SPOILERS! Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl Data Dumps

[Pikachu315111]

but also Hearthome Gym specifically and Looker not even being acknowledged.

Oh, geez, forgot about Hearthome Gym. Is it really the elevators & math puzzles again? Do they try to do anything to give it some pizzazz?

 

[Wukong]

Have they removed the SwSh 179 affection stat cap?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeLeaks/comments/qrxn9f

 

[Worldie]

I'm mostly joking about Bidoof going from something no one wanted to use but used anyway to something people want to use, but just the idea of Bidoof going from meme to serious pick is shocking.

You too must join the "Bidoof for champion" club sir

Joooin uuuusssss

 

[Scorpio]

This is way too minor to dampen my excitement for these games, but I’m a bit disappointed that there’s still no Stat Teainer specializing in Special Defense. I know Buck is supposed to be both defense stats but his Pokémon choices kinda lean more towards physical Defense.

 

[KaenSoul]

Is there a list of move tutor moves?

Frenzy Plant, Hydro Cannon, Blast Burn and Draco Meteor are the only tutor moves found so far.

 

[Sirya]

The last mon in the dex is Arceus, there is no Victini.

Victini is number 000. 000 comes before 001.

... Sorry.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeLeaks/comments/qs2puw This is really cute

https://i.gyazo.com/c92c4843d28d8c343f62f00f01c3e662.mp4

 

[Lord Godwin]

Do we have any info on the Battle Tower Teams? Especially for the Boss Battles:)

 

[Siggu]

Have they removed the SwSh 179 affection stat cap?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeLeaks/comments/qrxn9f

Most likely it's that following Pokémon ignores it.

I honestly hope ILCA comes back for more in the future. BDSP looks so good. Imagine if they made their own Pokemon game without input from Gamefreak...that would be a sight to behold.

I wouldn't say it's the best in the series. Not by a long shot.

But... it'd be interesting to see them take on Gen V.

 

[Sirya]

Game Freak is not the problem, the problem is TPC. TPC rushes Game Freak and Game Freak rushes ILCA. Direction also has to do with things. Black and White were great games, very great games in fact, but in terms of content they werent far from other entires on the franchise, altho the story had a more mature and beliveable tone and even the ending was on pair with what you could expect of other classic jRPGs (even the music sounded like Golden Sun), and they were directed by Junichi Masuda, but both HGSS and BW2 were directed by Shigeki Morimoto and Takao Unno respectively.

The more ligth vision of what Pokémon is, speciall noticeable when it comes to content, comes after the 3DS era, when Shigeru Ohmori took the director role.

 

[R_N]

Have they removed the SwSh 179 affection stat cap?

https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeLeaks/comments/qrxn9f

I'm guessing just going to Amity Square at all unlocks it, then.

We'll need more people to look into the happiness

 

[Balanced Freakmons]

This is so sad tho...one of the best battle themes in the series is not present :(

 

[Siggu]

I'm guessing just going to Amity Square at all unlocks it, then.

We'll need more people to look into the happiness

I'd assume it's like in Sword and Shield and that there are certain things that ignore the cap, and others that don't.

 

[R_N]

I honestly hope ILCA comes back for more in the future. BDSP looks so good. Imagine if they made their own Pokemon game without input from Gamefreak...that would be a sight to behold.

look i'm not gonna lie here i feel some of ya'll are weirdly swayed by what amounts to a handful of cool trainer sets, most of which are in the post game

And like yeah they'r really cool, and different for the series that basically only experimented with it in BW2's challenge mode (& only with the E4 & Champion, really), the battle facilities & also, Rematch Wally
and in general yeah i think ilca did a decent enough job on the game all things considered


but at the end of the day we don't really have any indication what a "full ILCA" Pokemon game would actually be like. What's their world design like? Encounter tables? What's the dex they'd put out? How would they handle designing every trainer in the game from scratch, instead of using DP as a baseline* & editing about 20 trainers? Game balance, in general? What would the side content in a game built from scratch be like? LEARNSETS. And so on and so forth.

