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Hack Series: Pokémon Photonic Sun & Prismatic Moon

75
Posts
5
Years
    • Seen Aug 5, 2023
    Not sure if Drought would be broken with that typing or if it'd just be decent on Sunflora; might have to try it out and see.
    Just my two cents but although the buffs you gave it already are great and I had one in my Nuzlocke of WY that really carried me I'm pretty doubtful it'd be broken with Drought and an added Fire type. It'd be much more versatile and harder hitting for sure but even with the 95 HP you gave it it's got very minimal physical staying power and is far too slow to really be able to hit its weaknesses (namely typically fast Flying types) before they hit it. I'm definitely in favor of giving it Drought and making it Grass/Fire either way though, it's a great way to give added relevance to an otherwise drastically overshadowed and forgotten Pokemon.
     
    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    Well, I'm back in here, after finally getting to beat Ultra Necrozma in the rom hack, and to celebrate that and to help out a bit with making the hack more interesting, I got two suggestions, both based around the big prismatic golem/lion/bat/dragon thing:

    - Change base form Necrozma's type from pure Psychic to Psychic/Dark. Considering that its' design is based off of black dwarves and black holes, its japanese name has the japanese word for "Black", it gains a surprising amount of Dark type moves from the classic Dark Pulse and Night Slash to things like Thief, Brutal Swing, Fling and Knock Off, to even more story-based reasons as it being constantly hostile and ready to attack anything (which fits since in Japanese versions of the game, Dark types are called Evil types), it being able to easily defeat Solgaleo/Lunala even though both have an advantage towards it in both stats and typing (Steel for Solgaleo because of it resisting most attacks Necrozma can throw at them, and Ghost for Lunala due to being super-effective against it normally), and even small things like it leaving behind a trail of darkness as it flies (as shown in the battle against it and Solgaleo/Lunala), and all of that shows that the Dark type would fit base form Necrozma.
    - Replace the Lum Berry that Ultra Necrozma holds in the battle against it with either nothing, or if it has to hold something, a White Herb and replace its Dragon Pulse with Draco Meteor. Even in the base game, Ultra Necrozma serves as a massive roadblock for the game, and this rom hack makes that problem even more cruel since now you can't cheese out the fight with a Steel type due to it knowing Earth Power. Due to that, it now having a +2 boost in its stats instead of +1, it having back-up in the form of Naganadel, and the Lum Berry pretty much allow it to cover all of its weaknesses unless you wanna grind out a buncha Focus Sashes for your mons to survive at least one hit, or to get something like a mon with Clear Smog. It makes teambuilding a lot harder and less flexible since you always gotta have one (or more, since we all know Ultra Necrozma is a powerhouse) team member to take care of it. Removing its current item and either not giving it anything or giving it a White Herb with Draco Meteor would give the player a bit more ability to breathe with the fight, since it allows you to use statuses on turn 1 to give you a fighting chance, or you could bait out the Draco Meteors to lower its Special Attack to a managable level.

    But these are mainly my opinion, would love to see your opinions on these changes, Buffel.
     
    Last edited:
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    Heya! Just wanted to thank you for Photonic Sun, it's really awesome! (Playing the Rebalanced version.) In case you're still working on this hack, what about Water/Dragon Lugia? Or atleast Water/Flying, since I think Psychic is a bit of a silly choice. Thanks, and keep up the good work!
    Hey, thanks! IMO Lugia's typing could be any combination of Psychic, Flying Water and Dragon and still make sense. I don't really want to make major changes to cover legendaries though (except for Kyurem; poor thing just needed a good physical Ice move).
    Just my two cents but although the buffs you gave it already are great and I had one in my Nuzlocke of WY that really carried me I'm pretty doubtful it'd be broken with Drought and an added Fire type. It'd be much more versatile and harder hitting for sure but even with the 95 HP you gave it it's got very minimal physical staying power and is far too slow to really be able to hit its weaknesses (namely typically fast Flying types) before they hit it. I'm definitely in favor of giving it Drought and making it Grass/Fire either way though, it's a great way to give added relevance to an otherwise drastically overshadowed and forgotten Pokemon.
    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! I'll make these changes to Sunflora with the next update. Also nice to hear it was actually good with the existing buffs, it's hard to tell how far to go with buffing Pokemon like Sunflora.

