Semi-Blind, Hardcore Log

[Quickslip]

Semi-blind how? Well, I played the original Reborn up to defeating the 2nd Gym. At that point, I realized hardcore existed, so I started over. So, I know a little about what happens up till then. I also know a few other random things about the original game, like the Tangrowth thing wasn't just a one-time occurrence, you needed rock smash to get a certain house key, mawile is in the game somewhere. Things like that. Not sure how much I know but don't remember, but it doesn't seem like much to me.

And that's awesome!

So please don't spoil anything beyond the point I've already reached and posted about here. Everything else is welcome, as I've never actually done one of these before, so I surely won't write it perfectly. Or maybe even particularly well. And its perfectly likely that there's a common pokemon in an easily reached place that I just obliviously passed by without noticing. Feel free to poke me about things in the areas I'm currently in or already passed.

---

---

---

Playing the 1st time, I chose Snivy, because that's my favorite. However, the AI didn't really recognize Contrary, so it kinda felt like cheating, so no Snivy this time. I like mudkips, but the water/ground pokemon feels like cheating too. That basically leaves chikorita as my favorite remaining pokemon, so...

...yeah, I'm not much for using soft-reset a billion times, so this is as good as he got before I got tired of it. Not terrible, but I'll be sad that Body Slam won't be the house it could be. Chikorita's other strengths are its decent bulkiness, decent speed, and access to both Reflect and Light Screen, so those will still work out fine I think. Here's hoping there's a Light Clay somewhere!

So we leave the choosing ground, and immediately fight Cain. Who is mildly creepy, but w/e. Battle! Not much to say though, Chikorita is strong enough and fast enough to win the tackle vs. scratch contest with Nidoran. However, Victoria is next, and Tepig proves to be too burly and takes revenge for nidoran. However, Chikorita got Razor Leaf already, so we've got some juicy, juicy crits coming later.

I buy some potions and pokeballs, then walk out, looking for a pidgey. Big Pecks + Feather Dance seems like a decent combo with Chikorita's Reflect, and Pidgeot is cool looking, so it fits all the paramters. What I did -not- know, was that pidgey is apparently rare around here. >_> Still, we found:

Can only stand to soft reset and search again so many times, so...yeah. That speed malus may come back and bite us later, but w/e. xD All Welcome Pride, the Pidgey.
Oh yeah, and Rayquaza techie...um. Not touching him. xD

So together, Chikorita and Pidgey work their way north and rescue the adorable zigzagoon. No soft resets here, that looks good enough. Pickup ftw. Silk joins the group.

May have abused that lucky egg a bit too much though, expecting the opponents levels to grow really fast.

Abandoning that egg for the moment before no one listens to me anymore. >_> At least Pidgey learned Gust though. Flying type STAB ftw

Next, we all head up into the 'hood, as everyone there seems to call it. There's a random Teddiursa sitting there. Its not interested in Pokesnax and just runs away. Not a clue what that's about, but sad.

This Whismur however, was very interested in the Pokesnax. Tried to take my head off for it. Not sure if she'll remain on the team, but for now she can stick around.

Moving on, we explore, we train. Chikorita brings up the idea of learning Synthesis, but sadly, I travel largely by night, so I don't foresee it being particularly useful. Sorry Chikorita. However, we picked up a Rose Insence from a challenger a little later, and he seems to be pretty happy about that. We also come across this guy:

Making a ruckus in some lady's house. Not sure if that frantic energy is needed in this party, but for now the more the merrier, right?

Oh. And I may have made a bad investment earlier in the game. And maybe another one just now. So a bought a SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME(or something to that effect) pokemon early in the game and it got stolen from the dealer. Now, these jokers took my money again and still won't give me w/e pokemon it was unless I beat them in battle...and then it turns out they don't have it at all, because someone else stole it from them. -.-

I think I see where this is going >_>

Also, at some point, this happened.

I mean. Who around here exactly would even have a nugget to drop? xD

Anyway, at the end of all that, we have Fern. Good 'ole Fern. The put downs herald his challenge to battle. We will not disappoint.

Chikorita makes easy work of Lombre, since all Lombre's attacks to do almost nothing to him...

...and Razor Leaf crits through Growl. Thankfully, Fern burns all his Potions here. Things may have been different otherwise.

Next up, Echoed Voice tears through Servine. Needed a Super Potion either Silk found or I found lying around somewhere, but simple enough.

But then, everything fell apart at Roselia. I panic and lose alot of Pokemon doing nothing since it was so tanky...until I remember Sand A-hax.

So eventually, it faints to a -lot- of gusts and some potions on my part.

Fern speaks the truth, but is still a jerk and walks off.

So...that fight was a bit of a jump, level-wise. Guess I should use that Lucky Egg some more huh? >_>

Only Silk would have fainted there if I played it correctly from the start though, so not too shabby I think.

---

---

---

Closing thoughts: still could use some sort of Pokemon with paralyze or poison or something, (you know...that isn't poison powder and thus not useful vs. Grass) but I don't like Grimer, Garbardour, or...umm...the one thing that jumps out of the dumpster at you. Probably gonna go and headbutt some trees and see if there's anything there, since I think I totally forgot to try it once Zigzagoon got headbutt.

Also wooow, the format I put that in is ugly I think. Almost don't want to post it yet and just browse the forum looking for a similar but better format, but the img tags appear to have vanished and turned into pictures, so I don't think think I can just copy this now and paste it later. Unless I'm just missing the 'show BBcode' button or some equivalent. xD

Comment away if you like! Next section will come within 3 days, most likely.

[Commander]

(Shrugs) Yeah the first part is a little grindy so that Lucky Egg really helps out. 1.8 came out which boosted/fixed a few fights in the game such as the 2nd gym fight. I'm not going to spoiler you though, but kind of happy how popular this is getting.

[Dragon116]

There's a rather important item next to the factory that you raid with Fern, Julia, and Florina.

Ability capsule in the barrel to the left of the factory entrance.

I'm surprised you found that Teddiursa as it's a day-only event.In addition, many people have had glitches finding it, most likely due to story progression and weather. After Julia's badge, there's more event pokemon you can get in Peridot, but I'll let you research that on your own if you're interested. There's an event guide in the On The Hunt section.

Good luck on your run!

[Quickslip]

Yeah, I played during the day that time. Wasn't sure whether or not pidgey could be found at night. Actually, I think I'll just shift some things around...play more during the day. Guess that means I should go get Synthesis back. >_>.

Also yeah, thanks I found that one. Not yet sure one what to use it on, so I'll probably just hold onto this ability capsule until I absolutely need a different ability or I find another pokemon that just screams "use it on me!"

---

---

---

Inexplicably, it starts raining as soon as Fern walks away. Searching around a bit more, we find some Pineco in the trees. I've always been a fan of foretress for some reason. He can be a nice spiker...eventually. Till then, a tanky self-destructer will be nice too. Just have to be wary about finding more things weak to fire. Chickorita with low SpD + Foretress is already somewhat worrying as far as flamethrower goes.
Anyway, Atom joins the party!


Also, I thought about it a bit more and decided Synthesis would be a decent thing to have. Gave Chikorita 2 common candies, and re leveled to get it.
After training Atom up a bit, we head to the gym, only to discover that there's apparently more booming going on and that we should stop it. Reasonable enough goal, lets do it! ...except Fern's here too. Well, he's not being too obnoxious right now, so its all good. And...he's actually pretty helpful all things considered. xD


Still Julia's mad at the unreasonableness of the booms, so we hurry along. Pride and Chikorita evolve along the way and Baleef learns Reflect. Fern looks smug as his Roselia Mega Drains all the things for monstrous damage...till we reach the new, improved duo at the end of the hideout.

Yeah, babies no more. These guys are both faster than anything on my current team. They also one-shot anything on Fern's team. While that's satisfying, they do almost the same to everything on my team as well. And sadly, my trump card I was thinking of


...doesn't actually work. Normal Gem doesn't trigger when Atom uses Self-Destruct. Whoops. Even still, I run through the battle 3 times or so, because I'm sooo close to fainting one of them each time, but the Potions the duo have as backup keep them just out of reach each time.

So, though it makes no sense in-game, we back out and train up a bit since, level wise, some pokemon are still a bit behind from not using the Egg all the time, then go back. This time, things will be different.

And different they are. We start things off with a bang again.


The AI decides not to KO Roselia turn 1 on this occasion, but Pineco takes care of it. Hehe.


With that Self Destruct, the AI starts chugging both potions. Luombre uses astonish(hasn't used bubble even once when he's had the chance yet) and I send in Bayleaf to Razor Leaf spam with an attached Grass Gem as backup. Ultimately, the AI chooses to focus down all of Fern's pokemon with weaker attacks instead of just Shock Wave/Flame Bursting it and koing Bayleaf too with the other attack, so Magmar ends up really, really low. Sadly, Bayleef got no crits there, so neither was knocked out. I send in Pride to Quick Attack the Magmar, thinking Electabuzz would surely ko him anyway...

...but instead, it uses Swift. Huh. Ok Quick Attack again!


....it uses Swift. ...quick attack again?


Low Kick. What. You have Shock Wave xD
Anyway, I'll just let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Remembering that Electabuzz outspeeds everything left on my team, and will one shot any of them with shock wave

>_>

Supremely unsatisfying. I soft reset and try that again. Granted, if Bayleef got a decent number of crits, it wouldn't have mattered what they would have done later, since they'd be ko'd, but still.

So we try that again and, this time, Atom crits.


Afterward, Bayleef still gets no crits, and Loumbre was still not using Bubble, but it really didn't matter because that one self-destruct crit was devastating.


The duo go back to one-shotting things like they should, but Electabuzz ends up still low enough for Quick Attack to finish.

