hack Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Alpha (3.0.3, last update 3/10/2025)

[Modified]

10 hours ago, Alphadaemon said:

I have places where you can farm Reviver Seeds and IQ is minimal in these places. If IQ for Item Master was minimal, they would eat your reviver seeds

No they are not shiny/non-shiny. They are Male/Female or variants for mons with a single gender.

Oh I see, some of them do seem to be shiny/non-shiny, which is why I assumed so, Arcanine and Growlithe for example are shiny-nonshiny.

[eeveeinabox]

Another bug? I had team-wide Mist active due to Mysteriosity, but I still got debuffed by Screech.

 

 

Also some separate but related feedback: Team-wide Gastro Acid and Embargo have the same icons. Is it possible to use different icons or have text at the start of each floor to indicate what Mysteriosity effects are being applied? Likewise, is it possible to have a text alerting the player that Neutralizing Gas is in effect for the floor? I remember being super confused when I ran into it for the first time since it wasn't in the original mystery dungeon.

Edited September 29 by eeveeinabox

[JustCallMeFin]

So I’m playing as a Shiny Gallade with Shiny Gardevoir partner and when I fall in the hole to fight Wiggly and the guild my game freezes. I don’t know what to do in order to stop this. If anyone has any tips please let me know

 

if I can get the “why” this happens, which I’m guessing is because my two mons can’t evolve since I’m seen other people with this glitch having at least 1 mon that can’t evolve and I got past this before with 2 Ralts, I’ll just restart with two mons that can evolve 

Edited September 30 by JustCallMeFin

[Alphadaemon]

23 hours ago, eeveeinabox said:

Another bug? I had team-wide Mist active due to Mysteriosity, but I still got debuffed by Screech.

 

 

Also some separate but related feedback: Team-wide Gastro Acid and Embargo have the same icons. Is it possible to use different icons or have text at the start of each floor to indicate what Mysteriosity effects are being applied? Likewise, is it possible to have a text alerting the player that Neutralizing Gas is in effect for the floor? I remember being super confused when I ran into it for the first time since it wasn't in the original mystery dungeon.

The Screech bug is fixed on my version. As for the suggestion, changing icons is not possible. Adding an indicator for Neutralizing Gas I'm planning to, but it's low priority as the indicator would be of the same nature as one I'll add for terrains in 4.0 so I'll code this for 4.0. 

[Alphadaemon]

3 hours ago, JustCallMeFin said:

So I’m playing as a Shiny Gallade with Shiny Gardevoir partner and when I fall in the hole to fight Wiggly and the guild my game freezes. I don’t know what to do in order to stop this. If anyone has any tips please let me know

 

if I can get the “why” this happens, which I’m guessing is because my two mons can’t evolve since I’m seen other people with this glitch having at least 1 mon that can’t evolve and I got past this before with 2 Ralts, I’ll just restart with two mons that can evolve 

For the record, answered on Discord, save hopping should fix the problem

[Chubbles_2B]

Dunno if someone already pointed it out somewhere, but think a few starters has the eating animation and proper sleeping animation mixed around - Started playing with H.Zorua and Skorupi and those two seem to get mixed around, so when the Skorupi does go full 'sleep mode', they instead do a different animation. Silly moment of working out at bed while snoozing at dinner and all.

Dunno if this is the right place to point out that specific thing and it's not really a major issue, but thought to point it out since it could apply to a couple other Starters as well. Romhack is enjoyable so far, either way!

Edited October 3 by Chubbles_2B

[lunarnight]

Hi... bug report! 
I've definitely turned on the exp share and ive passed through Northern Desert, but one of the level 1 Pokemon I got just after the expedition has not gained a single lick of xp. Maybe it's gotta do with upgrades, but I don't think it works. Just an fyi. nbd or anything, but it don't work. 

[Alphadaemon]

1 hour ago, lunarnight said:

Hi... bug report! 
I've definitely turned on the exp share and ive passed through Northern Desert, but one of the level 1 Pokemon I got just after the expedition has not gained a single lick of xp. Maybe it's gotta do with upgrades, but I don't think it works. Just an fyi. nbd or anything, but it don't work. 

