July Bulletin & PATCH 2.2

JULY BULLETIN

PLASMA

The Plasma Story Quest started last month has wrapped! Professor Ash has successfully made it to the Abandoned Lab in Ostellia, which will serve as a new unofficial headquarters for Team Plasma going forward.

Recruitment for Plasma is now open! Players who wish to join Professor Ash's cause may post in the Abandoned Lab sticky to join the team. Joining Plasma imposes certain story restrictions, but offers other story benefits.

Out of character, we encourage everyone to engage with this aspect of UNOVR in some way, as it provides an opportunity to look at the core issues that make the UNOVR/VR experience different than standard Pokemon games. Is Pokemon Training ethical if Pokemon are sentient, speaking creatures? On a similar level, is playing the game of UNOVR ethical if its NPCs are sentient, fully-realized intelligences? We certainly do not seek to provide answers to these questions, but we love seeing people thinking about them!

For this reason, engaging with Plasma members on these core issues (even if not Plasma themselves) can now provide a unique perk: a permanent rarity increase for one Pokemon (who has to participate in the discussion too). Check the full update out here!

GRAVEDIGGER

Thank you to everyone who posted in the Modern Revival thread reviving their fossils! A new basic subclass has dropped related to the uncovering of fossils and other remains called Gravedigger. (Fun fact, this was the other subclass that could have dropped from the Thunderfall Raid if players had gone a different route with Zapdos!)

Gravedigger is a necromancy-themed build that involves summoning hordes of Pokemon skeletons. All participants from the (unfinished) Silent Night event have automatically unlocked this class, regardless of whether you finished reviving your fossils or not. Enjoy~!

SPOILER: Click to show

{GRAVEDIGGER STATS}

GRAVEDIGGER GROUND-TYPE

These grim, ground-type specialists have the power to sense things hidden underground— and to access them. At a mere touch, the earth splits open at their command, birthing Pokemon skeletons to do their bidding. Their Ground-Type Pokemon may appear undead, or may contain remnants of small bones and fossils. Gravediggers often imbue their necromatic power in a special item, such as a grimoire or staff, though many still prefer the tried-and-true tool of their trade: the shovel. Tier 2 - pkmn +5 Tier 3 - moves +5 Tier 4 - know your enemy Tier 5 - never normal

REVISED RIVAL

When we first designed System Admin:Rival, we imagined him as similar to other "shared" Major NPCs in the game (Mom, Bunya, etc). However, even back in Beta, players were having multiple individual Rival NPCs show up in Tutorial threads and we ended up rolling with it!

Flash forward to the present day, where Your Rival can now have a completely individualized backstory, personality, gender, and appearance based on each Player Character. We now have a set PROGRESSION SYSTEM for the Rival that specifies how their Pokemon Team grows and changes over the course of your/their journey in UNOVR!

Check out the changes here.

With this opportunity for character development in mind, we have decided the Rival Tutorial can now be completed solo (previously, two players either needed to share a Rival or there needed to be two Rivals in the thread).

Thanks to Magnere for this update!

CHANGES TO THE ROOKERY

Sorry, we're changing The Rookery again!

Egg Hunt threads are now FREE to start, but limited to once per calendar season (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter) per OOC player. However, once the egg is found, it now costs 200 BYTES to choose the egg's type before hatching.

This means you can acquire a true "random" Mystery Egg once per season for free, or pay 200 BYTES at the end of the thread to get an egg of your preferred type.

For Birthday Egg Hunts, this 200 BYTE cost is (of course) waived, and you may have an extra Egg Hunt in your Birthday Month even if you have already done a different Egg Hunt for that season.

COMING SOON

• Very Rare Colossal Battle (Lapras)
• Trainer Star #4
• 12 New Trainer Titles
• World Event Pt.1 (September)

PATCH 2.2: THE UNOVR SHOP

DISCLAIMER

This will be a massive update that we expect to be a bit messy, so don't worry if you find yourself floundering a bit as we get everyone converted over (this is the worst part. It'll actually make the site much easier after that, so bear with us).

