Pokémon Compass — v2.1.0.0 Primer

This update makes some pretty big changes, and as such, there are some important notes to cover first.

This version of Compass has a different release style than previous versions, owing to the inclusion of exeFS content.

Standalone Instructions

The Standalone release is the main release of the mod, and is the version that should be installed for players who will not be merging Compass with any other romFS mod(s).

You must use the version of the release that corresponds to the version of the game you will be modding. There are no differences in terms of features, but because of the inclusion of exeFS, it is version-specific.

This release is an archive that should be extracted to your mod install location:

If the directory does not exist, then you may create it. The game will automatically create the directory on first run, as well.

For Atmosphere players, this should not be in any containing directory.

Emulator players should use the emulator's mod install location instead of the atmosphere install, which can be accessed generally by, for instance, right-clicking the game and opening that directory. Make sure to have or create a Compass directory in this location, and put the exeFS and romFS content within that directory.

Do not use the Atmosphere install location on emulators.

Trinity Instructions

The Trinity release is an optional release method for the mod, and is the version that should be used for players who wish to combine Compass with other romFS mods.

If you're using this version, it's assumed you know how to use Trinity already~

This release is slightly different from the Standalone, as it is comprised of two components that have to be downloaded separately :

• The exeFS content
• The romFS content

First, download the version of the exeFS content that corresponds to the version of the game you will be modding, then extract this to your mod install location.

Then, download the romFS Trinity release. This archive is ready for processing with Trinity Mod Loader, just like previous releases of the Trinity version were.

Upon completion of the Trinity Mod Loader process, take the resulting romFS directory — not the contents within, but the whole romFS directory entirely — and copy it to the same directory as the exeFS.

You will therefore have an exeFS directory and romFS directory, if you installed it correctly.

Ensure that the romFS directory does not contain another romFS directory. It should open directly to the actual data content, such as appli, arc, and so on.

We are aware of the following issues, and will have them resolved in a future update.

Other Issues | Quirks

This version includes a completely reworked spawn function system. This includes an entirely new core logic and notably superior lookup method across the whole process, bringing much-needed optimizations, resulting in (a little bit) better performance and smoother player experience.

As such, there will be fewer microstutters / framedrops while roaming the world. While this won't completely eliminate and significantly improve maximum framerate, it will keep it more steady.

Many spawn points have been corrected, especially in Paldea, such as removing many that were inside of walls, beyond bounding boxes, outside of the world space, etc. — the game still does all of its normal spawn filtering on these points, even if the result is something that isn't interactable, which can lead to missed spawns and additional performance overhead.

Some areas also had a significant amount of essentially-overlapping spawn points, or incredibly high-density clusters, which have been thinned out to make spawning a touch more consistent and less prone to heavy calculation in one specific location.

This update reduces the number of these types of spawn points, marginally reducing spawn overhead — thousands of points have been removed and adjusted.

This has an additional benefit of reducing false-positives for the shiny indicator and notices, because spending a lot of time chasing down a shiny that actually spawned inside a world object or otherwise out-of-reach ... sounds awful.

Beyond just fixing spawn points, this update includes new spawn points, specifically to improve the rarity of certain biomes by adding a few additional spawns of the same type in the same vicinity as appropriate, or extend some of the spawn points to areas of the world where it would make more sense for them to exist in.

This will be pretty much invisible to the player, but it does result in better adherence to the design decisions behind certain species in certain areas, and should help improve variety in some areas marginally.

Does mean that some spawns, which were always intended to appear in certain locations, but were removed in previous Compass patches — like Cyndaquil, around the Pokémon League Entrance — can show up where they were originally planned to be.

Included is an improvement to the way the game loads and unloads battle data.

With the method originally used by the game, battle data loading times increase linearly with additional trainers, which is a problem, considering this update has ~330 different trainer teams and a further ~60 new trainer battles, an almost 60% increase from vanilla's total.

So we replaced it.

Overall, this will marginally reduce the framedrops when a battle starts and when it ends, though it will not eliminate it entirely — There is just a lot going on here.

Compass now also replaces the sorting method used in several places throughout the game, which will help to reduce overhead in areas where a lot of data is loaded continually.

This will help to ease some of the framedrops caused by over-long array parsing, generally reducing stutters.

The trade-off being a minimal increase in game loading time.

In this version of Compass, you can now improve the frame rate / animation rates of all the background objects that commonly have low animation rates and appear choppy from the Animation Settings option — This change affects world objects (e.g. Artazon windmill), NPCs (e.g. crowd and static people, non-interactable Pokémon), and wild Pokémon.

Gone with the 4 FPS school children during the classroom introduction scene, and similar.

Disabling and enabling can be done at any time without any impact on the game. Leaving and reloading the immediate vicinity will result in the changed animation rates applying to the wild Pokémon.

The LOD settings applied to models can be changed to some extent now, as well, through a few LOD options — Wild Pokéspawn LODs, Static NPC LODs, and Wandering NPC LODs.

By changing these values from vanilla to High (LOD0), the game will only attempt to use the LOD0 for every model of the relevant category, essentially causing all models of that type loaded after this setting has been saved to use the highest quality version.

This only applies to newly loaded models — existing ones are not changed. You will need to reload the area for the changes to start taking effect on entities in the world. Leaving the area to cause the Pokémon to despawn and re-populate, or going into / out of the Academy or a Gym building will work, for instance.

