Set in the original region of Arciel, Legends Rising is a route-inspired, but not strictly route-based, Pokemon roleplay. Pick a faction, pick a class, and strike out into the wild to take on the League, master Contest coordination, research the mysteries of Pokemon and Arciel, and much, much more. Will you be a classic trainer? A criminal? A farmer? Choose your destiny on Legends Rising.
While at the southernmost Pokémon Center in Cedar Town, an advertisement for an Arciel-based game development studio caught Josh's eye. Apparently there was a new project they were working on--not a brand new game, but a major content patch for one of their greatest hits. While waiting for his Pokémon to be healed, he checked out the developer's website. "Shovelware Studios," he couldn't help but chuckle aloud upon hearing the name while browsing. "True to their name, it looks like they acquire beloved but abandoned properties for cheap and either make sequels to them or brand new content for them."
As he scrolled down, he noticed there was another advertisement looking for staff for an open beta testing of new features for what appeared to be a sequel to an open-world action-adventure game. "The Last Link - I loved this game as a kid. Wait, they're developing a randomizer for it? Count me in!" Randomizers were a recent breakthrough among game developers, the first good one having been created only four years ago. Generally speaking, a randomizer takes a game and randomly moves its elements around in such a way that the game remains beatable. A player may have to take a completely different path through the game to complete it, providing limitless replay value. Among game communities, there were frequently contests where multiple players would get the same random configuration, and it was a race to see who could complete the game first.
Of course, developing a randomizer was a nightmare - it seemed that no matter how much testing a developer did within their circle, players would find game-breaking corner cases that required patching on day one. He had a little bit of experience with beta-testing for a couple of fan projects for high-profile games that their developers had no intention of putting new content out for, but never with a real developer. How exciting! He replied to the studio's advertisement via e-mail, putting his previous randomizer experience (including tournament experience) at the top of his sales pitch.
"Alright, let's get started. Time to see where the seed wants me to go." Josh was smiling, excited to try a randomized version of a game he had played so often as a child. From the very start, there were surprised. "Oh, the intro cutscene and escape scenes are both cut out! That's neat, so I can start from either my house or the church straight away." He made his way straight to the first town, going to slash a spider standing outside the gates...when he got smacked in the face. "Right, no sword. No weapon at all. This might be fun..."
The first town, Foresta if he was recalling the name correctly, had the largest number of items accessible with no equipment whatsoever. A hidden treasure cache in the jail was the first place to start. Nothing but spending money down there--enough to pay off the merchant downtown, but not much more. "Alright, what's in the well..." He was doing an awful lot of speaking out loud for not talking to someone else - with a controller in his hand, it seemed to help him think better if he thought out loud. "A Power Glove? And bow and arrows? This isn't too different from the regular game - those are the items you get from the first two dungeons normally!"
Josh headed for the town center, ready to see what the merchant had for sale. "Moon Stone for 1000 gold!" he was told when he entered the vendor's area. He set the controller down for a moment.
"The Moon Stone?" Josh said aloud, possibly disturbing a co-worker or two. "That's the item you get from the third dungeon normally! This has to be a bug. It's not supposed to give you the same items in the same order." Pausing the game, he saw there were some minor changes to the inventory screens, including a display of the seed number and a string of characters representing the options settings. "Cool, that saves me some work. Lemme jot this down real quick...perfect." The next place to take a look was the library. While he could not obtain the Tome of Sands, or whatever happened to be there this time, he could at least see what was on top of the bookshelf.
Josh's jaw dropped. "Wait, what? There's a Golden Glove there?" He thought about that for a few seconds, thinking where he could get with that. "Oh, Arceus. The moment I find Speed Shoes, that's access to the Lower World." He paused again to jot down some notes."There might be a bit of a difficulty issue with this seed," he wrote. Though that wasn't necessarily the case. If the Speed Shoes showed up as early as they did in the normal game, sure. But if they were withheld for a while...
s0DbdEmE
ooc/mod note: This is Totally Not A Link to the Past lol {WC: 471} {PC: 2} {Josh: 112/112}
Last Edit: Feb 22, 2020 5:52:43 GMT by Josh Devlin
There doesn't seem to be any glitches or problems aside from maybe the items being too good to be true (is this a glitch or a new feature, though? Who can tell).
