the_plateau | Sinnoh trip FAQ

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Sinnoh trip FAQ

As you’ve all heard from Lance himself, this month, VR is going to Sinnoh!

We realise this is probably a lot to take in at once and you’re all brimming with questions, so we’ve written up a little FAQ for the Sinnoh event to try and address the most common questions. We ask that you read through it, as well as our Eterna City information post here, but if you have any more questions after, please feel free to ask ‘em here.

How will we be getting to Sinnoh?

Everything will be revealed on the 9th, but until then, all your characters will know is that they are requested to report to the Goldenrod City pokecenter on Sunday. For those that desire it, lifts will be arranged, free of charge. If you already are in Goldenrod City or would rather travel yourself, that’s fine too.

Would my character be able to join in later / leave earlier?

Like any group trip, we go together and we leave together! Meaning it will be impossible to join in on the trip later or go home earlier.

Where exactly are we going?

As Lance mentioned, we’ll be heading to the scenic Eterna City for two weeks. And in addition to the city itself, there are also a few nearby routes that have been opened up for characters to explore if they so desire.

It will not be possible to explore beyond these routes. Like in the games, there will be roadblocks, keeping characters from accessing the next routes.

The list of allowed routes and places are:

Eterna City
The Northern segment of Route 205
Eterna Forest (including the old Chateau
The Western segment Route 211
Mt Coronet
The Underground

It will not be possible for characters to leave Eterna Forest to the South and continue onto the rest of route 205

It will also not be possible for characters to leave Mt Coronet onto any of the other routes (Eastern segment of route 211, route 216, route 207, and route 206)

This means that it is theoretically possible for a character to find Spear Pillar, but this would require two weeks of straight up exploring.

In addition to all of this, there will also be field trips to two other Sinnoh locations.

Field Trips?

That’s right. In order to get as much bang for your poke-buck, so to speak, while the majority of the trip will be spent in Eterna City and surrounding areas, there will be two field trips to explore some more distant locations within Sinnoh.

One field trip will be held on Friday the 14th, and the second on Friday the 21st. The exact location won’t be revealed until those dates. ICly, you can assume that characters will find out where they’re going on the morning of the trip, giving them one last chance to tag along or stay behind.

Travel during these trips will be taken care of by the League and won’t cost characters a thing. Any expenses outside of travel (say, buying souvenirs) will mean dipping into your own wallet, though!

Threads of each field trip will go up within the main mod log for the event, and those should include all information you need. (You can also ask questions. We do answer questions still.)

Characters are free to decide whether or not they come along, but keep in mind that they will not be able to join everybody else later or go home earlier. So get up earlier and pack plenty to eat!

Tell me more about The Underground!

It certainly wouldn’t be a Sinnoh trip without the Underground!

We did have to adjust the concept of it slightly. Unlike in the games where you get a kit and can then access the Underground from just about anywhere, in VR, the Underground functions as a network of tunnels with several fixed entry points. Eterna City is one of those points.

This means characters will be able to enter the Underground and dig for fossils. On our Info Page, we have included a list of all possible fossils and items characters can find while digging in the underground. For every full day (from 10am to 6pm) they spend in the Underground, they will be able to take home up to two items. What they find is entirely up to you.

And yes, those sure are some Galar fossils pieces on the list too. No, you will not be able to revive those just yet. But who knows, maybe if you hold onto them...

What if my character tries to leave the allowed routes?

They’ll be caught by a dedicated team of rangers and returned to the city. If it happened on accident because a character happened to get majorly lost, the rangers won’t be too strict with them. If it keeps happening, however, they might find themselves confined to house arrest for the remainder of the trip.

Okay, but what if--

This is a hard limit, so no matter how your character tries, they will not be able to leave the allowed routes.

Can we challenge the gym while we are there?

Yes and no.

