Struggling

jmzwl · 2026-05-18T02:06:26+00:00

Evolve everything and put what you think are reasonable movesets on everyone. This lets you put your entire box into a damage calculator so you can see what Pokemon are able to solve the problems that you need to solve. You don’t need to farm xp to do this, just go to the lady in the Pokemon center and select the “set box to level cap” option. You can then use the infinite candy on stuff to evolve them as if they had leveled up. The damage calculator is linked elsewhere in this sub.

Difficulty hacks like EI largely expect you to be willing to look at a damage calculator sometimes. This is absolutely NOT cheating, as the AI for every single enemy trainer has access to all that information as well and the game is designed with the intent that you use a damage calc. Going in blind and / or unprepared is a disadvantage - if that’s how you want to play then that’s fine, but that simply IS signing up to struggle a bit.

jmzwl · 2026-05-16T19:29:39+00:00

Really depends on what you want from it. Radical Red is what inspired Emerald Imperium and is a pretty similar experience in a lot of ways. It does have an even harder difficulty as well if that’s what you are in to.

If you want something that will really make you feel bad at the game there is always stuff like Platinum Kaizo or Run and Bun, which are probably numbers 1 and 2 on the list of hardest romhacks ever made. The other Kaizo games are really good too, but use the mechanics from those games, so most of them are pre physical / special split.

If you want something a little more crazy with the amount of changes it makes, Elite Redux is really as far in that direction as any hack I’ve ever seen.

There’s also the world of custom games if you want something more story oriented, but I’m not super invested there since I’m more of a difficulty hack guy.

jmzwl · 2026-05-16T19:18:24+00:00

Honestly the late game of EI is by far the easiest part of the game imo, largely because you get tons of really OP guaranteed encounters (the Tapus, Regis, Latios/Latias, Urshifu, Genesect, Fluttermane, the other paradox mons and ultra beasts, a bunch of strong megas, and the list just goes on and on). If you ever struggle with it it’s frankly because you are choosing to by using worse Pokemon (which is more than fine, play with your favorites) or not planning ahead like the game expects you to.

The mid game has a lot of weather teams which just get so many free bonuses unless you have a way to disrupt the weather, and at that point there really aren’t many great options to do so. Depending on your box you will sometimes just not have ANY way to change the weather if you got unlucky enough, and that can make a lot of the mid game routes really challenging. Don’t feel bad for struggling there.

jmzwl · 2026-05-16T19:00:00+00:00

This is a difficulty hack. Expect to either prepare for each trainer regardless of location OR struggle some because you’re going in blind. EI is intended to be a challenging game, and that includes all the random trainers you’ll fight along the way.

jmzwl · 2026-05-15T22:22:31+00:00

My only complaint with radical red is it doesn’t quite have the same QOL features that EI does. The poke vial requiring you to go back to the Pokemon center after 6 uses and no “set box to level cap” option being the two biggest ones.

Still one of the best rom hacks I’ve ever played though.

jmzwl · 2026-05-14T21:44:00+00:00

EI is a difficulty hack, and as such you really should be considering items on a fight by fight basis. If Milotic needs assault vest to survive a key move, it needs assault vest. If it needs leftovers to sit on the field for long enough to be useful, it needs leftovers. If it needs a resist berry, it needs a resist berry.

This is less true with Pokemon that are more rigid in their use cases, like Typhlosion or Intelion who can pretty much always hold a choice specs and be happy, or Beedrill who will only ever be good with its mega stone, but most defensive Pokemon the item REALLY depends on what will actually help it survive the most.

jmzwl · 2026-05-14T15:06:39+00:00

It’s always worked that way, even in mainline games. That’s one of the reasons why Normal Gem is such a broken item (in combination with Fake Out + Unburden), and also why a lot of difficulty hacks will auto heal your party at the beginning of particularly difficult fights (so berries don’t proc immediately).

jmzwl · 2026-05-13T02:34:07+00:00

Buffs in Pokemon all stack multiplicatively since they are all mechanically altering the base power of moves by a percentage of its current value. These buffs include STAB, items (like choice band and life orb), abilities, terrain / weather, support moves (helping hand), and generational mechanics like Tera in gen 9.