Ok, More satisfying, and I'm reasonably certain that even if self destruct does not crit, if Bayleef gets even one crit and Loumbre uses Bubble I'd certainly win regardless. Also, I kept forgetting to actually use the Normal Gem, which would have helped with the Quick Attack thing. xD

With the victory over the flunkies, the leader of the bomb expedition concedes defeat and vanishes. All the self-destructing leaves Julia salivating at the mouth however. So we all run for our lives.


Job done, our impromptu gang splits up. We head for the gym, now that all the excitement is over. Fighting our way to Julia, both Silk and Whismer evolve. Ultimately, after blasting our way through all the defenses in the gym with the exploding voltorbs, we challenge Julia. (Just who ends up paying for all those repairs, anyway? >_>)

Also, yeah, in game my character's name is Vllipsis. I kinda forgot which I used for this forum at the time xD

1st round, we discover the lead is Magnemite. Neat. Bayleef goes at it, but gets no crits at all and gets KO'd. I forgot whether or not Steel resisted Bug, so I sent Silk in next, but yes. Yes Steel does resist Pin MIssle. KO. So then I send in Loudred and she just bites it, for the KO. Emolga comes out...so I just send out Pineco and use self-destruct. That settled that. >_> Her Voltorb finishes off Loudred with Explosion, and that ends the run as Panpour and Pride are all the remain. However, now we have a good bit of the info we need.

2nd Round, I just lead with Loudred and she takes out Mangemite easy...but Julia uses no Super Potion this time. Disturbing.


Against Emolga, I try Silk this time. Silk outspeeds it, and gets in the headbutt, but Emolga nuzzles it. However, Headbutt does so much damage that Julia uses a super potion on her turn, but Silk just headbutts it twice more and KOs Emolga. Acrobatics and para-hax not strong enough.


Vs. Voltorb, I offer up Panpour as a shield while I potion Loudred back into health. Unfortunately, I underestimate just how much charge beam does, and it knocks out Loudred with it. Pride gets knocked out when I try to Quick Attack away what remains of its hp and Julia uses a 2nd Super Potion. :/ Pride still does decent damage though, and Silk forces the Explosion.


Next up is her Chinchou? That's new too, I think, but Bayleef has this. He hits with one non-crit Razor Leaf, and Julia then immediately withdraws it for Heliolisk, which eats the 2nd Razor leaf. However, whatever it's Hidden Power is, its not very effective vs. Bayleaf, so there's really nothing it could do vs. Razor Leaf and Synthesis apparently. Julia sends Chinchou back out, but it just falls to Razor Leaf, since Bayleef is faster.


Electrode is beefy though, and Bayleef can't crit to save his life. Not to mention that Sitrus Berry Electrode has. I ended up using one of the Hyper Potions Silk has found. Finally, Bayleef crits and ko's Electrode the turn before it would have ko'd him. I think Sturdy Atom could have 1 shot what would have remained of Electrode's HP regardless, or lived through the Explosion if the Electrode has that, but still, close!


The Whatchamacollit Badge and TM 37 are ours!

...and I really forgot to rename Pineco to Atom. >_>

---

---

---

Closing thoughts: Wow, that Magmar and Electabuzz setup was a step up. Significantly stronger and worthy of the storyline bad guy's faith in them to deal with two other trainers, even though they only have 1 pokemon each. Nice. Not sure if they are actually overbearingly fast or if its just that fact that all my pokemon at the time were only middling as far as speed was concerned at the time. I really aught to have evolved Zigzagoon and found out, since Linoone is by far my fastest pokemon right now and would have made the fight loads easier to deal with, I think. I'm not really sure what locked Electabuzz into that almost-only-use-Swift loop though. A question if you read this Commander; does Fern's Loumbre actually still have Bubble during the duo fight with the Magmar and Electebuzz?

I really like the Julia fight too. Seemed like she had more of her bases covered now. I think that maybe she should switch to Electrode if she only has Chinchou, Heliolisk, and it left, but I have no idea if that's an extreme amount of programming for such a small gain or not. Edited October 29, 2015 by Quickslip

[Commander]

Closing thoughts: Wow, that Magmar and Electabuzz setup was a step up. Significantly stronger and worthy of the storyline bad guy's faith in them to deal with two other trainers, even though they only have 1 pokemon each. Nice. Not sure if they are actually overbearingly fast or if its just that fact that all my pokemon at the time were only middling as far as speed was concerned at the time. I really aught to have evolved Zigzagoon and found out, since Linoone is by far my fastest pokemon right now and would have made the fight loads easier to deal with, I think. I'm not really sure what locked Electabuzz into that almost-only-use-Swift loop though. A question if you read this Commander; does Fern's Loumbre actually still have Bubble during the duo fight with the Magmar and Electebuzz?

I really like the Julia fight too. Seemed like she had more of her bases covered now. I think that maybe she should switch to Electrode if she only has Chinchou, Heliolisk, and it left, but I have no idea if that's an extreme amount of programming for such a small gain or not.

The reason why Electrode is last is actually a program which forces all leaders to use their ace last (it's the same for the official game as well). While I could remove it, it'd cause a few problems down the line. If I did remove it, I'd have Electrode know explode and replace the other Voltorb with Blitzle probably. It wouldn't be that hard to remove actually, but I'd do that down the line to see if people would want the ace for last or an overall balanced team with the ace being slightly stronger (the current leaders are designed more towards the ace for last fighting style).

As for Fern, that whole battle is hell. The AI can get so screwed up in Doubles that I had to buff the fight a bit. If Magmar had Flame Burst, you have the current version. And yes, Lombre has Bubble...but this is probably the most screwed up fight in history.

[Quickslip]

So Double Battles can be kinda silly. Got it.

---

---

---

Interestingly, I forgot to save at the end last time, so my pokemon ended up leveled slightly differently >_>.


Also, just noticed, but this Victory Music playing ambiantly after the Julia fight is actually really nice. I wonder if its different at each gym? Huh.
Stepping outside, its still raining, but there appears to be some lightning as well. Victoria's there too. She congratulates me on my win, then goes off to fight plant monsters or something. Weird, but its where the next gym is, so I guess I'll see what she's talking about anyway. And was this Blitzle just standing there the whole time and I just didn't notice it? >_>


Well. That's a non-powder paralyze anyway. Extremely helpful.
Unsurprisingly, the next area is still blocked off, but Florina uses the power of her clout to let me though. Wonder how Victoria made it through? Because, through the blockade and wreckage all around, she still got here. The situation inside is so bad, that she won't agree to stand aside unless we battle first. Well, that's fine with me! Blitzle takes a trip to the PC for a bit, since I want Panpour one last time for Pignite.

1st round, she leads with Scraggy. Pineco (whose name still isn't Atom) is leading my team currently. Her scraggy has Intimidate, so I go for Bide, which tanks 2 Faint Attacks and knocks out the Scraggy. Next she goes for Pignite, so I send in Panpour. It has Sunny Day though and Panpour isn't exactly the highest level pokemon on my team. However, panpour licks it for the paralyze before he goes down. Pride finishes off Pignite and through the incredible power of para-hax, Victoria uses all her potions while doing no damage to Pride. Next, she sends in Makuhita, So Pride seams fine to stay in. Pride predictably Gusts it's face off pretty easily....and I press f12 instead of f8 >_> K.

2nd round, I try the Bide thing again, but Scraggy headbutts twice instead of faint attacks, and this isn't enough to knock it out in retaliation. Victoria heals it with potions, but Pineco's Bug Bite is still too much for Scraggy ultimately. I fail to press f8, but Pineco is in singe digit HP here.

Pignite Vs. Panpour doesn't go as well for Pignite this time, as it goes for Smog and Flame Charge instead of Sunny Day. Thunderstorm Rainy Day allows Panpour to 3 shot Pignite.


Next, she goes for Kirlia, so I go for Bayleaf just as a general tanky matchup. It tries for Double Team shenanigans + Confusion, but the misses aren't enough as it goes down to 2 Razor Leafs and Bayleaf is tanky enough to survive the Confusion and Disarming Voice.


Makuhita is next, and it goes down to 2 of Pride's gusts again. Last is Poliwag, which goes down to Razor Leaf.

With Victoria's blessing, Into the slums we go! We find another link in the stolen pokemon chain thing. Still no stolen pokemon, but a fight is a fight I guess. xD However, there is also a suspicios box. Everyone in the slums seems slightly insane, possibly. Until we find the offending box.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuut...it just turns out to be some pokemon. Not even ghost types. Augh. There is a band of fighting types though. It didn't occur to me at the time to take alot of screenshots of the this, as in the original version they were all just 'Scraggy'. But in this one they were named and had different abilities. I lead with Bayleef and Pride. Bayleef kept Reflect up during the battle till he got KO'd, even though it got brick broken occasionally. One of the Scraggies was a wall with Toxic, so I had to antidote Pride at some point. When Bayleef was KO'd, I sent out Silk. Other than that, pretty straightforward until Big Boss was the only remainder. Then, Silk and Pride both Sand Attack'd it into uselessness, then spammed headbutts for flinches and gusts for damage till it was KO'd.

Afterward, the leader of the Pokemon Gang opened a lock on the far wall and left us to leave. Out of the slums, we find the area we are to meat Florina in sectioned off, so we go south instead. There, we find yet another Gym leader. We are no help to her, but Cain comes along and saves the day. Though he's a Poison-type user, he agrees to take the Oshewatt with him, then challenges us to a battle.

So Cain starts with his Grimer and I lead with Silk. Grimer tries to start things off with acid spray, but silk's headbutts and the added flinch that occured once was too much. Cain burns a Potion here to compliment his Black Sludge, but Silk burns off the hp gained from it in the same turn its used.