You can absolutely challenge the gym. However, because characters are not officially Sinnoh trainers, they will not be able to earn an actual badge. Instead, Gardenia has set aside a little special reward for anyone willing to challenge her.

Gym challenges can be submitted here.

Also, while this all is going on, regular badge challenges are on temporary hold. We will do one final check/accept on August 5th, but after that, we’ll only be checking the Gardenia challenges for the duration of the event. Normal badges will resume after the 23rd, but bluntly speaking, mods wanna have fun too!

Also, it’s not like you can challenge any Kanto or Johto gyms while you’re in Sinnoh anyway.

What about apping new characters?

Our apps will remain open!

Anyone who apps in as a Trainer or Breeder has the option of either having their character awaken in a small, strange room in the Eterna City pokecenter or waiting to intro their character until everyone returns!

Rockets will have the choice of either waiting to intro or else showing up in Sinnoh with one Pokemon (whichever one is level 5) only to get kidnapped by Team Rocket upon returning, at which point they will receive their second Pokemon and undergo their basic training. Alternatively, they can arrive in Goldenrod and undergo training as usual, but that period will be handwaved so that they’re ready to play as soon as everyone gets back!

This event really isn’t my style…

You don’t have to participate! Characters are free to remain back in Johto and Kanto.

During this event, the network will be accessible for characters both in Johto and Kanto as well as Sinnoh. So you’ll still be able to talk to each other even if you are literally regions away.

We hope we have been able to answer all of you guys’ most common questions, but we are sure there are more uncommon questions just waiting to be typed out. We’ll put up a thread in this post specifically for answering questions, while we hope you will use the rest of this post to start plotting up some Sinnoh fun.

Oh, and for this event, we’ve created the tag !Sinnohtrip. We’ll be tagging all of our stuff with that, but we also invite you to use it for any posts set during this time so they can easily be found in the future.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Will the Galarian pokemon in Sinnoh, like Stonjourner and Morpeko, be added to the starter list after this?

Edited 2020-08-01 20:49 (UTC)

They will indeed become available as starters! And we'll also be adding them to the wilds of Johto/Kanto, but that might take a bit longer.

OH GOOD. I know someone who's waiting to app until they can get Morpeko, so this is wonderful.

Will they be able to access the PC normally or will they just have the pokemon they bring with them.

Also if they've been writing letters to penpals in Sinnoh thanks to Armin, is it possible they can actually meet the npc's they've been writing to? Like just handwavey meetings.

They will be able to access the PC as normal (and catch pokemon as they normally do) while in Sinnoh.

They will also be able to meet the people they've been letter-writing too, just as long as those people are in Eterna City or willing to travel there.

Will we get to decide for ourselves which items our characters discover in the Underground, or will you guys randomly generate it for us?

The decision will be entirely up to you!

Excellent!

Semi-adjacent - would it be easier to find rare Pokemon such as Leafeon and Corviknight (and Gogoat who is seven stars??) by working in pairs or more?

It will improve the odds some, though you'd probably want three or four people to really make a difference.

Would a humble newsroom employee be able to negotiate with his bosses about recording one or two 15-minute segments about Sinnoh while he's gone, to be aired on the Town Channel?

It is possible. He'd probably have to sell it along the lines of 'An Otherworlder's view of Sinnoh' as Sinnoh itself isn't all that exciting or new to the people of Goldenrod (just cause the characters can't travel doesn't mean the natives can't either) but they'd probably be able to find a little open spot in their programming for that.

Oh, he'd definitely do that. And play up his very real excitement and fascination and probably interview a couple other otherworlders.

/rubs hands together

Excellent.

Is it possible to take a boat instead of surfing, and if so can it technically be fishing if a fish flops into said boat?

You know what. Go for it. It's a holiday after all.

I'm going to make a guess that using Pidgey Post to order TMs from Goldenrod or Celadon probably won't be an option on the trip?

But what about ordering from the Veilstone store?

And if that's possible, what does it have available?

