Fighting Florinia

[Ryik]

Alright, so first off I've got some words of praise and reproach about Pokemon Reborn. Bear with me.

When I first got to Florinia, I said to myself, "Fuck this game".

I take serious issue with the hard level cap and how hard it punishes you for overleveling, voluntarily or otherwise. (especially otherwise) Why do we have to rely on mods for a solution? If we have to decrease levels for certain challenges, why can't we get the level back after the cap is lifted? Why couldn't we just gain exponentially decreasing experience? There are any multitude of alternate solutions than telling players that they either have to de-level their pokemon or stop using them. For me, personally, this soured the experience of exploration just a bit. Every roadblock or minor inconvenience that would normally make me think "wow, neat dungeon" became such a hassle since I knew I was edging ever closer to my pokemon being unusable. This forces you to use a wide variety of pokemon, which I've seen a lot of praise for, but I can't help but feel the opposite. You could say I'm OCD; I like my living pokedex to be fresh and untouched; no experience or EVs, and I instead stick to specific pokemon throughout my playthroughs. This is usually made up of my favorite pokemon, give or take whatever my whims dictate. This created a fundamental problem for me: All gyms have 6 pokemon and you're expected to fill out your team pretty quickly or otherwise build your team according to the challenges before you. I just didn't like any of my options. Slugma? Ew. Litleo? Lame. Vanillite? Maybe, but the weather won't cooperate. When I train a pokemon, I feel obligated to continue training them, not just pick them up, use them, then drop them into the box marred and scarred forever, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the pristine pokemon surrounding them, or otherwise quarantining them forever and having to catch a new one for the living dex.

Yes, this is completely irrational and stupid, but that's OCD for you. Why use Potions to win a battle when I can soft-reset until I get a crit or they miss?

Anyways, coming to Florinia, my team is 1-2 levels over the cap, consists of three pokemon, and none of them are good against grass types. This brought me to my decision to use the mod made by Walpurgis to remove the disobedience mechanic.

"Cheating" aside, now that I could actually use my damn pokemon, I found Florinia to be a very fun challenge. I failed a lot trying to RNG it through disobedience and a lot more trying to cheese through that thick-as-fuck Cradily, until I finally came out on top. I wanted to keep my pokemon at the level they were at in the spirit of keeping the levels low, so without further ado, here is my team:

Spoiler

It's funny, really. When I was using only Snivy and Minccino I resigned myself to overleveling one of them and then continued to use them while they disobeyed to keep the other usable. Minccino is a powerhouse with Skill Link Tail Slap, so Snivy was the obvious choice until I could get the coin case. Maybe Snivy would be better if I evolved it, but I decided at the beginning to keep it a Snivy until level 43 for... reasons.

 

In any case, the experience situation was bad, so I pushed myself to get another pokemon asap, and among the options available, I chose Shinx>Luxio, even if he's no help against Florinia. Cleaning up the school was much easier after that, but in the fight against Fern and his Roselia who could heal off most of the damage Luxio could dish out, I had to resort to Minccino, pushing him over the edge. Even if I just got him and didn't fight a single wild pokemon, Luxio ended up at level 25 anyway, so here I am. Ironically, I ended up not using Luxio at all when I finally beat Florinia.

Obviously this much isn't enough to take on Florinia, but I wasn't willing to compromise, so I also brought along three of my living pokedex mons. After all, it was fine as long as they didn't gain any experience, which they wouldn't so long as they always died when one of Florinia's pokemon are taken out. Even if they can't kill any of Florinia's pokemon, they're fairly helpful. Here they are:

Spoiler

Ironic that they're all poison type when most of Florinia's team has boosted Sand Tomb by way of Nature Power. Funnily enough, Trubbish never got to do anything and died in one hit, so no poison stalling here.

 

Anyways, getting down to how I did it:

 

#1: Maractus.

Seeing as Maractus is Florinia's lead, she's vulnerable to RNG cheese. Minccino Sing > and Tickle/Swift+Tail Slap takes her out handily.

