Setting Off a Chain Reaction: A Reborn Mono-Nuclear run/story

CURIE · February 10, 2022

If you're involved enough in the fangame scene to be using this website, you've at least heard of Pokemon Uranium. While I enjoyed the game overall it had some... issues, the biggest of which in my opinion was the gross mishandling of its main "quirk": the Nuclear type. Almost all the Nuclear-type Pokemon are corrupted versions of already existing Pokemon, which sounds kinda cool right? Well too bad because the corruption has driven them mad and they won't listen to you, making them practically unusable. You can "purify" them later on and then they'll obey you, but by "later on" I mean only after you've got ALL the gym badges. By then, you've already got a team set up that you've been playing with the whole game, and with the story almost over you probably aren't inclined to grind up a new member just to try out the new type. There are a handful of "natural" nuclear Pokemon that will listen to you without needing to be purified, but most of them are, you guessed it, only available after you've beaten all the gyms.

But now for some good news: @Fervis has made a badass mod (link here) that adds most of Uranium's fakemon, moves, and of course the Nuclear type to Reborn. And yes, the Nuclear-form Pokemon actually listen to you this time. He even made a bunch of Nuclear forms that weren't in the original, just because he's cool like that. So to make up for how underused the Nuclear type is in it's own game, I'll be attempting the first-ever Nuclear Monotype of Reborn.

The (updated for episode 19) rules are:

1. The energy core that lets me nuclearize Pokemon is available very early on, only behind 3 required trainer battles (5 if you count Victoria and Cain at the start). I make a beeline for it, catch a Pokemon with a Nuclear form along the way, nuclearize that Pokemon, dump my starter in the box, and then the run really begins.

2. Only Nuclear-type Pokemon in battles. I can use other types of Pokemon for sidequests, HMs, breeding, etc. In the original Uranium the nuclear Pokemon were found already corrupted in the wild and couldn't breed, but in this mod you actively turn regular Pokemon into their nuclear forms. That means breeding is actually an option here.

3. The mod has debug enabled for testing purposes, obviously I won't use it.*

*There was one point where a glitch deleted most of my Pokemon. I used debug to replace them. I don't really count that as cheating. I'm sure you'd feel the same way if a glitch deleted most of YOUR Pokemon!

~~4. The mod is an expansion of Plates of Arceus, which has a ton of side content and even its own separate storyline. I'm ignoring it for the most part. This is about Reborn the base game.~~

As of the episode 19 update the mod is no longer an expansion of Plates of Arceus, but its own standalone thing. So this rule doesn't matter anymore.

4. I'll use the weathermod and easyHMs passwords for convenience, but not in any way that would affect the game's difficulty. That is to say, if a boss requires an HM move to reach (with no access to a PC to switch out an HM slave), then someone on my team has to be able to learn that move. Also, I can't set a weather condition that can't naturally occur in whatever area I'm in.

*Bonus Points* I'll TRY to follow these, but if I get completely stuck and HAVE to break one to win, I will.

*1* Play on set mode.

*2* No items in battle.

*3* Nucleon is banned because he's kinda broken.

As of the episode 19 update Nucleon has been nerfed, so he's tentatively unbanned. If he still ends up being too OP I might re-ban him, who knows.

I think that about covers it, so let's begin. I also considered making this one of those "fanfic" playthroughs that are popular on this side of the forums but realized that anything I wrote would probably be cringey and bad.

Then I remembered this is the internet so I don't care!

Chapter 1

Reveal hidden contents

And for those of you who care more about the game than my shitty fanfiction, I'll be adding a "gameplay section" to my updates.

Reveal hidden contents

First thing I do after grabbing a starter is fight these three guys.

These are the only required trainer fights to reach Fern, but Fern's not why I'm going there. THIS is why I'm going there:

This is what allows us to turn regular Pokemon into Nuclear Pokemon, if they have nuclear forms programmed into the game (and yes, it has infinite uses). They don't learn Nuclear moves naturally though, those are taught by a special tutor later in the game. So until I reach that tutor, my Pokemon have all the downsides of the Nuclear type, with NO benefit. That's why I said at the beginning I was going to "attempt" this, it's probably going to be really hard and there's no guarantee I won't give up.

I just realized I haven't explained Nuclear type for those of you who haven't actually played Uranium. It's simple: It's super effective against every type except Steel and itself (which both resist it), but it's also weak to every type in return, including Steel (actually it resists itself, but since no one in Reborn uses Nuclear types that doesn't matter). Nuclear form Pokemon that were single type become their original type + Nuclear, and those that were dual-typed have whatever their second type was replaced with Nuclear.

Anyway after picking up the Energy Core I backtrack to the Opal Ward and catch an Ekans.

Ekans' ability was actually Unnerve; I used the Ability Capsule you get next to Mosswater Factory to make it Intimidate. Maybe it was a waste but I really liked the nature she had and didn't want to soft reset it away. Arbok may not be the fastest Pokemon naturally, but... well, you'll see if we get that far in the game. I dump my starter in the box, and the challenge officially begins. First thing I do is find a wild Chyinmunk, throw Pokeballs at it, and catch it on the second try at full health.

Chyinmunk is the absolute bottomest-of-the-barrel shitmon in all of Uranium. Don't have any better options though.