With his discovery of the Golden Glove in the library, that was everything in Foresta. At least everything he could do for now - there was a sick child in the inn, and he wanted medicine, but without a bottle to put it in, there was no way to cure him. In the standard game, the vendor he got the Moon Stone from would sell him a bottle, but Arceus knows where those were. They might all be in the final dungeon, for what he knew. Hopefully not - medicine was very helpful later in the game.
"Wait, I can clear Western Palace - I have a bow. Let's go there." A save followed by a quick console reset took him back to the starting location - the protagonist's house. "A shield on the wall," Josh mused, picking it up. "A sword to go with this would be nice." Weaving around several palace guards on a bridge, as well as crabs that got a little too close for comfort, he paid a visit to the palace's sage.
"You want something for free? Go get the Orb of Courage out of the Sunken Ship and I'll give you a mysterious item! Until then, take these to help you in your quest."
"Health capacity and money," Josh said aloud as his character opened the treasure chests in the back of the sage's house. "Wait, the Orb of Courage in the Sunken Ship?" Stepping back outside, he flashed his in-game map, finding that the Mountain Tower and the palace he was about to go into held two of the seven imprisoned maidens instead of the Orbs needed to forge the Sword of Evil's Bane.
The implications of this discovery swirled through Josh's mind. If the dungeons the maidens were in were different, that meant some items normally required to complete the standard game may not be required here. With the Sunken Ship not holding one of them, that meant he might not have to find the Magic Mirror. Or the Flippers, assuming the dev team hadn't patched the Fake Flippers glitch out.
Western Palace, Josh remembered, was a fairly linear dungeon. After all, it was the first dungeon you were expected to go into. After heading through the entry hallway, his screen turned pitch black. "Oh right, I don't have a lantern, do I? It's the very first item you get in the normal game, so I didn't think about navigating dark rooms without it. I've played this game enough that I should be able to get through without being able to see..." He pressed onward, heading up to where he remembered the door being...
CzGkGb_Y
{WC: 438} {PC: 3} {Josh: 130/130}
Last Edit: Feb 23, 2020 6:11:57 GMT by Josh Devlin
You open the door, but the entire screen itself seems to glitch for a moment! Will you wait to see if the glitching stops? Will you press on through this room? Or will you kill the game because moving through this glitchy atmosphere is too annoying?
Seconds after Josh moved forward into the first dark room, he heard a distorted sound of what appeared to be his character falling through a pit and respawning. This looped until his character was dead. "...Guess we're not traversing dark rooms today," he sighed, resuming play back from the home start point. He paused on the map screen to turn to his notebook again. "I went into a dark room in Western Palace without the lantern, then heard the sound of falling into a pit over and over again until I died. In theory, you should be able to navigate the dungeon without a lantern if you have the room layouts memorized. Is this a bug or a feature?"
As soon as he emerged in the overworld, all of the overworld tiling was both discolored and wrong. "Um..." He paused for a moment, the lake by his home cycling among grasses, flowers, and bushes in what he could only assume was a corrupted pointer of some kind. Josh had a little bit of programming knowledge from having played so many old video games before. He moved the hero around, and everything appeared to be functioning correctly. He went back into the house, and everything was fine. It appeared to be just the outdoor tiling. He appended his notes: "Whichever it is, it also seems to be corrupting the outdoor tileset - the game had the wrong graphics loaded once I left my house. It fixed itself when I went back in, but it was still bad when I went out. It's unplayable if you don't have the overworld map memorized."
Thankfully, the jaunt to his next destination wasn't too difficult, and combat wasn't too bad, either - the sprites were just fine, and he had a bow and arrow to fight with. He was headed to the Upper World's dam - there was a health capacity upgrade under the water, but who knew what it would be this time?
Shortly after diverting the water to the larger lake to the east, he found a treasure trove at the bottom of the lake - to the tune of 3,000 gold. "Cool, now I can go to the waterfall and see what's there." There was one more order of business on the way to the waterfall. There was a thieves' den on the way to the lake that had six treasure chests in the back. None of them were significant in the regular game, but here it was likely to have something good. With a bow, sniping the ruffians out of reach of melee weapons was trivial. In the back was...money, money, explosives, money, money...and a medallion depicting a lightning bolt. "Ah, the Thunder spell. Can't use it without a sword, but that will be needed to enter the Bog of Evil. That's way off, though - there are I think three other things I need to get in there?"