I definitely wouldn't mind ILCA coming back to work on another remake, and maybe being given more [whatever] to see them experiment with different design spaces in it, mind, but there's quite a leap some folks are making if you catch my drift.



*And Platinum for that matter. all the rematch teams use those as a base for composition, and then either added an additional one or tweaked one or two pokemon.

This is so sad tho...one of the best battle themes in the series is not present :(

View attachment 384784

Honestly I'm surprised it's not there? Since they brought in the Super Contest themes from Platinum and got Giratina's theme, I figured they'd get the only other "big" theme left.

 

[Sirya]

Ngl what i hate the most is the unavoidable friendship system. What can you do about that other than keep using a mon from the PC that you wont use in your team and put it first in the team to avoid the rest getting friendship. This is seriously a problem, like, all of your mons or a handful of them will evade attacks and crit everything out of nowhere by the endgame if you just normally play and enjoy the games.

 

[TURBODERP]

The fact that the Elite 4 on your first run have their mons at least somewhat EV trained with fairly reasonable spreads, good-to-perfect IVs, and with decent natures is a huge jump in power from base D/P and definitely a big increase in difficulty (especially given the higher levels and better movesets in many cases). When compared to D/P Cynthia's rematch Level 78 Garchomp, BDSP Cynthia's Level 66 first-run Garchomp is hitting harder (231 vs 238 Attack) and is way faster (187 vs 212 speed). And even before that point, you're facing stuff like Flame Orb Guts Heracross with Facade (yes, not maxed out EV training or even perfect IVs, but still), Adamant Max Attack Head Smash Sudowoodo, Life Orb Sheer Force Steelix, etc.

Even given overleveling and the exp share, I think the rematches will still pose a challenge to the majority of players, who aren't focusing on EV training and the like - after all, stuff like a Modest Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking with 252 SpA and perfect IVs, packing Sludge Bomb/Earth Power/Ice Beam/Thunderbolt is probably going to chunk a hell of a lot of players' mons.

 

[R_N]

Ngl what i hate the most is the unavoidable friendship system. What can you do about that other than keep using a mon from the PC that you wont use in your team and put it first in the team to avoid the rest getting friendship. This is seriously a problem, like, all of your mons or a handful of them will evade attacks and crit everything out of nowhere by the endgame if you just normally play and enjoy the games.

We need to see what actually happens internally to say its unavoidable. It's possible jsut visiting Amity Park uncaps it for everyone(or at least the ones brought INTO the park since that's following you)

 

[mattgcn]

Yeah my excitement overall has gone from "these will be fine I guess" to "oh some of this is really cool". I wasn't going to get excited at all without some level-up set reworks and interesting teachable moves / tutors in addition to best boy Looker and we didn't get any of that soooo

 

[chimp]

Maybe I'm getting carried away with the hype train, in fairness. I will say that I've never seen anything like these rematch teams before. Perfect IV'd, EV trained, six mon opposing teams, all holding items, with competitive strats, is something that is quite literally unprecedented in a main series Pokémon game. It's a tremendous selling point for me.

I do think it's "in the discussion" as I specified in my earlier post. But I'm far from declaring it the outright best in the franchise without first having played it.

are the remake teams really that cool or interesting? Don’t seem that much different than the PWT teams, at least in terms of difficulty. I mean you are of course entitled to your opinion but I see these kinds of teams as being they are minimum for what the game should have in the first place.

 

[Kurona]

I do think some of the teams are being a little overhyped. Like yeah, there are absolutely insane movesets in here; but you are still going to be sweeping Candace and you are still one-shotting half of Cynthia's team with Infernape. There's certain individual Pokémon that have been upgraded (Yache Garchomp is the stuff of nightmares), but it's mostly stuff that was difficult to begin with and has been updated to still be threatening in the current climate.

Don't get me wrong, the teambuilding on display here is perhaps the best we've ever seen; but outside of a few particular Pokémon I don't see it providing a radically harder challenge.

 

[BlizzardHero]

Game Freak is not the problem, the problem is TPC. TPC rushes Game Freak and Game Freak rushes ILCA.

