Alpha Build 8 Now Available!

It’s here! It’s finally here! I hope you all are as excited for this as I am! The story now continues into the southern mountains of Abbadon where mysteries and danger abound. Here are the highlights:

• Story Continuation - The story goes on! See what awaits you in Chapter 3!
• New Areas - Explore Mt. Belial, the town of Nysa, the Crystal Channel, and a strange abandoned lab on the snowy mountaintop. Each area is packed with items, Pokémon, secrets, and battles!
• New Music - Three new toe-tapping tracks have been added to the game’s soundtrack. I hope you like them as much as I do!
• New Custom Items - Use the Warding Charms to keep away wild Pokémon at the cost of draining money on each step. Use the new Impulse items to give experience to your Pokémon. And don’t forget new Artifacts to play around with!
• New Quality-of-Life Options - Use Fast Mode to speed up gameplay, helpful for repeat playthroughs. Also, you can now disable weather effects for those who have perfomance issues when weather occurs. Find these options in the Options Menu.
• Hard Mode - This newly-added mode cranks up the difficulty by restricting saving to special sigils found throughout the game, and causes a Game Over upon losing a battle. Don’t worry, though, as most trainer battles can be surrendered in this mode, letting you instantly end the battle, while still caughing up the loser’s fee. Additionally, prize money from battles is increased while in this mode. This mode is still experimental, so try it out and see what you think! Start a new save to try it out.
• Item Drops - Wild Pokémon now have a chance to drop the held item they were holding. It’s rare, but it should hopefully help you gain a few free items for defeating wild Pokémon.
• Loads of Changes - A whole heaping helping of changes, fixes, and tweaks have been added. See the changelog for details!

I’ve been working super hard on this build, and I really hope you guys have fun with it! I already have lots of plans for Build 9, so hopefully development for that won’t be as long this time. As always, please report any bugs you find on the subreddit, come discuss the game on our Discord server, and contribute your knowledge of the game to the Wiki (we really need some active contributors!).

I’d like to take this chance to thank our contributors for their hard work. Lesser Bay composed the amazing new tracks, and CandiHyphenPants created some cool new trainer class designs. I’d also like to thank the people who worked to playtest this build to squash a LOT of bugs. I daresay this will likely be the most bug-free launch we’ve had! (Fingers crossed super hard)

Downloads are available in the Launcher now! See the blog for more info.

Read on for the full changelog:

Additions

• Dahlia can now give the player TM27 Return if shown a Pokémon with perfect happiness.
• Two new Secret Hollow locations in the Acacia area.
• New item balls in Acacia area.
• Mt. Belial, Nysa, and various sub-maps are now available!
• Wild Pokémon that are carrying items now have a chance to drop the item upon defeat. The Pokémon must still be holding the item upon defeat, and there is a percent chance equal to the Pokémon’s level that its item will drop.
• New items: Vitality Impulse, Life Impulse, Supremacy Impulse. These give a set number of EXP to a Pokémon. Good for leveling up multiple times, especially at lower-levels.
• New option: Fast mode. Enable to play the game in slight fast-forward. Good for repeat playthroughs.
• New option: Weather effects. Disable to hide weather on the overworld for those who experience slowdown when weather is displayed.
• Added a few examination events to The Secret Spot.
• Added high-resolution Gen V back sprites (created by Dreadwing93 on Deviantart)
• Added three new music tracks for new areas.
• Added a temporary way for players who used the temporary event in Build 7 to return to Nascene City in Chapter 3 to get back on track.

