Kyrios

I may or may not have confused you for the other guy.

I'm not sure if that's his first post, but from ninjas tone I don't think it is. Even if it is, if you're toxic, we'll let you know. It's how we've always been. BTB let's other people bludgeon his disruptive members rather than do it himself. Sorry for the double post. The quote formatting is troublesome for editing on mobile.

I can and will edit your posts to make you sing "I'm a little teapot" if you're an ass though. You're a guest here, my man. We don't know you yet. Coming in here guns blazing won't earn you any kind of desirable place here. This is our house. Time you started acting like it.

Alright, you've convinced me. I'd like to point this out for everyone: when you don't like something the staff does, this is how you speak out -- you make a reasoned argument against it. This is how you will get us to listen. That goes for all the Administrators, not just me. Bravo, sir. My hat goes off to you.

I mean, if you can find the sprite, I actually made a tutorial on YouTube for how to do it.

As an update to everyone, I received word from FFTA, one of the other former Administrators of Insane Difficulty earlier tonight. Whatever happens from here on out, just know that this man was not to blame. He tried purchasing the site himself, but Archael would not have it. If he comes back here, I intend to welcome him back with open arms, and I expect all of you to do the same. He loved Insane Difficulty just as much as anyone else, and he tried just as much as the rest of the Administration to save it.

Yeah man, no kidding. I'll be picking this up again soon. Been on a serious World of Warcraft kick lately.

At the request of @Aura Of The Dawn I will be putting story elements in spoiler tags. So! I've had a lot of progress since my last update. Let me just kind of get that out of the way first. Level: 41 Bite / Dragon Dance / Twister / Wing Attack Boy, Aether, you've grown. Delta Pidgeot learns Dragon Dance, making him a powerful sweeper when given the opportunity. I gave him Wing Attack to hopefully mitigate his fighting weakness, as that's a pretty prevalent type in Insurgence. Level: 41 Ice Beam / Calm Mind / Thundershock / Shock Wave Kyrie has grown a lot as well, into a beautiful bleach-blonde transvestite. She's a special monster, with Calm Mind and Ice Beam. Thunderbolt is soon to follow. Level: 43 Calm Mind / Leech Seed / Psychic / Dazzling Kiss Look who it is! Saphira is pretty great defensively; her EVs allow her to have strong defense, while Calm Mind both boosts her sweeping potential and covers her special defense, though I've been considering giving her a screen instead. Dazzling Kiss, combined with Leftovers and Leech Seed, makes her a pain in the ass to KO. Level: 40 Bite / Rock Slide / Dragon Dance / Chip Away Titan's getting there, but he's not quite fully grown just yet. Rock Slide combined with Dragon Dance has made him invaluable so far, and I expect that to continue, especially once he reaches his final form and can properly utilize his armor. Level: 41 Flame Wheel / Iron Defense / Flame Burst / Iron Tail Veritas is kind of in the same boat as Titan. He's got Flame Wheel and Iron Defense, two very important abilities that lend themselves very well to the type of pokemon he is. This team is designed somewhat more defensive than normal, and it's starting to show in their movesets. Here comes a new challenger! Crush Delta Torterra Water/Ground Water Absorb (self-explanatory) Adamant (+Atk/-SpAtk) 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def Earthquake / Curse / Razor Shell / Recover This guy is an absolute monster. Earthquake, Curse (-spd / +atk / +def), Razor Shell (strong phys water), and Recover? Jesus. I found out that I needed to change it up a bit, since Larvesta is pretty lacking right now. So I made a new rule: I can change out to other delta/armored pokemon. I'm not sure what limitations I'm going to put on this rule, but Hard Mode is proving to be much more of a challenge (given that I'm sort of breaking pacing with this challenge) than I thought it would be. I love the soft level cap it imposes based on story progression. There wasn't all that many noteworthy things that happened (I forgot to screenshot almost all of it because I didn't think there was any interest in this), but this was by far the best. THAT WAS HIS LAST POKEMON! IT HELD ON USING FOCUS SASH AND PROCEEDED TO RAPE MY PHYSICALLY DEFENSIVE TEAM WITH SHADOW BALL! This is why I was considering switching to Light Screen, because fuck this mess. It really outlined an issue with my team. But I'm gonna continue and post more stuff tomorrow! Just wanted to give you guys an update.

Then I guess I need to do an update, don't I?