A new setting in the Options menu, Color Profile, will override the game's default color profile shader with a customized one.

This is a relatively simple tweak that we think makes for a better visual experience. The shadow colors, contrast, saturation, and tonemapping have been adjusted — like a mini-ReShade setting to make the game pop a bit more.

It results in a bit more contrast and a bit more vibrancy, but targets specific color ranges to keep it from going overboard. Shadows are darker, and the grey wash is reduced, while highlights have a touch more oomph.

This can be enabled and disabled at any time — by default, the setting is disabled.

There is no performance change with this setting enabled.

Experience amounts from battle can be modified from the Options menu, with selections that range from 0%, completely disabling experience gains in these battles, up to 150% (the same as the vanilla value while holding an Exp. Charm).

This change applies to Let's Go and Synchro Machine battles as well as all battles which reward experience (such as raids or some story battles), and is available from the beginning of the game, with no unlock requirements.

The Exp. Share feature can now also be disabled. This is independent of the experience rate gains.

With Exp. Share disabled, only Pokémon that have participated in battle will be given experience.

Picnic Experience gains can be disabled, for those who like to be very particular with their experience gains / level limits and don't want that accidental / overlooked smidgen to make a mess of it.

Starting with the battle against Nemona at the entrance to Mesagoza, all of the story trainers will have at least two teams, with most having three total options, that will be selected from — resulting in the battle potentially being different in subsequent playthroughs.

This applies to Gym Leaders (story and rematch circuit both), Team Star leaders, the Elite Four (Paldean and Blueberry both), and rivals or other major story trainers across all stories.

Some of the existing teams for these trainers were adjusted, with some being notably reworked to better fit the increased variety across all of their team options.

The end-game repeatable rematches against the Team Star leaders have been expanded upon greatly, similar to the story trainers. The biggest difference is that the player can choose which battle style the match will be using — singles or doubles.

Each trainer has multiple teams for each style, making for six different encounters for each trainer.

Additionally, these trainers can Terastallize any of their team members, not just the final one.

The endgame repeatable battles against the special coaches available to be invited to the League Club Room have also seen changes in the same sort of manner.

You'll be able to select the battle style, either singles or doubles for that fight, or let the choice be made at random.

Similar to the Ace Tournament, these coaches also have different teams for each style, and multiple teams available. Which team is chosen is randomly decided each time you battle them, so you will not know what's coming strictly speaking — but they're all designed with general theme in mind and meant to have the same level of difficulty as the previous battles against them, so it won't be too much of a surprise.

Beyond just being a great source of Pokémonies, providing around 80,000₽ each tournament completion, the second and third Ace Tournaments also provide rewards for successfully completing them. In vanilla, these are usually a single Mint or a few random Tera Shards, the occasional Apricorn ball, and some team-building items.

Because of the significantly-increased monetary reward obtained for each fight, simple purchaseable items have been removed, including the Mints and Vitamins.

Instead, the player will be rewarded with five items taken randomly from the following sets:

• Commonly — One of any TM in the game
• Rarely — A few of any of the Apricorn balls
• Very rarely — A Master or Beast ball

When interacting with the NPC to initiate the tournament, the event has been modified to include a new option — the player can now select whether they would like the entire tournament to consist of singles or doubles battles, or if they would like the choice to be random, resulting in potentially singles or doubles battles in the same tournament.

Every opponent in this tournament has a unique team specific to that battle style, including AI changes to ensure the doubles battles are using their actions properly.

Way More Teams

Similar to the second tournament, talking to the NPC to initiate the tournament allows the player to select whether they want the tournament style to be singles, doubles, random, or chaos.

Random simply chooses either Singles or Doubles for all battles, while Chaos is Singles or Doubles chosen randomly for every fight.

And like the second tournament, each opponent has teams for the different styles — but to add on that, this version of the tournament further expands on those, giving every opponent additional teams for each style they can pull from.

All of the teams have different strategies, usually entirely different Pokémon (though some trainers have a strong preference for their thematic partners), movesets, held items, and so on. They are, however, all designed to be approximately the same range of difficulty.

Extra Replayability Features

To expand on the replayability of this content, new features have also been added to the fights :

The trainers don't always use the same "ace" in each battle. This results in them making different choices and using different strategies to determine which Pokémon to bring into battle, making for a slightly different fight even compared to other bouts against this trainer with the same team.

They may Terastallize their first Pokémon in battle, or save this for their "ace" at the end.

Sometimes, weather effects or other special conditions will be applied to the battle at the start. These count as environmental weathers, so cannot be overridden in-battle by the trainers — natural weather may still occur in the middle of the fight, but will return to the random-set weather once that weather has run its course.

Changes have been made to the range and to the amount of encounters that can spawn.

The range of Pokémon spawns has been widened, so spawns will appear at a further distance from the player, and will be visible in a wider range around the player.

This also means that Pokémon will not despawn as quickly, allowing the number of nearby encounters to be higher than vanilla, and looking for a specific spawn in the local vicinity is more forgiving.

Changes to the way the spawns are distributed have been made, resulting in fewer spawns that appear within very close proximity to the player, particularly if you're on your mount.

So now, instead of random positions when wild encounters spawn, the selection point is biased away from being immediately in front of or behind the player — instead, spawns will appear a bit more frequently around the front-facing area and the sides.