Next up is his Nidorino. I recall Silk since Double Kick is probably a thing, and send out Pride. Sadly, Pride's Gusts are not strong enough to just go one-on-one with horn attack and (hah)double kick. It is enough for Silk to come back in and finish off Nidorino with a high speed headbutt though. It also blew away the mist, though I'm not certain whether that helped in this fight or not.


He sends out Oshawatt...I mean Dewott(what? >_>), so I think to get Blitzle some more xp...but Dewott is a bit stronger than I thought, and Blitzle gets 1-shot by razor shell. So I send in Bayleef next. First I set up Reflect, which proved incredibly helpful as an unexpected Air Slash did extreme damage later. First, Dewott tries Fury Cutter though, which did something like 7 damage. That Air Slash tho....yeah. Thankfully, Magical Leaf doesn't miss like Razor Leaf sometimes does.


Venonat faces off against Loudred and disables Echoed Voice, so she has to use Bite instead. 1 confusion and bug bite later and loudred's bites have overpowered Venonat.


The last pokemon up is Gastly, so I just leave Loudred out. The Gastly decides to use Curse on Loudred with its first breath, but is KO's by bite in return.

With that done, we head to the pokemon center, fight a fisherman, then head up to help Florina. We also pick up a Skitty and Lotad here from events, but I'm not really considering using them currently. There was a Lilipup down here, but it ran away. I think I vaguely recall some guy running after one earlier, so I'd guess I could run around and find it again if I wanted. Or possibly just return to the house and tell him. I'll probably go back to the house at some point, then. There's also something locked in a warehouse down there, but the door is locked. I assume I'll need rock smash or something to get in. Hopefully I'll remember. xD

We head north and recieve Cut. Bayleef gets the honor of learning the terrible move for now, and we head into the newly forested area. Our two gym leader friends get grabbed and restrained before they can call out any pokemon, so its all on us to beat the weird 3 personality person(?) that calls him/herself collectively ZEL. And his/her Scary Tangrowth, which is the source of this mess.

Blitzle starts the show so we can get a thunderwave. It lands, and that's all I really wanted from Blitzle here, so we just Flame Charge the Tangrowth until it manages to not be paralyzed and hit him. It decides to use Growth once first, so this amounts to 4 Flame Charges. Wow that Hp bar.


Next up is Loudred(which was a mistake. Pride should have been next). Her job was to use Screech as often as possible before getting KO'd, then use Bite if she got off the 3 Screeches. She used 2 successfully before being knocked out by 2 Knock Offs, but the 2 screeches seemed adequate.
Next, we send in Pride to sand a-hax Tangrowth. Pride gets in all 6 sand attacks before getting KO'd. Tangrowth also gets in another growth here. Neither of these actually changed the look of its HP bar, so I didn't include pictures here.
Pineco was next, there to bug bite it as many times as possible before getting KO'd. This worked better than I expected getting in 3 without any retaliation. This forced a Super Potion from ZEL, which restored almost its entire health bar(!). Bug bite and Pineco's Sturdy ability proved to be too much however. Pineco chewed through all of Tangrowth's remaining life with 4 more bug bites, and without any help from Silk's pin missles or headbutts.

After some words of anger of his/her own overconfidence, ZEL threatens us and vanishes.


The leaders get up, complain only a little about getting strangled by what was effectively a tentacle monster, and head back to their respective gyms. I head back to the pokemon center, tell a woman about her lost child, and receive another ability capsule.

---

---

---

Closing Thoughts: None of the fights seemed hard in this section, though that may just be the nature of low-level type advantage talking more than anything. Vs. Victoria, I had so many super-effective attacks to use that any strategy she had wasn't particularly apparent. Everything just got knocked out too fast as most her pokemon's base stats are just so low. I can see her getting significantly scarier later in the game if her team finishes evolving though. Much the same could be said of Cain; grimer and venonat just don't learn that much that's threatening this early and their base stats aren't that good either. Gastly might be scary attacks-wise(assuming half your team isn't randomly normal type xD), but it has no HP or defense to back it up yet. Nidorino, Dewatt, and Pignite were comparative monsters when looking at the other pokemon at this point. Its all nightmare fuel for when we inevitably fight them again and everything is evolved. xD However, I could also see the argument that might be made that it has to be around this level at this point so that the teams aren't just overpowering to anyone doing a mono-type run or any other thing significantly more difficult than what I'm doing here, so I dunno.

As for tangrowth...i dunno. Status afflictions just seem like they'll destroy any 6v1 pokemon fight that isnt' decided by the 1 just 1 shotting all the 6. I suppose it could just be flat out immune to all non volatile afflictions, but I could easily see that being too much. Maybe if it just cured itself of non volatile afflictions every 4ish turns without it taking up its turn? I dunno, it just doesn't seem impressive right now.

Really interested to see what Florina does now. Next section within 3 days, probably.

[Dragon116]

Victoria is brutal at Shelly. It's beatable, but everyone struggles here. Cain's Gengar also has Sludge Bomb, so even if you have a Normal type, it will still hit you with a 90 BP poison attack, which also has STAB. Most boss mons have ways to deal with status afflictions, so most just cheese it with Prankster Perish Song or Sturdy Counter/LV 1 Leech Seed. They are beatable through normal means as well, it just take a lot longer.

[Quickslip]

So yesterday, I looked at what I had and thought there wasn't enough to bother posting. Now I look at this and think its just too much. Sorry guys. xD

---

---

---

The lightning appears to have stopped, but its still raining outside. Pretty wet week.

There was alot I could do before actually challenging Florina. Long story short, I found a Castform, a Minun, a Lillipup, a Glameow, and a Happiny. I could have gotten a Litleo too, but the SpA IVs would't go above single digits before I got bored, so I skipped it. All in all, I don't think I'll use any of these, but eh. Buuuuuut, if you want the whole story...

This one house that was walled off by a tree earlier was apparently the day-care people, but they don't want to talk to me for some reason. We go get a Furret for a girl who wants to trade a castform, but I don't think I'll use castform either, so...eh. Found a heart scale somewhere, and a Minun hiding out in an alleyway. It has really impressive IVs considering I didn't soft reset at all, and for some reason it knows Wish. Still not going to use her, but interesting.


There was also a litleo in that alley, but it ran away. Sadening. Ran into Lilipup again while wandering around to see if I could find the Litleo. Lillipup ran away again too though. No one likes me. D: Picked up a glameow, but I don't like purugly, so into the box it goes. We also pick up a Membership card in the Department Store. Deciding to head to the gym, we end up finding Lillipup and his trainer. He offers me his Lillipup and I accept though I have no plans of using it...wait, it has Ice Fang. Huh.


Well. Stoutland is good, but...I don't like it so I still won't use it. He can be a backup plan though, I guess. I head to the Arcade to find out what's actually offered as prizes. Shinx is interesting, but blitzle works and is cooler. Facade is here, so I need to find that coin case and see about prices. Skitty won 4th Pize in the Lottery randomly, so we pick up a Full Restore. We head back to the day care people in response to a request by someone worried about them and the day care people get mad and attack. Apparently, they were Team Meteor grunts. After beating them, they taunt that we will never find the real couple since they locked them up and threw away the key, then run away. Well that sounded like a challenge. We head back to the lady who asked to see if she has any opinion on the matter, but she just hands us an egg. >_> There are two suspicious warehouses down in Coral Ward, but there doesn't appear to be a key down there. Guess we'll come across it later. Searching through the previously empty houses to see if anything has changed causes me to find litleo again. It leads me downstairs to a scary klingklang. I didn't think about Clear Body at the time, so it destroyed me that first time. It only seemed to have electric attacks though, so I went back and picked up Minun since it has Volt Absorb. This turned out to not be true, but the AI was not capable of telling that Minun had Volt Absorb, so it chose to use Mirror Shot only about half as often as it chose Charge Beam or Discharge, meaning Minun could usually just tank it.


After determining that I could beat it with Thunder Wave + Bite/Headbutts, I beat it a few times with Minun for a decent Litleo. However, none I found ever had more than single digit SpA IVs, so I left the quest for later(code for probably won't ever remember to do it). I did start noticing an excess of XP though, so I trained Minun a bit just so it didn't go to waste.

Suddenly, the rain is gone, leaving strong winds in its place(This is where I picked up again after yesterday). After checking to be sure no interesting pokemon have cropped up in the park due to the winds, I make a last pass-through the area to see if I missed anything. And right there is the Warehouse Key. -.- Back to Coral Ward then. This Key apparently opens both doors. We save the Day Care people and learn Meteor has taken the pokemon they stole somewhere far away. Irksome. There is a random Happiny here though and the Day-Care people don't seem to say anything about, so I guess its mine too. Lastly, this girl walked up to me and said stuff, but didn't challenge me to a battle or anything. Weird.

Onward to the gym! Fern does that really annoying thing were he's a jerk and locks us out for no good reason.


Going around through the school, we pick up the Coin Case, which prompts me to immediately leave and get Facade. The Voltorb game isn't the most engrossing thing in the world after a bit, so in the end I just sell one of the nuggets Silk has found and buy the rest of the coins. We teach Facade to Pride, since all of his attacks are at 40 or 50 power otherwise. :/ Neat to note that we're in 'TMs can be used any number of times' mode. If I had to guess earlier fromt he feel of the game, I'd've thought it would only be usable once. We come across some diaries of some important people...I get the feeling reading these is important somehow. Feels wrong though, so I don't do it(and by that I mean I save, read them, then soft reset of course >_>).

Eventually, we answer all the questions on the machines and make it to Fern. Its worth noting that all of my current team are sitting on the level cap at this point. Common candy pig-out time incoming!
Anyway. Fern, on his throne, still refuses us entry.