Alright, so! Time to meet the team! Saphira Delta Bulbasaur Fairy/Psychic Regenerator (Restores 1/3 HP when switched out in battle) Bold (+Def/-SpD) 16 HP / 252 Def / 176 SpA / 64 Spd Saphira isn't meant to be all that offensive. Delta Venusaur has great typing as well as good defenses. I plan to load her up with Leftovers and give her Leech Seed and Calm Mind, to boost both her sweeping potential and wall potential at the same time. Aether Delta Pidgey Dark/Dragon Marvel Scale (1.5x Def when inflicted with status) Adamant (+Atk/-SpAtk) 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd Aether is gonna be a bit of a physical powerhouse. Not only does he have good offensive typing, but he also has access to Dragon Dance, Outrage, and Crunch, all great STAB moves with great coverage. Veritas Delta Aron Fire/Steel Heavy Metal (weight is doubled) Adamant (+Atk/-SpAtk) 68 Atk / 200 SpDef / 240 Spd Veritas is gonna be a physical monster. Delta Aggron has a base 180 Defense, so I figured it'd be best to beef up his special defense a bit, since he has access to Iron Defense as well. Heavy Weight is an interesting choice. There are only two moves in the game that directly benefit from this, and one is Fire, one is Steel -- both STAB moves. I don't have access to a movelist for this one as it's not in the wiki, so I can only really speculate. Kyrie Delta Ralts Ice/Electric Clear Body (can't have stats lowered) Modest (+SpAtk/-Atk) 6 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spd Kyrie is gonna be my main special powerhouse. She has amazing offensive typing, with access to Calm Mind, Thunderbolt, and Ice Beam, as well as Focus Blast and Earth Power for potential coverage. Delta Gardevoir was amazing in my last game, and I expect her to perform just as well here. Titan Larvitar Rock/Ground Guts (boosts Atk by one stage if inflicted with status) Adamant (+Atk/-SpAtk) 68 Atk / 200 Def / 240 Spd Titan is just that -- a veritable titan of power. With his armor once he hits Tyranitar, he gets a huge defensive boost, plus he's got Dragon Dance and some awesome STAB moves to pick up some huge sweeping potantial. Vulcan Delta Larvesta Dark/Poison Defiant (when stats are lowered, attack increases by one stage) Modest (+SpAtk/-Atk) 6 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spd Vulcan is my other special powerhouse, though she has the potential to be far more of a powerhouse than I'll probably make her into. Delta Volcarona gets access to Toxic Spikes, an entry hazard I'll probably make use of, and a ton of awesome STAB moves as well. She rounds out my team nicely. Okay, I lied. Next time, we do stuff!

The Administrator in me says this might not be the best idea, but you guys deserve the best. This noble, majestic mother fucker right here? @ninjasdf? The one responsible for the creation of this site? Yeah, this mother fucker tried to buy the ID domain off Archael, for way more than it was worth, for you guys to host it as a sister site. He was offering to pay the server fees, everything. And Archael turned his nose up at it. Completely ignored him. So yeah, it went down, and it isn't coming back. But just know that we -- ninja, especially -- tried to get it for y'all. That should tell you something.

Why is this even a fucking question? All jokes aside, basically all Dark means is certain aspects of the story change, so you might see someone die on screen. One death is particularly gruesome, but it's not bad at all really. So, the story begins with this asshole giving you some information about the world. Basically, instead of people with bowl-shaped haircuts and switchblades, we have cults that worship legendary pokemon, namely Darkrai, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza. You see a bunch of others throughout the game, but those are the big ones for now. The first Augur went around and fucked shit up on these cults. He wrecked over half of them, but one day he went out to fuck some more shit up and never came back. OH MY GOD, I BET YOU NEVER SAW THAT COMING. I'm sure. I love this game. It does shit like this all the time without even batting an eye. There is -- I shit you not -- a Jehova's Witness joke later on in the game. So, the story goes that right now, you're held captive by the Cult of Darkrai, and they've got a Gengar eating your memories right now. So, you're being held by a murderous cult, you don't remember shit, and you have no pokemon. But that's okay, because your best buddy Mew is here to help you! Mew has the ability to transform itself -- and you -- into anything you have the DNA of. I'm getting a distinct Animorphs vibe. So we go, get the blood of a cultist who was sacrificed to summon Darkrai before, to get the ability to transform into one! This is actually pretty neat, as there's all kinds of stuff in the game that reacts to this, from different NPC reactions to opening fingerprinted locks. Our first ritual sacrifice of the game! Woo! But then Darkrai is like "lol nah fam, this bitch a thot" and then peaces the fuck out, because fuck Persephone. She's the leader of the Cult of Darkrai, if you didn't guess. HOLY SHIT DID SHE JUST FUCKIN' MERC HER OWN GRUNTS?! JESUS CHRIST! I love it. So, you don't get Mew yet. Instead, you get the Quartz Flute, which lets you call on Mew when you need to for the DNA thing. This is not just limited to switching appearances either, as Mew can also get the DNA of other legendaries to perform abilities on the field to open up paths and access things that weren't available before! Fuck yeah. So yeah, your new bud Damian's mom is a bitch, so there's that. THIS IS WHY DAD DOESN'T TOUCH YOU ANYMORE MOM!! This kid kinda reminds me of Wally, only Wally's Mom isn't a reprehensible cunt. Welp, we go, grab ourselves a Delta Bulbasaur. Then proceed to beat the shit out of Wal -- I mean Damian, and head out into the forest to grab a gift for the Second Augur, since he's apparently in town. Tune in next time, when I'll actually do stuff!