#2 Ferroseed.

This one was a bit trickier, just because it's so thick. He doesn't pose any real threat, but the residual damage left by sand tomb or Pin Missile creates issues later on. I could use Luxio to take it out, but Sand Tomb would take a huge toll on Luxio, and I wanted to keep him healthy for Cradily since flinch hax with Bite was one of my best bets for dealing with it. (This is what desperation sounds like) I went with Minccino, was able to Sing it to sleep on the second try and then chip away at it with Tail Slap. The Sand Tomb effect really helped, and luckily Pin Missile didn't do a ton of damage, so Minccino was still in the green.

#3 Breloom.

Breloom is a nightmare for my heavily Minccino-reliant team. Fortunately, I had this little green blob named Gulpin who could come in, tank Mach Punch, then Yawn Breloom to sleep as he went down, leaving the sleeping mushroom kangaroo easy pickings for Tail Slap+Swift. Important to note, Breloom has poison heal and would become immune to sleep, so it's impossible to set up Toxic Spikes before Breloom otherwise he becomes a bigger headache than Cradily.

 

#3.5 Cradily

Raid Boss alert.

First off, my team was in no shape to handle Cradily. That's why I was planning to poison it and ignore it. Unfortunately, Recover invalidates Poison Gas and Suction Cups invalidates Roar, so my only option was to trick Florinia into switching. I sent out Grimer and he was bulky enough to eat Cradily's Smack Down. He then used disable, since Smack Down is Cradily's only direct attacking move, and started spamming Mud Slap. It was doing no real damage, and Cradily responded with Sandstorm and Stockpile, so, really, Grimer was being grinded down and made no progress whatsoever, at least until Florinia got sick of missing very quickly and swapped to Cacnea. I can't let Grimer live since he's seen Cradily, and he's not terribly useful anymore besides, so I keep him in. He lands a mud slap on Cacnea, who proceeds to murder him.

 

#4 Cacnea

I was thinking that maybe I could send in Trubbish here to get off Toxic Spikes for some Cradily cheese. Even if I ended up with  just the first layer, maybe I could work with it in order to wittle Cradily down, but nope, instant death at the hands of Pin Missile. Not as lucky as I was against Ferroseed this time.

Well, even so, Cacnea's a huge pushover, so I just send out Minccino to one shot it with Tail Slap.

#5 Cradily

Okay, for real this time.

My cheese strat of poisoning it to death is off the table, so there's nothing left but good old fashioned slaps. I sing it to sleep and begin tickling it like a madman. It wakes up twice, but I manage to Sing it back to sleep without too many misses, bringing Minccino to red health. Good luck against Ferroseed was really paying off here. After tickling it 3-4 times and putting Cradily to sleep a third time, I manage to survive its Smack Down and 2-shot it with Tail Slap. If it woke up early before then, I wouldn't have been able to finish it or survive its Smack Down. If it woke up early before the second tail slap, I might've been screwed since Luxio can't deal with Stockpile+Recover or do as much damage as Tail Slap, even with neutral-effective Bite. Add another point to the "just got lucky" counter.

 

#6 Cottonee

Welp.

Minccino is in the red, and Cottonee has priority Sand Tomb. One hit and Minccino is going down, and Luxio's STAB move is at 1/4th effectiveness. It's other damaging move Bite is no better, and let's not forget that he's weak to Sand Tomb to begin with. My solution? Snivy. Snivy can't normally beat Cottonee one on one, not when Florinia has potions and I refuse to use them, but Cottonee doesn't use Poison Powder properly, so all I have to do is survive Cottonee's Sand Tombs. Luckily, Sand Tomb has terrible accuracy, and Snivy has a signature move that has a 50% chance of lowering accuracy. After spamming Leaf Tornado enough to burn through a potion and losing almost all of Snivy's health in the process, Cottonee finally starts missing, and never really stops. I mix in Mega Drains in order to keep myself above the "one hit away from death" line and keep using Leaf Tornado to stack on the accuracy decreases. Eventually I run out of Leaf Tornado PP, but by then Florinia has had to burn her second potion, and it's smooth sailing from there, Mega Draining my health back up as a safety net. Cottonee has more defense than special defense and Snivy is Timid anyway, so Slam is barely different if better at all, and it pays off, since Cottonee manages to land one last Sand Tomb before going down.

