Now that we’re going into the third day of this Holiday Cave, I wanted to create this thread as a place for feedback and general thoughts or concerns.
We’d love to hear any feedback or comments that you guys wanna share! The feedback can be about anything; NPCs, story, thematics, difficulty, the shop, etc.
This HC was more story-driven as well, which is something we haven’t done for a while I believe? We also introduced new alternate boss cutscenes/stories to make farming go by a bit quicker. If that’s a popular feature, we may start doing them in future HCs.
We hope you all have a fun time with the rest of this HC!
(Also the story is cool, the maps are pretty, and the music is nice — shout out to PMU) Powder Day)
I don’t have a problem with difficulty so far except like Noctowl sometimes because of night shade iirc
And I’m as usual frustrated with the overload of items I’d like to have from the shop but that’s a larger scale issue with all hc and it currently not being possible to have costumes/music items in the weekly event shop. The thing is that possibly not seeing certain items for a year or more is a downer and puts a lot of pressure for items that are just goofy silly not gameplay relevant. Especially since you can’t even really enjoy legendary costumes often. Plus the fact they compete with gifts whose weekly token price is kinda punishing.
On my end though, I’m quite satisfied with everything in this HC. I would agree with Levy’s thread as well but I’m not in shambles by the fact theres not a lot of recruits, but it would be nice to have a bit more love for some recruits like Klink whos only in Cryptic Chasm and Timburr who is only in one of the Dojos.
my general thought’s is that this is a pretty good hc,
dosen’t do really anything wrong and it seems well balanced for the most part,
and it’s great that the bosses rember you after your first encounter, and also something that no one really pointed out that i really liked is that ellina warns you about kyurem having long range attacks!
for the stuff i feel are a bit lacking are:
The recruits are not that interesting for the precedences set by past hcs which where filled with stuff like eevee minccino new recruits psudolegendarys, which uh yeah it’s fine that this isn’t just recruit galore but it is something to note coming from a hc that was it,
The story is not that interesting? like yeah it’s nice that it’s there and usually we straight up don’t have storys in hc, but it was said that this was very story focused hc and the story is just like someone broke in the toy factory and you found out they where sent by a beast which turns out to be nice dude and end of story-
did i set my expectations too high? was this bad advertisement? i dunno prob a me problem but i felt like it was neccesary to point it out regardless
and my final issue with this hc,
the empoleon’s in woodlands. what is up with them?
they deal most of your hp with a single long range snipe nutral bubble beam god forbid it’s raining and or they get a crit, i actually tested thier damage against a azumarill and thier resisted bubble beam dealt more damage then super effective metal claw from a weavile (no rain was in effect)???
even tho the negative section is like 90% of this post i do think this is one of the best HCs we had! it’s just that i don’t really have much to say about it posetively due to nothing really sticking out, it’s just very well done in general
btw can we like get a hc that dosen’t have ice and water in it next time? i’m just kinda noticing it as thrend how all hcs seems to always have those two types in it either be the main types or heavy covrage usage, it’s getting a bit stale, would be fun to use a fire type or grass type every once in awhile.
The return of the move relearners on 2f is once again great. Very necessary for Pokémon with huge movepools at level 1.
The Toy Factory lacks ice and water types, which makes it feel more distinguishable from Winter Woodlands.
The guaranteed currency at the end of Toy Factory is nice.
The lack of enemies with snow warning, along with having enemies with cloud nine, makes enemies with snow cloak far easier to deal with than in the previous Winter HC.
The freeze nerf lets me laugh at freeze traps in harsh sunlight without having to use safeguard.
Using honey in the end room of Winter Woodlands leads to some pretty funny situations.
Tinkaton and Kleavor will be very fun to use in the future.
Now that we have all the positives, I have a couple negatives to share.
There are no mystery eggs in ethier dungeon. Having a low amount of Pokemon to recruit is fine, but there should at least be some eggs too.
Every single Pokémon that was introduced in this HC has a move and/or ability that doesn’t work. Seriously, you can’t release something that isn’t finished!
Scyther isn’t available to recruit in ethier dungeon despite the fact that its evolution item for Kleavor is available in the shop.
Overall, much better than the previous Winter HC and Anniversary HC. It’s much more fair than those two, while also having a generally better reward for completing the dungeons. I hope you continue to make future HCs even better than this one.
now that you mention it that IS very wierd.
was the expectation that people just had a scyther?
cause scyther is pretty rare and hard mon to obtain, being a time limited secret room recruit, feels wrong to just give a evo item and then just tell the players to go grind down a competely different dungeon to actually get the mon.
and if the awser is like “well scyther dosen’t fit this hc” well, niether does kleavor tbh, so if that’s the reasoning then for how wierd it sounds maybe kleavor shouldn’t have been inclouded in it.
you also obtain metal coat in toy factory, which is sizor evo item.
