[Spoilers] Intense Mono-normal Challenge! (Updated 15/07/21)

[Vum]

Heya are you doing species clause? if not im pretty sure 6 fearows can sweep keta lol

[Glint]

4 hours ago, Vum said:

Heya are you doing species clause? if not im pretty sure 6 fearows can sweep keta lol

 

Yep! I'm actually playing with a slightly extended species clause too so that I can't use two things from the same evo line, e.g only one eeveelution per team, Spearow and Fearow can't be on the same team etc.

 

My list of rules are all in my first post here!

 

Keta shouldn't really be a challenge anyway, I have tons of flying types and psychic moves to choose from. I think I can even get a Sylveon now if I want.

[Vum]

I see, yea mono normal has a lot of answers to keta

[Glint]

Hi all, we're back with another update.

 

There's not much to do right now other than face Keta, so we head back into Sheridan and set up the story ready for the fight. The team is the same one that we used against Novae:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's the video!

 

Spoiler

 

 

First off, Keta's music kinda bops. Second, that wasn't really much of a fight...

 

Granted I got lucky with a couple of crits and a flinch, but either way that was an absolute walk over. The only factor that made that fight a little challenging when I was testing were the rolls on the first turn. Very rarely Hariyama goes for a Fake Out on Hootdini instead of Deus, whilst Breloom doesn't always get OHKOed by Extrasensory. Either way, that's Keta down and we can claim our second badge...except for the part where Keta runs off. Time to track him down!

 

We team up with Aelita and head into Carotos Mountain to find Keta. Inside the Mountain we face off against some Team Xen Grunts and Memebot-3000, who after some heartbreaking scenes is no more. Sleep tight memerino.

 

Eventually we find Madelis deep inside Carotos Mountain, who challenges us to a double battle alongside Keta. We use the same team as before, as it hasn't failed us so far:

 

Spoiler

 

Yep, I definitely didn't forget to put berries on my team members before I walked into the room and got stuck there. Anyway, here's the battle!

 

Spoiler

 

 

...I guess that counts as a win. That was my first attempt and I only really went in there to test things out, but things went better than expected! Having Keta on my side to make it a 12v6 made Madelis' team seem a lot less scary, and we were pretty much able to brute force the fight without any strategy at all. Well, blocking Shadow Mewtwo's hits with my face whilst Keta does all the work counts as a strategy.

 

With Madelis out of the way, Keta decides he can 1v1 an angry Mewtwo....yeah, good luck with that.

 

We leave Keta to it and move onto the far less challenging Rift Volcanion with the same team yet again (now featuring berries):

 

Spoiler

 

Here's the battle!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Yep...that's Rift Volcanion. It's also a great time to end this segment.

 

Until next time, peace!

[Glint]

Hi, welcome back! Let's finish Chapter 2 today!

 

We pick after defeating Rift Volcanion and waking up in the Sheridan Arena. The Eldest tells us to meet her in the Spring of Purification, where we're finally able to purify our Meowth from earlier! We nickname Meowth "Rocket" and store it in the box for now. Access to the Spring also lets us catch our last encounter of Chapter 2, Zigzagoon! We nickname it Bandito and store in the box alongside Rocket.

 

As we leave the Spring, spooky Keta tells us to meet him in Amethyst Grotto before disappearing mid moonwalk. There's not much left to do in Chapter 2, so it's time to prepare for the upcoming Keta battle in Amethyst Grotto. If we don't prepare then I expect that this will be a bit more difficult than the last few fights, mostly due or lack of coverage for dealing with his Gabite and Ninetales.

 

Fortunately, we still have the Eevee from earlier and some stones to evolve it. Vaporeon seems like a particularly good choice for this fight, as it learns Aurora Beam at Lv 20 and a plethora of water moves before Lv 25. With that said, we evolve Eevee into Vaporeon which we name Maelstrom! Unfortunately, Maelstrom is male. This means that we can't get another Eevee until we get Ditto a little later on, so Maelstrom needs to carry us for a while!

 

Anyway, here's the team that I decided on for taking care of Keta:

 

Spoiler

 

Maelstrom doesn't have the best IVs or nature to carry out Vaporeon's traditional role, but with max EVs in HP and Def we should at least be able to overcome its shortcomings a little bit. Anyway, here's the fight!

 

Spoiler

 

 

That quite a bit tougher than I expected! Without Maelstrom I think that fight might have taken me quite a while to get past, especially Keta's Ninetales which hits like a truck with the +1 SpAtk sun boosted Flame Burst. After beating Keta he gives us TM103 Stacking Shot (which is a suprisingly good move early on) and our second badge, raising the level cap to 30.