While TPC does contribute to a number of issues, it's not entirely correct to lay blame squarely on them. TPC largely handles marketing/mobile games/additional products. They, along with Nintendo, pressure GF into unreasonable schedules (as is common in the gaming industry, lets be honest) in order to meet timelines they set.

However, TPC was literally created by GF - along with Nintendo and Creatures. They likely own a 1/3rd stake, and while Nintendo possibly holds the majority share due to their control over Creatures, GF should still hold significant sway. If GF wanted more production time, they certainly have some power to make that happen.

Then you have to consider the production environment of GF itself. GF rarely, if ever, hires new employees. While mass-hiring of developers doesn't increase production in the short-term, it does in the long-term. GF has the capital to hire more people if they wanted to - and I imagine lots of very talented people would jump at the chance. But they rarely do. GF is known to be an incredibly "old boys club" company, where new talent rarely gets added and it's hard to move up. 2020 was the first year in a long time where they've hired a lot of people - but still a fraction compared to other AAA developers who can hire north of 200 devs at the start of a production cycle. Regardless though, this might be signaling a shift in their production philosophy.

There are a myriad of other systemic issues that revolve around GF which I don't really have the time to go into. But while unreasonable schedules are a very clear issue, as is with most things there's no one single cause.

 

[Kurona]

I really do think this whole "Nintendo vs TPCi vs GF vs ILCA" conversation will get better when you realise they're not four completely separate entities in a vacuum and are interconnected on a far more complex level than that; and in all cases will have bosses at the top who care more about getting popular Pokémon games for children out mid-November for profit margins than they do about extra postgame content

 

[Hematite]

Do we know about trainer items? Wondering how many Full Restores Cynthia is packing.

I do! : D
Here you go!
I'm not 100% confident in the base reward money (pretty sure though - and at least if any one of them is right, they all should be P:), but all of the items are correct, and the AI should be, too (to the extent that anyone knows how to read it).
I left enough information their teams that you can tell at a glance what you're looking at, but obviously my other sheet is still more useful for finding detailed team information, and I do not have the energy to combine them right now XP

The only four kinds of items used by any Trainer in the game are Potions, Super Potions, Hyper Potions and Full Restores, so you can Ctrl + F any one of those if you want to see who has them!
Or to answer your question directly, Cynthia has... four Full Restores in every one of her battles. o.o'

For wild Pokémon encounters postgame, is the new stuff outwith the Sinnoh dex just in Ramanas Park, Grand Underground and the postgame areas (route 224 onwards, Snowpoint Temple etc)? Do swarms still exist, is there anything added to the Great Marsh, is there anything exclusive to the poke radar?

These are all of the Trophy Garden's post-Natdex encounters in the files:

Hide

Clefairy
Jigglypuff
Meowth
Chansey
Eevee
Porygon
Cleffa
Igglybuff
Marill
Azurill
Plusle
Minun
Castform
Bonsly
Mime Jr.
Happiny

Safari Zone Pokémon - there are a lot of duplicates here, but the data has all of them as one big list, so I don't know how they're divided up, exactly.

Full list in order of game data

Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Golduck
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Roselia
Staravia
Marill
Azurill
Wooper
Golduck
Staravia
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Quagsire
Bidoof
Bibarel
Wooper
Azurill
Roselia
Staravia
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Roselia
Golduck
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Golduck
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Roselia
Staravia

this section is probably where the Natdex list starts, but that is conjecture on my part
Toxicroak
Drapion
Exeggcute
Golduck
Staravia
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Yanma
Shroomish
Paras
Kangaskhan
Gulpin
Roselia
Staravia
Croagunk
Skorupi
Carnivine
Roselia
Golduck

Better-organized version

This is the same data but alphabetized and with duplicates removed, purely as a list of available species.

