Idea for Destiny Knot (or: How to easily breed Hidden Abilities)

[EpicAncient]

Some players fear that with the upcoming releases of hidden abilities into PokeMMO that their current competitive pokemon will just become expensive breeding fodder due to their current abilities not being viable for the competitive meta game.

This item will act as a limited consumable shortcut item to allow veteran players to be able to more easily breed in the new hidden ability into their outdated pokemon.

I propose this item could be Destiny Knot, as its main breeding function from the normal games (Generation 4 onwards) isn't necessarily applicable to the system we currently use. However, due to Destiny Knot additionally having a battle item, this may not be the best item to use.

The item I'm going to dub 'Ability Stone' will be able to be held by a pokemon while breeding. The IV's and all of the current egg moves of the parent NOT holding the ability stone will be passed down to the offspring while the pokemon holding the ability stone will pass down its hidden ability. So essentially you can breed an outdated competitve pokemon with a pokemon from its same evolutionary line to get the same pokemon with the hidden ability.

One rather important note is that this item is not replacing the way you breed Hidden Abilities onto pokemon at all. It's a shortcut item to allow players who desire a way to not have "wasted" their time with previous breeds, but keep up with competitive. Regularly breeding in Hidden Abilities should still work, with or without this item.

 

 

Example:
Let's say you have caught a female Dratini from one of the new Legendary Dungeons with its hidden ability 'Marvel Scale.' Now, assuming that pokemon that evolve with a hidden ability will get the hidden ability available for its evolution, you can evolve this Dratini into a Dragonite with the hidden ability 'Multiscale.' Instead, we're going to take that female Dratini and breed it with our now outdated Adamant Inner Focus Dragonite that has 6 31 IVs.

 

Dragonite                |        Dratini
Male                         |        Female
Adamant                  |        ???
Inner Focus             |        Marvel Scale
Everstone                |        Ability Stone

31        |        ??
31        |        ??
31        |        ??
31        |        ??
31        |        ??
31        |        ??
----------------------------------

Dratini
?? (Pay for gender if you want)
Adamant
Marvel Scale

31
31
31
31
31
31
-----------------------------------

Now, our new Dratini has the Adamant nature from the Dragonite via Everstone, and 6x31 IVs via the Ability Stone, along with the hidden ability 'Marvel Scale.'
At this point, you can EV train your new Dratini as you want with its new Hidden Ability without much loss of time or resource.
With one caveat, this new pokemon you breed will have a special ribbon that will make it much like a gift pokemon; It will then be untradeable and unbreedable.

Untradeable so as to prevent players possibly scamming others into their "Ability Stone Service" and losing their competitive pokemon. Used with the Destiny Knot item, this "binds" the pokemon to you, akin to its own Destiny. A corny way to go about it but makes a bit of sense.

Unbreedable so you cannot simply remove the ribbon by breeding once more. This may cause issues with re-IV breeding later however, so it may be best to make the ribbon pass to future generations of offspring, and allow breeding in general.

 

Some additional notes on the item:

- Will be untradeable, so you cannot simply make new characters to obtain more of them for yourself to avoid normally breeding in Hidden Abilities.
- Will be unsellable, so you cannot accidentally sell such a powerful item.
- Will be considered invalid for breeding when held by a pokemon with no hidden ability, or both parents are holding an ability stone.
- Only pokemon of the same evolutionary line will be able to breed. You can limit this further by making it so only same-step evolution pokemon may breed abilities together (Dragonite and Dragonite, not Dratini), but this is completely unnecessary.
- Any gender of parent may hold the ability stone.

 

 

How to obtain this item?

I'm not completely set on the method of acquisition for this item for players, but one idea I had was to use it as a reward for first completion of each tier of the elite four in each reigon with a max of three being able to be earned. Meaning that after you beat the elite four in each reigon for the first time you will be rewarded with one ability stone then additional one for the second and third time. I think its an ample enough challenge for the players that have competitive pokemon at their disposal to be able to get these stones. As for players who already completed these tiers they should be awarded stones accordingly.

 

Conclusion

I think this a good solution to the problem that will arise for players when hidden abilities are introduced into the game.

This item I have suggested is meant to be a limited shortcut for veteran players and not the only means of breeding competitive pokemon with hidden abilities. I suggested this with the assumption that a pokemon with a hidden ability (so long as both parents are from the same evolutionary line or at least the female has the hidden ability) will be guaranteed to be passed to the offspring. So the alternate avenue you could take to 'fixing' your competitive pokemon outside of using this suggested item would to be breed up the hidden ability as your would your egg moves with your IVs. An example to mimic the one above would be to breed your 5IV Hidden Ability Pokemon with the right nature and an everstone into your 6IV Pokemon with the correct band for the missing IV. And if you ever for any reason were to not want your hidden ability on a pokemon your could you use an ability pill on that pokemon to roll from one of the normal abilities avalible for that pokemon, though you would lose that hidden ability and have no means to get it back without breeding.

Thanks for reading my suggestion and if there is anything people need me to clarify on my suggestion or just have questions in general about it let me know below.

Edited April 22, 2018 by EpicAncient

[Tyrone]

Well thought out and written suggestion.

I like the fact that you want to keep the item rare enough by not allowing it to be tradeable and having untradeable offsprings as well.

Perhaps the way to obtain it is still too easy though? Beating the elite 4 is rather trivial. Also limiting the maximum supply to 3 isn't longterm sustainable.

 

[EpicAncient]

The primary idea stemmed from some complaints I saw on other parts of the forum primarily being about how people absolutely have to rebreed their current competitive pokemon to stay up to date with their stronger abilities.

It's not as if you need the item; it's just so people who feel that they're being cheated by the incoming abilities being breed-only can still fix what they need to. Eventually more hidden abilities and pokemon would be added in the future, along with their respective dungeons, and more pokemon will be 'fixable.'

In this way, 3 may not be enough, but it's a good starting point. If they figure out a way to implement it as a dungeon reward, that may also be sustainable enough, so long as it is a rare chance to get it. The goal shouldn't be to negate breeding with this item idea, just circumvent the immediate problem with dungeons' release.

 

As for how you obtain the item, I can't say much on it. I'm sure it'd be fine as pokedex reward, too, but not every player wants to grind out that. So, that's for the Devs and forum to figure out. There's only so much to work with now, seeing as how we don't know the functionality of dungeons. It may work well as a reward therein, but until we know specifics I'm not throwing eggs into that basket.

 

If the item is awarded through completion of all Elite 4 levelsets/tiers, it provides some level of base challenge that not every player may have done (Lv70/80/90/100).

Edited April 22, 2018 by EpicAncient