Jesus, where do I begin...? These changes seem really random and not focused in any way whatsoever. What is your goal here? What kind of mod is this? A difficulty mod? A content mod? Okay, so definitely not a difficulty mod. With these changes, you might as well not even mod any of the enemies, as changes this small will amount to literally nothing. ...Why? This seems more like a really shallow randomizer than a mod, at this point. So, not a difficulty mod, not a quality mod... What else is there? Every ability costs 13 AP? Why? What kind of sense does that make? That literally penalizes the player and actively discourages if not completely shuts down any kind of depth with abilities. All spells have both a positive and negative effect on them now? Why? So when I cast Cure, it poisons me or something? Okay, so you're trying to nerf the damage curve. I can get on board with this. Eidolons have multi-element? Why? All physical and magical attacks inflict poison and darkness? Why? All the base character names have been modified? Fucking why? Every ability costs 255 AP to learn? What the actual fuck? Why? What purpose does this serve? This actively encourages grinding. Reduced HP and MP I can agree with. Okay, so here's the thing. Unless you found a way to change the type of value HP and MP are, you can't have doubled the HP of all enemies, and here's why. 65,535 is the max HP that an enemy can have, and there are a few bosses that already have that maxed. This is a maxed out 16-bit value, and unless you are able to change that datatype without fucking everything else up, this is literally not possible to do. Look, it was not at all my intention to come here and shit on your work, but this is a mod that has come from a completely unfocused and scatter-brained vision. I would be shocked if you told me you actually tested this before releasing it and said you were pleased with the changes. If you want to link to it here, that is fine, but this mod will not be hosted on NGPlus. While there are many reasons for this, three changes combined are enough to make this call. You've increased the exp curve immensely, lowered the amount of EXP and AP you get per battle, as well as made it so that you need 255 AP for every goddamn ability in the game. That is incredibly poor design. That's not fun, that's a pointless grind that makes no sense whatsoever. You need to go back to the drawing board with this and figure out what exactly you want to make, and for the love of god, playtest it too. I know some people might think I'm being too harsh, but sometimes you need to hear the truth, no matter how harsh it is.

So, on the subject of trying to get some more activity here, I'll fully admit that I'm not all that great at coming up with events and the like, but something that seems to usually be a pretty good bet with you guys is speedrun tourneys. Now, I'm down for a speedrun tourney on a small scale, but I'm curious about a few things. Does anyone have any ideas for what they think would be interesting to speedrun? Does anyone have any ideas outside of a speedrun tourney that they'd like to put forth for an event? We're really open to just about anything at this point. Once we get enough suggestions, I'll see about picking one for us to start with, and if there's enough, we might even put them on some kind of rotation. Ideas! Post 'em! Let's go!

To be perfectly honest with you, I doubt it would go in that direction even if the option presented itself. But at this point in time, no.

It still makes them worth less by default, and it makes it way easier to fully buff up the entire party, which in a way diminishes the effect of stuff like Trance Aura and Mighty Guard, not to mention Rei's Wind. In short, I feel like that causes more problems then it fixes. Raising spirit across the board at this point in time I feel like is a better solution.

My only problem with this is that it kind of nullifies characters having self-buffs. I feel it removes a layer of depth.

Okay, this is fair. What about raising Spirit across the board? What else does that affect? I mean I know it affects a lot of different things, I'm more wondering about problematic stuff.

Not to dismiss this suggestion, but I feel like this is one of those "get gud" recommendations.

@Xifanie Me love you long time? <3 Let's keep the suggestions remotely feasible. Not that I don't agree, but for now we're not touching that monstrosity.

Right now we're focusing on a simple rebalance. We'll delve into the rest once we've got that handled.

Ludo's got a lot going on right now, so I doubt he'll be able to take a crack at it tbh.

I really, really like this idea, but that's a smidge long for what I had in mind originally. Yeah, that's more or less what I was thinking. I like the modding contest one as well, but that's definitely not going to be the first event.

The fuck we don't. You shut your lying whore mouth.