    Well, I'm back in here, after finally getting to beat Ultra Necrozma in the rom hack, and to celebrate that and to help out a bit with making the hack more interesting, I got two suggestions, both based around the big prismatic golem/lion/bat/dragon thing:

    - Change base form Necrozma's type from pure Psychic to Psychic/Dark. Considering that its' design is based off of black dwarves and black holes, its japanese name has the japanese word for "Black", it gains a surprising amount of Dark type moves from the classic Dark Pulse and Night Slash to things like Thief, Brutal Swing, Fling and Knock Off, to even more story-based reasons as it being constantly hostile and ready to attack anything (which fits since in Japanese versions of the game, Dark types are called Evil types), it being able to easily defeat Solgaleo/Lunala even though both have an advantage towards it in both stats and typing (Steel for Solgaleo because of it resisting most attacks Necrozma can throw at them, and Ghost for Lunala due to being super-effective against it normally), and even small things like it leaving behind a trail of darkness as it flies (as shown in the battle against it and Solgaleo/Lunala), and all of that shows that the Dark type would fit base form Necrozma.
    - Replace the Lum Berry that Ultra Necrozma holds in the battle against it with either nothing, or if it has to hold something, a White Herb and replace its Dragon Pulse with Draco Meteor. Even in the base game, Ultra Necrozma serves as a massive roadblock for the game, and this rom hack makes that problem even more cruel since now you can't cheese out the fight with a Steel type due to it knowing Earth Power. Due to that, it now having a +2 boost in its stats instead of +1, it having back-up in the form of Naganadel, and the Lum Berry pretty much allow it to cover all of its weaknesses unless you wanna grind out a buncha Focus Sashes for your mons to survive at least one hit, or to get something like a mon with Clear Smog. It makes teambuilding a lot harder and less flexible since you always gotta have one (or more, since we all know Ultra Necrozma is a powerhouse) team member to take care of it. Removing its current item and either not giving it anything or giving it a White Herb with Draco Meteor would give the player a bit more ability to breathe with the fight, since it allows you to use statuses on turn 1 to give you a fighting chance, or you could bait out the Draco Meteors to lower its Special Attack to a managable level.

    But these are mainly my opinion, would love to see your opinions on these changes, Buffel.

    Hey, congrats on beating Ultra Necrozma!

    Those are all well thought-out reasons for giving Necrozma Dark typing (though it still loses to Solgaleo and Lunala in battle even with that change). I don't think it really needs any changes though, especially with how strong its other formes are (even Dawn Wings is good enough for an in-game team). Also not a big fan of giving it a 4x weakness just to gain Dark STAB.

    Ultra Necrozma was 100% intended to be like that; you can beat it with any team, but you'll need both the free Focus Sashes (no need to grind for one unless you've used them earlier; the Shellos trade on Poni Island is holding one, and you get another one from a trainer nearby too) or a Pokemon with some way to get rid of its Lum Berry (Sturdy or Prankster both work). In the absolute worst case scenario, any wild Raticate, Wobbuffet or Pokemon that has Destiny Bond can beat Necrozma in one turn without any training, so you can add one to your party temporarily just to win the battle. There are other options too; the Curse TM lets any Ghost type beat it, Trick Room lets your team move first for a while, Endeavor + any priority move will always work, etc. Not every team has access to those of course, but there are ways around it. The goal with the Necrozma battle was to throw something absolutely ridiculous at the player and ask them to come up with a way to cheese it, which I think it does pretty well.

    Thanks for your feedback and suggestions though!
     