Honestly, Good enough HC, i think there’s more potential, and i have very little gripes:
I think the Grimy Traps are pointless. All it really does is make Grimy Berries out of Frozen Leppas. It’d just be better if this trap was just not present, to avoid clutter.
What do the breakable spots do? Cause i don’t see much use to it, honestly.
Why isn’t Scyther in the dungeon? Even if it didn’t fit, you included the Black Augurite. And even then, fitting the theme isn’t really an issue, or otherwise we’d not have the Kanto Starters in the Dungeon. I’d say maybe put Scyther in Eggs, or put it on Floors 41-50, since those lack unique recruits imo.
The Sail Fossil is very Overpriced. I get it, it makes sense in theory because the other fossils are 500 Cookies. But when you ponder the fact that they have the fact that they’re unreleased officially going for them, while Amaura has been released to TC for a while now, it just means that Amaura shouldn’t be priced in the 500 Ballpark. I’d say more like 400-450. (Side Note: why not Tyrunt as well?)
Overall prices are a bit too much (Like, to get all i want I’m gonna need 3000 cookies, something that’s gonna be complicated).
I find it odd you didn’t include Alolan Vulpix and Sandshrew in the dungeon themselves. I get it, they have “Keys” and you want players to go there more for them, but given this is THE Winter Dungeon, you have the Ice Stone on the shops, and in most Winter HCs, these mons have been present (And really popular too), it’s really odd they miss the bus this time around.
Other than that, this HC isn’t half bad, just has a few quirks i think should be ironed out.
EDIT: OK, no there’s a glaring flaw imo in Woodland. Toxic on Sawsbuck is just too much. Yes, you have Lumiose Galletes to heal the poison off, but i think Toxic in general is a bad idea when there’s already plenty of status in the dungeon.
Overall good HC In my opinion. I only have a few things to bring up here:
Not specific to this HC. I know why this happens ( para can make moves fail and orbs are technically just moves ), but It’s silly and makes these orbs much more useless than Intended. If the para debuff can be bypassed on recovery Items like that, or at least don’t consume the Item If It fails, that would be nice!
About this. I actually got the slate on my first run, meaning the cookies didn’t drop, which was a bit sad. Is It possible to make them a guaranteed drop somehow? Kind of like how SF bosses can drop two Items
I agree with this a lot and mentioned It In the last HC feedback thread. I get there was a crunch for this HC and not everything can work day 1. It’s still rather frustrating though when the things that set apart Pokemon In the first place are not there. Sharpness Is essentially Iron Fist which already does work. Should we expect the unique things to Pokemon to never be released with them, ever? Forgive me If I’m being too negative about It, I can’t remember the last time a Pokemon with a signature Ability or move was released with It working though. I don’t understand why they keep being done after the fact. Transparency about when we can expect them or If they’re being worked on at the least, would be appreciated. If you’re gonna make people grind 500 currency for a Kleavor then the things exclusive to It should at least be functional. That just seems fair. And I get that It can be hard coming up for ways certain things that have only ever been In the main series should function In PMU. If that’s ever a hurdle I personally think It could be fun to bring player Ideas Into It
I don’t know why the breakable objects are there besides It’s funny. If they could have Items In them like cookies, that would be a wonderful Idea and I would love to see something like that
Does It actually have Toxic? I know I got poisoned once but that was due to Secret Power, and I have a feeling no one knew what effect It would have or even thought about that move at all
Yes. They don’t use it often, but if you let them for even a second, that’s a run ender if you don’t have a healing mon. And sometimes, you just get unlucky with move selection. And the Lumiose Galletes are rare, i tell you.
Are they rare? I can’t remember any runs where I haven’t had multiple galettes but the mid floors. Though I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to raise Galette spawn rates (while probably lowering status-curing berry spawn rates to compensate).
I did add Pecha Berries to WW this morning, so hopefully runs are a bit more bearable in regards to poison. I could add Pecha Scarves if poison does seem to be a consistent issue that Pecha Berries + Lumiose Galettes can’t resolve. :(
So far, I just know there’s a few things that can poison.
Poison Jab on Weavile
Secret Power (on Sawsbuck and Azumarill I think?)
Sludge on Ivysaur/Venusaur
Tbh Secret Power being able to poison wasn’t something I intended to have happen since Secret Power is kinda quirky with the way it works. I can probably look into alternatives though, other times it can just decrease specific stats for example.
I wanted some decor in the dungeons to break up the scenery, and there’s currently an issue where they can spawn in front of hallways/stairs and block your way. Making them breakable was basically the only workaround if I wanted to have them in here. I know it probs seems kinda redundant but I think its a fun and silly detail.
Tbh I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been mentioned before.
Difficulty is fine (albeit a bit on the easier side), the more narrative approach is a nice touch, the new track is nice, etc
Only real complaint is that my runs always begin with me using half my scratch pp as soon as I enter to kill a single mon and begin running through the dungeon. I’m not entirely sure if it’s just a me thing for running this sorta dungeons with a totodile, but it’s fairly annoying at times.
