Pokémon Nova Sun & Umbra Moon: Fully-featured, challenging Sun/Moon ROMhacks!

Project Pokémon OP
GBATemp OP
PokéCommunity OP
Reddit /r/3dshacks OP


ROM hack of: Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon (3DS)



Pokémon Nova Sun and Umbra Moon are mods for Pokémon Sun and Moon. Like my Rutile Ruby and Star Sapphire hacks, their main purpose is to provide a more challenging game experience while not artificially limiting the player. The premier feature of Nova Sun and Umbra Moon is the ground-up redesign of Pokémon Trainers in the world to increase the game's challenge. Every trainer in the game has been edited, and the level curve expects use of the Experience Share, which means that the player levels up very quickly. Every Pokémon in Trainers' teams has a hold item and a proper moveset. The end-game of the main story features trainers with Levels in the mid-nineties.

Nova Sun and Umbra Moon's secondary focus is inspired by Super Smash Bros. Melee's "20XX Hack Pack" which enables features for competitive players to practice and grind. In Nova Sun and Umbra Moon's Legit Build, everything obtainable is 100% legal and legitimate for real online battles or trades. In all Builds, some features are designed to make preparing competitive teams much less of a hassle. Competitive hold items are much more available, a 6IV Ditto is available through an in-game trade (holding a Destiny Knot), Eggs hatch in one cycle, and Level 100 Memento Blissey battles are available in the Battle Buffet once the main story has been beaten.

This project's information has been moved to my WordPress.​

 

READ THIS POST BEFORE YOU COMMENT "THE DRAG AND DROP DOESN'T WORK FOR ME"

HOW TO UPDATE from Nova Sun & Umbra Moon v1.4 (or lower) to v1.5+:​

If you're updating the Drag & Drop installation of Nova Sun or Umbra Moon to v1.5+ from a previous version, you need to delete the old files. v1.5+ places the ROM hack files in a different SD card location, and no longer requires code.bin. Delete THESE files/folders from your SD card before copying v1.5+ to the SD Card.

• SD:\luma\titles\0004000000164800
• SD:\luma\titles\0004000000175E00
• SD:\luma\code_sections\0004000000164800.bin
• SD:\luma\code_sections\0004000000175E00.bin
• SD:\SaltySD\Nova_Sun
• SD:\SaltySD\Umbra_Moon

You also NEED to update Luma3DS if you're on a version lower than 7.0.
Drag & Drop packages of Nova Sun & Umbra Moon v1.5+ support (and require) Pokémon Sun & Moon v1.2.

FAQ

"HELP! The game freezes when I talk to a shopkeeper!"​

• This happens when you have a version mismatch on the Shop.cro file
• If you're using a Drag & Drop install of the game, make sure Sun or Moon are updated to v1.2. If you're getting shop freezes while Sun or Moon are updated to v1.2, update the ROM hack by redownloading the installation package. If your old version of the hack was v1.4 or earlier, follow the instructions for updating from NS/UM v1.4- to v1.5+.
• If you're using a *.3ds or *.cia install, make sure Sun or Moon are not updated at all. Uninstall updates from "Data Management" on the 3DS. You can also apply the Drag and Drop package over the NS/UM CIA; if you do this, you can update Sun/Moon and continue to play NS/UM.
• If you're using a HANS install, you copied the shop.cro file into the ROMFS folder. Re-download the hack and start over from the beginning, including re-dumping your game with Braindump and make sure you do not copy the shop.cro folder from the download pack.

"I want to randomize the game and still use the Drag & Drop install method!"​

• PK3DS currently requires a complete ROM file system to be present to function. This means you need to follow these instructions to play a randomized game through Drag & Drop.
• Download the Leveled Build of NS/UM and copy the luma folder to your SD card. Follow all instructions included with the Drag & Drop.
• Follow the included instructions for building a CIA/3DS file. When you reach the part where you can randomize your wild encounters, say Yes and use PK3DS to randomize them.
• Once you've randomized your Wild Encounters, copy /Extracted_ROM/romfs/a/0/8/2 and /Extracted_ROM/romfs/a/0/8/3 to the /luma/titles/16DIGITTITLEID/romfs/a/0/8 folder on your SD card. If there is no "8" folder inside romfs/a/0, create one. For reference, the Title IDs for Sun and Moon are 000400000164800 and 0004000000175E00 respectively.
• Booting Sun or Moon should load Nova Sun or Umbra Moon with randomized wild encounters.
• You can now delete your dumped ROM and your Extracted_ROM folder.

"HELP! I want to use a cheat menu or NTR plugin, but (insert tool here) breaks with this mod!"​

• It's not up to me to fix these sorts of tools.
• The reason these tools will sometimes break with Nova Sun / Umbra Moon is that they aren't capable of handling Luma3DS's LayeredFS implementation.
• If you want to complain to someone about incompatibility, complain to the developers of the cheat menu or plugin that their tool doesn't support Luma3DS LayeredFS.