Probably pre-Natdex:

Azurill
Bibarel
Bidoof
Carnivine
Croagunk
Golduck
Marill
Quagsire
Roselia
Skorupi
Staravia
Wooper

Probably post-Natdex:

Carnivine
Croagunk
Drapion
Exeggcute
Golduck
Gulpin
Kangaskhan
Paras
Roselia
Shroomish
Skorupi
Staravia
Toxicroak
Yanma

Both of these are the special/daily rotating encounters, not the regular encounter tables for the areas - that's probably why the postgame list for the Great Marsh is missing so many main game Pokémon (they just removed the duplicates to make room for more rare and exciting stuff/so there's something out of the ordinary almost every day).
Nothing is version-exclusive - both games' tables are stored separately (the same is true for all of the encounter data, surprisingly!), but they are identical.
As far as I can tell, both of these are exactly the same as DP as expected (not Platinum and not altered at all to adjust for the Grand Underground), but let me know if anyone spots anything out of the ordinary!

Uh, some other oddities that might interest you in the encounter data!

- Every location still has Radar-exclusive encounters defined, though some of them are still Pokémon you can find in other ways. This includes areas where you couldn't use the Radar in the original games, which makes me wonder if it might have been expanded to work outside of grass like DexNav, but it's more likely that it goes unused - it looks like every area fills every possible encounter slot and absolutely nothing is allowed to be blank, and it seems like the ones where you wouldn't expect to be allowed to use the Radar just recycle data from the non-Radar encounters anyway, haha.

- Every location has what appears to be data for swarms, but not all of those Pokémon are ones I would expect to be swarm-exclusives...? For example, there's data for a Camerupt swarm on what looks like it must be the exterior of Stark Mountain, but Camerupt is already possible to find in the grass there normally, and at the same level, too. I am not sure if these are used or what they're for, but it appears that every area has exactly two encounter slots dedicated to swarms even if there are no swarm-exclusive Pokémon in the area.
Dataminer @Mattyoukhana_ posted this about swarm Pokémon now appearing visibly in the overworld (they're not functioning encounters/you still have to find them normally in the grass, but they are a cute and extremely funny visual indicator all the same), which is worth noting - if there were an ongoing swarm of Pokémon that were already native to the area, you would still be able to tell easily.
If they do actually use this information, it would certainly make the postgame overworld livelier no matter what swarm you got! but it would also substantially decrease the odds that any one swarm is something "useful" by adding a ton of "dummy slots," so my guess is that there would be (a lot) more than one swarm at a time in that case.
That said, like the Radar data in areas without Radar use, the most likely explanation is simply that they were required to fill these slots and these duplicates will not actually be used. Swarms are probably pretty much the same as the originals and only called in the areas with unique swarm data.
We'll know how it works soon enough, in any case!

- Every location still has dual-slot mode encounters as if inherited from the originals, but I have no idea what these are for! They might be completely unused; one of the dataminers highlighted it as basically a funny sign of how true they stayed to the original source code, and it might just be a relic of the original DP...? but yeah, not only is this a complete encounter method, but there are actual unique encounters to it (the same ones as the originals - I even recognize the underleveled Gengar in the Old Chateau, haha)!
I wonder if there's a way to access these, like through Secret Base statues or Slates, or if they really are just remnants of the original source code that were only indirectly ported over and ignored.

- There's a column in the encounter data dedicated to what form of Unown is meant to appear, but it's set to 0|0 everywhere except Solaceon Ruins
Why is my first thought "they should have left a hidden message in areas where you couldn't find Unown normally" :<

Uh, all of this is to say there's a lot we don't actually understand about the current encounter tables, and not everything contained in the data is actually used - there's a ton of filler dedicated to filling encounter slots the game never checks, even for entire encounter methods we don't currently believe can be called at all that existed in the originals - so there are definitely some unknowns here!​

At a glance, in Shining Pearl, these are the Pokémon that appear to be possible to find by swarms that aren't also regular encounters in any area:

Hide

Absol
Beldum
Corsola
Cubone
Delibird
Doduo
Drowzee
Dunsparce
Electrike
Farfetch’d
Krabby
Lickitung
Magnemite
Makuhita
Natu
Nosepass
Phanpy
Pidgey
Skitty
Slakoth
Smoochum
Snubbull
Spinda
Spoink
Surskit
Swinub
Voltorb
Zigzagoon

Of those, only these do not appear in the Grand Underground encounter lists, either:

Dunsparce
Electrike
Farfetch’d
Makuhita
Nosepass
Pidgey
Slakoth
Spinda
Spoink

Those ones might still be swarm-exclusive!