 

And with that, we've finished Chapter 2! I'm still having a lot of fun with this run, although I think that the difficulty will really start ramping up soon; we're nowhere near the hardest the fights in the game yet and I expect that Novae was just a taste of things to come. As always, feedback is super appreciated!

 

Until next time, peace!

[Glint]

Hi everybody, we're back and ready to get on with Chapter 3!

 

We start off by spending a little time at the Chrisola Casino before going anywhere with the story, which after (many, many) games of Voltorb Flip gives us enough coins to pick up TM10 Hidden Power and TM90 Substitute! The latter will certainly help us in the upcoming fight against Amanda, whilst the former will give us some much needed coverage.

 

Here's a list of the HP types of our special attackers so far:

 

Greg - HP Bug
Hootdini - HP Fighting
Maelstrom - HP Water (HA!)
Reverb - HP Rock
Flash - HP Grass
Borb (which may end up as a special attacker) - HP Electric
Pyro - HP Poison
Hootdunnit (our non-shiny Hoothoot) - HP Ice
Yoomtah - HP Water
Nimbus (our shiny Swablu, which also has crazy good IVs) - HP Fighting
Cumulus - HP Dragon

 

That's quite a good type spread, so we should get plenty of use out of HP during this run! With that out of the way, we head towards Route 3 to take on Amanda. At the same time we teach Greg Substitute, which will allow to avoid Thunder Wave from Amanda's Miltank and deal with it efficiently.

 

Here's the team:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's the fight!

 

Spoiler

 

 

That wasn't too difficult at all, especially given that her team outlevelled ours by quite a bit. I think that having a way of dealing with her Miltank was the key here. On her way out, Amanda gifts us with HM01 Cut which will give us access to a few new areas! We also gain access to the drinks vendor in Sheridan Village, who sells Berry Juice at half the price of Oran Berries that give twice the healing. These will really help us going forward!

 

With our newly acquired HM, we head through Amethyst Cave to Pom Pom Meadow, where we catch a Yungoos and name it Smiler. We also pick up a few new encounters (in fact, these are all of the encounters in Chapter 3) on Route 3 and in Mirage Woods:

 

Doduo (Hydra)
Zangoose (Disaster)...yep, this is another one of those 1% encounters.
Kecleon (Camo)

 

I've been looking forward to getting Zangoose all game. If you thought Violence was dangerous, wait until you see what Disaster can do. Hydra will also most likely replace Violence once we're able to evolve it at Lv 31.

 

We clear out trainers as we head south on Route 3 before bumping into the best character in the game, Rorim B, who challenges us to a battle. Here's the team:

 

Spoiler

 

 

We've pre-poisoned Disaster before the fight, which will allow us to take advantage of the +50% damage using physical moves from Toxic Boost. Here's the video!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Yep...that was just a taste of what Disaster can do, despite being underlevelled. If it wasn't for the Focus Sash on Vivillon she'd most likely have swept the rest of that fight.

 

Anyway, that's Rorim B down so we're free to make our way to Goldenwood Town! Maybe his musical spirit is rubbing off on me...

 

Before we do though, there's a little sidequest that I'd like to take care of in the form of a very angry Kingdra statue. It sits at a whopping Lv 53 and has moves that can easily OHKO every member of our usual squad. Clearly then, we're going to need some sort of cheese strat to get through this fight. Let's review our options:

 

1. PP stalling: Kingdra knows Thunder, Bubblebeam and Ice Beam. Maelstrom can tank Ice Beam, and if I use an ability capsule to give it Water Absorb it can tank Bubblebeam too. But we have nothing that can survive Thunder (Bunnelby seems to far away), so that's out of the question.
2. Status: We have no damaging status moves right now, and I'm not sure that we have access to any through level up either. We could try to *somehow* survive a hit and then pray for confusion, but that seems unlikely and cheap.
3. Leech Seed: This kinda comes under the guise of damaging status moves, but it's not quite so I'm giving it its own category (because I can). We have access to Leech Seed through Bambi, but unfortunately Bambi can't take a hit. So...how do we get this to work?
4. We could use a Telluric Seed which gives Spiky Shield on Forest Field, but a Telluric Seed is a pretty high price to pay. That leaves us with just one more option...
5. Dunsparce: Pretty sure Dunsparce doesn't count as a strategy and I'm just making this up as I go along at this point. But we have a Dunsparce called Serenity and with max SpDef and HP EVs she can tank a hit and use Yawn. Bambi switches in and uses Leech Seed and then we win...eventually.
6. Gary and Bun: They know Fake Out and Endure, so they can stay alive long enough for Leech Seed to actually do its job.

 

Everything clear? Good. Here's the team:

 

Spoiler

 

 

And here's the fight!