As you suspected, it won't be possible to order TMs from Goldenrod / Celadon during this event. By the time they'd get to Sinnoh, the holiday would be over.

As for Veilstone, it won't be possible to order from there, but your question did bring up something we hadn't considered before, so we will be looking into putting some special TMs on offer in Eterna City during the event! Please keep an eye out for the eventual updates to the information page.

awesome! Also, can characters watch NPCs and/or other PCs battle Gardenia if they hang around her gym ~~to spy~~ as a spectator?

Because Thace would try to do that. And if he can he'd try to glean as much as he could about her strategy (and if her Pokemon know any TMs that might round out their movesets)

Absolutely. Every gym is open to spectators. Not only is it pretty exciting to watch, but gym leaders also encourage it to help newer trainers learn by observation.

Now that the travel method is revealed: What is the general procedure concerning Pokemon on planes?

What about eggs on planes?

In order to ensure a secure and easy flight for all passengers, it will not be possible to have any pokemon out during the flight, safe for registered service pokemon. Eggs should be stored in the PC before departure. Unfortunately, they just cannot risk someone's Onix suddenly hatching during the flight and bringing down the entire thing.

That is what I expected, but Thace will be Concerned. He wouldn't be able to talk the crew into letting him purchase a seat or two for one or two of his Pokemon? (The answer is probably no, but he'd ask)

As you expected, the answer is no. It's a safety procedure, so there is no being able to talk them into any deviations.

wait a minute does that mean those adopted nulls had pokeballs thIS WHOLE TIME

Is the Ice Stone that can be found in the underground equivalent to the Frozen Rock that's used to evolve Glaceon, Alolan Vulpix, and Alolan Sandshrew?

One and the same, yes.

I should have asked this aaaaages agoooooo-

Ah well. Does Hakutai Inn perhaps have an associated restaurant or similar that could be used as like...a spot to gather and have say, a reunion of some kind?

Specifically, the family kind,

auntie hakutai, jonathan just wants to have a nice dinner with his family ok he just needs this,

Hakutai Inn doesn’t really have a restaurant itself, but if asked, Auntie Hakutai will refer them to her niece’s restaurant in town. Very nice and traditional. Perfect for a family reunion (family is so important)

If you say Auntie Hakutai sent you, you might even get a discount.

THANK YOU AUNTIE

(Lucky for Hakutai's niece, a number of the attendees are probably prepared to shell out funds to make up for any nonsense the remainder of them pull in the worst case :'] )

Regarding the new moves, there's at least one that can be learned by Silvally only if they're holding a specific element memory (in this case Steel). Since Silvallies don't have those items in this settings, is it only [element] Silvallies (or other pokemon that might have similar restrictions) that can learn those moves?

Yes. Seeing as we didn't introduce the memories into VR, every Silvally is essentially 'stuck' as what they were originally created as as a Type:Null. So a Fairy-type Type:Null will always evolve to a Fairy-type Silvally, and would, therefore, be unable to learn this move.

Thanks for the clarification!

A simple one and a couple more involved ones:

Simple! Is it safe to assume that Eternia City has an antique shop or two, and that it might have some old keys for sale that would please a Klefki?

The first more involved one: Thace had an interesting discussion about Pokemon being allowed to hang out in a person's house even if it broke the six rule. So if he left a couple of his Pokemon out of their balls and in his room at the inn, and then tried to get others out of storage, what would happen? (he'd rather leave them in a hotel room than the PC if he has to leave any behind when he's out and about, you see, so he's going to try)

Number two: Would Gardenia have agreed to talk with Thace candidly after he won their match? If she did agree, how would she have reacted in general to his concerns about Pokemon freedom? (Thace would have helpfully explained the slavery and forcing slaves to fight each other for entertainment situation in his world to give context for his concerns)

1. It absolutely has antique shops. There might be an antique stall or two at the market place. Plenty of places to find old keys!