"HELP! I get a black screen or crash dump error when I click Sun/Moon when using the Drag & Drop install method!"​

• Make sure you have properly removed any SaltySD-based hacks (including older builds of Nova Sun/Umbra Moon) from your 3DS SD card as detailed at the top of this post.
• Try deleting the files from SD:/luma/titles and re-copying them over to the SD. Plug your SD into your computer instead of using FTP or MicroSD Management for best results.
• Update your Luma3DS install to the latest stable version and make sure "Enable Game Patching" is enabled. It's possible Luma3DS's "hourly" builds could break something important for the LayeredFS feature.
• Make sure your 3DS firmware is on version 11.0 or greater (this is a requirement to run Pokémon Sun & Moon).
• Make sure you have the Sun/Moon v1.2 update installed.
• Remove any code.bin or code.ips patches from your Sun/Moon Title ID folder, then try again. A code patch for v1.0 or v1.1 of Sun or Moon can cause a freeze on startup or a crash dump, depending on which Luma version you're using. Make sure any code.bin patches you're using alongside Nova Sun / Umbra Moon are for the latest version of Sun or Moon.

"HELP! When using the Drag & Drop pack, the game boots as normal Sun/Moon!"​

• Make sure the option "enable game patching" is enabled in your Luma3DS configuration.
• Make sure you copied the luma folder from the ROM hack's install folder directly to the root of your 3DS SD card.
• If you're using the Title Screen to tell the difference and you are playing in a language other than English, run the NonEnglish.bat file included in the Drag & Drop pack before you copy the files to the SD.
• Make sure you don't have a code.bin in Sun or Moon's Title ID folder.
• Make sure you're using the latest stable version of Luma3DS CFW. If you're on arm9loaderhax, follow this guide to update to boot9strap so you can use the latest Luma3DS version. The process is very quick (less than five minutes) and mostly consists of downloading and placing files on the SD card.
• If you want to remain on arm9loaderhax for whatever reason, update your Luma3DS to version 7.0.5, which is the last stable version that supports a9lh.

"HELP! I am having trouble building a CIA/*.3DS of this!"​

• Always dump your own ROM instead of downloading it from some piracy site. This isn't just for moral reasons: many pirate dumps of games are trimmed, compressed, or simply not decrypted and therefore will not extract correctly.
• Make sure your rom is in the correct place. It should be in the folder you downloaded with the ROM hack, in "Extra_Files", like this.
• Make sure your rom is named "rom.cia" or "rom.3ds" before you run the All_In_One.bat or Extract_ROM.bat file.
• You can't build a 3DS file if your dump was from a CIA. You can build a CIA if your dump was from a 3DS.
• Both the extraction and rebuilding process will throw error messages at you during the process. Keep going until the process finishes.
• You need 6GB of open storage space on your main system drive to use 3DS Toolkit. You also need 3GB of available RAM to dump and rebuild the game.
• If all else fails, just use the Drag and Drop method. Any 3DS capable of installing CIAs is also capable of updating to the latest version of Luma3DS.

"WHICH BUILD HAS LEGENDARIES!?"​

• This ROM hack does not add Legendary Pokémon to the wild. This is a design choice made for the following reasons:
• 3DS ROM hackers currently (and for the foreseeable future) can't alter the game script to add events, so adding Legendary Pokémon would just be sticking them in random grass patches as low-percentage encounters. That's ugly, feels hacky, and removes the reason Legendary Pokémon are cool in the first place.
• Nova Sun and Umbra Moon are not balanced around the player using 650+ BST monstrosities. If I added Legendary Pokémon to the grass, they'd turn the supposedly challenging game into a cakewalk. If I balanced the game *around* Legendary Pokémon, you'd basically be required to either use them or grind and overlevel your team.
• Hacked Legendary Pokémon cannot be converted to legitimate Pokémon by altering their data to make them "hatched from an egg". This means using Legendary Pokémon as a post-game reward is absolutely and completely pointless.
• And finally: I personally believe the game is more fun without them, and I want to present the most fun (in my opinion) way to play Pokémon in my ROM hacks.

 

Why would you play a challenge ROMhack and then use cheats to make it easier? (No, it wouldn't)

 

No outlines is fine. if by "pokeballs" you mean infinite pokeballs, you should be aware this rom hack already sells all pokeballs for 90% off! 100% catch is definitely a cheat.

 

Personally, I like kit-kat.

— Posts automatically merged - Please don't double post! —

If you're playing on a SaltySD build, just update the game normally before playing. It will embed v1.1, but some files updated in v1.1 will be overwritten by NS/UM (one example is the "learnset" list, which was changed slightly from Sun/Moon v1.0 > 1.1. Don't worry, NS and UM have the fix for movesets like Kadabra built in! I actually hacked that in before Nintendo fixed it properly). Go online at your own risk, but it should work alright.

 

That is correct. Installing an update to a CIA of NS/UM will lose you many if not all features of the rom hack. If you really want to have the custom launch banner/icon, you can do something incredibly silly: build and install a CIA of the game, update the game, then use the SaltySD pack on the already modified rom.