This Game Has the Worse Artificial Difficulty I Have Ever Seen in a Video Game

[VERsingthegamez]

Here I am at the Connor fight with a level 20 Poliwag and 20 Digglet and this asshole is still one shotting me before I can one shot him on Pokémon that should not be one shotted especially with their type. This is such a shame that the game literally goes from a regular experience to all of a sudden making a gym leader one shot you in an instant. That is literal artificial difficulty. What are his Pokémon drugged up on attack? Did they take some PCP? Give me some of that shit. What do I have to get 4 level 20 poliwags just to take him down and spend hours grinding them up? I am all for difficult battles that test you but this isn't it. How can I be tested if my Pokémon don't even get a chance to allow me to be tested?  Damn shame because I was really liking this story and how interesting it is.

[wcv]

Connor's Vulpix sets up sun, which cuts the power of water moves by 50%. It also boosts the power of fire moves by 50%. Additionally, you battle him on a grassy field, which when flame burst (i.e. his Vulpix's primary attack) is used transforms into the burning field. This further amplifies the power of grounded fire type moves by 50%.

[chamomomile]

its... really not that bad? there's some lotads you can evolve if you get them to level 14, you can get a water-type starter, and you can catch a bidoof and evolve it at like... level 20? and there's a re-fightable trainer for you to grind on, iirc. and this is just off the top of my head mate, im sure there's other stuff

[R.B]

The Connor fight is possibly my favorite first gym battle in any Pokemon game I've played; sun+field makes brute forcing it extremely difficult, even with type advantage (combined effect of burning field and sun actually makes water type moves behave as if resisted, so type advantage doesn't actually get you much), but the game gives you access to a lot of tools to counteract those, so once you understand everything that's going on, it's pretty straightforward to develop a winning strategy. 

Key thing to keep in mind is that if it's raining or water sport is active, the burning field effect won't occur when he uses flame burst; you can get rain dance on poliwag and water sport on poliwag, buizel (available at the beach if you have a poke-candy), lotad, and surskit.  If you water sport turn 1 and have a reasonably bulky fire resist (e.g., one of the lab starters, Bibarel, or Noctowl, which isn't a fire resist but has a ton of bulk for an early game mon), you can pretty easily stall out the sun, at which point all your water-type moves are doing *2 damage instead of *1 (halved by sun, then doubled back to normal from type advantage).

Be aware that the gym battles are balanced around the assumption that you have a full team at or near the level cap, so if you're going in with just two max level pokemon, you're probably underprepared.  Also be aware that the grassy field significantly weakens ground-type moves, so Diglett's not going to be very effective in the fight (incidentally, diglett is one of the frailest pokemon in the entire game, with the lowest hp and 15th lowest defense of any non-shedinja pokemon; getting oneshot is kind of the default thing that happens to it).

Repeatable trainer mentioned by chamomile is next to the building to the left of the pokemon center, wearing a red hat - there's one in every town, and they make level grinding orders of magnitude faster. 

[Dreamy]

It's a regular vulpix with 16 in IVs and not EV trained, as others mentioned, it's just a mix of the sun and the field powering up fire, mixed with you using very frail mons.  

 

Early evolutions and things like fake out to stall sun turns and water sport for weakening fire (lombre should be able to do both) should be able to turn the tide pretty quickly.

[Posty]

Hi Deso Dev here!

 

Firstly sorry to hear that you have been having a hard time with the first gym leader, the game utilises Field Effects like Pokemon Reborn and Rejuvenation (If you have ever played them games, they are actually a bit more difficult than Desolation) meaning that if you have never played around them before, then walking into an important battle for the first time on a specific field might feel quite challenging. That being said, regarding Connor, like the others here have mentioned, there are a few options you can use to get round his team and field. The concept of the battle is for him to set up a field effect and sun which is in his favour and overall gives him the advantage, moves such as Water Sport comes quite handy here which is why there are Pokemon like Poliwag and Buizel available early also the flying bugs like Butterfree etc actually do well considering they can remove the field. His team is actually pretty balanced out regarding "drugs" lol and with the right strategy or just straight up brute force, you can defeat him in a reasonable fashion. 

