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Hack Series: Pokéluv - A Balanced, Randomized Experience (FireRed/Emerald) [UPDATE]

Have fixed the issue 😊 PokeluvFRfull patch has been updated.

Sevii Islands should now activate after the first time you beat the E4. Only thing I haven't tested yet is if everything works normally the second time you beat the E4 (i.e. it doesn't re-activate Oak's Sevii island script), but from how I set it up it should work fine.
 
Thank you cery much Akiak, been waiting for this full walkthrough 😊
 
BIG UPDATE

Through some sort of miracle (thank you Gamer2020) I was able to skip the entire process of copying over every single Pokemon from FireRed to Emerald and have completed the Emerald version!

I've decided to use Pokemon Emerald Final as a "base", and since it's still getting updated, the patch should be used after you've applied the latest version of the Emerald Final patch (unlike the FireRed patch which is simply applied to the vanilla ROM).

By the way, my hack will re-enable capitalization (because I personally prefer it that way).

Again, I've also included basic versions of the hack, with and without the Physical/Special split.

Finally, I noticed a handful of mistakes in the FireRed version which have been fixed. It's very minor stuff though (mainly some Pokemon having moves they shouldn't have) so I wouldn't bother to update if you've already started a playthrough on the previous version.

As always please let me know about any bugs you might encounter (I've only tested the beginning of the game).

Hope you enjoy!
 
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So the Sevii Island issue made me stop playing this hack until it was fixed. While it was fixed, I played Adventure Red Chapter, a very long hack. After that, I finally got back to this hack. Thank you for fixing the Sevii Islands issue, I was able to do all the stuff there and beat the Elite 4 and Champion's rematch teams. I was able to return to the Sevii Islands after beating the Pokemon League again, so no bugs there.

Overall I enjoyed the hack. I used the randomizer settings in the OP as well as a Steel monotype. That spiced things up and it definitely made my team unique. Forretress, Aggron, Scizor, Beldum, Mawile, and Steelix. Honestly if the randomizer brought Skarmory and/or Magnemite/Magneton sooner, I would've used them. I made sure no Legendaries were in the wild, so no Jirachi or Registeel for me. Beldum and Scizor were the MVPs because of their sweeping abilities. Scizor dominated the first Pokemon League challenge. Beldum was the MVP for the 2nd Pokemon League challenge. That one was ridiculous because Blue had a Mewtwo, the randomizer tortured me with that. Also, Torkoal and Rapidash, as if it knew I had a Steel monotype team. Eventually I got into the right situation where Beldum double danced with Sharpen and Agility, taking down Mewtwo and outspeeding and OHKOing the Fire-types in Blue's rematch team.

As far as critiques, I think more could be done to make pre-evolutions more appealing, mainly some BST enhancements. More than the ones implemented. Documentation would be helpful because I didn't bother looking at all the Pokemon to see what they have. I used G3T but didn't spend too much time on it, a document is better anyway. Then again, my monotype was extremely limited, the only pre-evolved Steel-types I could get is Magnemite, Aron, and Beldum. Aggron was more appealing because of the power. Beldum's sweeping moves and Levitate made it more appealing than Metagross. That's just my opinion, I appreciate the effort a lot. It definitely separates itself from say Emerald Balanced Edition, which gave everyone a BST of 600.

I do like Throwback and appreciate that as the base ROM, but man I love Emerald Final. I'll check out the Emerald version eventually. Ending on a more positive note, thanks again for making this, very solid.
 
SevenChurches said:
So the Sevii Island issue made me stop playing this hack until it was fixed. While it was fixed, I played Adventure Red Chapter, a very long hack. After that, I finally got back to this hack. Thank you for fixing the Sevii Islands issue, I was able to do all the stuff there and beat the Elite 4 and Champion's rematch teams. I was able to return to the Sevii Islands after beating the Pokemon League again, so no bugs there.