    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    Alright-y, thank you for telling me about that. Now it makes sense why Ultra Necrozma is designed like that.
    Though now I gotta ask a question, since I imagine a bunch of people are thinking about it as well: Are you planning to add in all the various moveset additions that the Isle of Armor DLC brought to Sword and Shield, like Mystical Fire Volcarona and U-turn Lopunny?

    EDIT: Well, I got a little further, caught Solgaleo and Necrozma, and now I got some suggestions:
    - Change the level that the Solgaleo/Lunala are in the Mahalo Trail encounter from 60 to 95. Considering that some people would want to prefer using them over Necrozma, it would make sense to boost up their levels to be relative to everything else you can encounter at this point.
    - Either give Necrozma access to Outrage and Dragon Pulse via move tutor, or allow it to learn Dragon Claw by TM. Unless you go right over to the Battle Tree, which is pretty far in post-game, you can't use the Dragon STAB that Ultra Necrozma gains. Either of the above mentioned changes would allow you to use Ultra Necrozma at its best without having to do through twenty hoops to get to the Battle Tree. And hey, Necrozma has those big bloody claws, would fit for it to have Dragon Claw.
     
    Last edited:
    75
    Posts
    5
    Years
    • Seen Aug 5, 2023
    What I did to beat it was I just had my Bastiodon tank a hit with Sturdy and use Metal Burst. The battle is REALLY daunting but it's not as though there aren't strategies available. Anyway though I'd have to agree that even though Dark makes sense on Necrozma it's probably for the best not to make it part Dark. I agree though that it could use access to more Dragon moves.
     
    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    Yeah the more opinions I get, the more I understand.
    Though I got YET ANOTHER suggestion, since I finally got to beat the main story of the rom hack, and there's two more things that sorta makes me scratch my head that could be changed:
    - Replace Noibat/Noivern in Hau's teams before the Pokemon League with Bagon/Shelgon/Salamence. It's kinda weird how Hau just sorta decides to drop his Noivern that he had for a long ass time with an out-of-nowhere Salamence with a Mega Stone. Switching the Noibat he gets with a Bagon would make it not be as weird, could possibly give the player a bit more challenge since Shelgon and Salamence are nothing to mess around with, and considering that you can catch Bagons in Melemele, it wouldn't even be out of place.

    - Switch the exclusive Z-Crystals from Hau and any other trainer that currently has them with any of the regular Z-Crystals. After beating the main game I decided to check the important trainer documents out of curiosity, and I saw that Hau had the starter exclusive Z-Crystals. From what I can remember, NPC trainers cannot use the exclusive Z-Moves on their Pokemon and will simply not use a Z-Move at all. Switching them with regular crystals would give them back the ability to use them and potentially slap the player silly.
     

    Giovanni Boss

    Team Rocket's Head
    138
    Posts
    16
    Years
    • Seen Jan 10, 2023
    Yeah the more opinions I get, the more I understand.
    Though I got YET ANOTHER suggestion, since I finally got to beat the main story of the rom hack, and there's two more things that sorta makes me scratch my head that could be changed:
    - Replace Noibat/Noivern in Hau's teams before the Pokemon League with Bagon/Shelgon/Salamence. It's kinda weird how Hau just sorta decides to drop his Noivern that he had for a long ass time with an out-of-nowhere Salamence with a Mega Stone. Switching the Noibat he gets with a Bagon would make it not be as weird, could possibly give the player a bit more challenge since Shelgon and Salamence are nothing to mess around with, and considering that you can catch Bagons in Melemele, it wouldn't even be out of place.

    - Switch the exclusive Z-Crystals from Hau and any other trainer that currently has them with any of the regular Z-Crystals. After beating the main game I decided to check the important trainer documents out of curiosity, and I saw that Hau had the starter exclusive Z-Crystals. From what I can remember, NPC trainers cannot use the exclusive Z-Moves on their Pokemon and will simply not use a Z-Move at all. Switching them with regular crystals would give them back the ability to use them and potentially slap the player silly.

    As Hau already uses the starter Z-crystals on the regular Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, I'd imagine he's able to use those crystals. Probably the only one who can.
     
