An attempt at implementing Shadow Pokemon and other related mechanics as they appear in Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness.
| /xd check<slot> | Sends a message to the player hinting at how close their shadow pokemon is to being eligible for purification. |
|---|---|
| /xd purification | Opens a GUI players can use to purify any eligible shadow pokemon. |
Some recommended reading before diving into this:
Not all of what is described here is represented in this mod. I did my best though 🙂
Canonically, shadow pokemon are the product of Team Cipher, an antagonist team in the GameCube Pokemon games. They use science to “close the door to pokemon’s hearts” and turn stolen pokemon into reckless battle machines. The primary goal of these games is to steal back these pokemon from trainers and then purify them to turn them back into normal pokemon.
In this mod, shadow pokemon appear with exclusive palettes and particle effects. While they know shadow-type moves, they themselves are not shadow-type. However, their status as a shadow pokemon gives them type-resistance to other shadow-type moves. They gain a number of advantages in battles, but these advantages come at many costs.
Shadow pokemon cannot be found in the wild. Instead, there is a chance that an NPC trainer has a shadow pokemon on their team. After defeating such a trainer in battle, you will enter into battle with the shadow pokemon they used against you, during which you may catch the shadow pokemon. The type of shadow pokemon encountered is mostly random, but can be influenced by the type of trainer fought. For example, trainers that use primarily water-type pokemon are more likely to have water-type shadow pokemon.
A newly obtained shadow pokemon will know 2-3 shadow moves in place of their normal moves. This means that a pokemon that would normally only know 1 or 2 moves will only know 1 or 2 shadow moves.