He leads with Ludicolo, I lead with Silk. Pin MIssle makes short work of ludicolo, but it uses Nature Power on what was to be it's only turn. This turns into Tri-Attack, and it paralyzes Silk. >_> Might hamper later points of the battle.


Next up is Grovyle, so I send in Pineco. Bug Bite proves incredibly strong against it; it only gets one Leaf Blade off before Fern gets stuck in Super Potion spam mode till it gets KO'd.


Ferroseed is next, so I send in Blitzle. The combination of Iron Barbs, Leech Seed, and a really high defense leaves Blitzle's flame charging efforts leading to a double KO, but that's fine too. No one else has to deal with that ferroseed. >_>


We send in Pride blind next. His next pokemon is Roselia. That whole speed malus thing is proving true, as Roselia is tanky enough to survive Gusts and attacks firsts besides. It was probably silly to go with Gust anyway...Pride has Facade now and we really aren't afraid of poison point if we have Facade. -.- In any case, I send out Loudred next and she stomps Roselia once for the KO.


His last Pokemon is Servine, so we send in Pineco again. Mega Drain proves to be inferior to Bug Bite in this case and Pineco easily finishes the match.

After insulting us some more and claiming that if I could do it, the Gym League must be easy, Fern leaves to begin his own journey. More importantly, this leaves the way to Florina clear, but first we heal up our party and hand out a few candies. Then...we challenge Florina.

Once again, we lead with Silk. Florina leads with Cacturne. Some combination of being Grass, Dark and the field makes it get one shot by pin missile however.


Next up is Breloom, so Pride is next from me. Like Roselia, Breloom is also faster than Pride due to Pride's nature. (-.-) Its Drain Punch hits like a truck and Breloom has the Toxic Orb + Poison Heal. Pride is no match here. He does burn one of Florina's Super Potions though.
We send in Pineco next, but Spore sends her to sleep twice and Drain Punch KOs her.


Risky plays are called for, so I send Silk back out. Pin Missle isn't enough to one shot Breloom, and drain punch heals it back to full. Drain punch proceeds to KO everyone on the team. xD Its faster than blitzle and one shots him as well, so no Thunder Wave to beat out Toxic Orb.
K. Lets try that again.

We do so and send in Pineco vs. Breloom 2nd round. We immediately have her Self-Destruct, which eventually works when she wakes up. We then immediatly send out Pride to finish the job with a Gust since Breloom can't one-shot him. This works.


Next up is Florina's Tropius, so we go with Loudred, thinking echoed Voice will do work here. Nope, Sitrus Berry + Harvest + Fly is too strong. Loudred gets KO'd. Next we send out Blitzle and Thunder Wave the Tropius to hax out its Fly, hopefully, then start flame charging it. Turns out, Tropius has Dragon Dance as well, and twice it harvests the Sitrus Berry two times on the same turn when it was almost KO'd. (>_>) However, Para-hax and resistance to Flying eventually win the day.


Next up is Grotle, So we send in Pride again. Unfortunately, he's lvl 26 now, so...its somewhat difficult to do anything here. Grotle still does not have much to do against him though, so Grotle ends up really low before KOing Pride. An Ultra Potion on my part helped make even that possible. Bayleef finishes the fight fine, however.

.
Next up is Florina's Gourgiest. We keep Bayleef in and set up reflect. It seems like Gourgeist won't be able to do much against Bayleef...until it uses Will-o-Wisp. This gives it the edge it needs to win vs. Bayleef eventually. Last in from me is Silk, who is way too close to leveling for my sanity. Silk wins with the Pin Missles, but levels to 26 -.-


Florina's last Pokemon is Cradily still. Silk looks like she could KO Cradily with 2 three hit Pin missles...but decides to do nothing on the 2nd turn instead and gets KO'd. We know Cradily has Rock Slide and Giga Drain now though. along with some attached Leftovers.

Well then. Some backstory: at one point, Bayleef was leveling up and learned Natural Gift, which I thought was Nature Power at the time. Well. Lets see if a cheri beri for a fire attack will help the bayleef vs. gourgeist matchup. Also went ahead and bought 4 Oran berries for everyone else. Used a few more common candies as well. Also time to make use of Covet. Underestimate Linoone at your peril!

Silk still one shots Cacturne, so that doesn't change. Next, with the addition of the Oran Berry, Pride is able to tank the Drain Punches and KOs Breloom, taking a Super Potion off Florina as well.


She sends out Tropius, so I send out Silk now. First we Covet away the silly Sitrius Berry while it Dragon Dances. Then, we switch in Blitzle. Sap Sipper protects against leaf blade and we paralyze it with Thunder Wave while it poisons Blitzle with Toxic. Still, Blitzle easily KO's Tropius without the Sitrus Berry.


Now that Pineco is still alive, we send it out against Grotle and Bug Bite out-damages the Seed Bombs and Sand Tombs and Synthesis.


Gourgeist is next so we send Loudred out next to see how effective Bite is. This proves to be a terrible idea, and Loudred is two shot by Bullet seed(two turns each of bullet seed, not one-shot by a 2 hit bullet seed, i mean). So we do what we actually intended to do at the start and send out Bayleff. We set up Reflect, and try it out the natural gift. It is singularly unimpressive. The fight proceeds much as it did last time, except bayleef gets some crits and its a double KO!


Last is Cradily again. We send out Blitzle first and hope he'll listen the one time for a thunderwave. He does it right before the rock slide. Now we send out Silk, 2 levels lower, and hope to finish this with Pin Missle. Oh wait she still has that Sitrus Berry she stole earlier. xD 3 Turns of pin missles takes down Cradily.


The Canopy Badge is is won!

After our battle, Florina offers to clear us for passage to Jasper if we check on the situation there. Of course, that's an easy choice to make.

...also, we immediately replace Natural Gift with the Nature Power we just received from Florina. >_>

---

---

---

Event pokemon with egg moves(I think) is interesting. Makes finishing events much more interesting. Fern wasn't that difficult, but I don't think he really is supposed to be considering he comes right before what amounts to the boss. And yeah...she is.

I'm trying to think of something constructive to say about the fight, but nothing is coming to mind. I like it alot. The only thing I could really say is that the Tropius has the potential to be really, really obnoxious depending on the RNG...but at the same time i feel like people with flyers and fire types won't have any trouble with it and its more of a check against lower damage teams like mine, which makes it fine as I have less trouble with other things like her lead, ace, and Grotle. I do feel a little like the Cacturne might be a little weak defensively and easy to make inconsequential through one shotting unless its holding something like an assault vest that would still let it lay spikes or something. Other than those, the fight feels really nice.

Next section within 3 days prob. Can't be sure since I'm mostly in the dark from here on out. Edited November 1, 2015 by Quickslip

[Commander]

I'm trying to think of something constructive to say about the fight, but nothing is coming to mind. I like it alot. The only thing I could really say is that the Tropius has the potential to be really, really obnoxious depending on the RNG...but at the same time i feel like people with flyers and fire types won't have any trouble with it and its more of a check against lower damage teams like mine, which makes it fine as I have less trouble with other things like her lead, ace, and Grotle. I do feel a little like the Cacturne might be a little weak defensively and easy to make inconsequential through one shotting unless its holding something like an assault vest that would still let it lay spikes or something. Other than those, the fight feels really nice.

Assault Vest would be worthless on Cacturne. You're supposed to have a lot of hard, fast hitters to stop her from setting up as most of her team has hazards. Grotle has Stealth Rock and an Eviolite to help Bulk it up while Cacturne is usually speedy and dodegy enough to pull off that Teeter Dance. If you're not faster than Cacturne (which most Pokemon aren't) you'll have a bad day.

Can I just say I'm very impressed you didn't need to run a Poison or Fighting type to beat her as Florinia's team is not weak at all. But yeah, just saying a battle was enjoyable or fun is good enough. You'll start to pick up patterns how Leaders go about their selection such as the lead. Cacturne is the lead to try and stop Toxic Spike and hazard users but a hyper offensive or fast mon will make short work of it. Kind of glad she didn't feel overwhelming (old Florinia was viewed as too weak so she got a major buff).

[Dragon116]

Kind of glad she didn't feel overwhelming (old Florinia was viewed as too weak so she got a major buff).

That's because she was a joke. The team I just saw above is wonderful. Even Kricketune couldn't solo her team. Jumpfluff is the only one I could see being used here, but that would go against the theme of bulky status.

Quite a good strategy you got there quickslip. Never used Linoone as I hate them for the struggles I suffered during my first playthrough of gen 3. Pineco was a great selection here.

[Commander]

That's because she was a joke. The team I just saw above is wonderful. Even Kricketune couldn't solo her team. Jumpfluff is the only one I could see being used here, but that would go against the theme of bulky status.

Let's be honest here: normal Florinia was a complete joke to begin with. She's a pushover once you have a counter for that Cradily (though Stockpile would be way too OP for this Florinia fight). I had an unknown audience for this mod, but I knew I had at least some type of audience who had an unknown skill level and tastes. Some things sound better on paper and even tests are just tests and cannot always provide accurate results. Florinia was such a situation. And as you can tell, I severely underestimated player skill level and Pokemon strength the first go around.The hard part was keeping/fixing some of the leader strategies in order to make a better fight. I had to sacrifice sandstorm, but it's a small loss (though if Cacturne was too OP it would've gained the move).

[Quickslip]

The wind has died off; the night is still.

