Pokémon Mystery Universe
is a fan-made MMORPG based on the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. It was started in 2008 and underwent various changes over the years.
Players take a team of their own 4 Pokémon and explore the lands as well as the dungeons residing in them. Most dungeons are randomly generated, much like the original games. Despite being in Perpetual Beta, the game has since its creation incorporated many existing features from both the Mystery Dungeon and regular Pokémon games, as well the majority of Pokémon, moves, and abilities.
Tropes present in Pokémon Mystery Universe include:
- Acronym Confusion: It's not rare for the acronyms used for dungeons to be mixed up. The holiday cave dungeon Frigid Forest got the same acronym as the dungeon Friendship Forest, and there are three dungeons that go by the acronym "SS", among others. To prevent differentiate them, players add a couple more letters.
- A Homeowner Is You: Every player gets a free house, which is free to decorate using the in-game mapper.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Like the real Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, players can have up to four Pokémon in their team unless the restrictions of an area or dungeon says otherwise.
- Artificial Stupidity: Enemies will use the moves that are in the range a given target first, resulting in mindless move spamming (with occasional alternating if more than one move reaches), even if the move isn't effective.
- Also results in Pokémon that know Teleport using it immediately, usually not stopping unless by chance they teleport next to a player.
- Audible Gleam: Hidden items reveal themselves by the occasional sparkle with an accompanying sound effect.
- Auto-Revive: Averted. Players are given the option to revive with a Reviver Seed (or one of its variants) when their party member is defeated, a departure from how it worked in all of the actual PMD games except Super Mystery Dungeon.
- Bat Scare: A dungeon called Tanren Mines has a maze with multiple staircases, and only one advances you. The rest of the stairs take you to a boss fight against multiple Zubats.
- Big Damn Heroes: In Seafloor Ruins, after defeating Kyogre, Manaphy appears when Kyogre is about to use Hyper Beam on you.
- Breakable Weapons: Breakable HELD ITEMS. Relic items and Air Balloons will break if the holder takes a hit. For the former it is their only function other than selling for an obscenely high price.
- Character Portrait: All Pokémon have this, save for the Generation 5 and up Pokémon who don't have official portraits like the sprite based Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games and haven't had one created by the community yet.
- Cosmetic Award: Mystery Hats serve no other purpose than to make the player appear like a legendary Pokémon when worn in a house, often for role-playing purposes. There's also the Seven Treasures, which play music when used.
- Cub Cues Protective Parent: After beating Shinx in the end of the early version of Thunderstorm Forest, he calls for help from his parent Luxray. In the revamped Thunderstorm Forest, Shinx is a minion to Luxray, and after defeat, he informs Luxray.
- Developer's Foresight: Certain combinations of abilities such as Immunity (prevents Poison) and Toxic Boost (increases Attack when Poisoned) that would normally cancel each other out are programmed specifically to allow the status problem to occur, prevent all adverse effects normally associated with it, and give the boost of the second ability.
- Dump Stat: Speed, which used to do nothing in older versions. Currently it controls hitstun resistance and effectiveness, but the effects are difficult to notice.
- Dungeon Shop: Kecleon Shops can be found in various dungeons. It's impossible to steal from them, however...
- Encounter Bait: Honey will instantly spawn wild Pokémon to your proximity.
- Escape Rope: The game includes both the Escape Orbs found in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, as well as the main series' Escape Ropes, which can work even if the player is unable to revive.
- Escort Mission: Due to the way parties are handled in the game, these are almost no different (and thereby no more frustrating) than normal destination missions. One still can experience some common problems of escort mission when escorting newer players through dungeons, however.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: Averted with the Wonder Chest; a gold chest that boosts experience gain by 10%, while the Miracle Chest is pink in color, boosting by 20% instead.
- Guide Dang It!: Tanren Chambers requires a very specific sequence of decisions to get through properly. It did have a guide... a cryptic one.
- Cryptic Chasm is a dungeon that requires the player to pick up stones on specific floors, have the move Dig to get a key in an out of the way room located in one of the dungeon's mid points, the item used for evolution, and a Water- or Ground-type depending on the in-game time.
- The past Holiday Palace and temple dungeons.
- Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Most bosses are less of a challenge than the dungeon it took to get to them.
- Holiday Mode: Holiday Cave is a certain dungeon that only opens around certain holidays. Each Holiday Cave holds special Pokémon and items that are exclusive to the dungeon, matching the holiday.
- In-Universe Game Clock: A feature from the mainline Pokémon games that found its way here. It includes Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night.
- Interface Screw: Darkness, which limits the player's sight to a circle of varying size. There is also the Fog and the Sandstorm weather.
- The deep floors of Tanren Chambers's Rock area also contain a tileset that makes it incredibly hard to distinguish floor from wall. And it's often covered in Sandstorm.
- Tanren Mansion's Courtyard has a tileset consisting of all purple, and no distinctive rooms instead having a full hallway-esque design, which isn't helped by the chance of Fog.
- Sky Fortress' Dark-type path. The walls and floor are both black, and there's rather heavy darkness.
- Kaizo Trap: The original Forlorn Tower had a Trip Trap planted just before the exit warp. Unsuspecting players that rushed to the exit would end up dropping their items in front of the exit and losing them forever. Considering how, during the time, most players relied on equipment, it was very detrimental.
- Level Editor:
- Players are able to create their own maps in the form of "houses".
- Marathon Level: 99-Floor dungeons exist in this game, and they often have gimmicks that make them less-than-straightforward to beat.
- One weekly Sunday event is literally called "Marathon" by name, which consists of 5 huge maps that have 2 parts each that players race to finish.
- The Maze: Tanren Chambers. It's 17 sets of 99 floors, all interconnected to each other at arbitrary floors. The connection points all require keys, which themselves have no apparent pattern to where they appear. Decoy rooms also threaten to boot the player out early with a consolation prize if they take the wrong turns.
- Money Sink: Expanding a house to its fullest extent will cost a grievous amount of money.
- One of the weekly events held by staff can be an auction.
- Fusing Heart Slates into a Mystery Part will continue to cost more and more Poké with each fusion.
- Mythology Gag: There is a Rattata named Joey, and a Piplup named Berlitz.
- No-Gear Level: Certain dungeons are capped at certain levels, often very low, while others prevent players from bringing items in.
- Not Completely Useless: Blight Clay will prevent a Pokémon from recovering from any non-volatile status ailment while holding it. Its reason for creation was to prevent players who wished to sleep in a public area from being awakened by another player's status-curing move.
- Nitro Boost: Quick Seeds and Orbs, which solely increase movement speed.
- Crystals and certain Family Items are bag items which boost speed in certain weather.
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Strength, in older versions, would increase the power of physical attacks as well as maximum HP. You could also throw Defense on this list, as overcoming 800 defense points is difficult.
- Area of Effect moves are generally regarded as powerful and good to have, but always have a chance to miss regardless of their traditional accuracy.
- Randomly Generated Levels: The majority of levels.
- Averted in much older versions of the game, where most dungeons were pre-mapped.
- Schizo Tech: Averted as most man-made items aren't present in most dungeons save for event dungeons, towers, ruins, or other places that hinted at past civilization.
- Splash Damage: Flame Burst will cause a small explosion of fire that damages nearby enemies.
- Spread Shot: A certain class of attacks will cover the area in front of the user, as well as the sides.
- Status Effects: A large host of status problems are derived straight from both the main Pokémon series as well as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
- Too Awesome to Use: Pinch Berries will increase a given stat to its HIGHEST LEVEL when eaten. They can only be found at the end or depths of most event dungeons. Ditto for Max Revive.
- Sparkle Tokens are an event-only item which will turn a player's active Pokémon shiny if applicable.
- Manual Leader, A.I. Party: Averted. Whatever Pokémon is being used on the team is the leader. The rest aren't seen unless the player switches and controls them.
- More Than Infinite: As the versions before PMU 7 had a really high/no stat cap, and many rare items gave extreme boosts to the Pokémon stats, many situations in the arena/dungeons where a veteran would fight a newer player would give the impression of this.
- One Curse Limit: Non-volatile status conditions, where they cannot stack unlike in the real Mystery Dungeon games.
- Required Party Member: Dungeons which require you to have a Pokémon of a specific type.