 

Finally, Florinia is beaten. Barring my Luxio on account of being useless, my team is in shambles. It's only the second gym, and yet this was easily the hardest pve pokemon battle I've ever had. (Yes, this is my first pokemon fangame)

What a mess.

Anyways, Although I have some issues with the game design, I commend whoever was responsible for the gym design. I look forward to seeing the other gyms.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Ryik

[logintomylife]

There is an item called Common Candy, that will decrease level of your pokemon by one. You can buy them for little cash in the Candy Shop near the park.

Secondly: Leveling pokemon is also rather easy, there are special trainers in the Grand Hall (The place you started at) that you can battle repeatedly.

Dont need to get them on the level cap, just to a level that will let them survive one or two hits.

[VividGrey]

If you don't like changing your team over and over again don't even bother continuing. It's important to have a dynamic team or otherwise you just won't be able to cope with the upcoming challenges. I have like a set of 20 pokemon that I use on rotation. It makes it fun because you get to play with pokemon that you otherwise would never play with such as slugma, meowstic, pachirisu, ... Try to have an open mind and change some pokes around. 

Yeah, reborn is a tough game. And without the right strategy, it'll take a lot of grinding and re-dos. But in the end, I think it's all worth it.

[Ryik]

1 hour ago, logintomylife said:

There is an item called Common Candy, that will decrease level of your pokemon by one. You can buy them for little cash in the Candy Shop near the park.

Secondly: Leveling pokemon is also rather easy, there are special trainers in the Grand Hall (The place you started at) that you can battle repeatedly.

Dont need to get them on the level cap, just to a level that will let them survive one or two hits.

It just feels really bad to have such a core gameplay loop (level up > get stronger) reversed on you. (level up > buy candies to lose your progress > don't get weaker) Makes it feel like a self-imposed challenge more than an organic one, which isn't really appealing for me. It's not realistic to avoid this without a full team either, since I ran from all wild encounters in between the first and second gym but ended up exceeding the level cap anyway.

Genuinely didn't know that second part though. That's good to know. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad to give common candies a try then. All the talk I've seen here and there about grinding a rotating party wasn't very encouraging though, so I guess I'll be playing it by ear.

24 minutes ago, VividGrey said:

If you don't like changing your team over and over again don't even bother continuing. It's important to have a dynamic team or otherwise you just won't be able to cope with the upcoming challenges. I have like a set of 20 pokemon that I use on rotation. It makes it fun because you get to play with pokemon that you otherwise would never play with such as slugma, meowstic, pachirisu, ... Try to have an open mind and change some pokes around. 

Yeah, reborn is a tough game. And without the right strategy, it'll take a lot of grinding and re-dos. But in the end, I think it's all worth it.

Oh no, that's not the issue. I don't mind raising more than 6 pokemon, or even 20 of them, on the condition that I actually like them. There's a decent amount of pokemon towards the beginning but I'm not interested in most of them. I would have picked up Galvantula, but Joltik came out Shiny and ended up with both a bad nature and the wrong ability, so I shelved him since I have no idea what pokemon modifying mechanics this game has. Will probably revisit, or maybe not, since my favorite pokemon gets sticky web too, Luxio is an electric attacker, and I'm thinking of picking up Mareep to boot.