The people outside the gym have changed, so I check up on things. Turns out one of the students at the gym feels bad and is offering me use of the upstairs garden. There we find nothing particularly interesting until random clicks bring us to a Pichu hiding behind a tree. Skitty wins 4th prize in the lottery again, so I should nickname her lucky or something. Nothing else seems odd though.
Heading to Jasper, we stop off at the snubbull girl's house. Don't think I'll use the snubble either...but it -does- have close combat. Eh. We also come across a Budew walking on a wall.
Upon entering Jasper, we are asked to find and help the policemen that have gone missing. We save one from a team meteor member, and find another trapped behind a vine Bayleef can't cut. While exploring the destroyed city, we find out that the egg we were given is a Cacnea, which is put into the box.
We decide to focus on the two earliest evolving pokemon in the party, so blitzle and pineco get the bulk of the exp here. Night shifts to day and we come across an Emolga that I might have just not seen or it may have appeared due to the time change. That seems to be all, so deeper into the forest we go. Only blitzle has evolved before we make it to the source of the problem in jasper. Its not there alone of course, but Taka tells us not to take it personally.

The first time I fought Taka, I didn't actually see him standing down there before-hand, so...lets just say he destroyed me. xD Next time, I use the glowy light shard and we actually have a fight.

He starts with Lileep and I start with Bayleef, thinking she would just out-tank and out-damage the leftovers. Turns out it has Ingrain as well and through a combination of Ancient Power stat ups and Mega/Giga(can't remember which) Drain, out-tanked Bayleef. At this point, it was a really scary lileep, so we send in Zebstrika to Thunderwave it. He takes a few hits and gives a few hits due the paralysis, but its not enough. Silk was next and KO'd the rest of the lileep with Pin Missiles. Gligar was next and Silk was no match since she wasn't at full health anymore. Pride finished the job with Facade, but took heavy damage. Pulse Tangrowth was next, so we tried the thing we did earlier minus the thunderwave. Loudred screeched twice and fainted, Pride sand-attacked once and fainted, then Pineco went out and bug bit Tangrowth alot, but Super Potions out did Pineco's damage here and she fainted.

Next round we just start with Silk. We Covet away the leftovers and KO it easily with Pin Missiles. Taka even wastes his Super Potions here. Next up is Gligar, which Silk beats with Headbutts, a few flinches, and the transient Leftovers.


He sends out Tangrowth, so Zebstrika is up. Zeb Thunderwaves it, Tangrowth Growths, we switch in Loudred. She gets two screeches then gets KO'd(this is becoming habit), then Pineco Bug Bites it alot almost KOing it, but its not quite enough. Pride finishes the job easily though.


Chatot is sent out next, so Zebstrika is back in. Spark two shots the Chatot, but wow that one Hyper Voice was damaging.


Taka goes for Klefki last and I let Zebstrika stay in. We paralyze it and Spark it, but get done in by Foul Play. Silk comes in and finishes the fight with Headbutts.

After Taka vanishes we turn to leave and find a little girl. She declares that it was mean of me to beat the Tangrowth before her, then...flies off on a Salamence? xD Well ok. Probably a gym leader then.


We check on the one policeman that was trapped and find a lady who was trapped on a high up floor of a building since the elevator wasn't working., then head on to Beryl Ward. To the right there's another gym or power plant, but its locked. West, then. Another forest has sprung up here. A trap is set in the floor that there doesn't seem to be a way around, so we spring it and fall into a cage. Some Nuzlead lock us in and run off. After a bit, Fern comes, saying he'll let us out if I beg. Since I have an escape rope, that seems dumb, and Fern runs off in a huff. After clicking around for a bit and wondering if I really would have to use the rope, a chatot comes by and lets us out. There's only one person so far that I've seen with a Chatot, but lets not jump to conclusions...

Nah, its totally Taka. We head along, rescue some policemen, evolve Pineco, and eventually find the final machine. There, he says he invited me, so I'm taking that as empirical evidence that he had the cage opened. Important story stuff happens resulting in a 2v1 vs. the Meteor Admins. K. Hopefully this isn't 6v12 xD

I have Bayleef and Forretress leading, they have Glaceon and Lileep. Forretress has Spikes now, so we just lay 3 of those down while Bayleef Reflects and Nature Powers. Glaceon Icy Winds and Quick Attacks, but the Ice moves miss Bayleef so damage is minimal. Foretress gets hit by everything, but doesn't seem to particularly care. After the spikes are down, Forretress Bug Bites the lileep to finish what's left of its hp from the nature powers.


Gligar is sent out next, so we switch out Bayleef for Silk. They Icy wind, knock off, and acrobatics Silk, but she perserveres and together Silk and Forretress KO the Gligar.


Next in is Tangrowth, so I switch Silk with Zebstrika and bug bite the Tangrowth. Zebstrika gets off the Thunder Wave, but is KO'd before he can do much else. Next we send out Loudred to do the same thing she always does. One screech and a crit from a bug bite is enough to take out Tangrowth.


Chatot comes out next, and it tries to Chatter at Loudred, but she's immune. Glaceon finishes Loudred with Ice Fang, but Forretress takes a large chunk of Chatot's HP with Payback. We send Silk back out next. Silk takes out Chatot with a Headbutt, but Glaceon finishes Silk with an Icy Wind. Forretress' Payback deals heavy damage to Glaceon.


We send out Pride next to hopefully focus down the glaceon. Klefki's Foul Play takes out Forretress and a Super Potion leaves Glaceon looking healthy through Facade. However, a 2nd Facade and a Magical leaf are enuogh to take it out. Next....wait next? Oh. It actually is 6v12 or something with the trainers only sending out one pokemon of their own at a time. Totally should have ultra potioned foretress then. Also should have taken out glaceon and the rest in the beginning, since the eevees all do more damage than most of the things Taka's got. Anyway, Jolteon's next and we manage to KO it, but Espeon is just too much.

2nd round we send in Silk and Forretress. This time, we just headbutt/payback the glaceon. Glaceon resists with Ice Fang and a Super Potion, but its not enough.


When Jolteon is sent out, we switch Silk for Bayleaf and just keep punching the eevees. Up until now, lileep has been using some inconsequential ancient powers and mega drains, but now starts using confuse ray. Jolten tries for double kick, but Silk is switched out. We KO the jolteon with little issue though. The same mostly goes for Umbreon, though some amount of confusion from Confuse Ray causes issues. However, the Espeon that comes after appears to be all there is for ZEL, though Bayleef is KO'd at the same time.


With that aside, we send out Pride and start doing the same to Taka's pokemon. Lileep falls easily to Bug Bite.


Gligar takes more punishment, needing 3 turns of Payback+Facade damage before falling, but it ate one of the duo's Super Potions, so that's fine.


Tangrowth is next, but we don't switch and keep powering through with Bug Bite + Gust. It chooses to focus down Pride with Sludge Bombs, but it still takes heavy damage before it succeeds. We switch in Zebstrika and flame charge finishes Tangrowth.


Chatot is next, but its not strong enough to stand against Zebstrika's Spark. Klefki's last, and it takes 2 turns to KO it, but all it does during it's turn is thunderwave, so its no issue.

---

---

---

Its surprising how Taka didn't feel like a pushover when I fought him 1v1, yet still he didn't feel overbearing when paired with ZEL. Nice.

Forretress has become the mid-game monster he tends to end up being, so that's good. I really, really want to replace Loudred, but nothing's come up that I like and makes sense yet. I'm not even entirely sure of the qualifications yet, since I might trade out Zebstrika as well. I'm pretty sure I'll keep the rest of my party though. We'll just see what the future pokemon and TMs open up.

Next section within 3 days probably. Almost certainly won't be tomorrow though, as my chances of playing this then are close to nil.

[Commander]

Ah the Taka and Zel fight. In the official game its 6v6, but due to the leveling in Hardcore, its 6v9 which is a one of a kind experience to hardcore (you'll never see opponents have more Pokemon than you in the official game). I made sure it wasn't overbearing and actually possible to get past hence the leveling. Also, you should've seen the days when that Chatot had boomburst...it needed a nerf for sure.

[Quickslip]

Really, boomburst? That's actually horrifying, xD

Also, know I said I wouldn't be able to post, but turns out if I just post this really late and restrict myself to just one fight, I can still get it in. And it was interesting enough to warrant it I think.

---

---

---

So the leader gets away by vanishing. Just how many people can do that in this place? I wanna know how to just vanish. He ruins the affect by telling us where he's going though. Eventually we work out the color puzzle, beat the drugged police officers, and challenge the depressed and angry gym leader. Oh, he's actually a ninja. Ok, I suppose vanishing is acceptable then.

Wait. Corey. You are totally Koga. You can't fool me with your ninja magic and hair dye.
Anyway, We have Forretress lead, since steel vs. poison seems fair. Quilfish leads and isn't that impressive...except it has Intimidate. This makes Forretress do far too little damage. Corey uses a Super Potion here too. Forretress does eventually win with a decent amount of health left , but mostly because Quilfish would try to Bubblebeam her every so often and the field transforms it into a Poison move.


Skuntank is next, so we send out Pride to blow away the mist. Gust does almost nothing to Skuntank here and the flamethower it gets in with the field active is very damaging. Pride falls. We send in Zebstrika...and learn the new field is an entry hazard to my team. Ugh. Still, it looks like Zebstrika can take the Skuntank, but it gets a burn with Flamethrower and Skuntank survives. The entry hazard makes switching in Silk to finish off things somewhat problematic, but we do it here anyway. Seems like the least damaging choice. Skuntank has Aftermath as well though, so that's quite a bit of damage.