The next thing he wanted to try was a glitch that let him temporarily swim without having the Flippers. To do it, his character had to be standing on a specific pixel, jump into the water, and transition the screen before the game checked to see if he had them. With the tiles corrupted, it was nearly impossible for him to find the one pixel that would work. "...I'm going to do a Save and Quit then hard reset the console. See if that fixes it."
A hard reset seemed to fix the corrupted tiles. Josh made his way down to the lake once more, easily able to find his visual cue to line up for Fake Flippers. He jumped into the lake and faced left, but was put back on the ledge. "...They patched it! Well, that makes getting to the waterfall very annoying. Hmm, what next?" Another save-warp back to his house later, he made his way to the castle.
With a bow and arrows, running through all the guards would be trivial. Before that, though, there was the secret passage in the well that would take him inside the courtyard. His uncle who normally gave him the sword would still be there, along with what would be a lantern in case the player didn't pick up the one in his house. Both contained mere bombs. "Guess if I run out of arrows, I have these?"
Disappointed there was nothing new, he headed into the castle, down to where he would normally break the princess out of the dungeon. Of course she wouldn't be there, but the treasure in her cell would be. "Ah, there's the lantern! Now I can go into Western and finish that--wait, I can finish this place first!" Having exterminated all the guards on the way down to the dungeon, there was no way for him to abuse death to get back to the castle entrance quickly. He would have to walk all the way back up the dungeon, through the throne room, and into the secret passage to a rat-infested sewer.
Vermin swarming him the whole time, he made his way to an intersection with a lone treasure chest in the corner. "A sword! Finally!" Now able to cut to pieces all the rats surrounding him, he was more free to explore...until a locked door to the north stopped him. He pulled up his inventory to find he had no keys for the castle. "Interesting...where to next?"
Josh performed another save-warp back to his house, then idled his character for a while, unsure where to go for a moment. "Need Flippers to go the waterfall...Desert's not available--wait. There is one thing I can do in the desert." South of Western Palace was the Rama Desert. In the corner of the desert was a single treasure half-buried in the sand. It was quite a trip to get there, but he was running out of options.
Thankfully with a sword, fighting off the sand elementals and vultures there would be a mere chore than a serious problem. Sticking out of the sand was a pair of blue, webbed pieces of footgear. "Aha, there we are. And they didn't cost me 5,000 gold. Next stop, the waterfall." After a long walk all the way across the southern edge of the world map, he arrived back at the large lake, diving in with his newly-found Flippers. He was ready to swim to the waterfall the hard way. cp|YQAeu
{WC: 498} {PC: 5} {Josh: 130/130}
Last Edit: Feb 26, 2020 1:08:58 GMT by Josh Devlin
Leaping into the lake and expecting to swim, Josh...landed on the lake's surface? "What armed Waterwalk?" he mused, a little puzzled as to the cause. "I know you can arm Waterwalk by swimming into the waterfall if you have the Moon Stone, but I've never heard of it being armed this way." Leaving the game on his map screen, he made an additional note about the strange case of waterwalk being armed somehow, taking a screenshot of the waterwalk state and another one of his inventory.
There was one danger to waterwalk, though: if he left the current screen he was on, there was a known glitch that would cause him to get stuck in the water with no way out. The faster movement than the Fake Flipper state would at least make it easier to dodge archer guards on the bridge. Making his way up the river and to the waterfall in the map's northeast corner, he was able to swim up to it and through a hidden cave behind the waterfall. In the unmodified game, there was a friendly fairy that upgraded some minor items as well as filled bottles with medicine for free. "Interesting, the waterfall fairy got replaced by two treasure chests. At least that cuts out--ah, the flute! Fast travel!"
New instrument in hand, Josh walked out of the waterfall and onto land to disarm water-walk, heading up to the mermaids' domain. In the back of their water-filled corner of the world was their queen, who had an offer for Josh. "5,000 gold for a better sword!" Not exactly what he wanted, but better weaponry wouldn't hurt.
"What next..." Josh mumbled as he walked and swam out of the mermaids' domain. "Wait, that's two swords and a Moon Stone. We can get to the Lower World how the original game intends--through the castle." One save-warp later, he was back at his house, just south of the castle. "Welp, time to kill the wrinkly old wizard?" Instead of heading to the castle's dungeon, he headed up its central tower, some of the castle's most elite guards awaiting him on the way up.