CHANGES

• Class Skill Trees have been discontinued and archived
• All Players have been/will soon be issued a complete refund from their Skill Trees.
• All Upgrades and Equipped Pokemon are now stored in your User Profile, not your Character Record
• All Upgrades must now be purchased through the UNOVR Shop Plugin
• The Automatic Deductions boards have been discontinued and link to the UNOVR Shop.
• Pokemon Storage Box (Pokemon, Items, Equipped Subclass) will continue to be run by mods
• Pokemon Box Space and Capture Cost have been rolled into one thing. Please purchase Pokeball Slots individually! Your first 10 are free.
• General Mod Requests now includes some items with a BYTE Cost (Evolution, Guild Change, etc)
• Player is now its Own Thing (no longer a subclass) and is accessible to all players from game start.
• Some prices have been changed, but most things still reflect the previous prices as closely as possible.

CLASS SKILL TREES - BYE BYE!

• The Class Skill Trees, which we have lovingly run for over three years, will no longer be officially supported! This is kind of a 'kill your darlings' change, as we really do love our skill trees-- however, with the Shop Update, it becomes more convenient to store Class Skill information in your user profile instead of in the Character Record, and doing both would be both time-consuming and redundant.
• If you love them and can't live without them (understandable - they were one of the first things we designed, and one of our core site concepts!) you now have the option to access the templates in your own Character Record! You'll have to run them yourself, of course xD
• WARNING: Do NOT use these templates unless you have set BBCode to Default in your User Settings. If the code loads into the Preview window, it will automatically REMOVE ALL SPACING and make the code itself completely unreadable. For your own sanity, please perform this Settings change before attempting to access the Skill Tree templates.

SPOILER: Click to show

{HOW TO USE SKILL TREE TEMPLATES}

1. Go to the SETTINGS tab in your Edit User Profile and change BBCode to Default (not Preview). You MUST do this step, or editing the code will be very painful.
2. The main coding trick with the Skill Trees is OPACITY (how visible a given item is). In each 'tier' of the skill tree are two overlapping images: the LOCK and the UNLOCKED image. By default, the LOCK's opacity is set to 1 (100% visible) and the UNLOCKED image is set to 0 (0% visible).
3. To change this ('unlocking' the upgrade) simply find the tier (example: Tank HP 2) by label and change the image at opacity:0 to opacity:1. Then, turn OFF the other image by changing its opacity:1 to opacity:0.
4. EQUIPPING POKEMON: The Skill Trees come with links to 'ditto' sprites at opacity:0. Change the sprite to opacity:1 and the 'ditto' at the end of the url to the name of your Pokemon (example: nidoran).
5. If you are using a Paldea sprite, completely DELETE the url and type #pokemonname instead. Do not delete the image coding (i.e it should look like <img src="#miraidon">).
6. That's it, really! Do NOT "Preview" the Skill Tree before posting or it will remove all the nice spacing that currently makes it readable.
7. Remember, this is all completely optional! We've specifically stopped running skill trees because it's difficult to maintain, so we certainly won't judge if you don't want to either! XD

UNOVR SHOP UPDATE: STARTING GUIDE

We have tried to set up the UNOVR Shop so that players can intuitively understand what everything does, without needing to consult other reference pages like Battle Mechanics, Catching Pokemon, etc. We recommend just checking out the link and clicking through things, as they all sort of self-explain! (Hopefully this will help new members, also).

• Most Shop Items are refundable from your User Profile (just click the icon and click 'refund'). This means you're no longer locked into big upgrades, so go wild!
• Your Shop purchases are now stored in your User Profile for easy reference. Click an icon and it will pop up with a full readout of what that Upgrade or Item does, so you never have to be in doubt!

Upon starting at the Shop, re-purchase the following items (we'll refund you soon if we haven't already). This is just so you have the icons to display in your User Profile.