Overall I enjoyed the hack. I used the randomizer settings in the OP as well as a Steel monotype. That spiced things up and it definitely made my team unique. Forretress, Aggron, Scizor, Beldum, Mawile, and Steelix. Honestly if the randomizer brought Skarmory and/or Magnemite/Magneton sooner, I would've used them. I made sure no Legendaries were in the wild, so no Jirachi or Registeel for me. Beldum and Scizor were the MVPs because of their sweeping abilities. Scizor dominated the first Pokemon League challenge. Beldum was the MVP for the 2nd Pokemon League challenge. That one was ridiculous because Blue had a Mewtwo, the randomizer tortured me with that. Also, Torkoal and Rapidash, as if it knew I had a Steel monotype team. Eventually I got into the right situation where Beldum double danced with Sharpen and Agility, taking down Mewtwo and outspeeding and OHKOing the Fire-types in Blue's rematch team.

As far as critiques, I think more could be done to make pre-evolutions more appealing, mainly some BST enhancements. More than the ones implemented. Documentation would be helpful because I didn't bother looking at all the Pokemon to see what they have. I used G3T but didn't spend too much time on it, a document is better anyway. Then again, my monotype was extremely limited, the only pre-evolved Steel-types I could get is Magnemite, Aron, and Beldum. Aggron was more appealing because of the power. Beldum's sweeping moves and Levitate made it more appealing than Metagross. That's just my opinion, I appreciate the effort a lot. It definitely separates itself from say Emerald Balanced Edition, which gave everyone a BST of 600.

I do like Throwback and appreciate that as the base ROM, but man I love Emerald Final. I'll check out the Emerald version eventually. Ending on a more positive note, thanks again for making this, very solid.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much!!

As far as the enhancements to pre-evos, I get it. The thing is I took a really strict approach where I would never give a Pokemon a stat I didn't believe it could realistically have, which often results in somewhat weak Pokemon, but I decided that was just how it was gonna be.

As far as documentation, I agree 100%. I've been lazy about it but it does feel like something that would be very much appreciated by a lot of people, so I think I'm just gonna start working on that now.

Again thanks, your input has been invaluable :)
 
So the documentation is coming along well, only have the 3rd gen left to add.

Just wanted to ask a couple questions about your run SevenChurches, hopefully hasn't been too long :)

1) You said Blue had a Mewtwo. But you definitely checked the No Legendaries box for trainers in the randomizer?

2) Do you remember if the E4 had any NFE mons?
 
Akiak said:
So the documentation is coming along well, only have the 3rd gen left to add.

Just wanted to ask a couple questions about your run SevenChurches, hopefully hasn't been too long :)

1) You said Blue had a Mewtwo. But you definitely checked the No Legendaries box for trainers in the randomizer?

2) Do you remember if the E4 had any NFE mons?
Click to expand...

1. I honestly don't remember. I'll say that in my previous instances of randomizing the game when you updated it, Blue never had any Legendary Pokemon. So it's possible I didn't check "No Legendaries."

2. Agatha had a Koffing, Bruno had 2 Combuskens, but most of the teams were of fully-evolved Pokemon.
 
SevenChurches said:
1. I honestly don't remember. I'll say that in my previous instances of randomizing the game when you updated it, Blue never had any Legendary Pokemon. So it's possible I didn't check "No Legendaries."

2. Agatha had a Koffing, Bruno had 2 Combuskens, but most of the teams were of fully-evolved Pokemon.
Click to expand...

Ok perfect, and just to be sure you didn't encounter legendaries on any other trainers?
 
Fixed a bug where the player's bag would appear glitched in PokeluvEfinal.

There's another visual glitch that happens if you catch a Pokemon you haven't caught before while simultaneously gaining an extra level, the Pokedex info will appear shifted after the battle (although this doesn't affect gameplay and the Pokedex looks fine afterwards). This is a part of Emerald Final (and from what I can tell every Emerald hack that has the EXP-on-catching feature) so not fixable on my end.
 