While spawns can still appear in the player's direct path, it's less likely.

Group and boss-group spawn types have also been changed, such that they do not spawn in a perfect circle arrangement every time, and instead will spawn in a more immersive, more-random pattern.

A new Options setting has been added, Maximum Pokéspawns, which has a few choices to increase the amount of Pokémon that can be spawned at any time.

The vanilla value for this is 15, which is, because this can affect performance, also the default value.

Other options allow for 20, 30 (the recommended value), or 40 spawns.

There is a small chance that any wild encounter will begin the battle by Terastallizing.

There is no indicator that this will occur — fixed encounters that will Terastallize will still do so; no changes there — and the Tera type of the encounter may differ from their default (which will be their standard type, or one of their types if they're dual-typed).

Just like the fixed Tera encounters, these wild encounters cannot be caught immediately — their HP needs to be brought down to the red (20%), and they cannot be defeated while above red HP by any single attack.

A wild Pokémon that Terastallizes is handled in a deterministic manner, so fleeing / resetting the battle will still result in that Pokémon Terastallizing.

Upon completion of the game, there is a very small chance that the wild Pokémon you encounter can Terastallize with the Stellar Tera type.

All wild shiny encounters, whether fixed or spawned randomly, will Terastallize at the start of battle.

This change does mean that shiny encounters will be marginally more challenging, and cannot be caught immediately, but it also means they cannot be one-shot, and must be brought down to a low HP value, which will improve the capture rate inherently.

Additionally, wild Terastal battles have improved AI and so will be a bit better at targeting your weaknesses, and the Stellar Terastal battles are improved even further, making them a fair bit more aggressive.

This is to help break up the monotony of the random-action AI, and make these special encounters more impactful.

There have been quite a few changes to the fixed encounters, primarily focused on the DLC areas.

The levels of many Teal Mask and Indigo Disk fixed encounters have been changed to have a more consistent pre- and post-game experience. This results in multiple encounters only becoming available post-game, since the species would not be available at the levels of the earlier version.

Some of the otherwise out-of-range levels of fixed encounters have been reduced to fit in with the rest of the region more appropriately.

Some of the Stellar fixed encounters found in the Terarium after the completion of the Indigo Disk story have had their evolutions changed up if they were not their final evolution — this includes those that have an unusual evolution method.

All of the Stellar encounters can also have their Hidden Ability.

Some of the stats for the fixed encounters have been increased, with many of the encounters being upgraded to 'strong' ones, having four maximum IVs and potentially having their Hidden Ability; these will be a bit higher level than the rest of the Pokémon in the area, and will require an additional Gym Badge to control, but are quite strong.

Added Fixed Encounters

Some Pokémon — Ogerpon and Terapagos — were not available to be shiny hunted, since the only way to capture them was through the story battle, and because of the unusual way these battles are handled, meant those captures could not be shiny.

Now, some new fixed encounters have been added, which are not shiny locked, enabling them to be battled and captured repeatedly, with the possibility that they can be shiny.

Pecharunt, which normally can only be captured once, also has a new respawning fixed encounter.

Additionally, because of some of the changes to the Pokédexes this update that shifted some species around, it was possible to be unable to 100% complete the Paldea Dex without access to the DLC — Subsequently, new, non-shiny-locked, repeatable fixed encounters have been added for all of the special Paradox Pokémon.

The upcoming documentation update will contain an updated map for spoiler hints, but for now, the following spoiler section can point you toward them.

Their movesets, abilities, held items, and so on, will remain largely the same, with some adjustments to limit them to or better match the appropriate capabilities of such a Pokémon at the level of the recommended encounter, since some of their levels have been adjusted — And in the case of the Titan battles, there's a significant boost to their capabilities in the second fight, where they are empowered by the Herba Mystica.

Most notably, however, is that all of these Titans and Loyal Three battles will have significantly more HP, making much less-likely for a player at that recommended level point to one- or two-round some of them.

And their AI has been improved. They'll all be more adaptable to your team choices, and further into the game, even further so, with a stronger preference for capitalizing on type advantages.

In exchange, they see slight reductions in other areas so the player is not just enormously stat-checked, but the fights can still be quite threatening — Good thing you have a partner and can bring a full team.

The Former Titans, available after the defeat of the Titans in the story, have also been adjusted in a similar, though less significant, fashion.

The levels of these encounters and their base stat and EV setup have been adjusted to be a bit more appropriate.

The Former Titan battles can be captured, once defeated, but are designed to be one badge of requirements ahead of the current expected progression-point — these encounters have quite high base stats and a handful of EVs (alongside their unique mark).

Additionally, they have the boss-like large HP gauge across the top of the screen, instead of the small bar near the Pokémon itself.

The capturable Loyal Three battles have much the same changes as the Former Titans, including stat adjustments, the boss HP gauge, and require defeat before they can be captured.

All of the major story / event battles, such as the Ruinous Quartet, the Snacksworth legendary battles, the major boss encounters of the Perrin stories, the box legendary battles in Area Zero, and the major story battles such as the DLC bosses, have all had new battle features added.

They've been given changes to their stats, including increased HP, and boosts to prominent stats to synergize with their moveset or battle capabilities.

The movesets of the Snacksworth Legendaries have also been completely overhauled this update, giving them a bit more distinct flavor and type coverage.

