Version Compatibility

Pokémon Compass Feature Documentation

Click Here for the Pokémon Compass Feature Documentation

Please read this. It contains a significant amount of extra information about the mod not found in this description.

Nearly every question you could have about the mod is addressed in here.

Seriously, we've changed a few things; this page is only a brief overview of what all the mod contains. The documentation is 80+ pages long!

What is Pokémon Compass?

Pokémon Compass is a Scarlet & Violet overhaul romhack/mod designed to be the definitive vanilla-enhanced experience with a focus on the following:

• Smoother progression through the main stories — The player's expected route through the game has been adjusted, so pay attention to wild encounter levels and use the updated map in-game to find areas you can handle more appropriately!
• Gradually ramping increased difficulty in trainer battles and post-game battles
• Revamped raids and raid rewards
• Wider selection of Pokémon both in the wild and added to raids
• Additional content, such as event raids and new symbol encounters
  

Quality of Life features are included to smooth out some of what we consider to be design deficiencies, or just to make exploration a little bit nicer, giving better access to EV items, evolution items, recovery consumables, etc.

Compass is the largest and most-expansive mod for Scarlet and Violet.

What Pokémon Compass is Not

Compass is not intended to be a super hard or unfair difficulty mod.

While the changes to the trainers and other major fights will result in an increase in difficulty, this is not strictly for the purpose of creating “high difficulty”. Compass is more “medium” or “medium-high” difficulty compared to the vanilla game.

Instead, the intention is to create a smoother sense of progression with some amount of increased challenge throughout your journey. At the same time, this will remove the ridiculous design principle behind trainers that are 3-5 or more levels under the wild Pokémon in their local vicinity with only a single, bare-minimum Pokémon, even late in the game.

It is meant to have some pushback, but not turn every encounter into a struggle. It does not give every trainer max stats and competitive teams from the beginning, for example; the prevailing design principle is the idea that the difficulty should increase as you progress through the game consistently, so that as you are provided with more opportunity for building a strong team, so too will the fights against you become tougher.

Compass is not balanced for Nuzlocke / challenge modes, or made with speedrun considerations.

While we enjoy these experiences and definitely like to see them being done, we prioritized the vanilla-enhanced feel over making considerations for these sorts of optional gameplay modes.

Compass is not a rebalance mod.

Compass does not change or rebalance Base Stats, movesets, etc. for most Pokémon. The major exception being changes for:

• Evolution methods so as to allow obtaining no-trade, co-op, and regional exclusives in Compass (see Other Evolution Changes)
• Evolution methods for Eevee (see Eevee Evolution Changes) and movesets for Eevee and the Eeveelutions
• Base Stat changes to Pikachu and Eevee as well as an updated moveset to more closely bring them in line with the Let's Go versions.
  

New Progression and Game Flow

Compass changes up the expected route the player will take through the game, and modifies the overall flow to be much more structured and able to keep pace with the player more readily than vanilla.

This means wild encounters will have higher levels, trainers will be more relevant based on the point in the story you are, the events have increased stats and levels for more pushback, and so on.

This starts with the very first trainer and the first area, and continues all the way into post-game territory. Everything has been touched up, even including wild encounter spawns and fixed encounter data.

Every story, and every area each story takes place in, has been changed. That's Starfall Street, Victory Road, Path of Legends, and The Way Home. The next major version will tackle Kitakami Mask Festival and The Bloodmoon Beast as well.

This section of the documentation provides more information.

Trainer Overhaul

Compass reworks every single trainer, from the wild trainers to event/story trainers, to Gym Leaders, to post-game trainers — all of them!

That's 387 encounters totally reworked, with more planned for the next patch (as well as additional trainer battles).

Trainers will generally have higher levels, more and/or better Pokémon on their teams, increased stats, movesets, and so on.

More than just better teams, Compass changes a lot more for trainers : Strong wild trainers can Terastallize, good trainers and Gym Leaders use better AI, doubles battles exist outside of Montenevera (around 25% of all Compass battles are doubles), and a whole lot more.

Visit this link to read more on this feature in the documentation.

No Version Exclusives

All version exclusivity has been removed. You can obtain all Pokémon that were otherwise locked away behind a specific game version.

Visit this link to read the documentation section which includes which are now available.

All HOME Pokémon Available are Obtainable

Every Pokémon that you can transfer in from HOME into Scarlet and Violet can be obtained in-game with Compass. Some have been placed into the wild, some are found in raids, some are added as fixed encounters, and others require new evolution methods, but they're all there.

This results in Compass providing access to an additional 148 Pokémon, including regional or alternate forms (nevermind Scatterbug, Spewpa, and Arceus), that you can't normally access in-game and have to trade in or wait for special events for!

There are still a handful we don't have in that you can transfer in, but they'll be available in-game soon~

The documentation here contains tables with these Pokémon and other useful information on this aspect of the mod.