Akiak said:
Fixed a bug where the player's bag would appear glitched in PokeluvEfinal.

There's another visual glitch that happens if you catch a Pokemon you haven't caught before while simultaneously gaining an extra level, the Pokedex info will appear shifted after the battle (although this doesn't affect gameplay and the Pokedex looks fine afterwards). This is a part of Emerald Final (and from what I can tell every Emerald hack that has the EXP-on-catching feature) so not fixable on my end.
Click to expand...

Did you update the OP with this fix? I just got the game loaded and when I opened the bag, the game crashed, showing just black.
 
SevenChurches said:
I have. I tested with just the latest version of Emerald Final over a clean Emerald ROM, and it's fine. Then when I used your Pokeluv patch, whether it's Emerald Basic or PSS, I end up with these issues.
Click to expand...

Oh, the basic/PSS ones are not meant to be used with Emerald Final. They're meant to be combined with other hacks or just used on a plain vanilla ROM.

You're supposed to use the PokeluvEfinal patch after applying the latest version of Emerald Final.

Or are you saying that you're attempting to use the Basic/PSS patches on a vanilla ROM and encountering these issues?
 
Akiak said:
Oh, the basic/PSS ones are not meant to be used with Emerald Final. They're meant to be combined with other hacks or just used on a plain vanilla ROM.

You're supposed to use the PokeluvEfinal patch after applying the latest version of Emerald Final.

Or are you saying that you're attempting to use the Basic/PSS patches on a vanilla ROM and encountering these issues?
Click to expand...

Oh no, I got it all wrong, that's totally my bad. That's embarrassing.
 
It took a while, but I finally got to play the Emerald version. I used the same randomizer settings as the OP, and this time it was a Dragon monotype. I had Flygon, Altaria, and Kingdra. It was super quick and pretty easy. I was overleveled for most of the game, I wasn't for Steven, but I still beat him. Speedup was used a lot, but it was still very short. I finished it within a day. Maybe the randomizer screwed me over, but I couldn't find anyone in the Dratini and Bagon line. The room where Bagon normally is in Meteor Falls, I found Vibrava. I found 2 of my Dragon-types on Route 103, Vibrava and Altaria. You kind of buffed the latter by giving it Lovely Kiss. I went through most of the game with Vibrava and Altaria, forgetting about the Rare Candy evolution system. So then I had Flygon, which I prefer over Vibrava because of the extra little bit of power. Speed wasn't the defining factor, despite Vibrava being crazy fast. It wasn't until Route 124 and the Super Rod that I got a Seadra, evolved it quickly to Kingdra. That turned out to be just enough for the rest of the game.

As far as this hack's attempt at making not-fully-evolved Pokemon viable, I didn't see much of that in the second half of the game. In the first half, it's a bit of a moot point because I had Vibrava, trainers had their own NFEs. Late-game, they all had fully-evolved. The one trainer that stood out in the last leg of the game was Wallace, he was the only one with an NFE, Sealeo. Drake had a Farfetch'd, but that was easy to take out. Sealeo was kind of bulky, and it crushed my team in the first attempt, as well as spam Rest like the AI does sometimes. On the second try I beat Wallace thanks to setting up Dragon Dance on Ludicolo with Altaria.

As far as the Legendaries, the Weather Trio and Ho-Oh/Lugia gave the most problems, but that's just because they were level 70 and I was in the high-60s. Kyogre was the hardest to take down, obviously because of Ice Beam and Sheer Cold.

Steven's team wasn't randomized at all, weird. He required a couple of tries, I was underleveled (high-60s). Anyway, the same general statements made on the FR Pokeluv apply to here, but I like this version more. That's just because Emerald Final's a superior hack to Throwback (that one's great too). I used the Moemon patch that is used for Emerald Final on this. That particular patch might've caused Kingdra to not have any ability, as I know it's supposed to have Swift Swim, but no big deal. I love Moemons, so that patch had to be applied.