Our first problem is leveling up. We have two very low level Pokemon, who are weak to every type, and Ekans' only moves are Wrap and Leer. There are more Nuclear-compatible Pokemon available before Julia, but they're behind trainers we don't stand a chance against. That's why I needed Intimidate on Ekans, it guarantees she'll survive at least one hit from any wild Pokemon bar a crit. By leading with her, getting a Leer in, getting in some Wrap damage if I get the chance, and switching to Cyinmunk before she dies, I can actually win a fight and get xp for both Pokemon... sometimes. Other times it goes poorly and I have to run before I wipe. Wipe to low level wild Pokemon. We're starting at the very bottom of the very bottom of the ladder here, huh. After enough victories, both Pokemon leveled up to the point they can win fights on their own. After yet some more grinding, we were able to get past the trainers that were blocking off new party members.

I catch a Tonemy in the Railnet:

A Tancoon in the alley whose IVs are so good, while ALSO having the ability I wanted, that I accept the bad nature:

And the Gulpin event has been replaced with Costraw.

Oh right, there's also this:

Remember how I said I was ignoring Plates of Arceus content "for the most part"? Well at the very beginning of the game they just give you a plate for free and a merchant who can swap it out for any other type plate you want. I'll make an exception for this since it's free and so easily accessible. Cut me some slack here, I'm weak to every type. Oh by the way, you may have noticed the thing in the top left, it's part of the weather mod that Fervis included. I don't think there's a way to get it to go away, so I've been cropping it out of the pictures in the story segments. You'll also notice that the dates and times are inconsistent between screenshots, that's because time is sped up drastically in the weather mod.

I'm NOT fighting these guys, not yet. They're a surprise tool that'll help us later.

Anyway I also train up a Bidoof to learn Headbutt, because we can find Owten in the trees. Yep, we can.... get an Owten...... any second now.......... over 300 encounters and still no Owten................ Okay finally I got one!

aaaaaaaaaaaand it's complete garbage.

About 150 headbutts later I found a much better one.

Except that she has the worst of the 3 abilities. Oh well.

After training up everyone to around the same level and beating the rest of the trainers, it's time for Fern.

Reveal hidden contents

On to Mosswater Factory. Most of the grunts didn't give me too much trouble, but by "didn't give me too much trouble" I mean "took out one or more of my Pokemon and I only won 'easily' because I have a full team". That's how it goes when you're weak to every type.

Kinetmunk was my first evolution at level 14. As Chyinmunk she was absolute garbage, but now she has an electric move in Thundershock that is boosted by the field and deals... still pitiful damage. Partially because she doesn't get stab (she'd normally be part Electric but it was replaced by Nuclear), but mostly because Kinetmunk just suuuuuuuuucks.

Back on track, the final two grunt fights gave me some problems.

If I don't do something about Minior it'll get a Rollout going and destroy us both, but the Pokemon best equipped to deal with it are all quad weak to fighting and get oneshot by Crawbrawler. To make matters worse, Fern's AI will always try to take the Crabrawler down first. Also Minior's immune to status until it's below half health. In the end what I did is led with Owten and get a Charm off before being oneshot, send in Ekans for yet more attack lowering, then brute force the rest of the way through the battle. By the time I won most of the team was dead even with Minior at -3 attack. By the way it's worth noting that the enemy AI almost always attacks me, unless they just happen to have a super effective move against Fern.

Haven't really talked about it yet, but Tancoon is my best Pokemon right now. She's got stab Bite which is boosted by Tough Claws, and I gave her the Dread Plate just for good measure. So she could handle Solrock and Lunatone, right? Wrong, because she's slower than both of them and is put down by two rock throws. Owten can't do much because her only attacks are resisted by Rock, my 3 Poison types all get oneshot by Confusion, and Kinetmunk is a fucking Kinetmunk. To make matters worse, when Budew goes down Fern is effectively just out of the fight. Sandile does nothing but spam Leer, so I guess he really doesn't have Bite. The way I won is by leading with Owten, who outspeeds and gets a charm off on one of them. They both attack me with Rock Throw, and because of Charm it takes both to kill me instead of only one. I expected Fern to go for Mega Drain, but was surprised to see him choose a better strategy: Stun Spore. I send in Ekans next, partially for attack lowering but mostly to predict both enemies attacking me with Confusion. Hard switch to Tancoon. I predicted right, the enemy wastes their turn entirely and Fern tries to Stun Spore the other... but misses. Oh well. I Bite Lunatone, the one who isn't Paralyzed, and it almost kills. Both enemies attack Budew, or I assume they did because Solrock got unlucky with the paralysis. Fern tries again with Stun Spore and succeeds this time.

Tancoon's now faster than both, and she handled the rest.

Aster and Eclipse fight:

Reveal hidden contents

A couple gym trainers and explosions later, and next is Julia. I grind the whole team up to the level cap, which gives us a couple more evolutions:

My strongest Pokemon, now even stronger. And she just looks so badass too.

Her ability changes from Levitate to Intimidate, which... I mean yeah Intimidate is good too, but now half my team actually is quad weak to ground...

I could also evolve Ekans by going 2 levels over the cap and Common Candying back down, but if I find myself needing to employ those kinds of strategies against the first gym then I have bigger problems.