Like the Titans and Loyal Three, all of the Legendary encounters have also had their AI bumped up a bit, and are now notably less random in their move selections.

For the case of the non-story battles, such as the Ruinous Quartet and Snacksworth legendaries, they've also been given the improved AI settings, the boosted HP and other stats, the boss HP gauge, and require being defeated before they can be captured — on the other hand, these are guaranteed captures once you win.

In addition to the basic changes listed above, many of these battles also feature new weather and terrain effects, applied at the beginning of the battle.

These weathers also include primal weathers — Drought, Heavy Rain, and Turbulence — for a few fights.

Weathers set like this are intentionally unable to be overwritten in battle, so best find a way to work around the strengths they can afford the encounter they're associated with.

New shader profiles and particle components were created for these special weathers to make them stand out and be more interesting.

In some cases, for a few notable fights, some new visual effects have been applied as well in addition to atmospheric changes, such as changing the time to specific points.

A quick once-over on the Starmobiles, as well — those with major weaknesses didn't have enough either power or ways to be threatening in some other manner, making them much less memorable than they should be.

As such, they've been generally-buffed, and some have had ability and movesets changed.

BST values mentioned below are relative to previous Compass values — across the board, Compass Starmobiles are stronger than vanilla ones, but were still generally underwhelming.

Its effective-BST increased by 12.5%, distributed rather evenly.

A couple of its moves have been replaced, to prevent it from getting stuck in a remarkably abusable AI pattern. Gone with Shift Gear spam, hooray.

Its effective-BST increased by 12.5%, giving it more power and speed.

Its ability has been changed to fit changes to its moveset, and will help it get out of hand if not managed.

A couple of its moves have been replaced, to give it better type coverage and a little more versatility, adding more threat for its ability to ramp.

Its effective-BST increased by 18.75%, distributed fairly evenly.

Its ability has been changed to offset its biggest weakness (slightly).

Its moveset has been significantly changed, to give it better type coverage and make its theme more apparent.

The Ruchbah squad in general has had its position in the main progression changed, and so is meant to be tackled a few levels earlier than in previous versions.

Its effective-BST increased by 5%, with slight distribution changes to give it a little bit more offense (but just a little).

Its ability has been changed to facilitate a different strategy.

Its moveset has been tweaked, fitting that change in strategy, and a bit better coverage.

Only slightly changed — Replaced some redundant type coverage in favor of a nominal amount of utility.

The points at which the various raid tiers unlock have been changed, and new sequences have been added to inform the player of the raid tiers changing.

Every time the player unlocks a new raid tier, they will receive a call from Jacq indicating an increase in Terastal energy that's affecting the raids. These calls are new and specific to Compass, to better indicate the player's progression and access to new raid tiers.

The severity of the energy's effect on the raid dens increases, resulting in more powerful Pokémon taking up residence in the dens.

Unlocking the 6★ and 7★ raids

Getting access to the black crystal raids has not been changed this update, but some of the dialogue regarding their unlock has been tweaked, just to try to make the process more obvious.

Upon completion of the Academy Ace Tournament, the player will receive a call from Jacq, requesting the player go investigate ten of the raids out in the world.

The dialogue for this call has been changed slightly, so it specifies the completion of ten of the raids that Jacq had previously (through the additional phone calls added by Compass) defined as being "high-energy" — the 4★ raids.

Upon clearing ten 4★ raids after this call, the player will receive another call, with a warning from Jacq to avoid the dangerous black crystal raids.

The dialogue for this call has been changed to include new lines indicating that even the "normal" raid dens (all non-black crystal ones) are seeing more dangerous Pokémon in them.

At that point, the player will advance to the Fifth Tier, where 5★ raids become available, and the black crystal 6★ raids and 7★ raids will begin appearing.

The fixed and the random rewards have all been adjusted in this update, to better-suit the modified point in the progression the raids can appear in. Random chances have been adjusted, and some minor corrections were made.

Some items were a little difficult to come by when they aren't necessarily powerful — in particular, useful early-game berries.

The type-resisting berries (like the Yache), the pinch-type berries (like the Aguav), and the status-recovery berries (like the Cheri) are all available in 1★ raids up to 4★ raids now. 4★ raids are a bit less likely to drop these berries relative to the previous tiers, to avoid crowding out the other loot drops.

Team-building items have been distributed across the various tiers, as well, and loot made more consistent with the unlock point, such as increasingly-common EV Feathers, and earlier access to EV-reduction berries.

EV-reduction berries (like the Pomeg) are available in 3★ raids, same as before, but this means they're available roughly ~15 levels earlier.

A few items that were previously restricted to post-game or otherwise in very limited quantities have been added to earlier tiers: Ability Capsules are rare drops from 3★ raids and up raids now, and Ability Patches can be found rarely in 4★ raids and up raids now.

Bottle Caps become available as rare drops in 5★ raids, along with the very-rare Gold Bottle Cap

Money rewards have generally been reduced, and some items that would be made available that have incredibly high monetary value have been reduced.

Many items that were locked behind having a certain number of Victory Road Gym Badges have had that point adjusted.

Items that are listed as belonging to one shop but that can be found in other shops (such as Peachy's shop in Mossui) are also changed in the same way.