I guess you could call me picky? I've even been skimming through guides to make sure I don't just pass by any I would like to pick up, but I'm not really interested in any of the others I've seen so far.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Ryik

[logintomylife]

Yeah, the problem here is, that in the early stage of the game it's better to not have a full team yet. I myself start with 3, then add one pokemon after each gym. Like this, you won't have problem with half of your team falling behind with XP, and neither should you get over the cap if you don't spam one pokemon all the time. From what I saw, your core pokemon are really strong. (Do recommend getting a level up on Snivy without him dying in battle or you won't get him to evolve)

Like that you add one more whenever you find something you like. Using mechanics of the game is neither cowardly or bad, it's there so you should use it, smartly or wastingly. Right now, I have a 6 pokemon rotation, and I am just waiting for E19 with them (They weren't perfect EV/IV trained till recently, too) so everything is possible if you know how and have the determination to get through the challenges this superb game offers.

7 minutes ago, Ryik said:

It just feels really bad to have such a core gameplay loop (level up > get stronger) reversed on you. (level up > buy candies to lose your progress > don't get weaker) Makes it feel like a self-imposed challenge more than an organic one, which isn't really appealing for me. It's not realistic to avoid this either, since I ran from all wild encounters in between the first and second gym but ended up exceeding the level cap anyway.

Genuinely didn't know that second part though. That's good to know. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad to give common candies a try then. All the talk I've seen here and there about grinding a rotating party wasn't very encouraging though, so I guess I'll be playing it by ear.

Oh no, that's not the issue. I don't mind raising more than 6 pokemon, or even 20 of them, on the condition that I actually like them. There's a decent amount of pokemon towards the beginning but I'm not interested in most of them. I would have picked up Galvantula, but Joltik came out Shiny and ended up with both a bad nature and the wrong ability, so I shelved him since I have no idea what pokemon modifying mechanics this game has. Will probably revisit, or maybe not, since my favorite pokemon gets sticky web too, Luxio is an electric attacker, and I'm thinking of picking up Mareep to boot.

I guess you could call me picky? I've even been skimming through guides to make sure I don't just pass by any I would like to pick up, but I'm not really interested in any of the others I've seen so far.

 

[Ryik]

5 minutes ago, logintomylife said:

Yeah, the problem here is, that in the early stage of the game it's better to not have a full team yet. I myself start with 3, then add one pokemon after each gym. Like this, you won't have problem with half of your team falling behind with XP, and neither should you get over the cap if you don't spam one pokemon all the time.

5 minutes ago, logintomylife said:

Using mechanics of the game is neither cowardly or bad, it's there so you should use it, smartly or wastingly.

My issue was that my team was too small though.

Wild pokemon appear at a pretty significant level and trainers are abundant, so grinding isn't necessarily difficult, I just don't like common candies on principle. If they gave a tangible benefit (gaining gold for using them instead of losing it for example) I could get behind them, since you'd be making some form of progress, just at an inefficient rate. As they are now, they're just a punishment, and therefore I find the system as a whole frustrating.

5 minutes ago, logintomylife said:

(Do recommend getting a level up on Snivy without him dying in battle or you won't get him to evolve)

5 hours ago, Ryik said:

Maybe Snivy would be better if I evolved it, but I decided at the beginning to keep it a Snivy until level 43 for... reasons.

I'm doing the long-term equivalent of greeding for damage.

[logintomylife]

45 minutes ago, Ryik said:

My issue was that my team was too small though.

Wild pokemon appear at a pretty significant level and trainers are abundant, so grinding isn't necessarily difficult, I just don't like common candies on principle. If they gave a tangible benefit (gaining gold for using them instead of losing it for example) I could get behind them, since you'd be making some form of progress, just at an inefficient rate. As they are now, they're just a punishment, and therefore I find the system as a whole frustrating.

Well, if you look at it that way, then it certainly makes looks like punishing, but that's rather a strange way to look at it. For me Common candies are a save for your incapability to not over-level your pokemon o: And for that mistake, you have to pay so the pokemon can actually listen to you! Also, as of the last Episode, if your pokemon levels up -during- fight (You go into the fight with lvl 25 on brink of 26) he will still listen to you during the whole match, so that is one worry off your list. Having full team of capped pokemon is no problem.