Julia time.

Reveal hidden contents

Kinetmunk is usually absolute garbage, but in Julia's fight specifically she has some use. She learns Charge, which is usually worthless but in the Electric Terrain gives me +2 Special Defense instead of 1, meaning I take a field-boosted Charge Beam like it's nothing. Julia switches to using Nuzzle after this, but it still does weak damage and Kinetmunk's main attack is Quick Attack anyway. Minun also has Quick Attack and uses it to get one more hit in, but like the other two attacks the damage is low. Now Kinetmunk's in a good position against whatever gets sent out next-

OKAY NEVERMIND. Yeah this mod gives Julia a shiny Galvanize Slothohm who also knows Quick Attack, which is basically a hard counter to my strategy thus far. I'm gonna have to save Kinetmunk for after I kill this thing.

I didn't lead with Tanscure the first time because I didn't want my strongest Pokemon to get paralyzed right off the bat. But after the Kinetmunk plan failed I decided to give it a try in case she was strong enough to oneshot Minun, and what do you know. She is.

Julia sends in her own strongest Pokemon, Electrode, which then immediately explodes! Holy shit that's one way to respond to my strongest Pokenon! Now that I know she'd do this, I COULD reset and switch to someone weaker right before Electrode blows up, but I'm gonna try and see if I can win this attempt. I don't know who she's sending in but I know Slothohm is still alive, so I send in Tofurang.

Nope, it was Oricorio. Intimidate is basically wasted. She sets up Tailwind and I poison her, and we trade blows until one of us goes down. It's her.

NOW it's Slothohm. I would like to try and poison it but I know it has Quick Attack and will just kill me, so I switch to Ekans. Even with Intimidate Slothohm hits like a truck, and Ekans only barely survives two Quick Attacks at 1 hp to get a Screech off before dying. I could switch Tofurang back in for a second Intimidate, but that would risk Julia switching and rendering my sacrifice useless. Instead I go to Costraw.

Julia switches anyway, rendering my sacrifice pointless. Leech Life does a whole lot to Plusle and can kill next turn (Costraw's attack is lower than his special attack but remember this is post-gen 7 Leech Life), but even then I don't see myself beating Slothohm.

I try anyway. First by hard switching to Tofurang for one last Intimidate. She predictably gets wrecked and I send Costraw back in. Now the question is, do I go straight for Leech Life or try and get a Leer in? I end up deciding to go straight for Leech Life. Good thing I did, because Quick Attack does just over half my health, and the Leech Life healing puts me at just enough to survive one more Quick Attack and get in another attack! Slothohm barely survives and kills me next turn, leaving just Kinetmunk and Eshouten. I go for Eshouten.

Eshouten obviously has a higher speed stat so her Quick Attack goes first and she gets a crit! I don't think the crit was necessary actually, He was at such low health I'm pretty sure he would've died despite resisting Normal.

Las is Volchik, and... not much to say about it. Eshouten twoshots it. It hits me with Sweet Kiss but even if I had terrible confusion luck and died, Kinetmunk would have finished it off.

Honestly that was more intense than it needed to be, if I had redone the fight and sacked someone to Electrode's Explosion it would've been a Tanscure sweep. I'm glad I did it this way, though, it was more fun.

Poor Kinetmunk, though! The one time she could have been useful outside of Pickup, and she gets cockblocked by a sloth!

And that's it for today.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

And no, I'm not doing "character ratings".

Fervis · February 11, 2022

Really. Really. Awesome.

I'm excited how it will continue!

I'm happy that I decided to add the nuclear alts to the game before E19 releases! Wish you best of luck!

CURIE · February 16, 2022

Chapter 2

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

If you read the story section you've probably figured this out already, but Popplio was the starter I chose.

I bring this up because, well first of all it's relevant in the story section, but also because Fervis intends to update the mod with more stuff after episode 19's public release, including more nuclear forms. I have a hunch Nuclear starters might be an eventuality, so I soft resetted for good IVs and got a Popplio with a PERFECT Special attack! The nature's bad, but if Nuclear Primarina is added I'll probably have access to the nature changer by then. If I'm wrong and Nuclear Primarina is never a thing, I'll uh... figure out something else to do with Popplio in the story. Or maybe just leave her forgotten in the daycare forever, I dunno.

Now back to the present. Even though I skipped over the slums arc in the story, I still had to play through it in the actual game. First up is Victoria, and she was super easy.

Reveal hidden contents

None of the randos in the slums gave me any real trouble. While fighting them I made sure to primarily use Ekans to get her the last couple levels she needed. Tofurang also finally learned an acceptable attacking move in Poison Fang.

Now for the part you've probably been wondering about this whole time. Half my team is quad weak to fighting, and my strongest Pokemon is a Dark attacker. How could I POSSIBLY have gotten past the Scraggies?

Reveal hidden contents

Well mainly it's because the AI would do nothing but spam Payback.

