I'm going ghost! (Ghost mono for hardcore)

[Damage]

So as the title suggests I decided on a ghost run in the hardcore mode of reborn. Seems like a fun type without the OPness of my previous runs. Fire mono and fighting mono were wayyy to easy. Especially when machamp can take a hit from Arceus unresisted. Anywho... heres the lineup

Leading the charge is...

Fahrenheit the Ghastly- Levitating cause he's a ghost/Timid. Thunderbolt/Sludge bomb/Hypnosis/Confuse Ray

Amaterasu the Litwick- Flashing all the fires/Timid. Flameburst/Energy Ball/Wow/Smog

Sorbet the Snorunt- Moody as f%$^/Timid. Powder snow(always freezes)/Icy wind/Double team/Bite

Blitzle the punching bag since three mons with low health isn't fun

This team is pretty solid. Blitz got boxed after the battle. The story starts off with a bang huehuehue and I get my ghastly from Ame. (it happens) Ghosts take all trainers hits baring the random dark attacks. Fern has the advantage since its raining but we call out Mr. Fahrenheit to sludge everyone. He levels at the speed of light. The factory is most kind to the team. Aster/Eclipse having evolved pokes is different and Litwick is able to eat all the fire moves while burning buzz and smogging Mag until its poisoned and both die. One segue later I'm at Julia's gym and I beat her on the 13th 1st try. Magnemite vs Litwick and he misses his first attack... Litwick does not. Chinchou comes out with a watergun but runs away with energy ball switching to emolga. I switch to punch sponge to heal up and send out snorunt. The rest of the match is snorunt versus everyone. Moody makes this battle an emotional roller coaster for me. Evasion is eventually maxed out. (Sorbet would be Neo in another life) and she freezes chinchou and electrode soo you know how that song and dance goes. Finally I have the whatchamacallit badge and get ready to leave but that's where part one ends. Who likes theme songs? No one? Well I do so here's my theme song. (p.s if anyone can teach me how to add the cool pics so I can show more I'd be thankful)

Edited January 14, 2016 by Damage

[Commander]

...(Glares)! I swear I need to teach these request fillers to be more trolly when giving out Pokemon. Pretty sure the point of Hardcore is that super OP mons aren't the solution to everything and strategy trumps power. I'm not trying to downplay your victory as most people do need a full team to even beat Julia (or at least four mons). Admittedly, I did use evasion hax to take down Julia's electrode though someone showed me it could be done other ways in an Ice Mono.

But if you want to know what I would've given you, it would've been Duskull, Shuppet, Sableye (aka your savior mon), Nincada, Phantump, and Difloon. There's just a lot of stuff from Julia to Florinia that can shut Ghosts down...especially ones so frail. I wish you luck man, no seriously, I really wish you luck as episode 2 is going to probably be the hardest section of the game for you.

[Damage]

Wow you'd be a harsh giving tree. Since 4/6 of those mons can kinda suck it. Yeah I hear this version is pretty tough and since I've beaten normal mode like 15 times I thought this would be much more fun. Snorunt is going to fall off after gym... 1 and litwick doesn't evolve until like gym 5 or 6. So ghastly is going to start carrying the team. Flo-bot might be doable but I fear for corey...

[Damage]

Growing pains-

So after beating Julia one has to train up their pokes and find more ghosts for the mono... there are none so cheating until that time happens and I get a butterfree to help me find some black sludge. That doesn't happen which isn't too bad since florinia is gonna be easy. I have ice, fire and poisonous ghosts what could go wrong....

I make my way over to obsidia and join flobot to save the city. You all know how this song and dance goes. Fight victoria where ghosts rule. Hooray for Amateratsu as he's mvp and I fight through the slums. The scrafty team is actually hard as hell since they all have dark moves and one of them has toxic which is fair since Scraggy learns toxic at the lvl TM06. Amateratsu quickly loses mvp status and the butterfree from before earns its place if it was a ghost. Farenheit is able to take down two of them with sludge bomb but he is one shot every attempt until they all start focusing on Amat. This plan usually fails and we wait for Sorbet to evasion hax herself to max. Finally thats done. For some reason I head down to the pier and see Amaria and best bro Cain. Since he's my rival he wants to fight. I lose this fight a couple times since Hardcore means well... hardcore.

Attempt number three and I find out icy wind gets a boost. Sorbet ends this match quickly. I also congratulate Cain on evolving his oshawatt into a dewott. I didn't see it happen it was so fast. (you may want to change its animation in the Overworld to a dewott since yeah) A few random trainers later and all my ghosts are 25 which is bad since now theyre all overdosing on common candies. Fern's fight is fun since Farenheit can ohko all of them but thats no fun so I let Amateratsu and Sorbet have their hits in too. Since everyone should be allowed to embarass Fern once.

And Florinia. three days fighting the same person makes you a little agitated, although some of this is my fault. I wont go over every bad play since theres a lot but the final attempt 100+ goes like this. Everyone has an oran berry except butterfree who has a rawst berry. I lead with Farenheit who OHKOs cacturne. We put grotle to sleep then spam sludge bomb on him. motherf$%^$-ing Gourgeist. shadowsneak is the bane of my life. Send in free and use supersonic and it uses will-o-wisp which is countered by the rawst berry. Thanks to RNJesus it keeps hitting itself while gust is going. it snaps out and uses a shadow sneak but its too late and it falls. Breloom vs Free is a bad match as it goes down just as fast. Finally is Cradily. Cradily is supersonic-ed and keeps hitting itself until it finishes off free. Turns out its kinda fast and OHKOs Amateratsu and Sorbet. My punching bad zebra-face is taken out while I heal Farenheit. He comes in and uses confuse ray and RNJesus approves and sludge bomb poisons cradily while I'm at full health. Its whittled down and thank christ is this nightmare over. Time to fight the elite four... oh this is only the second gym. I'm going to lie down now. The mvp of this episode is well represented in this song that I wrote just for him.