 

I hope that you are eventually able to defeat him and continue on with the story! I will admit one thing though, if you do continue make sure you pick up one of the two electric types available before the second gym, that is the only gym in the game that even I can say is not balanced and I regret everything, its being adjusted in EP6, apologies in advance. 

[LumberSaysHi]

If you picked a water starter at the lab and Rockruff on the beach, the battle should be a breeze

[ddp123]

Just wait until the flying type gym lol complete overpowered mess, don't understand why they levelcapped in this romhack it's all boring trial and error.

[Lucifer Morningstar]

A poliwag can sweep Connor with Rain Dance. That's what I did. 

[Murillo]

I'm on my second playthrough and is definitely easier now that I know whats ahead of me, but Rosetta and that damn Gardevoir keeps me stuck again and again, no idea how I defeated her the first time so I'm stuck here lmao

[Tengri]

Sorry for the long ranty reply I know I'm late but as someone who fell for this game before the shipwreck I'd feel cowardly for not replying on both the part of the Devs and the OP. 

 

 

My Experience

As a new player I did expect him to be a pain after playing reborn and reju but even I couldn't beat him with my original team comp. I had Wartortle, Zigzagoon, pidgeotto, vivillion, numel and Venipede. I start with Numel to wipe out vulpix so I don't have to worry about drought more than once, usually I can get lucky and OHKO his next choice torracat but it usually outspeeds me and somehow takes over half my HP due to the boosted fire terrain despite Numel being fire/ground. Given the level cap I can't do much else but find a way to heal it which usually means sacrificing zigzagoon to his pignite which is now set up to outspeed most of my mons. I tend to end the fire field with gust on one of my two flyers and try to use viv for it since Pidgeotto is my plan to get rid of his fletch's gale wings later but I can't get past his growlithe no matter how I go about it after managing to wittle away his pignite. Wartortle can't out damage his morning sun even at night time when it heals less and nothing else besides my numel can seem to down it but doing so has basically ended in a trade each time since I already used my super potions and it feels dumb to "waste" a hyper on the first gym. Not to mention it's magby outspeeds my whole team from my experience. I tried to gamble with Venipede's rollout but he got revenge killed each time, pidgeotto seemingly can't kill ANY of his pokemon except pignite with Gust despite having a good EV/IV set-up considering this part of the game. 

 

 

My Opinion
Am I saying that it's BS, no but I am saying that I don't think it's as easy as "lol get a water type bro" as some are suggesting. Mudkip would probably be the "best" starter pick for this gym but honestly I doubt that would cut it without proper counter set-up of rain dance AND water sport which will likely be martyr pokemon given the level cap at this point of the game. If you need to go that hard on the first gym it seems like a bad curve imo. Going to start a new save for now with the beach starter I was originally going to use and see how that goes but long story short, I don't think the curve for the first gym in any game regardless of the difficulty you're trying to sell should require specific move sets to win. Not because it's impossible but because it feels gross personally to have to team swap at each gym just so I can continue. For my two cents, as much as I've loved Reborn, Reju and especially Desolation I think it would be more enjoyable with either early access to terrain swap moves to counter gyms "fairly" or allow you to play a-la Ash and skip gyms until you actually have a team comp able to go against it. I liked the idea of level capping originally and I definitely prefer being able to "lose control" of my pokemon for a few levels to evolve it or teach it a necessary move before candying it back down but the way it's been implemented with essentially Smogon level Monoteams against players with Vanilla moves it just feels a bridge too far sometimes and Connor is one of those times. Julia was honestly a cakewalk with various options, Venam was somewhere in the middle but Connor just feels like a STAB Sucker Punch to my poor Ghastly soul. Thanks for your time and if devs read this late reply to an old thread I appreciate your time and work and I saw some reworks might be headed for early game that would affect this so obviously take this with a large pinch of salt. I love your game and I will persevere like the Dark Souls player I have become. 

[AstranBlue]

On 8/7/2021 at 8:07 PM, ddp123 said:

Just wait until the flying type gym lol complete overpowered mess, don't understand why they levelcapped in this romhack it's all boring trial and error.

you are aware this isnt a rom hack, right?