2|xU5X1P
{WC: 358} {PC: 6} {Josh: 150/150}
Last Edit: Feb 26, 2020 3:17:09 GMT by Josh Devlin
Actually dispatching the "wrinkly old wizard" was trivial using the correct strategy - the left and right sides of him were safe spots as long as Josh could parry the spell with his newly-found Sacred Sword. After six successful reflections, the evil sorcerer at the top of the castle perished, casting him into the Lower World with his dying breath. "No mirror means I'll have to go to the castle every time I want to come here. Fun," he sighed, descending the Pyramid that he was warped on top of. "Oh right, this is my first time here. I should check my map since the dungeons are all mixed up. Hmm, Bog of Evil is one of the Orb locations. Hopefully I don't have to go there. Let's see what's on the pyramid altar--ah, that makes sense."
On the altar was a very valuable item indeed, the Grappling Hook. With it, he could latch onto certain objects and cross wide gaps using its magically-reinforced rope. Able to set the hook on a tree stump on the other side of a raging river, Josh was free to cross its banks and head to the west side of the Lower World, where the Village of Thieves awaited him. It wasn't quite as plentiful as Foresta was in item locations, but there were a few simple mini-games he could play, including a treasure shop. For a variable fee, he could open a variable number of treasure chests depending on how much he paid in. One of the sixteen chests had a prize--this time, the Fire Sword!
Blazing blade in hand, he entered the Thieves' Hideout in the maw of the giant raven statue, one of the seven labyrinths where an imprisoned maiden was located. The Fire Sword would make quick work of the enemies there, but the enemies there would also make quick work of him. With only 24 health capacity, three hits meant death. Stumbling into some more health capacity would sure be nice...
pYa65d4h
{WC: 331} {PC: 7} {Josh: 171/171}
Last Edit: Feb 27, 2020 4:41:09 GMT by Josh Devlin
Josh was able to wander the main hall of the Thieves' Hideout with not a single enemy firing at him. Pulling up his inventory to take notes, he wrote, "Upon entering Thieves' Hideout, all of the enemies seemed to ignore me. Must think I have the Magic Cape on or something. Might want to look into that?" Resuming play, he was able to wander the halls without issue, nabbing the four treasures there. And there were the Speed Shoes. A little late, but now he would be able to go back to the library and get his Gold Gloves. The question is, was it worth it to do that immediately after defeating Deaf the thief?
The only other things up front were the dungeon's keys. One of them had to be up front due to a lock leading to the rest of the dungeon. The other one Josh really didn't want to see. That key opened the way to a single treasure on the bottom floor, and it required the Hammer to get to. That was an item he did not have, and having to go all the way to the bottom of the dungeon after finding it was not fun.
The glitch that prevented enemies from seeing him seemed to persist through room transitions, letting him finish the entire dungeon up to the boss. Notably, the invisibility did not help him with the the boss fight against Deaf, as her attack pattern did not depend on his character's position - there were just a lot of projectiles to dodge. Ultimately narrowly surviving the fight, Josh rescued the first of the seven imprisoned maidens - he was on the board!
Despite his lack of late-game items, there was still plenty to do in the Lower World. Come to think of it, since he defeated the wizard atop the castle, wasn't he trapped in the Lower World until he found the Magic Mirror? "It better show up soon," he thought, leaving the Thieves Hideout and making his way down the hills. The enemies appeared able to see him again, narrowly dodging a few thieves that chased him and tried to steal some of his bombs. The Digging Field awaited to the south, which contained yet another mini-game with a random prize...
fEnt914_
{WC: 378} {PC: 8}
Last Edit: Feb 27, 2020 19:41:17 GMT by Josh Devlin
You arrive at the Digging Field, but instead of digging a hole, the game considers your first attempt to have dug up the whole field, and uncovers the item location immediately. Lucky you!
Josh was taken a bit by surprise when he dug up the game's prize on the first attempt. The prize itself, though, was money equal to a quarter of what the NPC was charging to play. "What a scammer," he chuckled before pausing again to write down notes. "Digging game was an immediate first try win, just like the treasure chest game in town. This feels like a feature, but just want to make sure it isn't a bug."