Similarly, these are the Pokémon that appear to be possible to find by Poké Radar that aren't also regular encounters in any area:

Hide

Bagon
Baltoy
Ditto
Dusclops
Duskull
Flaaffy
Grimer
Hoppip
Houndoom
Kirlia
Loudred
Mankey
Mareep
Miltank
Nidoran F
Nidoran M
Nidorina
Nidorino
Nincada
Primeape
Ralts
Sentret
Skiploom
Slowpoke
Smeargle
Snorunt
Stantler
Sunkern
Swablu
Swellow
Tauros
Togepi
Torkoal
Trapinch
Tyrogue
Venomoth
Venonat
Vibrava
Wobbuffet

Of those, only these do not appear in the Grand Underground encounter lists, either:

Loudred
Smeargle
Stantler
Swellow

Those ones might still be Radar-exclusive!

anddd I don't feel like repeating the process for Brilliant Diamond's encounter data at the moment P: but I think it would be about what you expect
The only thing that stands out to me in particular is Stantler remaining a Radar-exclusive encounter; like in the originals, Stantler is exclusive to Shining Pearl and Kecleon is exclusive to Brilliant Diamond, but it just happens that Kecleon is in the Grand Underground (still Diamond-exclusive) and Stantler is not in either version. I don't think that actually means anything, though - just funny that Shining Pearl players have one more Pokémon they can only find with the Radar than Brilliant Diamond players. XP



Siggu and R_N on affection: the linked post says they were noticing signs of affection bonuses before they got to Hearthome, FWIW! If they're right about this and that's accurate information, it can't only be because of walking Pokémon.



Most notable new thing:
Here's an organized summary of everything I was able to glean from Kaphotics's mined data on Grand Underground encounters!
There are some notes at the top as to what is certain and what I'm not sure about.



EDIT:
Oh, right, also just... please admire this:

Grand Underground full map (big image)

Source: @SHRetro on Twitter

For comparison with the original:

it's so beautiful ;-;
They even made it rotationally symmetrical just like the original map and divided it into roughly the same sections as before, while doing so in a cool and non-repetitive way (the layout of the map is symmetrical, but the contents and biomes of the rooms are not) and making the actual map completely from scratch instead of directly copy/pasting the layout like in the above-ground Sinnoh.
This is a gigantic, sprawling sandbox that's seriously way bigger than the trailers and official map made it look (the official map is beautifully rendered, but with how much bigger it made the caverns look, I thought the whole map was smaller in relation to them; it also completely missed the rotational symmetry of the map, which was a super satisfying reference that had me grinning when I noticed it) and it has an incredibly useful, PMD-looking mini map to aid exploring.
I freaking love this I cannot get over how fantastic it looks

 

[CTNC]

The Pokeleaks Reddit has a link to a list of stuff for comparing DP and Pt to BDSP and it has a few things from the leak that weren't brought up here because they're minor details.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SmT6qJ5MDk3kjqMfbyl3q1NyBj1Y0drqZG-hUHidkUY/edit

This stands out as a massive problem for one of this game's biggest additions.

After beating the league, pokemon in HIdeaways may adopt the flee mechanic or have a harder catch rate.

Why? You can save before running into them because everything is preset when they appear, but still, why? No one likes Pokemon running away!

 

[Kurona]

snip

This is EXTREMELY comprehensive, wow. Thank you! A lot of the oddities I can easily see as being Placeholder data or something similar, but the Dual Slot stuff is fascinating. I wonder if they perhaps used some of DP's code as a baseline to make it easier?

 

[doipy hooves]

This is EXTREMELY comprehensive, wow. Thank you! A lot of the oddities I can easily see as being Placeholder data or something similar, but the Dual Slot stuff is fascinating. I wonder if they perhaps used some of DP's code as a baseline to make it easier?

They apparently based the scripts on Gen 4 at least.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1457974856100704263

As for underground, seems like most of the Platinum mons are special Pokemon and the non Sinnoh dex stuff is all after National Dex otherwise. At least Tangela is in.