[Commander]

Moral of the story: don't call Commander a harsh gift tree. (I'm just kidding...ish)

As for that Oshawott, it was decided to leave the fight having a Dewott instead of changing it back into an Oshawott due to not being able to change the sprite. I would've had to make a couple custom sprites for that thing due to the grimer which is half the reason I didn't change it (the other is because laziness and having to redo it each episode). Just try to overlook it for now (as the person who was supposed to change these inconsistencies kind of bailed on me).

But congrats on not going insane. I'm just surprised you didn't pick Hariyama for your "ghost" type to help against Florinia but yeah, monotypes are really difficult on the first few gyms to run so don't feel too bad about cheating. You already know the story about Taka and the Chatot (RIP Boomburst) so good luck on Episode 3 which almost everybody struggles on. (Thankfully Shelly will be pretty easy for you and Shade probably won't be too bad).

[Damage]

Well to be fair I most certainly did go insane, I just eventually went sane again. Realized I can add a couple ghosts in at this point so I think I might do that. Shelly's at a disadvantage but Shade has the best ghost ever and I will still have litwick at that point so idk how this is gonna run. I'm nervous about kiki since I'm sure everyone will have knock off.

[Damage]

Episode three: This could be better

So after Florinia I'm sent off to Beryl ward to handle some deforestation. (am I the bad guy?) Its here that my main guys, Amateratsi, Fahrenheit and Sorbet begin getting over leveled. Also notice Sorbet can learn drain kiss at 23 so she gets boxed so that can happen later on. (a decision I will come to ragert). I make my way through the awful forest and the pattern goes, send in Amateratsu he gets kicked when not around grass, remedy problem by sending in Fahrenheit. Rinse and repeat. Finally I make it to Taka who is actually taken down pretty easily by (insert gengar joke). I make my way through some more grunts with Amateratsu setting everything on fire. Pulse round two is pretty easy since Amateratsu and Fahrenheit have been eating common candies since wayyy back. Finally I escape the forest after destroying a family and add two ghosts to the roster. Grin the pumpkaboo and Envy the shuppet. Both make fine punching bags while my boys heal up. Fahrenheit, Amateratsu and (Butteryfree's last battle) takes place. But here comes a new challenger. Nine the drifblim (cloud nine.. get it? cause he's a blimp in.... I'll stop) Destiny bond works twice since revive exists. Amateratsu explodes the field so there's three suicides. This takes care of Quilfish who lost to Fahrenheit. Nidoqueen who lost to suicide fire Amteratsu. Swalot who lost to Destiny round 1. Skunktank also is taken out with Destiny bond. Remaining is Crobat and Scoliopede.

Butterfree sleep powders scoliopede and uses gust until it dies. He is quickly one shot by crobat who obviously one shots whoever is left who wasn't used as healing time. Fahrenheit (who would of guessed this outcome) uses thunderbolt after being hit by air cutter but is left with more than half. One more thunderbolt and bam attempt 67 new record minimum easy win.

Soooo about this ghost run. I don't actually recommend it to anyone. Its awful, like the worst kind of awful. Nothing is going to evolve until after Shelly. Nine did and he's doing fine but his movepool is awful atm and Amateratsu is slow due to being stage one and in hardcore mode this team is getting the brakes beaten off them. I literally only have fun when using Haunter who I HAD to ev train in order for him to ohko any threat since some devil worshiper the game gave every mon a dark move. To anyone reading this. Have fun playing hardcore and pick a team that has more than 2 second stage mons by Corey.

Team update.

Fahrenheit the gengar- Levitate- Shadow ball/ Sludge bomb/ Thunderbolt/ Hypnosis

Amateratsu the litwick- Flash fire- Flame burst/ Will o Wisp/ Energy Ball/ Hex

Nine the drifblim- Unburden Stockpile/ Payback/ Ominious Wind/ Destinybond (my favorite move)

Envy the shuppet- Insomnia- Shadow sneak/ will o wisp/ Feint attack/ Gunk shot (would be cool if he could hit anything)

Grin the pumpkaboo- Pickup- Shadow sneak/ Leech seed/ Razor leaf/ Bullet seed

Frillish the Frillish- Water absorb- Brine/ Absorb/ Ominous wind/ Recover

Sorbet the boxed snorunt- Moody- Icy wind/ Powder snow ftw/ Bite/ Double team

P.S I'm stuck on Victoria since Fahrenheit (who is easily one shot) keeps missing hypnosis and everyone else besides Nine is outsped AND one shot. Thinking about switching to something fun like water or ground.

[Commander]

Generally, I recommend a normal run of hardcore for a first playthrough. There's a large handful of Pokemon who evolve at that range which is why I kept it at that level and why there is an easy version of Corey called field Corey with lower levels and a weaker team (Garbodor, Haunter, Beedrill, Skuntank, Vileplume, Corbat). There is that lucky egg and exp share at the start for a very good reason.

You should've seen the days I called Supermario crazy for attempting a Poison mono

[Damage]

I appreciate the challenge but I wanted to play this version the smart way instead of just relying on my starter which every playthrough of normal I usually only touch my starter when bored. I think that ghost is just beyond difficult the early game due to frailty and not being able to evolve. Once everyone on my team stops playing JV ball then I can start enjoying the game. I'm gonna try to hang in there for a little while longer. If it really doesn't appeal to me I'll switch to something a little less mind consuming.