 

Spoiler

 

 

That's Kingdra down! It turns out that Serenity being able to tank a hit on the first turn didn't matter there as Kingdra went for a Rain Dance, though I think it only goes for Rain Dance when it doesn't see a guaranteed KO...at least that's what I found during my testing anyway. Either way, with Kingdra down we're able to claim our Itemfinder! This will come in super handy for the rest of the run.

 

And that's it for this segment, next time we'll be taking on Pokegang Crobat and maybe even finishing Chapter 3! I had tons of fun with this segment, I hope you're all still enjoying following along too!

 

Until next time, peace!

[cicada]

Hello I am support

[G O O S E]

gamer
top tier gamer
splendid
fantastic
fabulous
magnificent

legendery
madman
beautiful
(skeletor totally didnt ask me on discord to admire his run)

[Glint]

8 minutes ago, G O O S E said:

gamer
top tier gamer
splendid
fantastic
fabulous
magnificent

legendery
madman
beautiful
(skeletor totally didnt ask me on discord to admire his run)

 

That would be very immoral of me and quite honestly despicable too.

[G O O S E]

 

10 minutes ago, Glint said:

 

That would be very immoral of me and quite honestly despicable too.

ironic how you say that yet you did

[Glint]

Hi all, we're back with another update. Let's try to get to the end of Chapter 3 today!

 

We pick up after having just dealt with the Ancient Guard Kingdra using some serious cheese tactics. That means it's time to face an equally spooky foe in the PokeGang Crobat, which sits at a nice Lv 48 and is accompanied by four Lv 37 Zubats. At first I thought the Zubats might be a problem for us, but they actually give us an opportunity to set up with Maelstrom and get a good headstart over Crobat. I won't go into much detail here for once, and I'll just show you the team instead:

 

Spoiler

 

As before, we pre-poison Disaster so that she can deal some serious damage. Here's the battle!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Aaand that's Crobat down. That fight went a little differently than when I was testing, usually the first Zubat stops using Acrobatics after two Acid Armors which leaves Maelstrom at higher HP. As a result, it can usually chip away at Crobat a bit before it goes down. Either way, that went pretty well and we're able to claim a Zubat...that we can't use. Either way, we name Zubat "Ratbird" in memory of my beautiful Crobat from my first playthrough and store it in the box. Onto Goldenleaf! 

 

We're confronted by Ren at the gates of Goldenwood, who locks us out and drops a hint that we need to find Venam in Gearen. There's a whole lot of story that goes on here and it's super interesting, but I'm not going to type it out here. Eventually we end up at our next Gym Battle, Marianette! I don't expect her to be too much of a challenge, especially after the last two fights, so we've got more or less our usual team:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's the video!

 

Spoiler

 

 

As I expected, that wasn't too hard a battle. The scariest thing on her team might actually be her Lopunny, which becomes bulky incredibly quickly with the boosted cosmic powers whilst hitting hard with +1 Multipulse. The rest of her team is pretty easy to just brute force through though, provided you save a special attacker for Bewear at the end.

 

Anyway, with Marianette out of the way we're able to claim our third badge, taking our level cap all the way to 35! We also get TM42 Facade as soon as we leave the Mansion...and we all know who's getting that!

 

Beating Marianette also signals the end of Chapter 3, which is a great time to end this segment. I might post a quick review of what we have in our box, plans going forward and so on before we carry on with Chapter 4, but maybe not.

 

Either way, until next time...peace!

 

[Glint]

Hi all, welcome back. Let's get started with Chapter 4!

 

We make our way back to Goldenwood Town, where Venam opens up the entrance at last. After being greeted by a welcoming scene, we get our first and only encounter of the Chapter, as well as (I think) the only ground type in the run, Bunnelby! We name Bunnelby "Chungus" (seriously, what else would you call this?) and store it in the box for now.

 

Before continuining the story, we take the time to complete the Rift Gyarados sidequest. After a fairly easy battle against "C" we make our way to Goldenwood Forest, where Rift Gyarados awaits at a whopping Lv 49. Here's the team:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's the video!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Not much of a fight in the end now that we have access to Facade on Disaster. I feel like a lot of battles are going to go this way until the game catches up with us. Anyway, that's Rift Gyarados down for good this time! Back to Goldenwood Town!

 

Back in Goldenwood we meet Narcissa (again), who tells us to "subdue" the outsiders in the Pokémon Centre. Before we do, however, we're challenged to a battle by Aelita! Here's the team:

 

Spoiler

 

And here's the battle!

 

Spoiler

 

 

"Hm...I did a lot better than I thought I would!" - Aelita, doing really badly.

 

After seriously disrespecting Aelita we're able to move on with the story and take on Wispy Tower, but that's for the next segment!

 

Until then, peace!

 

[HoplashTheGuy]

Wait I just realized. You could've chosen froakie as your starter and if it had protean then it could use only normal type moves :D