Honestly I think it’s time we got something better than the Golden Mask and the Miracle Chest.
For years, these two items (along with stuff like the Tight Belt and Crystals) have been some of the highest priced items throughout the game. They are nearly essential for every player late-game and mentioned by just about everybody when running a dungeon for recruitment or exp.
For the Golden Mask, I am suggesting a massive upgrade, similarly to how the Friend Bow → Golden Mask situation jumps from 10% to 20% Added recruit rate, this new item should give 40% additional recruit rate, but NOT stack with Golden Mask.
I think we need an item like this because of the prevalence of Shinies in the game to the community. Missing the recruitment is a massive pain when you have GM and Friend Bow on and Pokemon Gift should NOT be a requirement especially since its locked behind Event Tokens and is untradeable. Finding the shiny should be the hard part, recruiting it should not be a 50/50.
If I had it my way, Shinies would have a boosted recruit rate, or just be 100% RR as a baseline, but that doesn’t seem plausible.
With the Miracle Chest, leveling a Pokemon to 100 is extremely grindy and difficult, even with the chest. I have seen suggestions of making the base growth rate different but that would heavily impact current Pokemon’s levels and make getting to level 100 ridiculously easy.
If I recall correctly, the current growth rate is medium-fast, with 1,000,000 exp needed to get to level 100. People have suggested changing it to Erratic, which nearly halves the exp needed to 600,000. (Even changing it to Fast would be a massive drop at 800,000 exp at level 100)
So, instead of changing something baseline about the game, I would like to propose a new endgame item that is a direct upgrade to the Miracle Chest with a similar upgrade as the Golden Mask got. 40% Boost to experience, team-wide held item, does not stack with Miracle or Wonder chest.
These items could be placed in End Boxes of high level dungeons, potentially prompting a revamp of one of the end boxes that the community has wanted for a while (TC). It may also allow for the Miracle Chest and Golden Mask to be ‘knocked down’ into lower end boxes as the higher difficulty dungeons will now have better items. Though I don’t know if I’d want to see this change personally. I think I’d rather just have a new challenge.
Such as…
A new 99F Dungeon with an interesting theming could be formed around these items.
My first thought was a split two-path dungeon with Reshiram and Zekrom at the end representing truth and ideals.
Reshiram, representing truth, would have a section of the dungeon that has high exp yield, the dungeon is grueling, offering a low amount of supplies and tanky but high exp yield Pokemon like Chansey throughout, along with mons that use Spite and Grudge to try to wear you down. The truth of this world is painful sometimes, but you have to persist.
The End Box of Reshiram’s section would have the chance of getting the Exp Boosting item (or it could be a direct Reshiram drop)
Zekrom, representing ideals, would have a section of the dungeon that has a boosted shiny rate, but the RR is low. The dungeon would have Pokemon that the community generally finds use in, as it is “idealistic”. (Noivern, Gastrodon, Smeargle, Malamar, Sylveon etc), and many of them would use ‘Meta’ movesets, leaning into healing and spread moves.
The End Box of Zekrom’s section would have the chance of getting the recruitment rate item, (or it could be a direct Zekrom drop).
In general, I would love to have a solution to the exp and recruitment rate problems that I think PMU definitely has. I also want to see cool new dungeons, as well as more legendary pokemon for more heart slates and potential story beats.
Thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear anyone’s input. Either on the dungeon or the items and especially both.