Elite Four-Hard Mode, they're using items anyways?

General Discussion Questions
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I’m fighting the Elite Four for the first time, on hard mode. I’m fighting Eduard currently, after having defeated Kayla. She didn’t use any items, which is great, but after challenging Eduard, he uses a Full Restore on his Hippowdon. A few turns after taking it out, he revives it with a Max Revive.

Sorry in advance if I’m just an idiot who misread the wiki page for the Elite Four, but I thought that on hard mode they wouldn’t use items since I can’t either. For the record, I’m playing on the 1.2.7 version for Windows, with the performance enhancement patch.

Anyways, my question is: Is this a bug, did I misunderstand what the wiki was saying, or is it outdated information on the wiki?

Thanks in advance!

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In the game hard mode changes all the teams irrc,and elite four too.
All of the elite 4 members have an item. In the game’s code the healing item which they have to use is defined in the team itself. So the devs probably forgot to include items for kayla.
And I’m preety sure all other e4 members do use healing items. Im not sure about which difficulty they use them tho.

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" On Hard difficulty, the player is restricted from using items during battle while also having the player’s Battle Style forced to Set ; for the sake of fairness, the Elite Four and Champion will also be forbidden from using items in battle." (Pokemon League insurgence wiki page)

So it is not a misunderstanding on your part. Although, I do not know if it is a bug or outdated info, sorry I can’t clarify further.

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That’s weird. The only way I can see this not being a weird bug is if:

  1. The difficulty somehow changed between the chambers.
  2. The game isn’t up to date or something like that.
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Thanks for the response everyone!

Yeah Demopan, they do change the teams on hard mode. I realized something based on this. I’m not sure what was up with Kayla. Everyone starting with Eduard had no problem using Full Restores/Max Revives, but not her. I’ll update this topic again once I get to the rematches, I’ll avoid changing any settings and see if I can reproduce what happened/notice any differences. About on which difficulties
the E4 should use items - I was able to confirm they use them on normal based on something I’ll go into more detail on soon, I’m assuming they can use them on easy as well.

MastersHideout, Thanks for the clarification. I feel a bit better knowing I’m not crazy on that front, lol. No worries! All we can really do is theorycraft at this point.

PeterHolmes74, that’s true. For those first point, this is the other possibility I can think of, but it has to have a restriction - it wasn’t visible in my difficulty settings, as when I checked multiple times during my E4 run, it was set to Hard Mode, and it only would have changed the difficulty for the enemy side. For the second point, I’ve checked my version multiple times to make sure it’s up to date. I can also use online features like visiting peoples bases, so it should be up to date.

So, to start with the new information I found since making the topic:

  • I’ve beaten the E4.

  • Based on looking at enemy teams, I can say that the “enemy” was playing on Normal difficulty specifically.

  • They did NOT have their Hard mode teams despite my difficulty being set to Hard, but their Normal ones. I was able to determine they had their Normal teams because the Champion’s Delta Haxorus was not holding the Life Orb it should be on hard, nor nothing if it was Easy, but a Shuca Berry I accidentally triggered with Earthquake. There were other inconsistencies, such as Eduard having Tyranitar instead of Garchomp, and Rotom instead of Delta Hydreigon.

  • Despite my previous statement, I confirmed my difficulty was set to Hard. I tried, and was unable to use items during the run, even when the E4 was using theirs. So this is a weird limbo where the “enemy” is set to Normal mode teams and rules (being allowed to use items), while I’m still bound by Hard mode rules (no using items).

Since I can’t find anything online of this happening to anyone else, I’m assuming it has something to do with my using the performance enhancement patch, otherwise I might have triggered some rare bug along the way playing the game. Just to throw any other relevant info out there - Before I started the E4 run, I had the battle style on SET, which Hard mode would have it set to anyways. Maybe it tried to change the style from SET to SET and bugged out? I’m going to test that on the rematches.

The other thing is the weird inconsistencies with Kayla. She didn’t use items. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to have any difference in her teams between Easy through Normal (besides slight difference in Pokemon levels, which I can’t see since I’m over leveled and the scaling matches that), so I couldn’t check anything with her to confirm, which would have made this a lot easy to understand.

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Waittt you use the performance patch? I know the creator of it,(And I’m the one who did the “,improved” sprites u can see me inn the changelog) it does nothing to e4 members to my knowledge.

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Yep. Oh, neat! I saw your name there now that you mention it. That’s a big help though, just hearing that. I would probably have just assumed it had it was the something related to the patch if I couldn’t find the cause of the problem had you not mentioned that. With that possibility gone though, I really need to find something in the E4 rematches that can further isolate the cause.

In the meantime, I’m doing all the Holon content atm, next Trainer battle I’ll take a look at the wiki and see if there is anything off between the teams I’m up against and what they should actually be on Hard mode.

EDIT: I have some findings.

I ran into a trainer battle with Nora, and despite being on Hard mode, her team wasn’t using the Hard mode items it should have been, but rather the Normal ones. I tried switching difficulties from Hard to Normal and Easy hoping that would refresh her teams to what they should be, but nah. Seems like they’re stuck on normal. Even playing On Easy won’t change her team’s details - they were still at their normal mode levels.

I had a hunch at this point, and remembered a fight with Taen during the story a while back, where he had a Pokemon that outsped me that shouldn’t have. Turns out his Pokemon (Delta Darmanitan at the time) holds a choice scarf on Normal mode. This should have been easier for me to notice, wish I paid more attention at the time.

So this has been a problem since at the very least my Second Taen encounter at the Perfection Base, and not with Kayla or the E4 (she might have a separate issue with her not using items, but due to her team being the same and level scaling, I can’t actually check this directly.)

My difficulty settings (for the most part) in the Options doesn’t do anything. Oddly the exception seems to be the E4 restricting items on Hard Mode - that alone functions correctly. I can’t test it further until I advance to the rematches at the moment, but my guess is regardless of what difficulty I set the game to, I won’t be allowed to use items in the E4.

Is this something I could change in the files? I took a look at the Game.ini config file and I don’t have a difficulty setting in there. Would there be a line I could add that could fix the problem?

If not that, then maybe I screwed something up when patching the game?

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So I got around to the E4 rematch. It still allowed for the AI to use items, and Kayla still was the one exception to that. However, this time the new champion didn’t use items either. The AI was still using their normal mode teams despite being on hard. I did another run on normal, and this time I could use items.

There’s not really much for me to say at this point, as the E4 is much more manageable come the rematches. Not sure if this thread will help anyone in the future if they hit the same bug/problem, but I wasn’t able to find out the cause.

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