Non-potion healing items unlock after each of the first three badges in stages:

• 0 Badges — Fresh Water

• 1 Badge — Soda Pop

• 2 Badges — Lemonade

• 3 Badges — Moomoo Milk

Full Heals are available a bit earlier, after 6 Badges

• Nature-changing Mints can be purchased much earlier, after three Badges rather than six, and their price has been reduced

• Vitamins are now much later, requiring 8 Badges to purchase

• Ability Capsules can be purchased in the shops, beginning at 5 Badges

• Battle-boosting items, such as Dire Hit or the X items, all now require 1 Badge

All of the Delibird Presents shops have been consolidated, and have the same lineup in every location, including for Rotom Phone cases.

• Power items (Anklet, Band, Belt, Bracer, Lens, and Weight) now require 3 Badges before they're available

• Bottle Caps have been restricted to require all 8 Badges

• Nectar items have been reduced to a 1 Badge requirement

• The Herb items have all been reduced to 2 Badges to purchase

• Weather Rocks now only require 2 Badges to purchase, down from four

• Terrain Seeds become available now at just 2 Badges, rather than being post-game only

• Some items have been moved to 8 Badges required: Assault Vest and Blunder Policy

• Throat Spray has been reduced to 3 Badges from four

• Utility Umbrella is now 2 Badges instead of four

• Destiny Knots can be purchased immediately

• Choice items now all require the completion of the Victory Road story

• Eviolites can now be purchased after just 1 Badge, instead of being post-game, and their price has been reduced

Pokéballs have been changed to unlock at specific points relative to the type of effect, rather than a fairly-arbitrary order per-badge:

• 1 Badge — Great Ball, Heal Ball, Repeat Ball

• 3 Badges — Net Ball, Nest Ball, Luxury Ball, Dive Ball, and Dusk Ball

• 5 Badges — Ultra Ball

• 6 Badges — Quick Ball, Timer Ball

The TM Machine now, in addition to displaying the list of all TMs, also displays the name of the items, regardless of how many you have in your inventory.

You still of course need to collect the item, but at least you don't need to look up which Pokémon you need to target to get the items to make the TM you'd like.

Some items have had their monetary value changed, either to match their availability being changed to allow access to them earlier than in vanilla (such as for Mints, or Eviolite), or because they can be obtained through other means and it's a balance decision (Ability Capsules and Patches):

• Potions are now valued at 100₽ — Down from 200₽ — Fresh Water is therefore marginally more expensive, but provides slightly better healing

• All Mint items are now valued at 10,000₽ — Down from 20,000₽

• Eviolite is now valued at 5,000₽ — Changed from 50,000₽

• Ability Capsules are now valued at 5,000₽ — Down from 100,000₽

• Ability Patches are now valued at 8,000₽ — Changed from 125,000₽

The colored borders have been redrawn completely to be more accurate to specific region colliders, and is a bit more visible when zoomed all the way out.

Because of some of the progression changes this update, the Dalizapa Passage area in Paldea, on the south side of Glaseado Mountain, now fits in the general progression after the Lurking Steel Titan and Navi Squad on toward the Normal Gym.

The map has been updated to include this change, with a new label being added to indicate the area name, and the colored border portion of the map updated to include this passage.

The colored borders added to the progression groups on the maps of Kitakami and Blueberry were made using the same Gym colors to match the expected progression point for the story mode based on Paldea's core progression (to fit around the Obedience System and provide a consistent, if linear, route through the game).

So each grouped area corresponds to the same idea of "this whole area is in the level range of the gym leader whose color surrounds its edges", to put another way.

This is only useful for progressing through the DLC content prior to the completion of The Way Home, since it corresponds to general progression that's based around the Obedience System that no longer matters in the post-The Way Home scaled-up versions of the DLC.

Kitakami is broadly broken up into three stages, starting from around level 13 and ending at around 35, just as it was in Compass previously; the areas are bordered in Bug and Grass colors for the first and second stage of the Teal Mask storyline — the final stage of that story is not constrained to a single area, so there is no border specifically for it.

Blueberry is even more simply defined: The Savanna area is explorable up to the first Gym completion, while the Coast and Canyon areas are aimed at second Gym, and the Polar area the third Gym.

Labels have been changed to match changes to progression (if necessary), or to make the recommended level label more consistent with the difficulty of the encounter — A fair few of them have been tweaked slightly.

The label being changed does not necessarily mean that the encounter itself has been changed in any way; only those in the minor progression changes section have been modified.

Some of the wild level-indicating labels in a few areas have been changed, to match the adjustments to the actual wild encounter spawn levels:

• South One is now level 3-9
• The Pokémon League Entrance is now level 9-13

The recommended levels for the following events on the labels for the Paldean map have been changed:

The Titans

• Stony Cliff's recommended level label reduced to 27, from 28
• Open Sky Titan's label has been changed to a recommended level of 33, rather than 31
• The Lurking Steel Titan's recommended level label is now 45, up from 42
• The False Dragon's label is now a recommended level of 70, rather than 66

Team Star

• The Schedar Squad is now a recommended level of 41, up from 40
• The Navi Squad is now a recommended level of 48, up from 46
• The Ruchbah Squad is notably changed in the progression, now down to 58 from 62

Victory Road

• The Electric Gym is now level 43, up from 42
• The Psychic Gym is up to level 54, instead of 51
• The Ghost Gym is up slightly, to level 61, from 59
• The Ice Gym has been increased to level 68, from 66

A few other minor adjustments to the positioning and availability of some of the Paldean map labels have been made:

• Some minor locations (such as Cabo Poco and Inlet Grotto) are no longer visible when fully zoomed-out
• Some positions of existing labels, such as those for the seas and Poco Path, have been moved a bit

Labels have been added for the wild Pokémon levels of each area in the DLC regions, similar to those in Paldea.