It works, bring the Pokémon in a dungeon for it to gain EXP.

[lunarnight]

10 hours ago, Alphadaemon said:

It works, bring the Pokémon in a dungeon for it to gain EXP.

Oh, is that how it works? I thought they gained levels even if you didn't bring them in? But you're saying just bring them into a dungeon once and theyll gain that xp?
EDIT: Ty so much! I didn't catch that in the description! It does indeed work lol, thanks for the hack!

Edited October 3 by lunarnight

[Nozotol]

Hello, I really enjoyed this rom and im excited to eventually play the 4.0 release 

I was wondering if you would ever like for a set of achievements to be added on retro achievements for this or if it was something youd ever thought about because with how much endgame content there is its kind of a prime candidate for it 
I especially love achievement hunting so it would only make this rom even better for me I would even do it myself if I had any ideas as to how to actually go about it

also I was wondering which pokemon you would consider to be the best starters thanks in advance

[Lord Woodrow]

I’ve encountered a bug, in Mt Travall. When I tried to load floor 8 the text faded out, then reappeared but in low brightness, then the game locked. I quick-loaded back to before I entered the dungeon and got past it (8F ended up being the custom floor, despite it having appeared on an earlier floor before).

The same thing happened on 16F, no sign of the other half of the custom floor.

 

Edit: Quick loaded again, 16F loaded fine. I’m guessing some kind of issue with loading the custom floors? I haven’t had this happen with any of the other ones.

Edited October 17 by Lord Woodrow

[IceDragon247]

My question is how to get new exclusive item in this hack, from box or special mission (by the way where i can find discord link)

Edited October 18 by IceDragon247

[lunarnight]

Hi again! Is Uproar meant to be not upgradeable with ginseng for balance reasons? Does it break the game? It's one of the few damage dealing moves I can't scale, and I'd like to be able to scale its damage into the lategame. If that's the design, that's fine. I'm genuinely just curious. 

[Hermes P Mane]

Hello there! I'm here only to compliment the hack. It's truly a marvelous project full of creative ideas that i didn't even know i'd like to have on Explorers of Sky and many QoL settings for all kinds of players. It's really cool to go through the game and not only find all the new stuff implemented but also face the old ones which received small touches here and there. For real, you made so much that i wouldn't doubt if someone said that Alphadaemon was the head programmer of the base game.

By the way, i only recently found out Explorers of Alpha was updated and that was only because i looked for myself about it. There seems to be no broad channel aside from the dedicated reddit one where people can get easily notified about new updates. Dunno how you feel about advertising your work or if i'm wrong here, but posting future updates on r/PokemonRomHacks too could help notifying people and sharing your work.

[Asia81]

Hello, is there a suggested CRC or MD5 to know what clean rom to use ?

Also is the v3.0.3 the latest as of today ? Thanks in advance

[Alphadaemon]

On 10/10/2025 at 5:21 AM, Nozotol said:

Hello, I really enjoyed this rom and im excited to eventually play the 4.0 release 

I was wondering if you would ever like for a set of achievements to be added on retro achievements for this or if it was something youd ever thought about because with how much endgame content there is its kind of a prime candidate for it 
I especially love achievement hunting so it would only make this rom even better for me I would even do it myself if I had any ideas as to how to actually go about it

also I was wondering which pokemon you would consider to be the best starters thanks in advance

Considering that for 4.1 as it will set in stone the final product, and so the set of achievements.

On 10/17/2025 at 7:54 PM, Lord Woodrow said:

I’ve encountered a bug, in Mt Travall. When I tried to load floor 8 the text faded out, then reappeared but in low brightness, then the game locked. I quick-loaded back to before I entered the dungeon and got past it (8F ended up being the custom floor, despite it having appeared on an earlier floor before).

The same thing happened on 16F, no sign of the other half of the custom floor.

 

Edit: Quick loaded again, 16F loaded fine. I’m guessing some kind of issue with loading the custom floors? I haven’t had this happen with any of the other ones.

This issue is weird and known, I hopefully have fixed this issue in the next version... glad the issue is sorted on your end 

On 10/18/2025 at 8:43 PM, lunarnight said:

Hi again! Is Uproar meant to be not upgradeable with ginseng for balance reasons? Does it break the game? It's one of the few damage dealing moves I can't scale, and I'd like to be able to scale its damage into the lategame. If that's the design, that's fine. I'm genuinely just curious. 

