Pokemon Reborn Password Any% FAQ
Q: What is this?
A: Pokemon Reborn is an Emerald-styled downloadable fangame featuring all content up to Generation 7. It has its own unique region and story with 18 type based gyms and elite 4 alongside customary evil team. This run goes up all the way to the main game only and stops before the post game. There are several features that make this game particularly difficult to speedrun compared to other pokemon fan games/rom hacks:
-Custom field effects which give opponents an inherent edge in most battles and forces you to adapt to many unfavorable scenarios.
-Highly advanced AI, trainers and especially gym leaders/bosses will make logical decisions based on a variety of different factors such as your pokemon's stats, typing, items, moves, etc.
-Double battles are much more prevalent in this game compared to say a standard vanilla pokemon game (~1/3 of all fights are in doubles). This is enough to influence the dynamic of the team structure and requires members that are able to handle this format.
-Competitive movesets and general difficulty curve remain consistent throughout the entire game. All important trainers and late game fights will have optimal iv and ev spreads. Also x items can only be accessed late game and by early game pick ups.
-Disobedience is enforced and pokemon will not obey you if you overlevel past a certain gym badge. This is the same kind of disobedience you would see if you were using a traded pokemon in a vanilla pokemon game, however it also applies to pokemon with the same TID as yours. This mechanic also discourages a traditional pokemon speedrun where you would solo the game with 1 pokemon, not that it would be possible here.
All of these problems pretty much necessitates a full team of 6 in order to effectively speedrun through the game, which is especially doable with the use of passwords.
Q: What passwords are used in this speedrun?
Fortunately this game has a password that compresses a ton of quality of life features that make it much more appealing to speedrun which is the speedrun password! This mostly includes:
hardcap - stop gaining EXP at the current levelcap instead of disobeying
easyhms - can use hms in overworld so you don't need an HM slave
fullivs - every pokemon you get is guaranteed 31 across the board
norolls - damage rolls are eliminated to reduce RNG impact
stableweather - guaranteed a specific weather pattern
weathermod - can change weather freely, only used to change to clear weather if there is bad weather
freemegaz - can pick it up for free at the start of the game, allows the use of mega evolution and z moves
pinata - grinding trainers now give EXP candy. with this password, you skip having to fight them at all and just get candy for free by talking to them
mintyfresh - can pick it up for free at the start of the game, pack of nature mints to change nature
There are also a ton of other passwords that would make this speedrun faster such as litemode (easy mode) and powerpack (free power items), but those make the game too easy and eliminate the fun in the overall challenge of the game.
Q: What Pokemon do you use for the run?
A: Speed Boost Blaziken is by far the best pokemon available that can sweep through a majority of the game which we choose as our starter. Having additional access to a set up move in bulk up and wide lens high jump kick makes for extremely easy sweeps. Meowstic is an integral early game member that falls off in value offensively around the mid game section, but still manages to be effective throughout the entire game due to having access to Prankster fake out, reflect, light screen and misty terrain. Being able to override fields with misty terrain in particular is especially useful. Sharpedo is the second main and is somewhat special in that it comes with destiny bond as an egg move. This is extremely beneficial as a way to dispatch of pulse pokemon (super strong/bulky boss pokemon), or any other troublesome threat for that matter. It's also a back up Speed Boost sweeper that is efficient in dealing with fights that Blaziken is less favored in. Nidoqueen is the third main and is sort of a jack of all trades. It's bulky with a good defensive typing, has great coverage options in earth power, sludge wave, and elemental beams and hits just as hard as everyone else with Sheer Force. Onix is chosen due to notably having Sturdy, rock tomb and stealth rock, making it a pretty effective suicide lead. Picking it up also allows me to get a choice band in the late game. Ponyta is another one that we get because it is a mandatory pick up, but is still useful as sacrificial fodder.
Q: Is this game running at normal speed?
A: This run is done using the in game speed up function (x3 speed) which was a developer intended tool in order to alleviate lag. The current release of this game runs extremely smoothly with no lag because of the new and improved engine it is running on, but due to the sheer length of the game, speed up is used to make the run as fast as possible. At times I do turn it off in order to do more precise movements that I wouldn't be able to otherwise. This run is not at all comparable to runs that aren't using speed up which should be self evident, as those would average to around 8-9 hours.
Q: Do you rng manipulate anything in this run?
A: There is no rng manipulation in this run as it does not work. RPG Maker XP games base language is ruby and ruby's default rng can not be manipulated without modifying the game itself.
Q: Why pick the guy?
A: Outside of a couple changes in dialogue and losing a couple relationship points which is irrelevant, the gender you choose does not matter in the context of a speedrun. I just choose the guy so I can mash through the introduction faster.
Q: What's the goal time?
A: My sum of best is around 4 hours and 30 minutes, but that's assuming every split goes more or less perfectly which is highly unlikely. 4:35:00 is around the estimate and if I can get under that then I'd be satisfied.