Tweaks

• The 10-yard markers in the Nascene High football field have been moved to the sidelines to be more realistic.
• Altar of Fortitude has been renamed to Altar of Will.
• Added a primer on Pokeballs in Rosemary Market.
• Slight contrast bump to a few tiles in the desert tileset.
• Pokémon are no longer healed by placing them in the PC.
• Updated the Ancient Map to reflect changes in future story locations.
• Added more detail to Sagaxis Deep Wood.
• Minor tweaks to Sagaxis Forest tileset to improve color balance and perspective.
• Slightly clarified quick start intro dialog.
• Added more detail in Jagged Pass South.
• Added more detail to road construction area in Nascene Suburbs.
• Added a hint if the player returns to their apartment after receiving the skateboard.
• The player can no longer name the protagonist certain restricted names (mostly important NPC names).
• Bonsly now learns Mimic at lv17 (down from lv33).
• Umbreon now learns Curse at lv50.
• Shuppet and Banette now learn Shadow Claw instead of Shadow Ball at lv30.
• Minor color tweaks to Holly’s sprite.
• Added small details to the dials in the Dajjal Temple dial puzzle.
• Magneton now evolves into Magnezone in Aegis Generator Room.
• Added suspicious wall spot events to Jagged Foothills.
• TM60 has been changed from Quash to Avalanche.
• The Spooky Plate has been renamed to Soul Plate.
• The Up-Grade has a setting-specific tweak to its description.
• Feebas can now evolve while leveled up at night while holding a Prism Scale.
• Shelmet and Karrablast now evolve when exposed to a Dusk Stone or Dawn Stone, respectively. Their PokeDex entries have been modified to reflect this.
• Cave floors now register as rocky terrain.
• OST Organization is now played during the cutscene in Jagged Cavern during the Prologue.
• The player can no longer enter school during the chase with Dante in the Prologue.
• Minor pacing tweaks to the first cutscene in RevTex Textile Factory
• RevTex Textile Factory now plays OST Abandoned Lab Battle during battle.
• Slowed down lighting flash in RevTex Textiles Front Office.
• Added a few Potions to the early sections of RevTex Textiles 1F
• Improved visibility of ghost dialogue.
• Matthias now has a unique overworld sprite.
• Temple Catacombs and Temple Dungeon now play serious wild battle music.
• Wild Munchlax and Snorlax now only rarely spawn with a Leftovers.
• Reduced difficulty of the Training Dummy in Unknown Side Room.
• Action Kid Carson has been renamed to Action Kid Mitchell to avoid name overlap with Biologist Carson.
• New texture for locked doors in bars in the Temple Dungeon.
• Medic Ollie now has better shop handling, and can no longer be sold to.
• After battling Sayaka in Jagged Pass South, she will now heal your party.
• Sandstorm Warning events in Jul'far no longer trigger during the bandit siege.
• Added in-battle message for Bandit Boss Tariq.
• Updated Abbadon region map for new and future areas.
• Player no longer has to fight Lolita Astrid in Puzzle House Challenge 1 upon failing the second puzzle. Instead, they must re-complete the first puzzle.
• Wild double battles now play both foes’ cries.
• Various Rock-type moves have had slight accuracy increases: Rock Throw, Rock Slide, Stone Edge, and Rock Tomb.
• Removed mention of unused out-of-battle function for Teleport from its move description.
• The Temple Catacombs now allows use of Escape Rope.
• Money is no longer lost during battles in the Unknown Dungeon section.
• Changed PP of Sucker Punch from 5 to 10.
• Updated years on splash screen.
• The player’s party is now healed after the battle in the Altar of Truth.
• Ice types are now resistant to Grass-, Water-, Bug-, and Dragon-type moves.

Fixes

• Fixed an invisible wall in Jagged Pass South.
• Fixed map transfer from Jagged Pass South to Jagged Cavern placing the player on the wrong tile.
• Fixed a rare Essentials bug where the game would crash if metadata could not be loaded from a save file.
• Fixed static pronoun usage in journal note #3.
• Fixed error message during multi-trainer battles.
• Fixed generic player icon on map screen.
• Fixed issue where talking to Dahlia while she’s following you in Sagaxis Deep Wood makes certain events freeze.
• Fixed cutscene objects in the Altar of Truth not resetting if the battle against Samael is lost.
• Fixed various tile layering issues in Nascene City.
• Fixed a tile priority issue in Amon Desert, causing some ledges to be able to be jumped over from both sides.
• Fixed an Essentials bug where attempting to deposit a Pokémon in the PC while the target Pokémon is held above an empty party slot crashes the game.
• Fixed bookshelves in XENO Corp. Lab 1 being able to be read from all sides.
• Fixed a missing tile in Acacia Town.
• It’s no longer possible to examine the door to the Rival’s Apartment while the Rival is waiting in front of your apartment during the Prologue.
• Fixed missing transfer event into Flowertown Florists in Nascene City Downtown.
• Benches in Nascene City can no longer be walked onto from the sides.
• Fixed inconsistencies with lighting in Jagged Cavern.
• Fixed some stray tiles in Acacia Temple.
• Fixed an uncolored line of dialogue in Matthias’s speech in Acacia Temple.
• Fixed an NPC outside of the Jul'far gates using the wrong sprite.
• Fixed a bug where there bandit outside Jul'far Pharmacy re-charges you every time you want to go in.
• Fixed a typo in NPC dialogue in Naptha Inn.
• Fixed a typo on the fence break event in Jul'far.
• Fixed artifact acquisition event turning the room dark in the Altar of Will.
• Sayaka no longer turns randomly during an event in Murmur Tower.
• Fixed a missing tile in Sagaxis Deep Wood.
• References to “Temple of Dajjal” and “Forest Temple” have been changed to “Dajjal Temple” for consistency.
• Fixed inconsistent lighting in transitions into Jagged Cavern B1F.
• Removed a stray impassable tile in Jagged Cavern B1F.
• Fixed missing color code in Spelunker Hikari’s rematch text.
• Fixed broken replacement code in Medic Damian’s defeat text.
• Player can no longer use shortcut keys during cutscenes.
• Fixed artifact in XENO Corp. Lab 4 not appearing during cutscene.
• Fixed a bug where giving EXP to a Pokémon via items leveled it up if the total EXP given was less than what was needed to level up normally.
• Fixed a typo in Note #205 (Journal Entry #5)
• Fixed an Essentials bug where using Fling causes an error message.