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By StrengthOnKill
#213525 Darkrai is way too rare in 1.16 Pixelmon in my opinion and in the opinion of many others. Without a working Kyogre (which I hope is fixed soon), here is what you have to do:

Dark Forest Hills
New Moon (1/8 nights)
0.3 weight

It takes, if sleeping exactly on time, ~1h20 to rush to another new moon. Let's just assume you have access to /checkspawns legendary (not everyone does although I think it should default as an accessible permission). This allows you a way to time the legendary spawn so that it will line up with that new moon almost every time.

There is, at max, a 30% chance of a legendary spawning. Let's assume the entire 64 block radius around the player is not only dark forest hills, but cleared out and spawnable space. The game will try to find a block for the legend to spawn x amount of times, and with that many spawnable blocks, the number stays hovering around at that optimal 30%.

But this is where the issue arises; In 1.16, for whatever reason, the sword trio (Cobalion/Terrakion/Virizion) spawn location was changed to all "Hills" biomes. A pretty pointless change, that comes with drastic side effects that were clearly not thought out beforehand. Virizion spawns during the day, so we can forget about him. Terrakion and Cobalion both spawn at night, in Hills (including dark forest hills), with a weight of 3.0. This means, with simple math, Darkrai has approx. 4.76% chance of being the legendary picked between the three. You factor that in with the 30% (at the very most optimal conditions possible) of a legendary attempt happening, and you get a 1.4% chance of getting a Darkrai heading into a New Moon (with a spawn attempt lined up). That, on average, will take around 50 attempts (for a 50% chance additive) Combine this with the expected weight time of 1h20 (keep in mind this is always sleeping, meaning you have to basically always be at your PC to keep this pace up), it will take approx. 66 hours of grinding to get Darkrai.

That's an insane number for one legendary, don't you think? And that's only if you sleep perfectly, have access to checkspawns and time it every single time, and have a perfectly cleared out area. Take away checkspawns (which many server players can't access because of ignorant admins), and it's literally a lost cause entirely. I like the difficulty of Darkrai, but like how it was in 1.12. New Moon, no other legends interfering.

Now I think, with proper strategizes, this is a very possible task, although difficult, with a working Kyogre. Kyogre, as I reported 7 months ago, is supposed to give thunder on rain dance (which you can sleep in, therefore removing the 1h20 mandatory wait with 7 kyogres. And yes, this is 100% worth doing for Cresselia/Darkrai, it saves so much time and if you don't see that then you haven't given this as much thought as I have). However since 1.16, this is bugged and it only gives regular rain. It is supposed to still give thunder, the debug message and a developer confirmed this to me. I used this strategy to catch Darkrai in 1.16 and while it is, on average, difficult, it's very doable with the proper strategy, which is a good thing. I used the weather command when I used Kyogre's Rain Dance as a temporary fix. But most people can't do that to fix the bug. With a working Kyogre, I think the difficulty is in a good place.

Possible solutions:
-Revert Sword Trio spawns to 1.12 versions.
-Fix Kyogre bug (really should happen either way and I hope it's not being ignored)
-Change the way Darkrai spawns. Possibly some sort of rare NPC quest that's having a nightmare, that then gives you tasks towards getting Darkrai. Idk!

Thanks for reading.

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By SKyTheThunder
#213528 Not sure this counts as an actual suggestion. The majority of the post is just you outlining why you want a feature to change, but your actual suggestion boils down to "make my exploit work or change it to something else".
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By StrengthOnKill
#213531 How is this not a feature suggestion? I'm suggesting that Darkrai spawn conditions should be altered and outlined exactly why. Don't let your personal bias get in the way, it's a completely legitimate suggestion with the math to back it up. Why is outlining why I want the change a bad thing lmao
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By Sophie847
#213549 Just going to jump in since I actually disagree with Sky here and this seems like a reasonable thing to suggest - you've backed up your frustration with some rough math to get the point across, and suggested multiple ways this could be changed. While I can understand your frustration, I'll remind you that insulting members of staff isn't going to help the situation here. I've mentioned this post to devs, but whether changes are made ultimately comes down to their discretion, this isn't something I get to make decisions on.

It's also worth noting that this change could be easily implemented yourself via a datapack - you can control the spawn conditions and weightings of any pokemon spawns as you like, or implement other methods with which darkrai can be obtained.

For the first solution you suggest, you'd be looking in /data/pixelmon/spawning/legendaries, you'll find the spawn files for all legendary pokemon, where the spawn biomes of the sword trio could be edited accordingly (note that the "hills" biome category mentioned is defined under /data/pixelmon/config/betterspawnerconfig.json - if you wanted you could also remove dark forest hills here, though other non-legendary spawns would be impacted somewhat).

Likewise, implementing a custom darkrai quest would work in a similar fashion, though custom quests do require a slightly stronger understanding of the system than editing spawns. Our legendary bird quests are located under data/pixelmon/quests/red/, which could be used as a template to write a quest of your own.