Regional Form Evolutions

Pokémon which evolve into specific regional forms, like Hisuian or Alolan forms, have evolution methods added to them to allow you to obtain them in-game.

This section of the documentation provides the specifics for these evolution methods.

New No-Trade Evolutions

Every Pokémon that required trading to evolve has had a new evolution method provided. You can obtain every Pokémon that Scarlet and Violet has access to in Compass, after all.

You can visit this link to see the documentation which lists out which Pokémon are affected and what their evolution method is.

Full Pokédex Integration

If you've transferred any Pokémon in from HOME or played any mod that added any of these into the game, you've probably noticed that they lack Pokédex entries. Not in Compass~

Every Pokémon that's added into the game is integrated entirely into the world, just like everything in the Paldea and Kitakami Pokédexes from base game.

This means they all have Pokédex entries and data, have visuals for their Pokédex entries, have habitat data updated in-game, and are given appropriate behavior data so they'll behave like a natural part of the world.

This section of the documentation covers this in more detail and provides tables for the new Pokédex numbers.

Vivillons Available in the Wild

In official version 1.2.0, they removed the ability for Vivillon to spawn in the world, forcing the player into using their Go tie-in, which is not only obnoxious but also has been known to cause some major problems with players.

In Compass, every single form of the Vivillon-family can be found in the wild, in areas that you would expect them to be.

Visit this part of the documentation to get a listing of where they all might be found.

New Fixed Encounters

Compass adds 35 new fixed encounters into the world in interesting places, giving the player a little bit more incentive to explore around and find something interesting.

These are particularly special for a number of reasons, but you'll want to check out this section of the documentation to find out more.

Wild Pokémon In Town

Pokémon will no longer despawn when you enter any of the open-world towns and cities. Some may spawn around the edges or in select locations just inside of town, too.

This does mean that some will chase you and follow you into town!

Overworld Event Encounters Overhaul

All of the major event battles, such as against the box Legendaries and the Snacksworth Legendaries, have been overhauled or otherwise modified to provide more pushback or make them more enticing to capture.

You can read more of the details in the documentation.

General Raid Tweaks

Compass reworks the availability of raids, making for a much smoother progression through the core story to be more relevant to where the player is at that time.

You can go here to read more on the specifics.

Complete Raid Overhaul

Compass also reworks every single raid in the game (DLC raids coming next major update), updating their level, moves, stats, and even changing up their species if they should be evolved by that point, for instance.

Raids will scale up alongside the player more appropriately, and will continue scaling into late-game and post-game, which is where you can expect to start experiencing some real challenge.

That's hundreds of raids entirely reworked.

This section of the documentation contains much more information on the subject and lists some of the most notable changes.

New Standard Raids

Compass expands on the existing raids by bringing in an additional 128 new raids, incorporating most of the HOME-available Pokémon and some of the others that weren't readily available for acquisition in-game.

You can see the lists of which were added in this section of the documentation.

New Raids — Custom Compass Event Raids

Additionally, Compass also adds a further 94 additional raids, accessible via special event raids.

The Pokémon fought or obtained in these special raids include rare or special alternate forms, breeding-focused partners, mythicals, legendaries, and a special tier of high-difficulty challenge-oriented raids that will really push you.

These event raids also have their own unique set of rewards separate from the main raids (see below).

You can read more about the raids and see which have been added by going to this part of the documentation.

Overhauled Raid Loot

Every single raid has had its loot rewards changed, providing significantly better rewards in general to complement the sort of priority the player would have at that time, like far more candies and EV-related items in the late-game raids to make building up new teams to tackle the late- and post-game content.

Visit this part of the documentation to see further details on this.

Raid Ally Overhaul

All 52 of the possible raid allies have been entirely reworked. These NPCs now have significantly improved and relevant partners for use in raids, and better AI. This means they'll have levels and movesets that you would generally expect of players at approximately this point in the game.

Beyond that, Compass also uniquely adds 36 new raid allies at the highest tiers. These are meant to be decent partners for raiding these late-game and post-game raids, and bring a variety of useful or powerful moves, which you'll definitely appreciate against those challenge raids.

More information about this section can be found here in the documentation.

Improved In-game Map

To help players easily tell the modified progression and changes to the world made by Compass, we've made some notable changes to the in-game map.

Every area and every major event will have a recommended level in its label, making it easy to tell quickly where you are able to go or where you might be expected to venture off to next. If you find wild encounters higher level than you're expecting, check out the map and look for an area in your range to go explore.

Compass is effectively broken up into "chapters", similar to how previous generations would use "routes" to guide the player along. To help make it more apparent what areas these "chapters" include, the map has been given a simple color-coded separation between each. That way you can just open your map to see everywhere you can explore at the particular point you're at.

Visit this link to get more information on this aspect of the mod.

