Core Series Alterations

An in-depth list of differences between the core series games and Swirling Seasons.

## Lore / Reasoning

While some of the developers and many in the community think it could be interesting to tie some of our core series alterations to lore (especially the type changes), there are currently no plans to do so. The "lore" of these changes is that Swirling Seasons takes place in a separate universe from the mainline games. Therefore, some things are different and have simply always been this way in the game universe. There are no plans to elaborately mention the changes in game outside of small encounters designed to educate the player on the changes.

## Mechanical Changes

There are many subtle, and some not-so-subtle, Mechanical differences between the main series games and Swirling Seasons. The following is a non-exhaustive list of mechanical changes.

* 3 Player Character options
	+ The Three Choices are:
		- Wren, the Feminine Player Character
		- Lark, the Masculine Player Character
		- Robin, the Androgynous Player Character
	+ Pronouns and Player Appearance are no longer linked; you can play as any of the 3 with any pronouns; including custom set ones.
	+ In character creation, you're able to choose your appearance like normal. However, once you choose your appearance and pronouns you're able to select which of the other two will be your non-friendly rival. The one you select to be your rival will go off to work for Amaze-All, and the one you don't select will become a friendly assistant in Professor Fir's Lab.
* Non-berry held items (like the weakness policy) will be given back to the player if consumed in battle. This will happen after the battle is over.
* The Arceus Plate items now give a 1.3x boost to their respective types instead of a 1.2x one. In addition, the Normal-type plate from Pokémon Legends Arceus (the Blank Plate) has been added.

### X-Item Replacement (Starbyss Coffee)

X-Items have been removed and replaced with a new series of items called Starbyss Coffee. For more details on this, as well as a list of these items, please visit  the Starbyss Coffee page.

### Status Conditions

Throughout the main series there are many non-volatile status conditions that can appear throughout gameplay. These status conditions do not disappear after a Pokémon is switched out of battle or when a battle ends.

Most status conditions in Swirling Seasons act the same as they did in Sword and Shield, with the exception of **Freeze** and **Frostbite**, which are covered in more detail in their own article.

There are 6 major status conditions present in Swirling Seasons:

* **Burn (BN)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with burn will have their physical Attack stat cut in half, on top of this they will take 1/16th of their health in damage at the end of every turn. Fire-type Pokémon are immune to being burned.
* **Paralysis (PZ)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with Paralysis will have their Speed stat cut in half, on top of this they will have a 25% chance to not be able to move on any given turn due to Paralysis. Electric-type Pokémon are immune to being paralyzed.
* **Poison (PS)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with Poison will take 1/8th of their health in damage at the end of every turn. Poison and Steel-type Pokémon are immune to being poisoned under normal circumstances.
	+ Variants of the Poison Status:
		- **Toxic Poison (TX)**
			* Pokémon will take an increasing amount of damage every turn, starting at 1/16th and climbing by an additional 1/16th every turn. In the core series this status is called *"Badly Poisoned."*
		- **Blight (BT)**
			* Pokémon inflicted with Blight will take an increasing amount of damage every turn, starting at 1/8th and climbing by an additional 1/8th every turn. However, this variant of Poison cannot faint a Pokémon. This status is part of the signature move of Pestalation, Blight Spore.
* **Sleep (SP)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with sleep will be unable to move (unless using Snore or Sleep Talk) until they wake up.
* **Frostbite (FB)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with frostbite will have their Special Attack stat cut in half, on top of this they will take 1/16th of their health in damage at the end of every turn. Ice-type Pokémon are immune to frostbite.
* **Freeze (FZ)**
	+ Any Pokémon inflicted with freeze will be completely unable to move for the duration. Ice-type Pokémon are immune to being frozen. Freeze is the least common of the status conditions, especially in Swirling Seasons with the Frozen/Frostbite split.

## Stat Distribution Changes

In parallel with the  Type and Ability Changes, a decent handful of canon Pokémon have had their stats tweaked to either buff or retool certain Pokémon to be more in line with their design philosophy or typical usage in competitive play.

**Kantonian Jynx**

*+25 Def, +10 HP*

*(Buff to allow its Kaskadian counterpart to have a higher BST)*

**Kantonian Articuno**

*+30 SpA, -30 SpD*

*(Articuno was not designed for bulk, nor does it have much use for it)*

**Ledian**

*+75 Atk, -75 SpD*

*(This is allegedly what Ledian's stats are supposed to be, there was a programming error in the development of Gen 2 and they never went back to fix it.)*

**Unown**

*+31 HP, +17 Atk, +31 Def, +16 SpA, +31 SpD, +31 Spe*

*(Buff to a mon that's meant to be good, and now its Base Stat Total is equal to the National Dex number of Arceus.)*

**Shedinja**

*-44 Def, -29 SpD, +36 SpA, +37 Spe*

*(The Pokémon with exactly 1 HP has no use for Defensive stats.)*

**Torterra**

*+5 SpD*

*(Very slight buff to a Pokémon designed to be tanky.)*

**Sinnohnian Luxray**

*-15 SpA, -4 Def, -4 SpD, +23 Spe*

*(Retooled to become an obvious physical speedster, in contrast to the new Kaskadian Luxray.)*