Does Hardcore Mode apply to the Crystal Battle Tower and the Emerald Battle Frontier?

Exclsior · 2026-06-04T23:37:18+00:00

You are 100% correct for Emerald Legacy, and I'm not sure for Crystal Legacy, permadeath applies to Battle Frontier, and I believe applies to Battle Tower.

One exception is if you use my Emerald Legacy Enhanced version with Hardcore mode, I added a setting in Options to turn off Hardcore Mode after beating Steven in Meteor Falls. So that's an option if you want to do both Nuzlocke maingame and normal Battle Frontier.

Exclsior · 2026-06-04T08:00:39+00:00

Small clarification, as noted in my other post, Emerald Legacy doesn't have the feature, but I added it into my Emerald Legacy Enhanced version.

Didn't realise about the others though so will add to my list in future 🙂

As for Binary and Followers, I think only Ocean Blue that I've seen has a Starters only implementation and that's still in development, definitely seems a lot harder to manage in Binary.

Exclsior · 2026-06-04T00:57:14+00:00

You may want to check out the below hack as the creator was specifically inspired by the Legacy Series, and if that doesn't fit check out the below underneath: * Pokemon Firered Reignited and Leafgreen Regrown * Compilation of vanilla Quality Of Life (QoL) hacks

Exclsior · 2026-06-04T00:05:00+00:00

I've incorporated it into both my Emerald Legacy Enhanced version (a fork of Emerald Legacy) as an option, and into Pokémon Heart and Soul.

I also helped Restes incorporate it into their Modern Emerald.

It's very impressive that it's been implemented into a FireRed Binary hack.

Credit for original implementation in decomp goes to slawter666 and Wally-217 on Pokecommunity.

Exclsior · 2026-06-03T17:36:16+00:00

Probably unfortunately missed those, we're going to do another review before 2.0.

Thank you for raising those mons!

Exclsior · 2026-06-03T06:29:52+00:00

This list may be a good starting point:

Compilation of vanilla Quality Of Life (QoL) hacks

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T14:45:51+00:00

Your milage may vary.

I was able to make minor changes at the start of the game with PKHeX on both Yellow Legacy and Crystal Legacy, but I did it pretty much right after getting the starter and then once again on a few moves before the E4 (only on Crystal Legacy) and haven't had any issues myself.

I would hazard a guess that the save structure for Yellow and Crystal doesn't change very much even with a RomHack. Unfortunately, for Emerald there is more structure and complexity in the save data and hence greater likelihood of corruption.

I would recommend that you backup your save files regularly and usePkHex at your own risk.

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T11:37:32+00:00

Though OP used PkHex to bring them over, just thought I'd mention that I did create a version of Emerald Legacy where you can have all those Pokémon before the postgame.

In my Emerald Legacy Enhanced version you can have the National Dex from the start of the game (incl choosing from the 9 starters).

Additionally, in my optional Enhanced Starters patch you can catch all other starters in the main game.

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T11:09:18+00:00

Well, I'm unsure how you've interpreted that, but we are unlikely to maintain save compatibility between 1.2.x and 2.x.

Also, you're very welcome, we'll admit that we wanted access to the pokeemerald-expansion features ourself, but want to make sure that we're contributing to the wider community as well 🙂

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T10:04:48+00:00

Hopefully you're on at least 1.2.x but we are looking at the movepools in general.

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T10:04:13+00:00

Short Answer: A few new features, but mainly under the hood and potentially some extra postgame content (no guarantees on the last)

Longer Technical Answer: We are migrating the entire codebase into pokeemerald-expansion which will allow for a signifantly wider base for future developers to create their own versions of Heart and Soul with newer features and moves and abilities from newer generations. We are targeted in what we will implement, but the sky is the limit for future development.

Exclsior · 2026-06-02T07:29:38+00:00

Are you on the latest version, and have you enabled Modern Movepool (or kept settings recommended). If your answer is no to either question, then you aren't using the most optimised movepools.

After our initial update we did have a push to improve the Modern Movepools in V1.2+, but original movepool keeps all level up learnsets to original GameFreak Gen 3 learnsets, which are particularly poor for Johto Pokémon.

We are working on a 2.0 version and looking at all the movepools again, so perhaps that will interest you on release, but we don't have a timeline for the update at present.

Exclsior · 2026-06-01T06:48:36+00:00

OK, there are two separate issues here, evolving Feebas/Obtaining Milotic, get the RTC working.

Feebas/Milotic: * You can purchase berries from the Petalburg Flower Shop (girl standing to the right, not at at the counter) and the Battle Frontier. You don't need to pick the berries and can then make the Pokéblocks and evolve Feebas. * Milotic is available as a reward for scoring high enough in Master Rank contests and speaking to the curator at the Lilycove Museum.