However, both Kitakami and Blueberry (at least in Compass, in this update) have a scaled-up version of their area, with different level ranges for wild Pokémon. A simple separator arrow character (▶) indicates the minimum level of the Pokémon that'll appear post-game.

Additionally, the labels in the DLC areas have been made more consistent with the presentation used in Paldea: Certain labels would only be visible on certain zoom levels, but now, they are visible on all zoom levels.

The route from the Lurking Steel Titan and Navi Squad to Larry has been adjusted, as Dalizapa Passage is now a suitable path to take (and the recommended route, instead of flying to Porto Marinada and traveling through the lower-leveled Colonnade Hollow, which fits within the pre-Water Gym progression).

Wild and fixed encounters have had their levels reduced for the caves and grassy areas in the passage, and are now all within the 36-40 range.

All of the trainers in Dalizapa Passage have also been adjusted to match the expected progression point between East Three and West Three areas.

Proceeding into the snowy area toward the Ice Gym is dangerous, since those Pokémon are all in the 46-50 or so range. Pay attention to the levels of the wild Pokémon in the area if you venture up the mountain!

After the completion of the Psychic Gym, the player will start heading up into Glaseado Mountain, usually by heading out from Medali toward the Northern areas along the mountain paths — This route has been adjusted. As the player is expected to generally go along the western side of Glaseado (the eastern side is pretty much just for the minigame and is otherwise rather empty, anyway), the road will lead toward North Province Area Three, and Ruchbah Squad, which is where the player will be expected to go before heading up into the mountain.

As such, the Ruchbah fights are all reduced by 5-6 levels, with other attributes reduced down slightly to match.

The Starmobile has been adjusted a bit to match the appropriate expected stats at this new level, in addition to general move changes.

Some changes have been made which do not affect the player's route through the game, but will slightly impact the encounters themselves to keep things flowing more smoothly in general. This is generally owing to the quantity of experience opportunities during these sections, and to ensure increased consistency with the recommendation information provided — the ending point is still the same, but this will shift around a bit of time players will spend in certain sections to hopefully keep forward progress at a good and a bit more consistent pace.

For the most part, these changes are quite small, only usually seeing a one or two level change up or down.

The following event encounters were adjusted to better match the recommended levels provided on the game map (which have also been adjusted) or to better fit the general flow of the game:

• The Stony Cliff, Open Sky, and Lurking Steel Titans have seen minor level changes, but this is to match the Former Titan battle for their acquisition according to Badge progression — They've seen substantial changes this update

• The Quaking Earth and False Dragon Former Titans have had their encounter levels reduced to no longer be higher level than the Elite Four, but will still require all Victory Road Badges collected before they'll obey

• Segin Squad and Schedar Squad — Levels decreased slightly for boss and gatekeeper. Levels slightly increased for the auto battles event

• Navi Squad — Levels for gatekeeper and boss fight decreased slightly

• The final two story battles in the Starfall Street storyline have been changed to be Singles, rather than Doubles

• Nearly all Victory Road Gyms have had their levels reduced slightly, except for Larry

• Early Gyms — Cortondo and Artazon — have had their levels reduced a bit further, to ease the early-game climb

• Cascaraffa Gym — Now no longer considered the "end of the early-game" and has had his difficulty bumped to be a bit more into "early midgame", seeing slight stat bumps, potentially more aggressive moves, and now has five Pokémon to battle with, up from four

• Levincia Gym — All of the battles have been changed to be Doubles

• Medali Gym — All of the battles have been changed to Doubles

• Elite Four — Levels have been evened out a bit better for each team

Other changes were made at less-impactful points throughout the game:

• Every battle against Nemona has seen her team levels reduced slightly, for those that were higher than the Gym the player faces her at, to make her battles more fair for players utilizing Level Caps

  Nemona's teams see a minor stat increase for the battles at the third, fifth, and seventh Gyms, in exchange

• Arven's team in the very first battle has been reduced in level marginally

• Some wild trainers in South One have had their levels reduced slightly, particularly those around Los Platos and the first encounters from the lighthouse down into town

• Wild trainers in Asado Desert and West Two have had their team levels increased slightly in most encounters, since they are quite late into that portion of that story segment

• Most wild trainers in Paldea have had their Pokémons' stats adjusted, seeing slight or marginal increases :

  This applies to the wild trainers in all of South Province, West Province, and East Province

  West Province wild trainers see slightly-higher increases for those in Asado Desert and West Two, to help facilitate the gradual shift out of "early-game" and into the beginning of "mid-game"

• The wild encounter levels for Pokémon in South One have been reduced to the range of 3-9

• The wild encounter levels for Pokémon at the Pokémon League Entrance have been reduced to the range of 9-13

• Some areas in Kitakami have seen minor adjustments to wild encounter levels, such as the southern and eastern portion of Reveler's Road, which is (rather incorrectly, unfortunately) indicated as Mossfell Confluence — These will match the Reveler's Road levels instead, with the Confluence being on the opposite side of the river and upstream

• Levels for some of the post-story event battles for Carmine, and for Carmine the ally during the Loyal Three battles, have been increased slightly

• The Loyal Three and Ogerpon battles have had their levels bumped to better match approximate player strength at this point

• Every event battle in The Underdepths has been reworked with new moves, more aggressive AI, and higher stats

Shiny odds have been standardized across the board — every wild, fixed, event, and raid encounter has a base shiny rate of 1/4096.