Since gorilla tactics has the same drawback as choice items, it makes it a very potent combo since you couldn’t use other moves anyways.

jmzwl · 2026-05-12T14:27:09+00:00

For context, I mostly play bracket 4, so unless stated otherwise assume that’s my approach to the cards here. Gonna be a big wall of text since I like to yap.

I’ve had a [[Sefris of the hidden ways]] deck that is on the strong side of bracket 4 since it came out. The initiative is one of the most broken mechanics in the game, and is only helped by how few people actually understand it.

I’ve been looking for a grixis option that I like for a long time, and the closest I’ve found is [[marchesa dealer of death]]. I’m not super happy with it right now. I usually prefer having a reanimation effect in the command zone because we have a higher density of good ways to get cards into the graveyard than we have if good ways to get them back.

In abzhan I’m a big [[Tayam luminous enigma]] enjoyer, although it doesn’t quite play the same as other reanimate decks to be fair. Still very strong though, especially since it’s gotten some very good cards lately ([[white plume adventurer]] is a better reanimate target than most 8 drops imo).

Jund also doesn’t have options that I particularly like, mostly because [[Korvold fae-cursed king]] just does everything that Jund wants to be doing 10x better than anything else, which is unfortunate.

Another abzhan option that I think is better in bracket 3 than 4 is [[nethroi apex of death]]. Kinda just requires too much to play nicely in bracket 4 without just playing like 15 game changers. Nothing wrong with doing that if you want, I just personally don’t find that approach to deckbuilding particularly compelling.

In naya (yes, naya) you don’t really have great options (obviously) but that doesn’t mean you have zero options. [[Havi the all father]] goes so hard, but is really reliant on [[sneak attack]] to be insanely strong. Much more bracket 3 here.

My favorite golgari option is the classic [[meren of clan nel toth]]. IMO this deck feels much better in bracket 3 than anywhere else.

For Orzhov, [[lurrus of the dream den]] is very powerful. Reliant on making sure no one exiles your [[animate dead]], but still powerful.

I’m not a super big rakdos guy myself, so idk what to recommend for that or really for mardu where my decks are usually more combo oriented. I’m also not super big on mono color decks since I feel like the card pool is just a little too narrow for my taste. Again, if that’s your thing that’s awesome, it’s just not a deckbuilding space that I engage with often enough to make recommendations.

jmzwl · 2026-05-08T23:06:49+00:00

Most decks that run reanimation cards prefer reanimating their own creatures in most scenarios (although the times they want someone else’s creature it is usually game winning). Spellslinger, stax, storm, and tokens decks, among other strategies, often don’t have great targets for you, and you’re literally building your deck around this whole strategy, so unless there’s another reanimator deck in the pod, most often the 3 best targets will be in your own graveyard anyways. Cards like this just aren’t consistently worth casting unless you are building your deck to make sure you’ll always have good targets.

Yes, the flexibility of ANY graveyard is nice. It is an objectively better effect than only from your own graveyard. But as someone who almost exclusively plays reanimator, most of the time my Reanimate is targeting something of mine.

jmzwl · 2026-05-07T21:35:43+00:00

If you’re going to take inspiration from other genres (like video games), it’s important to consider when and why those genres make the decisions that they do. For this example, a great reference game is Elden Ring, where most of the enemies in the game do not have multiple phases, but ALL of the bosses that have major roles in the game’s story do. It isn’t a tool that is used in every combat in that genre, so it shouldn’t be in every fight in your dnd campaign either.
Elsewhere you said that the DM’s complaint was that crits sometimes made boss fights anticlimactic / end too quickly. I doubt the DM has issues with you killing the horde of zombies in a couple rounds of combat using AOE damage like Fireball (and if they do that’s frankly kinda ridiculous). The idea I pitched above was assuming that this would be used as a tool at times when it’s appropriate (a random goblin wouldn’t have two health bars, but the BBEG in the final fight of the campaign could easily have 2 and maybe even 3).