2. He should have no problem leaving several pokemon behind in his hotel room, and also withdrawing a full team to travel with. Only having a team of six on you is more of a social rule, rather than an actual physical inability. The PC doesn't stop letting people take more pokemon out of storage once they've hit six. The PC is just that, after all, and it can't really tell if someone is walking around with all those pokemon on them, or if they are leaving those pokemon outside of their balls in safe environments.

Technically there is nothing physically stopping someone from carrying tons of pokeballs (after all, team Rocket members are able to steal a ton of pokemon, which would be rather difficult if they couldn't hold more than six pokeballs), it's just something that is Not Done and judged really hard by individuals of this world.

And at the same time we as mods ask people to please stick from an OOC perspective as well to it to keep an even playing field between characters. It's one thing to have a bunch of pokemon out and about where a person lives/sleeps as this doesn't really convey any sort of advatage to them. But when travelling, having access to a lot more pokemon would really skew what they'd be able to do in terms of using pokemon mounts and winning battles.

3. She'd definitely be happy to talk to him, assuming there isn't a line of people waiting to challenge her (in which case she'd invite him back later)

Gardenia would sympathise with Thace, especially if he tells her about his own worlds and how people are captured and made to fight as slaves. In fact, hearing that sort of tale would be quite horrific to her. But she would also try her hardest to explain to him/convince him of the fact that pokemon are not slaves. They aren't being forced to fight; they enjoy it. And if a pokemon didn't want to fight, there isn't really anything a trainer could do to make them fight anyway. Most pokemon are much stronger than humans, so they can't really be cowed around.

2 Right. I do understand wanting to keep the playing field even. Would imposing some strict OOC handicaps on Thace for his anti-storage stance be enough to re-even the playing field?

I propose:
No means of shortening travel time via Pokemon (riding/fly/etc) for Thace. For those locations in which Surf is required for travel, well, Surf doesn't actually shorten travel time, as far as I know.

Level capping: For each partial day of travel in a week (P-6) members in his party are penalized via this formula where D equals days traveled rounded up to the next whole day and d4 is a 4-sided dice roll: 8 -(D x (d4/2)). With the result of the (d4/2) also rounded up to the next integer (ie .5=1, 1.5=2 etc) there's no way the penalty would be less than 1 level per day traveled, and no possible way to earn more than 1 level per week traveled for the penalized Pokemon. And plenty of chances for the penalty being more than 8 any time travel exceeds 3 days, which would mean 0 levels gained.

No battling NPC trainers on routes (due to the negative reactions to having more than six Pokemon with him)

In order to be allowed into a gym, Thace must leave his "extra" Pokemon elsewhere or put them in storage. That means that even if he were the type to try to disobey the 'only 6' rule in battle, he couldn't. Worse, it means his battling team will be capped at 5 because he's raising a baby Whismur who is always with him (and is OOCly capped at 2 levels per week even before additional penalties).

If that's not enough of a handicap to re-level the playing field with other characters/players, I could OOCly take away his trainer leveling/finding shiny perks in addition to the other handicaps (in which case his current shiny will be retconned as normal) or even get him banned from gyms entirely so he'll never earn badges.

Would that be enough of an OOC handicap and IC consequences for Thace's choice to break the rules once he finds out it's possible?

Unfortunately, the answer is still no.

While we fully understand your good-faith intentions here, the mod team has to be conscientious of the number of players in this game, all of whom we cannot keep an eye on at any given time. Your mechanical suggestions would require us to take on a great deal of individual labour that is functionally impossible for this game. We apologise for the inconvenience, but learning to compromise with the setting ICly may be one of Thace's greater challenges here.

I'll handwave that Thace doesn't find out the rule hacking ICly for at least a while.

He will come back at this problem, trying to work on IC solutions with science! So this probably won't be the last questions from me, sorry. But maybe there can be interesting player plots that stem from his attempts?

Thanks for being patient with me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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