Additionally, bonuses that modify your shiny rate, such as the encounter power buffs, Shiny Charm item, or having 25 or more captures of that species (see the Capture Bonuses addition in Compass), will all count toward your shiny opportunities for every encounter that is eligible to have shinies.

The story battles against Ogerpon and Terapagos are forced to non-shiny status, owing to their unique setup. There are, however, new encounters with these added which can be shiny.

For raids and event encounters (the Pokémon which just stand around until you interact with them, such as the Ruinous Quartet, Snacksworth Legendaries, the Koraidon/Miraidon encounter, and so on), the shiny status is determined on-battle-start.

This means that, for event battles, you won't be able to tell if the encounter will be shiny until you start combat with it — The shiny jingle will play, if it shiny, but the Pokémon's coloration will not change (due to the way these battles are instantiated).

Because the shiny status isn't determined until the battle starts, that means the Shiny Indicator cannot notify the player if it will be shiny ahead of time.

And in the case of raids, the raid Pokémon will appear shiny once you are in combat, having loaded into the raid entirely.

Raids, at least, wait until the Pokémon is fully determined before loading in the correct model, so they will have their shiny coloration if they are shiny.

It's also possible to utilize the Masuda Method for breeding, as player language can now be selected from the Options menu.

Reminder: Breeding does not benefit from or count toward Capture Bonuses.

It's not Breeding Bonuses, after all.

Food buffs are no longer 30 minutes, and have been instead increased to 60 minutes.

This applies to sandwiches made in your picnics, or food items purchased at any store of cafe in the game.

The, uh, chomping the air sequence that plays after making or purchasing a food item is now skipped entirely.

It just goes straight to the buff application portion of the sequence.

In addition to being able to see your Friendship level, this update also brings some new functionality — or more like extended functionality — for the Soothe Bell.

Now, Pokémon holding the Soothe Bell will receive Friendship upon any opposing Pokémon's defeat, which can take the holder's Friendship above 160 to a maximum of 220.

The following circumstances apply for normal battles :

• If the holder is at or above 160 and below 200 Friendship, they will gain +1 Friendship, even if they do not participate in the battle specifically
• If the holder is at or above 200 and below 220 Friendship, there is a 75% chance that they will receive that Friendship point instead

This also has an effect upon Auto Battle completions, as follows :

• If the holder is at or above 160 and below 200 Friendship, there is a 50% chance that they will gain +1 Friendship, even if they do not participate in the battle specifically
• If the holder is at or above 200 and below 220 Friendship, there is a 25% chance that they will receive that Friendship point instead

The ᓚᘏᗢ NPCs added to Compass previously (and added to new sequences; guess they're a lot less secret-y than before~) have had two new reset options added:

• Reset all trainers — This applies to all wild trainers, not story trainers
• Reset dailies — Daily-limited event battles and other daily-restricted events can be reset anytime, selectable per-region

You can reset and re-battle the trainers as often as you would like. This is also useful if you've explored DLC areas earlier, but want to be able to tackle their post-game teams during the story after The Way Home, as well, for example.

This includes the Kitakami Ogre Clan, for high-level and high-reward repeatable battles.

The event battles reset include the Ruinous Quartet, box legendary battles, and all of the Snacksworth legendaries — You can now battle and capture as many of these as you would like.

A new Options menu setting is available which can allow you to select the language you want to play in — After the initial selection has been made when creating a new save file.

The default setting for this option will be initially set to whichever language was chosen on new character creation.

Masuda Method Availability

Pokémon that are captured when the language is set to something other than the player's default language will have its language value set as the new language.

This will enable the Masuda Method for breeding.

The Club Room's "regional upgrade" has been changed, as the starters have been moved into the normal spawn set — This no longer locks entire Pokémon families behind it, but is instead a way to add a number of uncommon-to-rare Pokémon found in the Blueberry Pokédex.

These include final evolutions for species that normally require trading (Compass' no-trade-evolution changes still exist, but this is another way of getting these Pokémon) or the use of evolution items, as well as final evolutions of all of the starters from the Terarium.

Most of these encounters have a high chance to spawn in groups — which is useful, because all of these Pokémon also carry valuable items, either cash loot or team-building items (such as vitamins, or bottle caps). This is another avenue to collect the resources to build up team members, alongside Ace Tournament repeats and raids.

Blissey is also found in every area, though a bit uncommonly. They hold Carbos, HP Ups, and Ability Patches (rarely).

All areas in the Terarium can now spawn the various forms of Oricorio

The evolution methods for Eevee have been completely reworked this update, with all-new functionality created specifically for them, to give their evolution process something a bit more, in our opinion, interesting and appropriate.

No longer do they evolve through having some evolution stone shoved in their faces — Instead, they require high friendship values and then must be leveled in certain, specific areas in the world.