At first I led with Eshouten to see how much Wing Attack did to a Scraggy. It did around 3/4ths of its health, which made me realize that it would be a oneshot if she weren't intimidated. It's also where I first noticed the AI was using Payback, even though Eshouten was quad weak to fighting. I started again leading with Arbok and Tofurang, to see if the double Intimidate would cause the AI to switch. If it did, it would send Scrafty right into my Poison Gas, I could wear it down with everyone but Eshouten, and finally send in Eshouten to clean up the rest. Nope, they just use Payback. I have Arbok Screech them to see if THAT causes the AI to switch. Nope, they just use Payback. They kill Arbok and I send in Costraw, and between the poison and lowered defense they both go down at the same time, leaving just Scrafty and the third Scraggy. I poison them both with Poison Gas before they both knock out Costraw with... you guessed it, Payback. NOW I send in Eshouten and she oneshots the remaining Scraggy, while Scrafty kills Tofurang with Payback and gets the dreaded Moxie boost. I send in Kinetmunk, hoping the AI will choose her over Eshouten since they're both quad weak to fighting. Well I was half right, he hits Kinetmunk... with Payback. Regardless of not being a fighting move it was enough to kill, giving him a second Moxie boost, but by then the battle was already over.

I didn't take any other screenshots because this was basically just a test run; I didn't expect to actually win on my second try. I get why they spammed Payback on my poison types, it was a really strong super effective move and my Pokemon were always faster, but both my normal types weigh enough that Low Kick should've done more damage. I guess being weak to every type really messes with the AI.

After healing in Coral Ward I returned to the slums to hunt for a Ratsy. Ratsy doesn't have a Nuclear form but does learn Sketch, meaning it can theoretically breed any egg move I need onto Pokemon that do have Nuclear forms. Problem is I need a male, and for probably this very reason Fervis changed the gender ratio to be mostly female (it's the other way around in the original Uranium). This is made worse by the fact that Ratsy is a rare encounter in the slums to begin with. In the end I decided to just grab a female and breed it to get a male later.

By the way, this mod also adds two more possible options for the egg you find in the slums, being Masking and Flager. Flager would be great because he has a nuclear form.

But no, I just got one of the vanilla options.

Next is mr. bad character, a fight that also didn't happen in the story but I had to do in the game.

Reveal hidden contents

A feature that Plates of Arceus adds, and therefore this mod has too, is that HMs can be used at any time without a Pokemon having to actually know the move. Here you can see me cutting down a tree with only Arbok in the party, who can't actually learn cut.

I'm... waffling on whether or not I should allow this. Sure it's more convenient, and MOST of the time it won't actually effect the game's difficulty, but there are a few places like the water treatment center where part of the challenge of the game is to navigate an area with HM moves, while also dealing with difficult battles, with no PCs around to swap out an HM slave. Right now it doesn't matter because Cut is a slight upgrade to tackle so I gave it to Tanscure anyway. In the future, though? Not so sure.

Back to the plot. Normally I wouldn't count the fake daycare couple as important or hard enough to talk about here, but it was actually a plot point in the story section so I might as well.

Reveal hidden contents

Now that I can go to the Obsidia Ward there's another mystery egg that has a couple Uranium options: Glaslug, Brailip, and Shrimputy. Two of those have Nuclear forms.

But yet again I just get one of vanilla options. This means there are no new new Nuclear Pokemon available between Julia and Florinia. No one in the school gave me any trouble, but before fighting Fern I go grind Casino coins for a while to get all the TMs (none of the Casino Pokemon matter in this run. Slugma would've mattered, except he's been changed in this mod). Facade in particular is a much bigger upgrade than Cut was, so I give it to most of my party. Most of them had a more-or-less useless move to replace, but with Eshouten all her moves had proven useful so I ended up overwriting Quick Attack. Hopefully I don't regret that decision later. Tofurang in particular had two more-or-less useless moves, and she's also my bulkiest, so I gave her Substitute as well.

Okay, now it's time for Fern.

Reveal hidden contents

A little bit of level grinding later (my Pokemon were already almost at the cap by this point anyway) and it's the fight I was most worried about this chapter.

Reveal hidden contents

So. You've probably noticed by now that my team is... not very well matched up against Florinia. Half of them are quad weak to Nature-Power-turned-field-boosted-Sand-Tomb. You know, Florinia's signature move. The Pokemon who had Levitate, no longer has it. My only flying type isn't actually flying type. I had a couple ideas for things I could do to prepare, like train up an unevolved Tonemy (so it still has levitate) or overlevel Costraw to get him to evolve and common candy him back down, but before I try any of that let's see if I can win with my team as is.

Florinia's scariest Pokemon aside from Cradily is her first, since it gets STAB from the dreaded Sand Tomb. I lead with Tanscure first and try to set up Howl, but it crits me for half my health so I soft reset and try again. This time it misses, nice! I Bite and... I also miss. Yeah, it has Sand Veil. It Shell Smashes this time, outspeeds, almost kills with Sand Tomb, and I miss again.

After a third attempt I find that this is where we end up if we don't both miss. This obviously a loss for me because it's faster now and I can't switch out. I could keep soft resetting until he misses and I don't, but what about if I just Bite twice without setting up Howl? It looks like I should be able to twoshot... I try again, yep Bite is a twoshot, and holy crap she missed again! I just gotta not miss this second Bite... And I hit, good. If I know the AI, the next is probably Ferroseed...