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    Alright-y, thank you for telling me about that. Now it makes sense why Ultra Necrozma is designed like that.
    Though now I gotta ask a question, since I imagine a bunch of people are thinking about it as well: Are you planning to add in all the various moveset additions that the Isle of Armor DLC brought to Sword and Shield, like Mystical Fire Volcarona and U-turn Lopunny?

    EDIT: Well, I got a little further, caught Solgaleo and Necrozma, and now I got some suggestions:
    - Change the level that the Solgaleo/Lunala are in the Mahalo Trail encounter from 60 to 95. Considering that some people would want to prefer using them over Necrozma, it would make sense to boost up their levels to be relative to everything else you can encounter at this point.
    - Either give Necrozma access to Outrage and Dragon Pulse via move tutor, or allow it to learn Dragon Claw by TM. Unless you go right over to the Battle Tree, which is pretty far in post-game, you can't use the Dragon STAB that Ultra Necrozma gains. Either of the above mentioned changes would allow you to use Ultra Necrozma at its best without having to do through twenty hoops to get to the Battle Tree. And hey, Necrozma has those big bloody claws, would fit for it to have Dragon Claw.
    Definitely! I added a lot of the DLC movepool changes when all that information was datamined from Home, but there were a lot of them so I would've missed a few good ones. Didn't even know Lopunny had gained U-turn, that's interesting. Solgaleo and Lunala's level is an oversight, thanks for letting me know! Will fix that with the next update.
    What I did to beat it was I just had my Bastiodon tank a hit with Sturdy and use Metal Burst. The battle is REALLY daunting but it's not as though there aren't strategies available. Anyway though I'd have to agree that even though Dark makes sense on Necrozma it's probably for the best not to make it part Dark. I agree though that it could use access to more Dragon moves.
    Sure, I can give Necrozma access to some Dragon moves from the move reminder (Dragon Claw via TM sounds good too).
    Yeah the more opinions I get, the more I understand.
    Though I got YET ANOTHER suggestion, since I finally got to beat the main story of the rom hack, and there's two more things that sorta makes me scratch my head that could be changed:
    - Replace Noibat/Noivern in Hau's teams before the Pokemon League with Bagon/Shelgon/Salamence. It's kinda weird how Hau just sorta decides to drop his Noivern that he had for a long ass time with an out-of-nowhere Salamence with a Mega Stone. Switching the Noibat he gets with a Bagon would make it not be as weird, could possibly give the player a bit more challenge since Shelgon and Salamence are nothing to mess around with, and considering that you can catch Bagons in Melemele, it wouldn't even be out of place.

    - Switch the exclusive Z-Crystals from Hau and any other trainer that currently has them with any of the regular Z-Crystals. After beating the main game I decided to check the important trainer documents out of curiosity, and I saw that Hau had the starter exclusive Z-Crystals. From what I can remember, NPC trainers cannot use the exclusive Z-Moves on their Pokemon and will simply not use a Z-Move at all. Switching them with regular crystals would give them back the ability to use them and potentially slap the player silly.
    Yeah, giving Hau Bagon from the start would be "cleaner". Some rivals have swapped team members in the official games too though, so it's not unprecedented. I was hoping it'd make the championship battle against him a little more interesting.
    As Hau already uses the starter Z-crystals on the regular Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, I'd imagine he's able to use those crystals. Probably the only one who can.
    I think Necro's right about the special Z-Crystals being unusable by the AI; I've never seen them use one, and Bulbapedia and Serebii say Hau uses standard crystals in vanilla. I'd heard USUM fixed that, but didn't confirm it with testing.
     
    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    I'd heard USUM fixed that, but didn't confirm it with testing.
    From what I see on Bulbapedia, it didn't, since Hau still has the regular Z-Crystals in the games. If it truly doesn't work, giving him the regular crystals could be for the best, maybe even as a twist, make Hau use the crystal of his starter's secondary type (so Dark/Ghost/Fairy) in order to catch the player off guard.