Hmmm that's probably an oversight, I will look into it.

On 10/18/2025 at 3:53 AM, IceDragon247 said:

My question is how to get new exclusive item in this hack, from box or special mission (by the way where i can find discord link)

No Discord for Alpha. New exclusive items can be found in Croagunk's Swap Shop just like any other item if they don't belong to a Legendary mon, otherwise as a reward for completing a dungeon with a Legendary boss fight at the end

47 minutes ago, Asia81 said:

Hello, is there a suggested CRC or MD5 to know what clean rom to use ?

Also is the v3.0.3 the latest as of today ? Thanks in advance

I didn't provide those for now. I could look into that. 3.0.3 is also the latest version as of now. Also I wanted to thank you personally. I got into modding games in 2016 thanks to your posts on Pokemon Trash forums and never stopped ever since that time.

[Vivy]

Sorry to be a bother, but on the topic of exclusive items, are some significantly rarer than others? I've been desperately trying to get *either* of H-Sneasel's items(Dire Claw or Climber Bow) and have had zero luck after at least thirty attempts, and I'm pretty sure I'm low balling that. Meanwhile I've gotten the opportunity to get my partner Zorua's more times than I can count. It's one thing to be unlucky, but I feel like I'm missing something? Is there a requirement for some items and/or the leader?

I've spent the past hour looking for a save editor instead of continuing attempts and with no luck on either so I figured my best bet would be asking here.

Edit: Legitimately, I'm getting Zorua's special item over 50% of my attempts after a few more gos at things. I don't understand.

Edited October 22 by Vivy
Additional information.

[Asia81]

On 10/21/2025 at 7:34 PM, Alphadaemon said:

I didn't provide those for now. I could look into that. 3.0.3 is also the latest version as of now. 

I used the rom with 22dde080 CRC, it worked perfectly.

https://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&s=28&n=4273

I'm in a mood I want to play Explorers of sky again, so I'm going to 100% the vanilla version for an hundredth time, then going on alpha.
 

On 10/21/2025 at 7:34 PM, Alphadaemon said:

Also I wanted to thank you personally. I got into modding games in 2016 thanks to your posts on Pokemon Trash forums and never stopped ever since that time.

I'm glad to hear that 
I loved sharing what I myself learned from others.

Edited October 22 by Asia81

[Vivy]

So while I continue to grind for exclusive items, I went to go recycle some items and got a Gold Ticket. Using the ticket and getting a big win seems to cause a lot of issues.

Glitched textures scroll through the screen and eventually stops, music included, and I'm softlocked.

[Brokshi]

Just wanted to share that when everyone in the guild starts clapping for Dusknoir when he first appears, the game keeps crashing to white with an endlessly looped clap sound. I don't know if it's related to the fact that I'm playing Sneasel and partner Hisuian-Sneasel or not. I should also mention Buneary isn't on the Reverie list if you choose girl instead of boy.

[ShamelessGuard]

Hello! I have been thoroughly enjoying this rom hack! Not often do you see a fully fleshed out PMD game! I am experiencing a constant Data Abort error crashes during Mt. Horn. I tried disabling some settings, but I can't turn off randomization to confirm that one, since it's only through Porygon2 at the guild instead of the one in front of the cave entrance. I can share a save file or anything if it helps, the farthest I've been able to get before a crash is Floor 12 before it errors out, other times it occurs by about floor 5-7. 

 

I am using this on a modded 3DS, starters were Gible and H-Zorua. One post somewhere mentioned to ensure the .nds and .sav were the same name, which they were both listed as Explorers of Sky, so I changed it to Explorers of Alpha. Any information helps, I can also get a log attached somehow from the 3DS if that helps.

Edited October 28 by ShamelessGuard

[Alphadaemon]

On 10/23/2025 at 3:55 PM, Vivy said:

So while I continue to grind for exclusive items, I went to go recycle some items and got a Gold Ticket. Using the ticket and getting a big win seems to cause a lot of issues.

