decided to give this hack a shot since i was looking for something just a little more difficult, and i thought the difficulty options seemed promising (as well as having trapinch as a starter choice). i've been having a pretty good time up to the fake groudon fight so far, but that's actually where i'd like to either report a bug or suggest updating the intro post.
when i started my playthrough, i selected the "Difficult" difficulty option, and i haven't changed it since. despite this, a few things are acting as though the difficulty is set higher. the intro post says that field effects (the auras in boss fights) only activate on expert or hardcore, but on entering the fake groudon fight it definitely had a permanent Mist status effect. i wiped to precipice blades repeatedly 2-shotting me and my partner and burning through all my reviver and status seeds, and double checked my difficulty in the L menu when i went to restock: it was definitely on Difficult, not Expert or Hardcore. groudon still had the aura effect on my second (much more successful) attempt, as well.
the intro post also mentions the porygon2 npc mid-dungeon having a resupply bag on vanilla and difficult, but that wasn't an option in steam cave either. it just let me save and nothing else. as a result of these issues, i'm kind of beginning to suspect that starting on Difficult difficulty... didn't work right. it's either that or the intro post is outdated, and Difficult actually is supposed to have field effects. i'm kind of not looking forward to future boss fights if auras are permanently enabled, since some of them seem... a bit restrictive for a casual player, especially considering i chose a partner with Run Away as an ability. but at the same time, i'm enjoying whatever difficulty setting i'm actually on for the non-boss gameplay, and i wouldn't like to lower it down to vanilla for that.
few minutes later edit: i'm also playing with vanilla types turned on, but i noticed that Crunch was super effective on the noctowls in foggy forest during the expedition. does the vanilla types toggle only effect your team members? i haven't recruited a noctowl to be able to check its typing when on my team, so i'm a bit unsure.
thank you for all your work on the hack! despite the somewhat unexpected difficulty spike i'm still enjoying it a lot. i'm not able to find a toggle specifically for field effects anywhere in the L menu, but i tried swapping to Vanilla and then back to Difficult to see if that updated any settings, and Amp Plains still disabled my abilities for the Luxray fight.