While I can't speak about bug prioritisation or progress here, Kyogre summoning regular rain and not a thunderstorm is still a legitimate issue and is not being ignored. One look at the bug tracker makes it clear there is plenty of issues the devs are working on at any given time, and unfortunately fixes can take longer than we like.
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By SKyTheThunder
#213550 (I never meant to imply this wasn't a reasonable suggetion - just that the actual suggestion part of the post was tiny compared to the motivational description)
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By StrengthOnKill
#213552
Sophie847 wrote:Just going to jump in since I actually disagree with Sky here and this seems like a reasonable thing to suggest - you've backed up your frustration with some rough math to get the point across, and suggested multiple ways this could be changed. While I can understand your frustration, I'll remind you that insulting members of staff isn't going to help the situation here. I've mentioned this post to devs, but whether changes are made ultimately comes down to their discretion, this isn't something I get to make decisions on.

It's also worth noting that this change could be easily implemented yourself via a datapack - you can control the spawn conditions and weightings of any pokemon spawns as you like, or implement other methods with which darkrai can be obtained.

For the first solution you suggest, you'd be looking in /data/pixelmon/spawning/legendaries, you'll find the spawn files for all legendary pokemon, where the spawn biomes of the sword trio could be edited accordingly (note that the "hills" biome category mentioned is defined under /data/pixelmon/config/betterspawnerconfig.json - if you wanted you could also remove dark forest hills here, though other non-legendary spawns would be impacted somewhat).

Likewise, implementing a custom darkrai quest would work in a similar fashion, though custom quests do require a slightly stronger understanding of the system than editing spawns. Our legendary bird quests are located under data/pixelmon/quests/red/, which could be used as a template to write a quest of your own.

While I can't speak about bug prioritisation or progress here, Kyogre summoning regular rain and not a thunderstorm is still a legitimate issue and is not being ignored. One look at the bug tracker makes it clear there is plenty of issues the devs are working on at any given time, and unfortunately fixes can take longer than we like.


Yeah I know, I've made datapacks before that many people use (For Zygarde and a BYG bug). The problem is just because it's datapack-able, doesn't mean it shouldn't be changed as a default. Multiple reasons for this:

I don't think it's okay to ignore bad decisions / mechanics (that many people agree are bad -- nothing particular just in general) because a datapack can change it. It's almost a built-in excuse but it's really not valid for a few reasons:

1) I bet lots of people like myself want to play the game as intended. If the devs make it so Darkrai is this hard, or breeding requirements too, for example, then I want to do it that way. Even if I think it should be changed and disagree with the changes that made them this way. Like a real pokemon game, I want to play it as intended with intended difficulties. Kyogre is supposed to work and is a bug, that's why I have a workaround that. It's intended to work.

2) Many people don't have access to datapacking. That's what bothers me with this solution. Do I? Yes, I could. I run my SMP. But the thousands of people playing on public servers do not. And 99.9999% will never see a Darkrai because of it. Or be able to breed a shiny because of the new reqs (just an example I'm using but not as important because it's not required for dex to breed 220 times etc.) Also, some people are too young to figure out how to datapack.

So yeah, I know how to datapack and know I could. But that doesn't answer for the vast majority. And I mean.. VAST majority here. But I appreciate your response, and appreciate you forwarding my concerns to the dev team, as well as not ignoring the Kyogre bug. Thank you!
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By Sophie847
#214362 I agree that datapacks aren't the ideal solution for all cases, though I still feel it's relevant to mention their value here, both for you and for anyone else who sees this discussion in the future. While of course not everyone can implement it where they choose to play, if someone releases such a datapack publicly, that would help out some people with the same feelings (give access to those who lack the skills to make one themselves, or at least save some time for others).

Pixelmon isn't a mod that's supposed to be "completed" quickly. And especially with mechanics like Zygarde cells not being implemented, and plans to eventually give all legends shrines or something similar, I doubt this is set to be changed in the short term, at least. My discussions on the issue with devs suggest this is essentially an intended change, or at least not one there's a hurry to fix. One such small change opens up that whole can of worms regarding spawns people consider unbalanced, when frankly there's bigger problems to be handled.

You're right that not everyone has access to datapacking, though large public servers tend to offer alternative methods for getting pokemon as well. And ultimately, if someone is so intent on finding Darkrai (or whatever other goal) and a server doesn't cater for that, perhaps they'd be better off to play somewhere else which allows for this.

Finally, once the Kyogre bug gets resolved, that alleviates the problem somewhat. While perhaps not the full solution you're hoping for, it's all I can really confirm.
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By StrengthOnKill
#214438 Kyogre being fixed would fix the issue entirely imo. It keeps it at a very difficult, but achievable, level with proper strategy. Which is a good thing.
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By StrengthOnKill
#215338 Looks like Kyogre is fixed for the next update, thanks for listening!

and stop downvoting my every post when u know I'm right my brother whoever you are quit the copium
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