Glitched textures scroll through the screen and eventually stops, music included, and I'm softlocked.

Unfortunate issue due to file bloat... I think it's fixed in the newest version but just to be sure when did this happen?

19 hours ago, Brokshi said:

Just wanted to share that when everyone in the guild starts clapping for Dusknoir when he first appears, the game keeps crashing to white with an endlessly looped clap sound. I don't know if it's related to the fact that I'm playing Sneasel and partner Hisuian-Sneasel or not. I should also mention Buneary isn't on the Reverie list if you choose girl instead of boy.

Skip cutscene toggle.

 

1 hour ago, ShamelessGuard said:

Hello! I have been thoroughly enjoying this rom hack! Not often do you see a fully fleshed out PMD game! I am experiencing a constant Data Abort error crashes during Mt. Horn. I tried disabling some settings, but I can't turn off randomization to confirm that one, since it's only through Porygon2 at the guild instead of the one in front of the cave entrance. I can share a save file or anything if it helps, the farthest I've been able to get before a crash is Floor 12 before it errors out, other times it occurs by about floor 5-7. 

 

I am using this on a modded 3DS, starters were Gible and H-Zorua. One post somewhere mentioned to ensure the .nds and .sav were the same name, which they were both listed as Explorers of Sky, so I changed it to Explorers of Alpha. Any information helps, I can also get a log attached somehow from the 3DS if that helps.

Unfortunate case of species randomizer crash in 3.0. Fixed hopefully in 3.1. 

[Brokshi]

1 hour ago, Alphadaemon said:

Skip cutscene toggle.

I've turned on skip daily cutscene, but it doesn't skip anything in this scene. 

Edited October 28 by Brokshi
got a screenshot of the frame before it crashes

[Hermes P Mane]

Hello there! I just beat Dialga on Expert mode. Overall it was a good and balanced challenge that really made me think on how to break through some obstacles and rooms. QoL changes also made it way more pleasant than the original game. Playing on Drastic, I did not find any game breaking bugs nor, actually, any real bugs I guess, so nothing to report here. About balance though, I just noted 2 things that were really bothersome and put them on the suggestions below.
Suggestions
- A NPC that recycles TMs for you in Treasure Town. Some TMs are rare and super valuable, while getting in a dungeon for the sake of only recycling is bothersome.
- Nerf Grovyle boss in Expert mode by removing Giga Drain and reducing his evade status. He is super bulky and given how Marowak Dojo gets closed Grovyle can become a hard wall that ends the run of any player who doesn't know how to cheese him. Like, the dungeon was easy but Grovyle suddenly appears one shooting everyone and taking less than 30 damage from my most powerful attacks when they happened to hit.
- Increase the amount of unique items sold by Croagunk. Since more species are meant to be added, getting the very specific items each party members needs can become hellish if that guy keeps his usual amount of products.
- Utility passwords could be on FAQ board. Special ones like the one for Diancie mega stone could be kept a secret.
- Restrain the amount of room wide moves foes have in Temporal Tower. All dragons (Altaria, Garchomp and Dragonite) I found had Draco meteor while grass types like Venusaur can also hit the entire room. At least to me this led to a never before seen burning of reviver seeds.

Bug reports
- The first dungeon of future dungeons allowed me to just fly to whenever I wanted. I believe this may be related to all terrain hiker and I don't know if it's something from the original game.

[Lord Woodrow]

Hello, me again.

Any hints as to where I might find another dream catcher? I unknowingly used the one I had up on Beach Cave of all places. I got the one I had from doing an optional fight in the post game story (Cresselia) I haven’t got a clue where else to look, but I assume they must be farmable if some encounters use them up (I did Dialga, Palkia, and Darkrai already which did not use up the Dream Catcher).

 

I did get a Dream Shard from the Beach Cave thing, but I haven’t a clue what that does yet.

 

 

edit: regarding Origin Formes for Palkia and Dialga, do they do anything that isn’t cosmetic? 
 

edit 2: playing Bidoof’s Wish, the screen fades to black after Chimecho calls everyone for food (just after talking to the Kecleons) and then stays like that locked. I’ve tried quick loading but it has had no effect.

Edited October 31 by Lord Woodrow