to each form by some different method. I don't know which method would be best tho >.< Also, not sure where else to ask this so might as well ask here: How is your Emerald hack comming along? Last time I remember you talking about it, I was like "This will be awesome, can't wait for it be released!" in my head xD

Hey! Yeah I haven't updated this hack except for fixes in quite a while, so that sort of thing hasn't been changed. I think it was decided that level up during the day for Silcoon and night for Cascoon was the best alternative method. Could also make it Sun Stone and Moon Stone but keep the regular method too.

Version one of my Emerald hack's pretty much done, just need to finish the documents and fix some bugs (someone broke Castform and Cherrim a while back so I'd like to fix those before release). If all goes well it'll be ready to go in the next two or three weeks.

 

[KarebuKupa]

There's a bug with the mythical move tutor in Hano Grand Resort, I had a Keldeo in the lead slot, catching it via Island Scan, and he doesn't recognize me as having Keldeo so I can't teach it Secret Sword.

 

[Buffel Saft]

There's a bug with the mythical move tutor in Hano Grand Resort, I had a Keldeo in the lead slot, catching it via Island Scan, and he doesn't recognize me as having Keldeo so I can't teach it Secret Sword.

That tutor will only teach Secret Sword to fateful encounter Keldeos. Sadly there's no way for me to make the one you get in the hack a fateful encounter, so that can't be fixed. I'll add Secret Sword to Keldeo's level up moves at some point to get around that.

 

[Volnatius]

What's your team? Slowpoke's got bad special defense, so hitting it with super effective special attacks is the fastest way to deal with it. You can get Electroweb and Shock Wave from the Melemele move tutor, though you might not have anything that can learn those.

My team is Brionne lvl 27, Noibat lvl 22, Sneasel lvl 17, Quilava lvl 27, Buizel lvl 22 and Ivysaur lvl 20.

Not sure why I cannot beat this guy. His slowpoke is so op and just frustrating.

 

[Jk Howling]

Guess who's playing this game again oops. I swear whenever I get bored, I just go back to this. It has such a good balance and fun variety of Pokemon, its easy to come back to.


Anyways I noticed that Mime Jr. and Mr. Mime respectively don't learn a single offensive fairy type move at all by levelup, which I find... really surprising. Literally nothing- not even something basic like Fairy Wind.
It gets Dazzling Gleam via TM, but that's all the way in Poni Canyon! Its actually quite baffling, especially from a vanilla standpoint.. Gamefreak REALLY didn't add a single fairy move to its learnset haha??

Anyways, maybe you could give it like Disarming Voice early on, and something stronger later on? Even if it's just Dazzling Gleam at 44 like in SWSH, that'd be better than nothing.
Could even add Moonblast or Draining Kiss to its arsenal, perhaps.


Also apparently I never got back re: the bugged level. Never thought about the bubbling spots having higher levels lol, my bad!

 

[Buffel Saft]

My team is Brionne lvl 27, Noibat lvl 22, Sneasel lvl 17, Quilava lvl 27, Buizel lvl 22 and Ivysaur lvl 20.

Not sure why I cannot beat this guy. His slowpoke is so op and just frustrating.

Ah I can see why, most of your Pokemon only have physical attacks this early on so they'll have a hard time breaking through Slowpoke. You could probably stall it out with Sleep Powder and Leech Seed on Ivysaur if it still has those moves?

Guess who's playing this game again oops. I swear whenever I get bored, I just go back to this. It has such a good balance and fun variety of Pokemon, its easy to come back to.


Anyways I noticed that Mime Jr. and Mr. Mime respectively don't learn a single offensive fairy type move at all by levelup, which I find... really surprising. Literally nothing- not even something basic like Fairy Wind.
It gets Dazzling Gleam via TM, but that's all the way in Poni Canyon! Its actually quite baffling, especially from a vanilla standpoint.. Gamefreak REALLY didn't add a single fairy move to its learnset haha??

Anyways, maybe you could give it like Disarming Voice early on, and something stronger later on? Even if it's just Dazzling Gleam at 44 like in SWSH, that'd be better than nothing.
Could even add Moonblast or Draining Kiss to its arsenal, perhaps.


Also apparently I never got back re: the bugged level. Never thought about the bubbling spots having higher levels lol, my bad!

Haha, glad you're still enjoying it!

Yeah that's pretty bad. It made sense in XY as Mr. Mime had no room for more level up moves, but there's no such limit in gen 7. Just Game freak doing their thing I guess? Not sure why it doesn't get Moonblast, it's not like Togekiss where there's a clear balance reason for not having it.

 

[Raishin]

I really wanna give this hackrom a try on my 3ds. It looks really cool! What's the latest version though?

 

[the ash greninja maniac16]

Umm something seems wrong with my game, everything seems to be working fine except the wild encounters.
i keep encountering normal pokemon from ultra sun. been trying for an hour haven't found a single new mon
Any idea how to fix this?

 

[Buffel Saft]

I really wanna give this hackrom a try on my 3ds. It looks really cool! What's the latest version though?

Thanks! Latest version is whatever it says at the top of the first post (IIRC it's 2.36).

Umm something seems wrong with my game, everything seems to be working fine except the wild encounters.
i keep encountering normal pokemon from ultra sun. been trying for an hour haven't found a single new mon
Any idea how to fix this?

First thing to do is check that the wild encounter file has been installed. Go the 00040000001B5000/a/0/8/ directory and check that there's a file there named "2". It should be around 460MB.

 

[the ash greninja maniac16]

Thanks! Latest version is whatever it says at the top of the first post (IIRC it's 2.36).

First thing to do is check that the wild encounter file has been installed. Go the 00040000001B5000/a/0/8/ directory and check that there's a file there named "2". It should be around 460MB.

yes seems like thats the problem, I checked the directory you mentioned but there was no file name "2" but there's a file named "3" . Its missing I guess, what should i do? should i try extracting the rebalanced zip file again?
EDIT : I tried extracting the zip file again but there's still no file named "2" in the directory you mentioned.....