It is. Remember how I said Cararalm was the scariest? Honestly it's a three way tie. This thing has Iron Barbs, so physical attacking is bad. But my only special attacks are resisted or outright immune... So trying to brute force it with Tanscure is basically my only option. I set up Howl since I didn't earlier, which ended up being a mistake.

I forgot about field-boosted Pin Missile, which Tanscure is quad weak to. Florinia gets 4 hits which I just barely survive, and the Iron Barbs damage kills me when I bite it. At least I almost kill it in return, which causes it to die from the self-inflicted Sand Tomb damage! I don't know who she's sending in next though... so I send in Kinetmunk.

It's Flapple. Facade gets a crit and does decent damage but Flapple absolutley DECIMATES me with Bullet Seed. I equipped everyone who didn't already have an item with an Oran Berry, but in this case it didn't even come close to saving me. at least I know Eshouten will be faster though, so I send her in next and Wing Attack for the kill- it doesn't kill. Bullet Seed only hits twice this time but one of them is a crit, which I only barely survive. Oran Berry didn't make a difference here either.

And here comes the Cradily, which I know doesn't have Nature Power and whose only attack is Physical. I go to Tofurang and use Poison Fang, desperately hoping for the bad poison.

I get it first try! I now Set up Substitute hoping Smack Down doesn't break it first hit, and start spamming Poison Fang. Smack Down does, in fact, break Substitute first hit. Unfortunate. I just keep spamming until I die-

-and she misplays! Switching to Tikiki to take a Poison Fang to the face and almost die! And get badly poisoned! Now, Tikiki has a higher base speed than Tofurang, but I'm two levels higher... I don't want to sack Tofurang if I don't have to, but I'm not sure who to switch to if she's slower... And then I remember Costraw exists. I switch to him.

He gets hit massivley by Fire Punch and burned, but that really doesn't matter. Between the sandstorm Cradily set up earlier and the poison, Tikiki dies and Costraw lives. Florinia sends Cradily back in, I Confuse Ray hoping it'll hit itself, it doesn't. I die and send Tofurang back in. Poison Fang is just barely not enough to kill, but Cradily finishes itself off from Confusion!

All that's left is Cottonee, who outspeeds and hits me with Nature-Power-turned-field-boosted-quad-super-effective-Sand-Tomb, but incredibly enough it isn't enough to kill even from my low health! Actually it's not that incredible, Sand Tomb is physical and Cottonee's base attack stat is 27. Obviously a single Poison Fang takes it out.

You might see how hard this fight was as a bad sign for the future, but keep in mind this was with my team specifically having a bad matchup against Julia's team. Future gym fights shouldn't have such a bad matchup... I think. I actually see it as a good sign that I was able to win without items.

Granted, I did get pretty lucky...

I'm not ending the chapter just yet, though. Now we're going to Jasper.

Even if I didn't have Plates of Arceus' free HM usage, I could just teach cut to Tanscure and immediately switch it back to Facade since I have the TM. Similar to what I did in the slums, I primarily battled with Costraw to get him to evolve before the boss.

He also finally learned an acceptable attacking move in Sludge. None of the randos or grunts here posed any problem, so let's cut to Taka.

Reveal hidden contents

And that's all for today's episode. Well, mostly. There are two more things before you go. First of all, the mystery egg you can get after beating Taka ALSO has Uranium Pokemon added as options, one of which has a nuclear form. Did I get it?

Yes I did! I'll soft reset for good IVs and train him/her up in between chapters.

Secondly, check out these shinies I found while grinding. Their IVs are both terrible so I won't be replacing my team members, but I just wanted you to see how fucking cool the shiny Nuclear Pokemon look. I'd sure love to get one that doesn't have terrible IVs. Maybe that egg I just picked up hmmmmmm?

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

stibarsen · February 17, 2022

This is a neat narrative so far! Just posting to say that the reason Fern's Sandile doesn't have Bite is that Plates of Arceus uses gen 8 level-up movesets (where it learns Bite at level 15) instead of gen 7 ones where possible, and Fern's Sandile has its default level-up moveset at this point. This doesn't normally come up in a Plates of Arceus playthrough because Fern's Sandile is replaced by an altform one that's water type (and thus can actually do things against lunatone/solrock), but since you're playing with the altforms turned off... yeah.

Same thing with the Scraggies (Scraggys?) not having low kick (they actually learn it too early to still know it at these levels), but there's no altform-related excuse there.

Fervis · February 24, 2022

Updated some nuclear mons, maybe that might help you with team composition :>

Good luck on your journey! I really enjoy reading it.

CURIE · March 3, 2022

On 2/24/2022 at 5:36 PM, Fervis said:

Updated some nuclear mons, maybe that might help you with team composition :>

Good luck on your journey! I really enjoy reading it.

Expand

Thanks for letting me know. Although your update seems to have broken the party icons for several nuclear Pokemon, making them appear as normal. As far as I can tell this happens to the Tonemy, Ekans, Tancoon, Baashaun, Growlithe, and Chyinmunk lines but there may be more.