In the grove to the south of town was an NPC that was slowly turning into a tree. In the normal game, he gave you the Shovel to dig up his treasure in the Upper World. This time, though, just money. At this point, money wasn't helpful until he found medicine bottles to fill. A little surprising one of those hadn't come up yet. Perhaps some questions would be answered by the final Thieves' Den in the game - the one south of the pyramid. "Where is this hammer?" Josh asked himself. "It's got to come up soon..."
With some well-placed explosives, he was able to ambush the thieves guarding their den and loot it with little trouble. There were a lot of health capacity upgrades, but nothing progressive. "Alright, guess we have to pick a dungeon we can't complete and see if we find something in there." One save-and-quit later, he found himself...outside the church? "Interesting - that's a really nice fail-safe against trapping players in the Lower World."
With his added speed from the Speed Shoes, he would be able to make it past a couple of crumbling bridges to get two remotely-located treasures. "The Inferno spell...interesting," Josh mused at his discovery. "That...gets me into the Ice Tower, doesn't it? Yet another place I can't finish without a Hammer. Where is this stupid Hammer?" He pounded his fist into the table out of frustration, starting to walk toward the direction of Western Palace when he suddenly stopped after a few seconds. "Right, I have a flute, don't I?" Playing a tune on it, its notes seemed to mimic the call of a predatory bird. A giant, alabaster eagle-like avian swooped down and picked him up, taking him back to the castle.
With the wizard defeated, there was now a gate between worlds outside the castle's entrance. It was a bit of a lengthy trip from the castle to where Western Palace was in the Upper World, but there was another dungeon to look at - the Pleasure Palace. Completely unlit and full of terrible horrors sealed away for aeons, there was plenty of treasure to be had there. He did have the lantern to light his way - navigating its completely unlit chambers without it would be nigh impossible. The only issue is he did not have the Hammer necessary to reach the bottom. There was nothing stopping it from being in there, like in the standard game. In he went, keeping one eye on his surroundings and the other on his still-low health meter...
hWLfMS9a
{WC: 505} {PC: 9}
Last Edit: Feb 29, 2020 18:39:52 GMT by Josh Devlin
The Pleasure Palace had five unique items inside, but it was a big maze and involved a lot of backtracking, especially without being in possession of the Magic Mirror to be able to instantly warp to the start of the dungeon. This dungeon also had six locked doors in it - the most out of any dungeon. If the logic was well-constructed, the keys should be arranged in such a way that it was impossible to lock oneself out of the dungeon, regardless of how the keys were used. Of course, with this being beta software, the logic for key distribution were probably still being adjusted. As such, Josh made a very conscious effort to use all of his keys in the most efficient way possible as he obtained them.
The front of the dungeon in particular only had a single door key and the Big Key. In the main hall's corners were fireball-shooting statues that kept Josh on his toes as he thought about the most efficient way to explore while not potentially making the game unbeatable. He was quickly finding that most of the treasure chests that were locked behind a single locked door held replacement keys. That made a lot of sense when he thought about it.
With all six of the Palace's door keys located near the front of the dungeon, he had concluded that most of the treasures were in the dark labyrinth toward its back - a devilish maze full of fire-spewing lizards and fire-spitting statues. Combined with a lingering spell that made Josh's lantern illuminate half the normal area, it made the room treacherous to navigate, and easy to get lost in. It was widely considered the most difficult obstacle in the game up to that point. Having navigated the maze many times as a child, it was almost muscle memory to him at this point. In the very back corner was the strongest shield in the game, capable of reflecting any projectile - even beams of light. "Mirror Shield is nice to have, but that still doesn't help!" His frustration grew as he repeatedly ran into one of the lizards in the maze in an effort to death-warp to the Palace's entrance. He would need to come back later to finish it with the Hammer.
There was one other location he could think of. In the extreme northeast corner of the Lower World, all of the mermaids had been transformed into catfish, of all things. Outside of their domain was a circle of rocks protruding from the water, as well as a sign that read "Woe to thee who throws anything into the circle of stones." Disobeying the warning, he lifted a nearby rock and threw it into the center of the circle.
A large catfish about twice his size emerged from the lake and began speaking to him. "Who dare disturbs my slumber? I'll give this to you if you go away!" Out of the ring of stones flew a green vial that he immediately quaffed, doubling the length of his magic bar. It was nice to find, but still not what Josh was looking for!
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