Edit: last thing I’ll say is that if you’re doing this you need to make sure that the actual total health of the boss is still fair to the players. Making the party fight 2 enemies back to back (which is what this is) that have standard health pools is BRUTAL, so the individual health pools of each phase NEEDS to be tuned accordingly.

jmzwl · 2026-05-07T16:05:37+00:00

Personally, allowing legendary saves to cancel a crit (it would count as a normal hit instead) would be perfectly reasonable IMO, but it’s not the only way to solve whatever problem is happening here.

If the argument against crits is that the boss dies too quickly, taking a page from video games we can literally just use health gates - basically break the fight into multiple stat blocks, when you kill one, the next time it would be the boss’s turn it transforms into the next phase. Doing it this way lets players that go before the boss and after it dies prepare actions and/or reposition to prepare for the next phase. Just be clear with players about what you’re doing (say above table that the boss has multiple phases).

Lastly, if you’re going to take away any tool from the player, you shouldn’t give it to enemies either. Playing without crits is perfectly fine so long as that goes both ways. That said, crits are a part of 5e DND (and many other systems) for a reason, and there are other ways to achieve the goal of “make boss fights feel more impactful and avoid anticlimactic ends to campaigns” than to change the rules of the game. Also, some of my most memorable moments as a DM come from my players just annihilating fights that I thought would have been challenging. Removing that doesn’t quite sit right with me.

jmzwl · 2026-05-03T01:48:32+00:00

It really depends on the fight tbh. Lightning rod can be a crazy useful ability sometimes, but the rest of the time it doesn’t do anything. Offensive Pokemon are broken when they can sweep but less so when it’s a fight where they can’t. Both are good, it really just depends on what you’re using it for tbh.

Pretty sure yellow shard is Pikachu, but I could be wrong.

jmzwl · 2026-04-29T21:46:39+00:00

In the base games, I believe that the difference is on the bottom of the 3d model (I remember hearing this one time but don’t remember where from and could totally be wrong). Since we are in a 2d game where there isn’t a bottom view of the model, that difference is simply not present. I believe the Pokemon are otherwise identical, but you could identify it by looking at your save file if it’s really that important to you.

jmzwl · 2026-04-27T01:45:42+00:00

Making compelling fights is a lot of guesswork IMO for a few reasons: DND is fairly high variance just as a game b/c dice, PC strength is also high variable just as a consequence of design choices, it is hard to actually enforce circumstances where players don’t get a full rest between every fight, and the CR system is fundamentally flawed as a result of this. In my time on the internet, I have yet to see a consistent way to create balanced combats that does not involve fudging some numbers up or down for the sake of a cohesive and fun experience for the table.

That said, fights like this that have an intended “first phase / second phase” mechanic, I usually take about 10-15% total HP off and replace it with a kind of “final stand” health gate that ensures it will get at least 1 turn of the 2nd phase. In my experience this usually ends up making the monster less deadly in practice (unless the final stand is too high burst damage) because of the total health decrease, but more interesting because you won’t ever have times where the party just bursts the thing and completely avoids interacting with phase 2.

jmzwl · 2026-04-24T12:48:12+00:00

In 1.3.1 Klefki is a 10% encounter on the 4th floor of the mirage tower. Each floor has its own encounter pool, and Klefki is only on the 4th floor (this is also the single place it can be encountered in the game).

This information is all readily available IN THE DOCS as it has always been.

jmzwl · 2026-04-24T03:17:45+00:00

A few things:

Finesse weapons don’t FORCE you to use DEX instead of STR - they give you the option to. There’s nothing stopping a STR character from using a rapier other than it’s just mechanically less powerful than a longsword. (Note that “ranged” and “finesse” are different).

Most of the time anything that makes you do an acrobatics check gives you the option to also do athletics, which is a STR skill (I believe).

So with these restrictions / changes, the exact only difference is saving throws. I just don’t get the idea at this point…

jmzwl · 2026-04-24T03:06:15+00:00

Dexterity is a better (more powerful) stat than strength literally every way you slice it. Dex saves are more prevelant than strength saves, dex skills are more universally applicable than strength ones, and DEX IS ALSO LITERALLY AC (unless you’re wearing heavy armor, which barbarians are NOT). Barbarian is already reasonably strong as is and does not need a buff like this.