Chapter 3

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

This scene is the reason I ended chapter 2 at Taka instead of Florinia. It's so UNBELIEVABLY CRINGE that I simply did not want to include it in the story, I didn't have any good ideas for writing it in a less bad way, and skipping stuff between chapters is better than skipping them mid-chapter. The devs have talked about reworking the early game in episode 19 and I'd LIKE to think this is one of the things they'd try to make less bad, but this is the same dev team that put Cain in the game so who knows.

Anyway, as I alluded to earlier I soft resetted the Nupin egg for a shiny. "But wait" you say, "wouldn't you have to hatch the egg every time just to see if it's shiny? That'd take forever! Shiny egg icons are a feature in episode 19, but you're playing episode 18!" Well guess what, Plates of Arceus did it before episode 19 did.

(they only use a generic icon for all shiny eggs though, so what episode 19 does is still more impressive)

Anyway here she is in all her shiny nuclear glory aaaaaaand I don't like it as much as Ekans or Owten. At least her (relevant) IVs are decent.

She's not the only Pokemon I can pick up to replace Kinetmunk either, if you go into the broken elevator after talking to the dude missing his Mareep (the one with the forest field notes), you'll find he actually has a second missing sheep. This is actually a choice event, if you take Mareep then Baashaun will dissapear and vice versa. Baashaun has a nuclear form and Mareep doesn't though, so I really only have one choice.

Baashaun can get Light Screen from breeding with Espurr/Meowstic, who learns it at level 30. I was GOING to train up Nupin to replace Kinetmunk and leave Baashaun in the box to breed later, but then I realized my mistake: Baashaun was male. I would've needed a female to breed Light Screen. And I had already saved over the male because his nature was good. And it's a one-time event, so I can't just get another Baashaun.

I just train him up instead. Nupin's quad weak to the next two gym leaders anyway.

ZEL and Taka fight:

Reveal hidden contents

Tanscure's minus speed nature is actually beneficial here: Arbok is a couple points faster and can hit Glaceon with screech BEFORE Tanscure hits her with Bite for the oneshot. I really didn't want to deal with Icy Wind. Tanscure gets seeded in retaliation, but that's not really as big a deal.

Zero's Umbreon resists my strongest moves so I have Tanscure attempt to oneshot Exeggcute while Arbok Screeches Umbreon. For some reason Taka's AI decides to switch to Chatot, who very nearly gets oneshot by Bite while Umbreon confuses Tanscure. Not a big deal, Arbok isn't confused and is faster so she finishes off Chatot. Tanscure sets up Howl and Umbreon hits Arbok for over half her health.

I'm pretty sure at this point Arbok's gonna go down so she gets one more Screech off on Umbreon while Tanscure absolutley DECIMATES Exeggcute. To my surprise Arbok survives with 1 HP which means I can get a Screech off on Tangrowth too!

Nevermind, Umbreon has Quick Attack. At least I got a flinch on Tangrowth. I send in Trawpint and try Confusion, but neither it nor Bite do very much damage, and Tanscure is at low HP. I try again but apparently I had already forgotten about Quick Attack because that's exactly what Umbreon does. Trawpint also gets Acid Spray'd.

I send in Eshouten hoping Wing Attack + Confusion is enough to finish the PULSE off... it's not. And it used Mega Drain to get back basically all the damage I dealt. Great ZEL switched to Espeon, by the way. Then I realized. Wing Attack and Confusion don't have stab, and PULSE Tangrowth has Filter. Therefore Sludge and Facade, which do have stab and are both neutral effective, do more damage. I try those instead and... It's enough to kill!

Lumi's (or was it Eve's? I don't care enough to look it up) Espeon kills Eshouten for... some reason (I guess the AI knew it was a kill on both and chose at random) and now it's the new guy's time to shine. He's unfortunately slower than Espeon so Trawpint dies but Beat Up absolutely destroys her. I realize now that Beat Up only attacks once for every alive party member and didn't at the time, but in this case 2 hits was still enough for the kill. All that's left is Umbreon, Baaschaf, and Tofurang. A couple of Revenges and Poison Fangs do the trick. All Umbreon does is confuse me, but I never hit myself.

As you could tell if you read the story section, I'm going for the true ending. That means I have to fight Corey on the poison mist field, which is bad news for anyone not poison type. Now, at some point in between the ZEL/Taka fight and me actually getting around to writing this crap, is when Fervis updated his mod to include more nuclear forms. The ones I can get at this point are Grimer, Nidoran Male, and Growlithe. Hey look, two of those are poison types! Both of their level up movesets are absolute trash though (Grimer learns some good special moves but his special attack is 40) so I'm gonna try to go in with most of my current team. Most, because there's technically one more nuclear type I can get now:

The older version of the mod had nuclear Splendifowl, but just Splendifowl and not Birbie or Aveden. Well this update's added nuclear forms for those two pre-evolutions, so I can add this guy to the team now instead of right before Shelly like I planned! And as an added bonus, he learns Gust by level up to destroy the field. Incidentally, this is the first Nuclear type we've had that Fervis made up.

Well anyway, even though I don't plan on using Grimer or Nidorino for this fight I might as well pick them up for later. I'll just mosey on over to Coral Ward and fish up a-

WAIT WHAT? This wasn't in the Pokemon locations excel file! It just says Hagoop is in the Tanzaan Depths! Well I guess I shouldn't complain about a new usable Pokemon (this guy also has a nuclear form) but now I wonder how many others I'll miss because of things not mentioned in the excel file.