Nidoqueen is next, and there is no chance Silk can win that. We send in loudred for the screeches. She gets in one before getting KO'd. Next we send in Bayleef and hope this Pokemon at least has no Poison attack. Turns out it might not, but it does have Ice Punch. This is enough to KO Bayleef when the entry hazard is factored in. That mostly leaves Forretress. Nidoqueen has the Bite and Bulldoze to bypass resistance, and Forretress is too low from the first fight. Silk comes in and finishes the fight of course, but with Corey sending out Scolipede next, it proves futile. We do learn its holding a Black Sludge due to Covet, though.

Ok, I'm not taking out Bayleef from my party on principle, so if I want it to do anything at all I need to send him out either before I blow away the mist, or else just not blow away the mist. If I don't blow away the mist, Pride becomes a monster with facade. In fact, maybe I should just teach Silk Facade for now too. Hmm. Seems reasonable. Might want to go ahead and evole Bayleef on wild pokes then, he's so close. Also, need some poison cure berries, I think.
With this reasoning, we head alllllll the way back to the dept. store and pick up some berries. Interestingly, that woman we saved earlier had a sticker for us too, so we get on the next floor too. Light Clay? Yes please and thank you. Also all sorts of other neat things like Red Cards and Metronomes. Ah the sweet sweet power of money. We hand Forretress the Metronome, Bayleef the Light Clay, and Zenstrika a Pecha Berry. We also evolve Bayleef with the pokemon outside the gym for a nice base stat boost and Petal Dance, which won't be that useful here, but is really nice regardless.

On to the rematch!

This time we lead with Pride, then immediately switch to Forretress to dodge the Intimidate. Next, we set out 3 layers of Spikes before heading in for the Paybacks this time. It appears the Metronome is bugged or something, so that's sad. It doesn't appear to do anything. Tthe fight proceeds much like the first time, except Forretress wins with less remaining HP. Actually no, its exactly the same HP. Weird. The Bubblebeams though.


He sends out Skuntank next, so we send in Zebstrika. Lord Parahax smiles upon us and Skuntank doesn't actually hit Zenstrika with anything but Aftermath. That's pretty painful in its own right though.


Next up is Nidoqueen, so this seems like the best time to get Reflect set up. We send in Meganium and set up Reflect. It appears that I underestimated just how good Meganium's defenses are, since it tanks the Ice Punch like a champ with Reflect up, so we just go ahead and Petal Dance. We get 2 hits of this in before Nidoqueen manages to KO him. Impressive. Silk comes in and finishes it with Headbutt.


Scolipede is next, but Pride is fine tanking Poison Tails and Rock Tombs behind Reflect and Facade overpowers the megapede.


Corey sends in a swalot next, so I send in Silk. It is at this point I realize I didn't actually teach Silk Facade, which is bad.We do get a flinch from headbutt in, but Swalot crits her with a Venoshock. Pride -almost- manages to finish the swalot, but its not enough. That Black Sludge tho. Zebstrika comes in for the finish.


Last in is Crobat. Everyone is weary, so I send in Loudred as tribute and Super Potion Forretress as a safeguard against ridiculousness and just to see some of what Crobat has. Crobat Air Slashes once and Loudred is down due to a poison tick(I didn't give her a berry). Sad that it has non-physical attacks, I send in Forretress anyway to see if she could tank it anyway with her SpD boosting nature. For some reason I can't determine though, Air Slash does not effect Forretress. This apparently baffled the AI as well, as it was determined to use it over and over. So Forretress won by default.


Hmm. Kinda torn on that one. On the one hand, it feels cheap. On the other, even if I redo the fight a few times to make sure, I'm pretty sure it will always come down to Forretress and a Thunder-waved Crobat if I want to win, since Crobat would seem too terifyingly fast and decently damage-y for the rest of my team. Zebstrika -might- be able to do it depending on what Crobat's other moves are. If one of those moves is Venoshock though, and I see no reason why a SpA Crobat wouldn't have Venoshock on that field(unless its just too strong), there's almost no chance outside of full parahax on every turn after the first. Hmm. I'm just going to call it a win.

Instead of giving us a badge, Corey, with what I assume is an evil smirk, tells us to meet him at the bridge and vanishes again.

---

---

---

After checking on the site, I noticed that Air Slash is actually changed into a poison attack while in Corrosive Mist, but the game doesn't mention this when the attack is used, like when Quillfish uses Bubblebeam. Odd. Nice fight otherwise.

Also, there is no possible way following the bad guy's instructions that he gave to me without any witnesses can go wrong. Nope. Totally not a one. xD
Next section within 3 days probably.

[AnimeFg]

It looks like Forretress really came in handy in that fight, and I admit that it's admirable that you keep meganium even though you can get a roselia, which is probably better for this fight overall.

[Dragon116]

The AI also has the same problem on factory field, when water moves become electric. It's unable to recognize the change of type due to field effects. I believe that issue is getting resolved next episode.

[Commander]

The AI also has the same problem on factory field, when water moves become electric. It's unable to recognize the change of type due to field effects. I believe that issue is getting resolved next episode.

...I don't know when the AI will be fixed (maybe 19), but I'm just ROFLing right now because I just realized Crobat has no way to attack steel types on Corey's field so that AI problem really doesn't matter. I kind of wish Air Slash removed his field effect though as it'd make Corey even more menacing. I'm not going to change it since there are like 3 steel types available at this point in time (Klink, Forretress, Wormadam). I didn't even think about it. Crobat's Moveset is Roost, Nasty Plot, Air Slash, and Venoshock btw.

Seriously, good job winning that Corey fight as the Mist fight is not easy at all. Mega Beedrill was another thing that got axed right away and Scolipede was so threatening it swapped places on to Corey's threat team. Seriously, that thing made me curl up into a ball the first time I fought it (it got nerfed 3 times).

[Quickslip]

I actually dislike changing around my team much after most of it is set. We'll see just how much I stick to that as the game goes on though.
Also, I thought one of the things I read was that Megastones weren't in the game yet. I guess that just applies the protagonist then. xD

---

---

---

Pokemon center, then bridge, since who knows what's gonna happen there. Oh cool, there's an absol up there. Oh crap, Absols are harbingers of disaster or some such thing. xD

And Much Disaster did ensue. Mechanically, the only important thing to note here is I picked up Growlithe and there were still some trainers along the path.

At the bridge we come across this scene.


Huh. That's not some evil scheme at all. That's actually rather sad. Apparently Team Meteor killed his wife for some important ring that just happened to be his engagement ring, and...well

Fern comes by just then to insult him as Fern does, but he gets interrupted by an explosion. Something else is happening at the Grand Stairway...
On our way to one disaster or another we pass the police station, where we are offered the dead officer's growlithe. Disregarding the all-in-all sad atmosphere for a moment, Arcanine actually wouldn't be bad. Intimidate and flash fire both have reasonable use on this team and Arcanine is fairly bulky and speedy, fire would be nice to have, and Arcanine is just generally cool. Morning Sun is neat too. Guess we're replacing Zebstrika with some sort of SpA damager at some point.

On our way through Peridot, we come across the Teddiursa again. Probably the same one even. Though once again, it runs away. We actually remember to stop by the name changer man, and get Forretress shortened to Atom and Meganium is now nicknamed Mega since I can't stop calling him that in my head anyway.
Going north, we discover the destruction at the Grand Stairway, which was apparently bombed. Just one thing after another today. Beyond the stairway are the Gates to the city, which we are told haven't actually been opened in a really long time. We find a hangout of the Magma gang, but don't join because...well, its a gang that calls itself a gang. That can't be a good thing. There doesn't appear to be anything else here, so we head east to lapis ward.
Lapis Ward has a bike shop selling bikes for way too much money, so there's an event in waiting somewhere.
Victoria is at the Gym, but she's worried about a traumatized child at the scene. There is also a ghost or something here that cleans up the place, but no one sees fit to tell me anything about it other than, "That's Shade." >_> Hmmmkay.


Following Victoria and the child in, we find that the child is actually the gym leader and her name is Shelly. Victoria is seriously worried about the dangerous happenings and goes out to investigate, leaving us to follow.

So we follow Victoria down the hole.


Where she has been captured by the Meteor Duo, who pretty promptly run away with her before we team up and beat them up. So we just follow them deeper down the passage, pick up Rock Smash along the way(though we can't use it), and eventually come upon the one they were probably referring to as "boss." He essentially tells us this city is inherently corrupt and built over a sort of sacred site of power; that the city is poisoning the land and 4 seals named after gemstones must come together to change that. Interestingly, one of those is the Ruby Seal. Maybe...that ring? Then he leaves, telling us he just wanted to tell us that and that Victoria and I are free to leave.


The grunts aren't too happy about that though.

This fight actually went rather fast. Zebstrika and Emboar lead. Zebstrika uses Spark to focus down the Lunatone and Emboar follows for a quick KO. Rhyhorn is sent out and we do the same to Solrock


Electebuzz comes down, so we switch out Zebstrika for Atom. Together the two take out Electabuzz with some help from the enemy Rhyhorn's Bulldoze hitting everything, but Emboar gets dangerously low.


Victoria switches Emboar out for Scraggy, who gets immediately KO'd while Atom continues Paybacking Magmar. Emboar comes back out and Atom and Emboar KO the magmar, but Emboar is Ko'd at the same time.


Afterward, Hariyama enters and uses Belly Drum. The Grunts send in Milotic and the two focus down Atom. This leaves Hariyama free to brick break everything in their party, though Zebstrika helps with a Spark to Milotic.

We finish our escape and make it back to Shelly. There, Shelly doesn't seem to be getting any better after having witnessed the scene, so we try to see about getting her a doctor to talk about it with. There's actually a psychiatrist in this ward, so we go and see about enlisting his aid. On our way in, we bump into someone on her way out in a serious hurry. Inside, we find two more kids and an older one who might be a teenager, who are wards of the doctor.