With their friendship value at 220 or higher (which you can view much more easily now, and improve in new ways), the Eevee will be eligible for evolution. By leveling on a certain type of terrain, they will evolve:

• For Vaporeon — Evolve in water, like ponds, rivers, puddles, or lakes

• For Jolteon — Evolve on electric-type terrain and metal surfaces, like the electric charged stones in Chargestone Cavern, the Terarium cubes, or PokéCenter roofs

• For Flareon — Evolve on 'hot'-type surfaces, such as desert sand, beach sand, or the poor soil and withered grass environments in the Savanna area in the Terarium

• For Leafeon — Evolve on grassy terrain, like grass or dense grass fields, in flower patches, on bamboo leaves, in rice fields, or on wooden flooring

• For Glaceon — Evolve in snowy areas, such as ice or snow, including snow-covered grass

• For Sylveon — Evolve in city-specific environments, including concrete or brick paths, stone pavement or marble, on glass surfaces, or climbing atop the roofs of most buildings

• For Espeon — Evolve in the daytime — Any environment that is not a part of any of the above lists will suffice

• For Umbreon — Evolve in the nighttime — Any environment that is not a part of any of the above lists will work

In order to help prevent evolutions into an Eeveelution that may not be desired, a safety system of sorts is also included.

By holding a specific evolution stone (the same as the previous evolution methods required, and listed below), your Eevee will not evolve into any Eeveelution that is not the one associated to that stone. This way, it's easy to guarantee which Eeveelution you want — but you must be on the terrain required and have the required friendship value still.

The Eeveelutions and their associated stones are:

This update also adds in some more intention to some evolutions — or, really, just sorta re-adds some of that which was removed : Evolutions which require Friendship to evolve have been changed.

Rather than evolving at 160 Friendship, which can often be obtained immediately with little or even no intentional effort, most of these Pokémon will instead evolve at 220 Friendship.

Not all Friendship evolutions have been changed. See below :

• Pokémon which evolve into intermediary evolutions evolve after levelling while at 160 Friendship and above — This applies to Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, and Azurill
• Pokémon which evolve into the final evolution evolve after levelling while at 220 Friendship and above — This applies to Meowth (Alolan Form), Munchlax, Chansey, Chingling, Riolu, Swadloon, and Snom
• The Eevee evolution methods are completely reworked, and now require at least 220 Friendship to trigger evolution

To help improve the Friendship value of your Pokémon, new functionality has been added to the Soothe Bell, allowing holders to gain Friendship up to the 220 point.

The Paradox Pokémon which were made available in The Indigo Disk through Perrin's side story, have been changed around a bit — These are Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, Iron Crown, and Iron Boulder.

The quest is still the same (though the encounters themselves are a bit tougher), but some of the other aspects of this side story have been tweaked:

The fixed encounters that were found in the Terarium after the completion of the side story have been removed.

In exchange, new wild encounters have been created for these Pokémon in Area Zero — these do require the completion of the side story before they appear.

The Pokédex entries have also been changed for these species (and for Walking Wake and Iron Leaves), and they are all now found exclusively in the Paldean Pokédex, and no longer in the Blueberry one.

A lot of tweaks have been made to the spawn rules of Area Zero.

Mostly, these are focused on ensuring that the Pokémon which weren't intended on being available in the area are actually gone properly, and that new species have been added to improve the variety of wild encounters.

Paradox Pokémon have been made a bit less common in the area, and all of their non-Paradox equivalents can be found in the area as well.

The documentation contains a list of all of the wild encounters.

Key, who has assisted in improving the quality of the German translation in the past, worked on localizing all of the changes and new lines for this update for German.

Thanks to finn, this version of Compass includes support for nearly all modified and new lines, now translated into both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Some lines are yet to be translated entirely into Chinese, so for now, these lines contain the English strings as a placeholder.

The update contains several hundred new dialogue, options, and notification lines — more than all of Compass' text-based changes up to this point, combined, so this is a significant amount of work.

All of the changes have also been translated into French and Spanish for this update.

This update makes a few changes to Zapapico, bringing a little bit more fun and color to it — Well, mostly as a place to put some new QoL elements and such~

The Better Buff Bistro, which provides a simple one-stop location for some useful sandwich buffs, has been moved, and is no longer in Montenevera — Instead, you'll find the new location in Zapapico.

The map icon for the Bistro has been updated to show the new location; it's near the PokéCenter, so it's hard to miss~

The town also has a number of new residents, including Phoe, who handles the Ball Change service, a new minor event from a nearby added NPC who will give you a modified Team Star uniform, and even the ᓚᘏᗢ NPCs (who mention heading here).

Also, there's a showboat cat around. He likes high places. ～(￣▽￣)～

Beyond all the new features and player experience-affecting components of this update outlined on the rest of this page, this update also comes with a list of various other, smaller-scale changes — bug fixes, small tweaks and updates to existing systems, etc.

And the Game Freak special — Select bug fixes. Well, these ones, anyway:.

A hotfix patch.

Not an especially huge patch (coming soon off of 2.1.0.0, haha), but we wanted to get this update out to resolve some major issues, including a potentially-common crash, and some evolution problems, even though there are still a couple quirks to resolve later.

And we also happened to have a few things we wanted to add to it.

New Additions

Major Fixes

Minor Fixes

Other | Minor Changes

Known Issues (Not Addressed this Update)

Some issues are still being ironed out~.

A quick patch to resolve a major issue for many Switch players — not being able to load the game properly.