His IVs and nature sucked so I got a better one. He's yet another Poison/Nuclear type by the way, I could fight Corey with an entire team of Poisons now if I wanted to. But I don't. I pick up a Grimer and Nidoran like I had originally planned, bought some berries, and moved on.

Reveal hidden contents

You probably expected me to use Gust first turn to get rid of the mist, didn't you? Nope, I put the Skrelp to sleep and switch out immediately to Baaschaf, who gets poisoned immediately on the switch in. The Skrelp's still asleep so I try to push my luck with a Focus Energy, but it wakes up and kills me in one shot with Bubble. Yeah, probably shouldn't have been greedy there. I soft reset and try again, miss sing, and guess what? Bubble oneshots Aveden too! Something you need to understand here is that Bubble gets an added poison type in this field, meaning it's now two types that Nuclear is weak to, meaning all my non-poison types are quad weak to it. Not to mention the 1.5x power boost... Yeah this Skrelp can wreck my whole team if I don't soft reset to abuse sleep.

So that's exactly what I do. One more reset and I get Baaschaf in safely. This time I don't get greedy and go straight for Facade, which is doubled in power AND gets a boost from Guts! It would be a oneshot, except Skrelp has a Focus Sash. I guess Focus Energy was never an option after all, since sleep is a maximum of three turns. Well good news is that this time Skrelp got a 3 turn sleep, so I finish it off next turn.

Croagunk is next and Sucker Punches me, but it does pitiful damage and I oneshot it with Facade. Next is Trawpint, which outspeeds and kills me. Unfortunate, next time I'll switch out but let's see if I can keep this going and win this attempt. I send in Aveden to clear the field (he's not poisoned from the first turn because I gave him a Pecha Berry) and get lucky with a Special Attack boost from Moody!

Wow, that was... not a lot of damage even with double Special Attack. Uh, Tanscure can you handle this?

Yes she can, although since she's weak to poison the field hazard damage takes HALF her health on switch in. Maybe I should have kept the mist... Well anyway Mareanie is next, and Bite is enough to oneshot! Holy crap Tanscure's a monster.

Next is a Tofurang of Corey's own, which intimates me. Switching Tanscure out and back in would drop her to like 1 hp if not outright kill her, so I just sack her and get as much damage in before she gets put down by two Poison Fangs. I send in Trawpint next and he kills with a critical Confusion, although I'm not sure if the crit was actually needed.

For Crobat I switch to Tofurang. Yes I know this is a special attacking Crobat, I intend to paralyze it with either Body Slam or Arbok's glare and didn't want Arbok to get killed before she could even get a turn. To my shock though, Tofurang actually speed ties with Crobat and is able to get in two Body Slams before dying instead of one, and the second gets the paralysis! I send Trawpint back in, use Confusion, outspeed and almost kill, Crobat gets unlucky with paralysis, and I kill it with a second-

Nevermind. He used a Super Potion. Because of it, Crobat was able to barely survive long enough to kill me with Venoshock (he had set up a Nasty Plot so it's a twoshot). I still have Arbok though.

I know there's a bit of a taboo around these parts on using strategies that rely on RNG, but I don't care. I'M WEAK TO EVERY TYPE.

That's the last major fight for today, but there's still some stuff I wanna mention before you go.

Hey Corey, where'd that Nidorina and Stuntank come from? And where'd your Tofurang and Trawpint go? In all seriousness though, Tofurang doesn't have an overworld sprite so I don't expect Fervis to make one up just for this scene.

Even though Nidoking's level up movepool sucks, his overall movepool is awesome and I would like to use him in the future. So I soft resetted for a shiny because, well, look how awesome it is.

This happened while I was soft resetting... see the problem here? Take another look and see if you notice it. Give up? It's female. It's a FEMALE Nidoran Male. I have no idea how it happened and honestly I should have kept it as a novelty, but I didn't want to grind even more casino coins so I just soft reset it away for the shiny.

The new version of the mod breaks some of my Pokemon's party icons, making them look non-Nuclear. Make no mistake though, they ARE all Nuclear. The screenshot you saw earlier where they were all displaying correctly, was from before I downloaded the new version.

Growlithe has a nuclear form and comes with an egg move, so I soft reset to make sure it was Close Combat.

Before I actually nuclearized her though, I made sure to breed her so I could get the last mystery egg which was, drumroll please...

Holy shit is that a Vulpix egg? (checks graphics folder) Yeah, it is! That's insane because Vulpix is one of only two options that have nuclear forms! And honestly, it's the better of those two! I'm DEFINITELY gonna soft reset this for good IV and nature, maybe a shiny too.

This can potentially help a ton against Radomus, but I'm iffy on if it should be allowed since it's a Plates of Arceus addition. I guess I have plenty of time to decide.

Finally, I common candied Aveden back down to 24 just so he could get Mirror Shot and get rid of Gust which is no longer needed. By the way, did I mention that level grinding sucks when you're weak to every type? Because it does!

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

Fervis · March 4, 2022

Nice progress so far!

Just a quick reminder, the team aqua reward mon is Chimical, it's also mentiooned in the Excel file. I previously had flager in there but changed it rather early.