The energetic one introduces us and, while she makes many claims the others brush aside as delusions, some of the things she says that the others say nothing about are disturbing. Chief among them is that we should -not- bring Shelly here. Also of note, she says that her brother in front of the couch is a gym leader and the girl in red is one of the elite four. Um. Interesting. Before she goes much further, the doctor appears and questions our presence. We take our queue from the wards and just claim interest in the rumor that there were gym leaders here, which prompts him to have an orderly conduct an "examination" on me. This Doctor is weird.

So I don't remember what the Orderly's first Pokemon was, since I didn't expect everything to go so fast and forgot to take a picture. Mega set Reflect, then one-shot whatever it was with Petal Dance. Then one-shot the Eelektross with Petal Dance. Then 2 shot Duosion with Petal Dance, though Mega hit himself once.


Mega hits the Kecleon that comes next hard with Petal Dance as well, but is finally taken out by the Ancient Power. Zebstrika avenges him with Spark.


Zebstrika looks like he might do the same to the Slowking that comes next, but gets confused by Water Pulse and falls. Silk finishes the Slowking


The Orderly's last pokemon is a magnezone, which Growlith roasts.

With that, the Doctor gives us his apologies, but says that he cannot allow the other gym leader to battle due to their current emotional development. The energetic one jumps on this and pushes us to leave, showing us to the door. Her whispers as she leads us out make it seem like we might be detained if we stay. She also gives us some advice for Shelly right before we leave.


We tell Shelly this and she snaps out of it a little bit. She still seems shaky, but wants to go look for her friend now. Thinking of her job though, she decides that she should stay and give us a battle first. Terribly, and unaccountably, apologetic about the whole thing, she shakily leaves to get ready. Victoria is not convinced with this performance. Fearful of the stress it might put on the girl, she tries to get us to stop by having a battle with us.

Life Orb Scraggy leads for Victoria, Mega leads for me. Mega sets Reflect and Petal Dances. Victoria uses a super potion, but its ultimately not enough. Scraggies paybacks were fairly damaging though.


Victoria sends out Emboar next and Mega is still dancing, so the obvious happens. Zebstrika enters, gets a crit, and almost manages to use that to win, but its not enough to beat the tanky Emboar. Pride enters for the finish.


Victoria sends out Poliwrath next. I decide to keep Pride in and use Feather Dance. Poliwrath immediately Circle Threw Pride out afterward and brought in Atom. Atom Bug Bit the Poliwrath until it decided to Circle Throw it as well instead of using Waterfall. Growlithe comes in, who I immediately switch to Silk. Silk finishes what's left of Poliwrath's HP.


Hariyama is next, and I send out Pride. Completely forgetting that last double battle where it used belly drum, I go for feather dance. It Belly Drummed and triggered its Sitrus berry. It took Pride, Growlithe, and Silk to beat Hariyama, with only Silk left of those 3 at the end. xD Victoria's last Pokemon is Gallade however, and he one-shots Silk. Atom almost has this fight, but is not quite enough since he's not full health.

After that fight, various horrible things happen during the Emboar fight. That, combined with the fact Mega can't quite 1-shot Poliwrath, causes losses. Then I remember and switch out Mega's Light Clay with Rose Incense. Reflect is just getting Brick Broken after a bit anyway.

Mega still leads and still sets Reflect and still Petal Dances. it does a little more, resulting in Scraggy getting only 1 hit in before it gets KO'd on the turn it gets Super Potion'd. Mega gets confused here, so I get to switch him out.


Emboar comes out and we send in Zebstrika again. This did not go anywhere near as well as the first time either, as even though we paralyzed the Emboar, it was never fully paralyzed on any turn and gets a Super Potion besides. It never flinches either. This causes it to take out Zebstrika, Pride, and Silk. Mega comes back in and Nature Powers to finish him, but that was a scary rampage.


Gallade is sent out next, so we Switch for Atom. 1 on 1, atom weathers the storm of attacks and perseveres.


Next in is Poliwrath, so we send Mega back out and he 1 shots it with Petal Dance. The dance continues as Hariyama is sent out. It doesn't Belly Drum, which is a shame since Mega would have just won by himself if it had, Brick Breaks take down Mega, but Hariyama is low enough for Growlithe to take him out.

So then we go and tackle the bookcase puzzle. This actually took an embarrissingly long time for me to do. Like, I could have had everything up to here posted last night, but I didn't think it would take me so long to finish a puzzle and thought I could fit in the Shelly fight at the time(hehe...yeah right >_>) I evolve Pride here then give him a Common Candy. Beyond the scary puzzle waits Shelly. Also a leaf stone. Also also, that vs. popup makes me look like I'm threatening to beat her up or something.

We lead with Growlithe and Zebstrika for fiery goodness. Ilumise and Masquerain. The flyer seems vaguely more threatening, so we focus it first. Ilumise confuses Zebstrika, but he still manages to hit the Masquerain with Spark, so it falls without doing anything.


Armaldo is next. That is also scary, so we try and focus it next. However, Armaldo has Bulldoze and completely destroys both Growlithe and Zebstrika.


I don't see many of my pokemon beating Armaldo in time, so we go risky and send out Mega along with Pride. We go for Petal Dance, but it hits Ilumise. Pride uses Gust, but Gust is weak at this point. Next turn, we KO the Ilumise, since we're aparently targetting it for now, but then we learn Armaldo also has Rock Slide, which one shots Pride and finishes Mega. Shelly's next pokemon is a Yanmega named Heather. It knows Air Cutter, which lets it hit Atom fairly well along with Silk. Silk and Atom almost manage to KO Heather, but an Ultra Potion stops that. Bulldoze and Air Cutter finish the fight next round.

Hmm. I actually have nothing on this Armaldo. Mega can't target it with Petal Dance or Nature Power, Pride's Flying STAB is still Gust for now, Silk has nothing that can hurt it, and it hits Zebstrika and Growlithe for Super Effective damage while neither can hit it for more than half its health. I think I just have to fodder off Mega to set Reflect here. Doing that, we discover that Illumise is actually faster than Mega and will two shot him before he gets a chance to use Reflect if I just switch him in.
I actually just ran this around trying things for a while, but nothing really seemed to work. Growlithe doesn't seem quite strong or fast enough as not-an-arcanine and Pride doesn't have a Flying STAB stronger than Gust yet. Either the multi-hit debuffs mess with my damage too much and I can't beat Armaldo, or I run out of steam later and Yanmega or Bugsy KO everything. Sooooooo...I went back and picked up that Litleo.


After training it a bit, making sure it knew Flamethrower, evolving it, and giving it a candy to delevel it, I tried this again. In addition, at some point before this, I taught Mega Grass Pledge since I can't target anything in Double Battles with Petal Dance or Nature Power.

We lead with Pride and Pyroar(who look really nice standing next to each other) and take out the Masquerain. That turn, Illumise uses Struggle Bug. Lowered SpA seems bad, so we so we switch both out for Mega and Growlithe when she sends out Armaldo. Strangely, Shelly switches out Illumise for Vespiquen on the same turn, while Bug Biting Mega. Mega uses Grass Pledge on the Armaldo, doing heavy damage. Armaldo responds with Rock Slide, which misses Mega but KOs Growlithe. Vespiquen uses Defend Order here.


I send out Silk next. Silk Covets away Vespiquen's Leftovers and Mega finishes Armaldo with another Grass Pledge. Vespiquen KOs Mega with Attack Order.


Pyroar is out next for me, and Shelly sends out Heather the Yanmega. Pyroar one-shots it with Flamethrower before it starts sweeping with Ancient Power and Silk hits Vespiquen with a Double-Edge. It responds with an Attack Order on Silk, but this isn't enough to KO her.


Shelly calls out Illumise again, but its KO'd by a Flamethrower followed by a Double-Edge. Vespiquen continues helping by using Toxic on Silk. Bugsy the Volbeat is sent out next, but it suffers the same fate. Vespiquen finishes Silk with Attack Order, but its fine as Shelly has no other Pokemon


The remainder of the fight took a while, since Pyroar leveled at that point and so wasn't interested in listening often. I send out Pride to Feather Dance away Vespiquen's damage potential and just antidote the Toxic away once until they eventually manage to break through Defense Order, Heal Order, and 2 Hyper Potions.

Shelly seems really down after that fight, but this apparently doesn't stop her from trying to do what's right.


Seems reasonable, so we head out. First, we heal everyone and put Pyroar back in the box though.

---

---

---

That Shelly fight. Doubles matches are entirely different in some ways from normals, and I'm not sure whether I build properly in my head when I try to take them into account. Still, I think Arcanine or a stronger STAB than gust would have made a huge difference, so I'm not too worried yet. Besides, I still need to find that 6th speedy SpA member!

So yeah, sorry about the Monstrous Post. I feel like normally, the number of pictures is large but fine...but when the post is this big, that many all at once might be a bit too much. >_>
I'll try to be more conservative with milestones from here on. Next section within 3 days, probably.

[Commander]

You don't even want to know how many hours I clocked in to fix this Shelly fight. That total alone is about a weeks worth of work. In the official game, most people blow this fight off claiming it's too easy due to the poor AI. The only thing I couldn't do is get Rain Dance to work, but that's only a problem if you change the field. And don't worry, Shelly's team is good. Like really good after the revamp. She's one of those very unique leaders as her strategy is to slowly chip your hp down and absorb your attacks. She's certainly not an offensive leader if you couldn't tell. Vespiquen used to be an attack spammer so I'm so glad it uses its other moves. Again, this fight took a ton of work and effort to create.

[Quickslip]

Gratz then, because the game is looking good.