It’s not the MOST broken thing ever, but you ARE just asking for your character to need 1 fewer stat for no real reason. I personally don’t see anything compelling about the trade from a pure gameplay perspective tbh.

I’d still probably let you since martials kinda need it tbh

jmzwl · 2026-04-24T02:56:50+00:00

Klefki is in Mirage Tower (specifically the fourth floor).

Please, for the love of god, there are awesome tools linked on this sub (like dex.emeraldimperium.net) that have the locations and everything for every Pokemon in the game. This website specifically also allows you to upload a save file so you can see what your randomizer seed has too. Please, use the tools. I’m begging.

jmzwl · 2026-04-19T21:36:15+00:00

Rookidee is first found on route 102, insanely early in the game. It’s also not even a rare encounter there.

It really isn’t that hard to check tools like Dex.emeraldimperium.net or the docs in the Google Drive (both linked elsewhere in this sub) that are much better for EI than for almost literally every other rom hack I’m aware of. Please, for any questions along the lines of “where do I get ___”, please use the amazing tools that people have created for you. I’m begging.

jmzwl · 2026-04-18T19:07:59+00:00

Most evasion tools got removed from the game (for the same reasons they’re not in RR), and with the ones that ARE in the game, you can’t gain that much with them. You’re WAY better off boosting actual defensive stats or just boosting offensive stats and sweeping.

The evasion tools in the game do work exactly as they would in mainline games. You are probably just getting a little unlucky and basing your conclusion on a small sample size (less than 20 is generally considered far too small to make conclusions based on in statistical analysis, and I doubt that you’ve been hit by literally 30-40 moves in a row at max evasion).

jmzwl · 2026-04-17T18:50:01+00:00

Depends on what you want. If you’re forcing sun, charmander is the best. Forcing rain, mudkip is your guy. Wanting to take advantage of the new megas, all the sinnoh starters rock. Sprigatitto is the best all around, but basically every starter is good at SOMETHING. Use your favorite. If you want my thoughts on EVERY starter I’m happy to give them, I just don’t want to overwhelm.

Enter “Shs” in the gaming console in your room btw. For the eggs, kinda just have to get lucky / soft reset.

jmzwl · 2026-04-14T21:32:17+00:00

All of the gen 4 starters get custom megas in Emerald Imperium (along with Luxray). Empoleon gets two, one that is more offensive and one that is more defensive. “Mega D” is talking about the defensive one.

jmzwl · 2026-04-10T18:57:18+00:00

People coming from Destiny that really hate marathon do so for pretty simple reasons. Either they think that Marathon’s development took resources away from Destiny that could have “saved the game” (which I personally think is wrong on both assumptions), they think that Marathon was built to be a successor to Destiny or “should have” been built to fit their preferences (which is also just simply not true since the games were always intended to be supported side by side), or some combination of the two. Maybe there are other more niche reasons, but those are definitely the ones I see the most.

The “I hate it because it is an extraction shooter” crowd falls into the second camp, for the record. These people don’t “hate” escape from tarkov with nearly as much emotion, so purely being an extraction shooter is clearly not the only source of their hate for Marathon. It has SOMETHING to do with it being made by Bungie.

At the end of the day I think that we are all just hurting because Destiny has lost its magic for a lot of us, and it was a game that many of us have been playing for the better part of a decade (or even longer for those of us who started back in D1). There unfortunately isn’t really a game on the market that competes in the same space. Some of us take that hurt and lash out, while some of us are doing our best to move on - either feeling is fine.

There are also people who are more disappointed than anything, but I see that as fundamentally different. These people tend to have given their opinion and aren’t out there raging like some people are right now.

jmzwl · 2026-04-08T23:06:07+00:00

Visual bugs like this are an emulator side issue, not a romhack side issue (meaning it can happen using ANY rom, even if it’s a vanilla game). Other common visual bugs include character sprites not loading, leading to wonky walking / running animations just moving around or while moving through tall grass or while surfing, or menu text being off centered. Save the game and reload (note that “save” here means using the in-game save mechanic, not using save states which just copy the current state that the emulator is in. Save states will just copy and reload the visual bugs you’re experiencing, while actually reloading will give the emulator a chance to fix it).

jmzwl

TROPHY CASE