KEY ITEMS

• Starter Pack (free) - Gives you 10 free Pokemon Box Slots and the starting 50 Tall Grass HP.
• Golden Pokeball Slot - For any Pokemon more than the first 10 in your box, please purchase one additional Golden Pokeball slot. If you are in Plasma, purchase a Team Plasma slot for these extras instead (free).
• Tall Grass HP +50 - Purchase as many as you already have (as far as you can remember. We'll fix it if you're wrong.)
• Commuter Pass, Fishing Rod, Water Stone, Type:Null

You are now free to purchase any desired upgrades to your Class Skill Trees, Player stats and any unlocked Trainer Subclasses! There are a few things to be aware of, which we'll break down for you now:

CHANGES

PLAYER
Player is no longer a subclass and is now its 'own thing' (read the full writeup here!) You can purchase move types, rarity increases, etc in the Shop! You will still have to equip yourself in a Class Tree via Mod Requests.


TANK/SWEEPER/SUPPORT
The most notable change is that you should only purchase the highest tier upgrade your character has at a time, and REFUND any previous tier upgrades back to the shop.

For example, if you want to buy Tier 5 Tank HP, you should first return Tier 4 Tank HP to the shop (click 'refund'). You get your BYTES from the previous purchase back, which should immediately go into the more expensive upgrade (the prices haven't changed from the old system, they just reflect the cumulative cost now).

This is so you can glance at your profile and easily see exactly what tier your character is at!

Remember, you can refund and re-spec your Class Skill Trees at any time, so don't worry about getting locked into a big commitment.


TRAINER SUBCLASS
The prices for Trainer Subclass have changed! Each Tier of upgrades is the same price across the board (no longer scales up). In other words, there's no difference in price between Tier 1 (no longer free) and Tier 5 (no longer expensive).

However, there is now some pricing variation between the TYPE of trainer subclasses.

• Starting Subclass (Gardener, Kindler, Swimmer) - 100 BYTES per upgrade
• Basic Subclass (Beta Tester, Charmer, Catcher, etc) - 200 BYTES per upgrade
• Advanced Subclass (Alchemist, Basilisk, Ironsmith, etc) - 300 BYTES per upgrade

Since Tier 1 is no longer free/automatic, 'Trainer Subclass' has also been removed from the Character Application! We still encourage new applicants to think about which subclass they would like, but they no longer need to choose ahead of time (which has led to conflicts in the Starter Lab in the past).


POKEMON BOX SLOTS
Pokemon Captures and Box Space have been rolled into one thing. Any time you acquire a Pokemon (including from the Rookery or Challenge Towers) you'll need to buy a PKMN Slot. However, the cost is still low (35) and you can go ahead and buy slots in advance - even all 50 up front!

Additionally, the Golden Great Ball (Trainer Star 3 perk) now increases Box Space by an additional 15 slots, up to 65!

All players are assumed to have a Starter Kit (even if you forgot to purchase it) which gives you 10 free Golden Pokeball slots, meaning you don't have to pay for your first 10 Pokemon. Cool!


CLASS SLOTS (TANK, SWEEPER, SUPPORT)
Class Slots have gone away, and you have all 6 unlocked from the get-go. Equipping a Pokemon in a blank slot is still free, however, SWITCHING or DE-EQUIPPING Pokemon has been increased to 50 BYTES (to help prevent potential abuse of evolution/shiny mechanics).

You can see your equipped Pokemon in your User Profile!

CLOSING NOTES

Please use System Admin and C0D13's User Profiles as a reference for how yours should roughly look - we both have the basic tier upgrades, so once you're finished making your initial shop purchases, your profile should look approximately like ours does.



If you're worried, you can COMMENT on this post for help from M00K or (temporarily, just during this initial transition period) ask Ladybug on Discord.

I'm sure I've forgotten to mention something, but we'll make additional posts in this same thread for any new updates. For the most part, the new Shop Update was built to be super intuitive for new members, so everyone should be able to figure things out with a little trial and error.

Thanks, everyone! Have fun with the new update!