---

---

---

So we're headed back to the beginning, but first we stop off to pick up that Lunatone under the stairway just in case. We also break up all the other rocks to see what's in there and discover mining. Lots of interesting stuff drops, but most importantly one of the blasting powders Silk has picked up over time finds a Fire Stone.
At the station, we find Fern doing the thing we were going to do. He brags about being able to enter the wastelands for his next gym battle, and taunts us saying he'll tell us how to find another key we beat him. Well that's entirely fine by me

We're leading with Silk and he sends out Ludicolo. Pin Missiles proves to still be strong and easily takes it out.


Sceptile is next and Mega out damages it with Nature Powers.


Ferrothorn is as flammable as ever.


I felt Serperior's tankiness would be an issue and contrary is a thing, so Zebstrika goes up against it. Zebstrika gets in Thunderwave and some Flame Charges, but Outrage is his undoing. Silk finishes the fight, but takes a bit more damage.


Roserage is flammable as well, but Giga Drain is far stronger than I gave it credit for. It also outspeeds Silk surprisingly, so that was free HP when I sent in Silk next. Pride is strong enough to finish it off though.

Afterward, he basically tells us to find Cain in the graveyard from earlier. As is tradition, we first check out underneath the bridge and break the rocks there. We don't seem to be able to go further without Strength as well, so we head back to the graveyard. We check out the cave with breakable rocks first. There's no light, but there's no pokemon and I have escape ropes so I explore. There's a nidorina in there that's probably Corey's, but it doesn't like me at all. Not sure how it ended up locked in a cage. There's a golett right outside of the other end of the cave though.

At the graveyard, we find Cain, who has set up another grave it would seem. Though he seems kinda down too, be agrees to give us a key...if we can beat him in a battle.

]Vs. Cain, I lead with Atom because Poison Types...but he leads with Samurott. xD So I immediately switch for Mega. It sets up Swords Dance, but Mega just one shots it with Petal Dance. He sends out Muk, who can't quite one-shot Mega while the dance does little. I switch out Mega for Atom and start setting up spikes. Muk has Acid Armor however, so I switch in Silk to Covet them away. Sticky Hold prevents this, so I switch in Growlithe to try to get around Acid Armor. We don't get the burn before Growlithe is KO'd, so my team has no way to deal with Muk's Armor at this point. We switch that around, round 2, and just have Zebstrika Spark it until Muk gets low, then send in Silk to finish it with Double-Edge. Nidoking is next and wow xD. Sludge Wave KO's Mega, Earth Power and Shadow Ball KO Atom, and Thunderbolt KOs Pride.
Something like this happened each time Cain send out another Pokemon, so skipping to the end. xD

Mega leads, sets up Reflect, then one-shots Samurott. In this case, its one of the times Samurott decides to Swords Dance instead of Aerial Axe, so Mega remains at full health.


With the help of Reflect, Zebstrika does alot of damage to Muk with Sparks before falling and Silk finishes it off with a headbutt and Double-Edge. Cain burns his Potions here.


The plan on Nidoking is for Silk to Headbutt it until she gets low, then Double-Edge, then send in Atom to finish it with Payback, which is how it normally goes. However, Nidoking flinched -alot- this round, so Silk just beats him by herself.


Pride goes in armed with a Chesto Berry to guard against sleep when Cain sends in Venomoth. With no consecutive successful Sleep Powder, Pride defeats Venomoth.


Cain's last pokemon is Haunter, and here we send in Atom. Atom Paybacks once, then we switch him for Mega, heal him with a potion, then send him back out when Mega falls and then Payback again.

After the battle, things get...interesting.

Cain sees Heather, who he was looking for, and she flies off on her Salamence. Cain apologizes for not giving me the key immediately and runs off after her. We follow and find Cain and Heather with Shelly. Cain tries to make friends with Heather, but succeeds only in driving her off down the street...where our good friend weird Doctor is waiting. He discovers that Heather is without a legal guardian, and so takes her into custody. When she refuses, he calls in orderlies to restrain her and take her away while warning Cain, Shelly, and I off with threats of lawsuits and jail time if we interfere. There at the orphanage, he then proceeds to electrocute her into compliance. Cain musters Shelly into breaking Heather out, and so we go and break into the orphanage with the help of the other wards, who are only too happy to help provided they can come with us. Seeing no problem with this, we beat back all the orderlies and their fairly strong pokemon(even a Mega Bannet, the first Mega I've seen at this point), get the wards back their pokemon, and break back out. This was not before damage was done to Heather though, as she will no longer speak and only follows meekly along. The doctor sends the police after us and we're on the run. We try to escape the city from beneath Opal Bridge, but one of the doors runs on a power source that has apparently been turned off. Anna knows Shade lives at the power plant that was deactivated and suggests that we just ask him to turn it back on and ask for a gym battle while we're there. She's not sure if he's human, but he is really nice! ...well, she hasn't been wrong about anything like that yet, I suppose.


We make it to the Power Plant, and even though I know we should be in a hurry and stuff, I find time to go into the cave that's blocked off by a breakable rock. Inside, its full of Ice type pokemon. There's another of Corey's pokemon hanging out here, and its not interested in me either. Deep inside, there's a really strong Beartic that's angry with a smoochum. We beat off the Beartic, since we can't catch it, and smoochum decides to come along.

So, eventually we make out way to the Power Plant/Gym and that Absol shows itself again. -.-
Inside the place, its pretty much pitch black. I wander around pressing buttons, which are there to show various people dieing in various ways. Marvelous. Even Corey's is in here. Eventually, we find shade floating around and challenge him to a battle, hoping Anna is right about him. He grins. Some of the lights do come on, but that grin...

This one took many tries to figure out what did and didn't work. Sadly, Silk is largely useless vs. ghosts at this point which didn't help. The Ethers and Ultra Potions Silk has been collecting were a huge help though. xD

Shade's first pokemon is Rotom, my lead is Mega. This fight actually depends alot on what Rotom chooses to do. Sometimes it easy, as he just spams Shadow Ball and gets Ultra Potion backup, in which case Mega usually eventually wins the Potion War unless Rotom crits at some point. Thunderwave and Confuse ray throw wrenches in things sometimes, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes, for no reason I can determine, Rotom decides to use Discharge. >_> This was one of those times, though the field made no difference. Mega sets up Light Screen and uses Grass Pledge and Rotom Spammed Shadow Ball. Me and Shade both heal up our pokemon once, then Rotom gets in that special HP point where Shade doesn't like to use a Potion, but it will still faint to Petal Dance. We do so, and Rotom falls.


For whatever reason, Shade always follows up Rotom with Golurk when Mega KOs it. Its no different this time, and Mega one-shots it with Petal Dance. Mega confuses himself, so we get to switch him out.


Next up is Shade's Aegislash. Here, we send in Pride to Feather Dance away its damage. Afterward, we switch in Atom to lay down 3 layers of spikes, then KO the ghost with Paybacks. Shade burns his other potion here.


Dusknoir is next, and we do the same thing to it, minus the spikes. Both Pride and Atom are equipped with Rawst Berries to guard against Will-O-Wisp, and Dusknoir eventually falls. We do have to spend an Ether and another Potion on Atom, though. Oddly, it never Earthquakes the field back into darkness like it usually does.


The Mega Gengar named Corey is next to last. Guess we know what Shade was doing that one time, then. >_>
Zebstrika outspeeds Gengar before it Megas, so we Thunderwave it. Parahax decides its paralyzed this turn, so Zebstrika also gets in a Spark before being one-shot by Shadow Ball. Growlithe's Crunch is enough to finish it with Zebstrika's damage, so no need for Pride to finish off Gengar this time.


Chadelure is handled alot like Haunter was handled. We send in Pride, heal up Atom, send him in and Payback when Pride is KO'd, switch him out for Growlithe who can tank a Flamethrower, heal Atom again, then switch in Atom again when Growlithe is KO'd for another Payback.

Not entirely sure what that's supposed to mean, but Omen Badge get! Also, that Shadow Claw would have been really useful a battle ago. xD

With that, Shade effortlessly turns the power back on by telling it to, then shows us on a monitor what happens when the door was opened. Ah. There's the disaster.


Huh. Scary, floaty, sharp-teethed dude does care. Go Anna.

Also, apparently the sun decided to celebrate Shade's defeat. I've never seen this weather before, so decided to go up on top of that one suspicious building that's been empty day, night, clear, and stormy. Sure enough, there's a Pokemon there now. That looks like a speedy SpAer. Maybe member 6, though I kinda worry about not having anything that's super effective vs. poison unless we come across a TM for Dig or Earthquake or something.

---

---

---

Shade felt fine. Given that I still think my team is in one of its weaker stages, it seemed right that it had trouble. Not much more to say; excited for Roost/Belly Drum/Arcanine I suppose.
Next section within 3 days.

[Dragon116]

Good strategy beating that Mega Gengar. Cain's Nidoking is pure evil, but at least you only have 2 more fights against it.

[Commander]

Hmm...I might change that Dusknoir into an Eviolite Dusclops but without the berries I don't know how difficult he is. Believe it or not, that Gengar used to outspeed everything but I used Manectric as a test for speed. Electric types are just super buffed in that field while his attacks are on and off buffed. An electric type boss latter really shows how good that field is for electric types. The only one I can really change is Dusknoir as the others I know are staying for sure.

[Hiroki Tatsumi]

Making an hardcore run.

Without playing the original before.

With Chikorita as a starter.

You're crazy. Crazy.

[Dragon116]

Making an hardcore run.

Without playing the original before.

With Chikorita as a starter.

You're crazy. Crazy.

Actually, they played the original reborn, but never finished it.

[Hiroki Tatsumi]

Actually, they played the original reborn, but never finished it.

That's still a thing, they didn't go far in the game, so well, that's crazy x)