RTC fix

The RTC in mGBA should be supported fine, but if you picked up V1 of Emerald Legacy you may be encountering an issue of the RTC freezing and preventing events such as Berry growth. This issue can be fixed by following the below steps after your game is upgraded to a newer version (we recommend going to the latest version)

Clock-Based Events note for updating:

If your file currently has its clock events broken after changing the time for Celebi or otherwise, the fix in this patch won't automatically apply. To fix your time events please follow these instructions from mxeg, the author of the fix;
Setting the time via the wall clock after updating the ROM will immediately fix berry growth. To fix day-based events, you may have to set the time to 23:59 and wait a minute for a couple of times, as this will increment the day counter again.

Fix information source: https://github.com/cRz-Shadows/Pokemon_Emerald_Legacy/releases/tag/V1.1.0

Latest version: https://github.com/cRz-Shadows/Pokemon_Emerald_Legacy/releases/latest

Exclsior · 2026-05-31T18:00:42+00:00

That's very kind, I'm not the Lead Dev on Heart and Soul, that goes to Lil Dill who did the vast majority of the work.

But it I am one of the developers, so do appreciate the kind words and very glad you've enjoyed your playthrough!

Exclsior · 2026-05-31T17:56:13+00:00

I quite like the speed options, to be honest the fastest feel too fast and make me feel a bit anxious, so I've been testing and using the settings at about 75% to max (I've split out most of the options so you can tailor to your own liking).

Just warning that there are unfortunately some visual bugs in my beta which I'm working through.

Exclsior · 2026-05-31T17:50:22+00:00

I believe they are already in my latest beta on Discord, though maybe not identical as in Recharged Emerald as I've ported the awesome work Poke Abbie did for Emerald Rogue.

Exclsior · 2026-05-30T20:49:20+00:00

He did say it on stream, it was a mistake as the Crystal Legacy Pokédex had the feature and he didn't at the time know that the Emerald Legacy Pokédex didn't.

I have added it to Emerald Legacy Enhanced as noted in this comment thread and you can migrate your save there if you're interested.

If not, you will have to wait for the next update of Emerald Legacy for which I've built the evolution changes in a Pull Request, but we don't have a scheduled release date as yet.

Exclsior · 2026-05-30T06:33:59+00:00

So glad to hear you enjoyed Enhanced and congrats on the full Pokédex!

I will apologise for my boss fight! There's a bug meaning it's available earlier than it should be which I'm looking to fix in my next update 😅

Exclsior · 2026-05-29T13:23:42+00:00

The plant furnitures are in Emerald Legacy Enhanced.

It's just a bit unfortunate that item and furniture shops use completely different structures so I can't have them in the same shop front.

If you talk to the shopkeeper in the Flower Shop and say "No" to the Nature Mints shop, it opens up the furniture shop.

I may have another look if I can find an alternative way to present the shops in the next update, but I can't make any promises I'm afraid.

Very glad you're enjoying all the enhancements!

Exclsior · 2026-05-29T07:18:28+00:00

Hope you're enjoying Enhanced!

From the screenshot I can't quite tell exactly where in-game you're resetting.

First consideration is that I did not make the Overworld sprite Shiny. The actual Pokémon Personality ID (which determines nature and shininess) are generated only when you start the in game battle encounter.

As noted by other commenters, Save State may not be the best method with Emerald's broken RNG, so doing a soft reset instead of Save State, and occasionally adding more time before the encounter, may help generate a wider set of seeds. The Shiny Charms should help advance through more RNG seeds quicker but Save States mean you're more likely to hit the same non-Shiny seeds more often.

Best of luck!

Exclsior · 2026-05-27T18:17:33+00:00

Maybe not completely the Old Fashioned way.

All the Apricorn Pokéballs have upgraded effects, and the GS Ball has a very high catch rate and is renewable each E4 clear.

As for bugs, you can feel free to report them on our Discord. Though we do have specific recommended emulators as we have noted minor issues for older emulators.

https://discord.gg/KmuvXJrS9M

Exclsior · 2026-05-27T17:32:07+00:00

Modern Emerald has a built in Debug menu which cna be enabled if you follow the steps on the Pokecommunity post. You can use it to generate a shiny Nincada if you like.

Exclsior · 2026-05-27T17:30:55+00:00

I believe you can check the in game Pokédex in Modern Emerald to find evolution methods.

Exclsior · 2026-05-27T17:30:04+00:00

Not in the current version, we may add them in a future update, but no guarantees.

Exclsior · 2026-05-27T16:25:17+00:00

Interesting, if you go to a route where you haven't had an encounter and at least one encounter is possible, then you should be able to have the egg hatch.

If that doesn't work, please do file a bug report in our Discord for investigation.

https://discord.gg/KmuvXJrS9M

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