    EDIT: Welp, after booting the hack up and getting to the point where you catch the new Ultra Beasts, I managed to find a couple weird and possibly unintended bugs:

    - In Photonic Sun, the Stakataka you are able to get have a Special Attack boosting aura, even though it doesn't make sense for them to have it, since they are physical attackers. Giving them an Attack or Defense aura would fit them more in my opinion.
    - Archie's Pelliper doesn't seem to actually have Drizzle, even though the documents say he does.
     
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    1
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jul 13, 2020
    Hi! Is it possible to get a version without any of the new past generation pokemon added? A lot of the pokemon in USUM are new to me, but base USUM is much too easy for me. Is there a way to remove the new added pokemon, so I can explore the native USUM pokemon with the added difficulty of the your amazing hack? Thanks!
     
    3
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Oct 6, 2021
    Is there a chance for an insanity mode for these games like in Eternal X and Wilting Y? I had an absolute blast playing those games in insanity mode due to their difficulty and I was wondering if there are any plans for these games also!
     
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    From what I see on Bulbapedia, it didn't, since Hau still has the regular Z-Crystals in the games. If it truly doesn't work, giving him the regular crystals could be for the best, maybe even as a twist, make Hau use the crystal of his starter's secondary type (so Dark/Ghost/Fairy) in order to catch the player off guard.

    EDIT: Welp, after booting the hack up and getting to the point where you catch the new Ultra Beasts, I managed to find a couple weird and possibly unintended bugs:

    - In Photonic Sun, the Stakataka you are able to get have a Special Attack boosting aura, even though it doesn't make sense for them to have it, since they are physical attackers. Giving them an Attack or Defense aura would fit them more in my opinion.
    - Archie's Pelliper doesn't seem to actually have Drizzle, even though the documents say he does.
    Yeah, it might be best to give him the regular crystals just to be sure they work.
    Oops, thanks for reporting those! I'll get them fixed tonight and finally get the next update uploaded too.
    Hi! Is it possible to get a version without any of the new past generation pokemon added? A lot of the pokemon in USUM are new to me, but base USUM is much too easy for me. Is there a way to remove the new added pokemon, so I can explore the native USUM pokemon with the added difficulty of the your amazing hack? Thanks!
    Hey! Sure, you'd just have to delete the "8" folder in romfs/a/0 in the hack's files before installing it. That'll delete all the of wild encounter changes, so they'll be exactly the same as vanilla. The only downside is they'll still be the same levels as vanilla too, so they'll be very underlevelled compared to the hack's trainers.

    Is there a chance for an insanity mode for these games like in Eternal X and Wilting Y? I had an absolute blast playing those games in insanity mode due to their difficulty and I was wondering if there are any plans for these games also!
    I've got no plans to make an insanity mode for this hack, at least for now. It's much harder than EXWY was as it is, so the difficulty should be pretty close to insanity mode already. Might be something I could add in future though!

    EDIT: Just updated the hack. I forgot to include a couple of things (U-turn Lopunny and more Dragon moves for Necrozma), but other than that all the reported issues should be fixed, and some of the Pokemon changes discussed in the thread have been added.
     
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    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    Oh baby patch time! Also I ended up finishing up Episode RR, and though it was fun (and kinda easy but then again I had the one-two combo of Ultra Necrozma and Mega Gyarados on me), there's one thing that doesn't sit right with me:

    - In Photonic Sun, Cyrus has a Z-Crystal on his Dialga, but not on his Palkia in Prismatic Moon, instead having the Lustrous Orb, which is really weird since it means that Cyrus has a Z-Move user in one game, but not in the other. I'd say you should replace Palkia's Lustrous Orb with a Dragonium-Z would be good, though doing the opposite and giving Dialga the Adamant Orb instead of the Z-Crystal would also be okay (and then maybe giving Weavile the Z-Move duty or something)
    Spoiler:
     
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    Oh baby patch time! Also I ended up finishing up Episode RR, and though it was fun (and kinda easy but then again I had the one-two combo of Ultra Necrozma and Mega Gyarados on me), there's one thing that doesn't sit right with me:

    - In Photonic Sun, Cyrus has a Z-Crystal on his Dialga, but not on his Palkia in Prismatic Moon, instead having the Lustrous Orb, which is really weird since it means that Cyrus has a Z-Move user in one game, but not in the other. I'd say you should replace Palkia's Lustrous Orb with a Dragonium-Z would be good, though doing the opposite and giving Dialga the Adamant Orb instead of the Z-Crystal would also be okay (and then maybe giving Weavile the Z-Move duty or something)
    Spoiler:
    Yeah, Ultra Necrozma makes everything pretty easy. The Z-crystal on Dialga is so it can use Roar of Time without needing to recharge next turn; I figured Palkia didn't really need a Z-crystal as Spacial Rend is fine without one.

    Spoiler:
     
    53
    Posts
    3
    Years
    • Seen Jun 22, 2023
    The Z-crystal on Dialga is so it can use Roar of Time without needing to recharge next turn; I figured Palkia didn't really need a Z-crystal as Spacial Rend is fine without one.

    Spoiler:
    Yeah makes sense, but I feel like consistency with the versions is also important. Maybe for Prismatic Moon you can give a different Pokemon the Z-Move. For Ghetsis getting Black/White Kyurem, I feel like he could have still went after Kyurem to completely dominate anyone trying to stop him. That and him talking about his own world's version of Colress once being confronted by the USUM Colress could imply that there were other things happening before Ghetsis got yoinked. But I feel like this is more headcanon territory than anything.

    Also would like to mention that the main post for the Rom Hack is displaying the wrong date for the last update.
     
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    Yeah makes sense, but I feel like consistency with the versions is also important. Maybe for Prismatic Moon you can give a different Pokemon the Z-Move. For Ghetsis getting Black/White Kyurem, I feel like he could have still went after Kyurem to completely dominate anyone trying to stop him. That and him talking about his own world's version of Colress once being confronted by the USUM Colress could imply that there were other things happening before Ghetsis got yoinked. But I feel like this is more headcanon territory than anything.

    Also would like to mention that the main post for the Rom Hack is displaying the wrong date for the last update.
    I'd have to disagree with that; I wouldn't give Lysandre's Yveltal a Power Herb just because his Xerneas has one in the other version. Cyrus could even have both legendaries seeing as he mentions Giratina (which implies he comes from Platinum's version of events), but at that point I'd have to give all the team leaders two or more legendaries just to keep them roughly on par with each other.

    Fixed the main post, thanks for pointing that out!
     
    1
    Posts
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    • Seen Jul 12, 2020
    Can some1 help me with the pokemart freeze bug?

    i would love to get instructions on how to bypass it.
     
    1,591
    Posts
    10
    Years
    • Seen Mar 20, 2024
    Can some1 help me with the pokemart freeze bug?

    i would love to get instructions on how to bypass it.
    Hey, I'll answer this here rather than via PM in case anyone else has the same question (I get this one a lot):

    99% of the time this happens it's not a bug in the hack, it happens because a prebuilt .cia of it was downloaded from somewhere. Whoever made it didn't bother to read the install guide, so it's missing half the hack and doesn't work as a result.
    To fix it, just download the latest version of the hack from the first post in this thread, then follow the install guide that comes with it. It's a very simple process; you copy/paste some files, install a .cia and you're done. No need to unpack anything or deal with janky tools, and if you have any trouble with it I'm happy to help!

    If you did follow the install guide, please let me know which version of the hack you're playing, as it may actually be a bug in that case.
     

    Paras16699

    Paras Shah
    37
    Posts
    7
    Years
  • Suggestion: Make Prankster a normal ability instead of hidden for Murkrow. That will allow players to switch to that ability using the Ability Capsule and it could be a fun mon to play with when given Eviolite to hold.

    Maybe give it some more Status egg moves in its normal learnset that it can take advantage of (eg: feather dance).

    Also, how about adding Parting Shot to its moveset? Fits thematically IMO.
     
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