The early-game was a bit of a problem, but that's mainly because Vibrava and Altaria didn't get good moves until later, so KOing boss trainer Pokemon would take a long time. Roxanne had a Shuckle, that took ages to take down for example. Aside from that, it was a very smooth experience, and I enjoyed myself.
 
SevenChurches said:
It took a while, but I finally got to play the Emerald version. I used the same randomizer settings as the OP, and this time it was a Dragon monotype. I had Flygon, Altaria, and Kingdra. It was super quick and pretty easy. I was overleveled for most of the game, I wasn't for Steven, but I still beat him. Speedup was used a lot, but it was still very short. I finished it within a day. Maybe the randomizer screwed me over, but I couldn't find anyone in the Dratini and Bagon line. The room where Bagon normally is in Meteor Falls, I found Vibrava. I found 2 of my Dragon-types on Route 103, Vibrava and Altaria. You kind of buffed the latter by giving it Lovely Kiss. I went through most of the game with Vibrava and Altaria, forgetting about the Rare Candy evolution system. So then I had Flygon, which I prefer over Vibrava because of the extra little bit of power. Speed wasn't the defining factor, despite Vibrava being crazy fast. It wasn't until Route 124 and the Super Rod that I got a Seadra, evolved it quickly to Kingdra. That turned out to be just enough for the rest of the game.

As far as this hack's attempt at making not-fully-evolved Pokemon viable, I didn't see much of that in the second half of the game. In the first half, it's a bit of a moot point because I had Vibrava, trainers had their own NFEs. Late-game, they all had fully-evolved. The one trainer that stood out in the last leg of the game was Wallace, he was the only one with an NFE, Sealeo. Drake had a Farfetch'd, but that was easy to take out. Sealeo was kind of bulky, and it crushed my team in the first attempt, as well as spam Rest like the AI does sometimes. On the second try I beat Wallace thanks to setting up Dragon Dance on Ludicolo with Altaria.

As far as the Legendaries, the Weather Trio and Ho-Oh/Lugia gave the most problems, but that's just because they were level 70 and I was in the high-60s. Kyogre was the hardest to take down, obviously because of Ice Beam and Sheer Cold.

Steven's team wasn't randomized at all, weird. He required a couple of tries, I was underleveled (high-60s). Anyway, the same general statements made on the FR Pokeluv apply to here, but I like this version more. That's just because Emerald Final's a superior hack to Throwback (that one's great too). I used the Moemon patch that is used for Emerald Final on this. That particular patch might've caused Kingdra to not have any ability, as I know it's supposed to have Swift Swim, but no big deal. I love Moemons, so that patch had to be applied.

The early-game was a bit of a problem, but that's mainly because Vibrava and Altaria didn't get good moves until later, so KOing boss trainer Pokemon would take a long time. Roxanne had a Shuckle, that took ages to take down for example. Aside from that, it was a very smooth experience, and I enjoyed myself.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for your input :)

I actually made some changes about a week ago to the recommended randomizer settings in the OP, which I think will make more NFE's appear overall in the late-game. Although on my current playthrough I'm only at the 3rd gym so I can't say for sure yet. I also decided to go with Global Substitutions over Local for wild Pokemon because it felt a little too chaotic before, I think because Emerald Final already has all 386 mons in the wild so that's already a lot of slots to work with (I think both are fine for Throwback though).

Kingdra is actually one of the stronger mons in the hack, also I had to replace Altaria's Sing with Lovely Kiss cause Sing is now 100% accurate... and only available to a small selection of mons.

But yeah like I've said before the fully evolved mons are still generally stronger overall compared to their pre-evolutions, so you might find it a little easy if you mainly use them.

I'm currently rocking a Pichu Hoppip Cyndaquil Duskull and Venonat team... so yeah.

edit: also the 'All Pokemon' setting in the randomizer should help with ensuring every mon is available to catch somewhere :)
 
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