Better Buff Bistro

The food shop in Montenevera has been taken over by new management.

This modified shop contains quick and inexpensive buffs for a lot of common effects, such as Egg Power Lv. 3, Encounter Power Lv. 2, and Sparkling Power Lv. 1, for every type in the game.

You can't miss it — It has three Eeveelutions parked outside~

Go here to get more information about the bistro.

Unlocked TM List

All TMs are available for crafting from the beginning, and you no longer need to obtain the TM the first time.

You still have to gather the materials, though.

Picnic Anywhere

Feel free to picnic in-town. Or in Area Zero, if you'd like! Compass adds more picnic locations, like the town in Kitakami, and the plaza and platforms in Blueberry Academy. (Not the entrance lobby.)


You can also start a picnic while riding on your mount, so you don't have to cancel the menu, get off, go back into the menu, and try again.

Shiny Lock Removal

Everything that was shiny locked is no longer.

You can read more about it here in the documentation.

Blind Battles

The player is not omniscient~ To improve immersion and make for a more interesting battle experience, the message in battle that would tell the player what Pokémon their opponent is about to use has been changed.

This allows the player to still swap out their current Pokémon, so it's not as restrictive as something like the Set mode which doesn't exist in this game, but doesn't allow the player to swap in a counter-pick for free.

This makes the choice all the more impactful, and that creates the deliberate gameplay we aim to help facilitate with Compass.

Snappier Combat Messages

The delay on messages in combat between actions has been reduced, making combat feel a little bit snappier without cutting into animations.

Picnic Egg Changes

The time required for eggs to appear in your basket has been reduced, and the probability of their appearance has been increased.

Check out this section of the documentation for the specifics.

Better Gliding

You can now glide for drastically longer, no longer having that sudden altitude loss you get from running out of that hidden stamina total.

This does not affect the flying behavior added in Indigo Disk.

Let's Go Mode Improvements

Your Pokémon during Let's Go Mode will follow you more readily, taking significantly less time to start following you or catch up to you, and are able to stay out on the field from a much further distance.

While this doesn't change their speed, and you can still outrun your partners, it's a pretty noticeable improvement~

Synchro Machine Improvements

Once you've obtained it, you are now able to use the Synchro Machine in Paldea and Kitakami as well as the Terarium.


Further details can be found here in the documentation.

Modified Gift Pokémon

At certain times in the story, you might be given an egg or a Pokémon from an NPC. These have been improved significantly in Compass, and can be interesting both for something like unique moves, or maybe because they're particularly rare in some way.

Less vague information can be found here in the documentation.

Modified Trade Pokémon

NPCs that you can trade with, such as in the League Club Room in DLC2, have had their trade partners improved, for better IVs across the board.

More detail can be found here in the documentation.

More Taxi Calling Locations

You can now call the Taxi when you're in the lobby of your Paldean school, the League Club Room in Blueberry, and your house in Poco Path.

Blueberry Mission Rewards Improvements

The Blueberry Missions have had their BP rewards increased.

Read about it here.

League Club Room Board Costs Reduction

Some of the Club Room BP costs have been reduced to cut back on the amount of tedium in DLC2.

Read about it here, in the documentation.

Known Issues

For an up-to-date list of the Known Issues in Compass, you can read this article on Nexus Mods, or if you want a bit more detail on those issues and information on resolved issues, non-Compass issues, and so on, check out this section of the documentation.

Compatibility with Other Mods

Compass is generally incompatible with most mods, other than those which are purely visual, such as shiny recolors.

You can read this article on Nexus Mods which gives more detail, or you can check out the relevant section of the documentation, which contains more information.

Frequently Asked Questions / FAQ

This section of the documentation includes common questions and their answers.

Discord Info

For the info on the latest updates, to find other Compass players, or just in general have a place to talk about the mod and other Switch Pokémon mods, you can check out the link below to access the Discord that Inidar has graciously allowed us some space in:


Be sure to give yourself the romhacks role when you join, so you can access the #compass-general channel!

Installation

Compass 2.0.5.1 requires Scarlet or Violet version 3.0.0.

Standalone Instructions

To install Compass without any other mods, simply download and extract the Standalone release to your mods folder. You do not need to use Trinity.

You need only copy the romFS folder from the extracted standalone release zip straight into: sdcard:\atmosphere\contents\0100A3D008C5C000

For Trinity Users

If you are going to install Compass alongside other mods, you must use Trinity Mod Loader, as it will download all of the updated file hashes necessary for use with Compass.

If you do not the game will soft lock at an infinite loading screen or crash.

Just simply using your existing Trinity to combine mods with Compass will not work.

If you do not see the following option under the Help menu in Trinity you need to update to the latest nightly version.



Note: For Violet, replace 0100A3D008C5C000 with 01008F6008C5E000
Copy the resulting romFS folder into sdcard:\atmosphere\contents\0100A3D008C5C000\