Also sorry for the hagoop surprise, i knew it was there but forgot to add it to the list.

Hopefully, the icons should be fixed as well now, AND i added more gen 2 nuclears to the kit.

I'd vote for the shiny ninetails btw, just because there will be plenty of green nuclears and its a pretty change of colours in my opinion.

CURIE · March 4, 2022

On 3/4/2022 at 11:44 AM, Fervis said:

Nice progress so far!

Just a quick reminder, the team aqua reward mon is Chimical, it's also mentiooned in the Excel file. I previously had flager in there but changed it rather early.

Also sorry for the hagoop surprise, i knew it was there but forgot to add it to the list.

Hopefully, the icons should be fixed as well now, AND i added more gen 2 nuclears to the kit.

I'd vote for the shiny ninetails btw, just because there will be plenty of green nuclears and its a pretty change of colours in my opinion.

Expand

Oops, didn't realize. I had just looked at the choices at the beginning of the run and didn't even think to check if they had been changed since. And since Chimical is available much earlier in the wild than Flager, I think I'll just go with Tubjaw. Nevermind on the poll, I've already decided.

CURIE · March 20, 2022

Chapter 4

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

You know, I didn't really INTEND to write Victoria out of the story but she just kinda... ended up not being necessary for any of the scenes she's normally in. Says a lot about Victoria as a character huh?

Anyway, after hatching the Vulpix egg a couple times, I get one with amazing Special Attack and Speed IVs, AND a good nature:

She doesn't have Drought though but that's fine, I can breed another and keep the nature and IVs. I was going to breed her anyway, because I want to get Heat Wave later on. Technically I could breed Heat Wave onto Vulpix right now, but it would require grinding a certain Pokemon all the way to level 45 and it's not worth it. I go to the department store and pick up the Destiny Knot and Everstone (conveniently I'm right at the point in the story where you can get them both), pick up a male field-type Pokemon with decent HP and Defense IVs:

And have them get to work. While I did want a shiny Nuclear Ninetales, I din't intend to soft reset for this Vulpix to be shiny since she was "temporary". But guess what happened on the very second egg?

A shiny with Drought! She inherited her "lesser" parent's Special Attack and Speed, but whatever. I'm using this one. Or at least I WOULD HAVE, except I discovered a bit of a bug in the version of the mod I was playing at the time. When Nuclearized, Vulpix and Ninetales have their level up movepools completely disappear. So until Fervis fixes it, she's stuck with just her level 1 moves forever.

Not a big deal right now, I can continue without her. Another addition Fervis has made in particular has caught my eye:

If you've read the story section you already know where this is gonna go. You'd also already know I joined the Magma Gang, that was so I could get this:

Like Growlithe, the Pokemon you get from the Magma/Aqua quest has one random egg move. I soft resetted for a Magnitude with non-shit IVs and nature, and not Intimidate because I have enough of that already. In case you're wondering, if I had chosen the Aqua Gang I would've got Chimichal.

Also this happened at some point.

That's a weird assumption you've got there, sir! Why would you think I have any Pokemon that learn Pledge moves?

Back to the main story. After gaining access to the crystal caves the first thing you always gotta do is pick up the hidden focus sash here. There are only a handful of these in the whole game as of episode 18, and considering I'm weak to every type it's probably gonna be more relevant than ever. Also I used my newly aquired Magnitude user to get the field effect read out, because I don't feel like switching save files just to refresh my memory on what a field does.

Aster and Eclipse fight:

Reveal hidden contents

These guys lead with a very problematic pair of Rock Slide spammers. Thanks to the field, Rock Moves will more often than not deal quad damage to all my Pokemon just like Skrelp's Bubble back in the Corey fight. I haven't really trained up Tubjaw by this point but even if I had, Magnitude wouldn't help for a multitude of reasons. It also doesn't help that my partner-whose-name-I-forgot leads with someone who's ALSO weak to Rock. The best I can do is lead with Tanscure, try to kill them as fast as I can, and hope the Rock Slide's extra typing is Psychic so that she's immune. The good news is that she's faster than both and able to oneshot either with Bite. On my first attempt I don't get the Psychic Rocks and die in one hit, and consider soft resetting until I do get them, but decide to try and win this attempt like I have in the past (and succeeded every time so far). I send in Arbok to intimidate both the remaining Solrock and the Day form Lycanroc that comes in next. Lycanroc hits me with Accelerock but I must've gotten lucky with grass as the extra typing because I survive with a bit more than half HP. Crunch almost but not quite kills Solrock and Torracat finishes it off.

Recently Arbok learned Acid Spray and this would've been a great chance to make use of it, but I get hit with another Accelerock that doesn't get grass as its extra type and I die. Torracat uses Double Kick, gets a crit on one of the hits, and almost kills Day form Lycanroc. How I wish I had a priority move of my own right now... But I don't, so I sent in Tofurang to hit them with even more intimidation. Day Form Lycanroc tries to finish off Torracat with Accelerock, but it gets either Grass or Fire for the extra typing dealing neutral damage and not killing. Torracat finishes it off in retaliation, and from there the battle's pretty much over. I poison Night form Lycanroc and now it literally can't beat us in time.

Since we're at that point in the story I should mention that the "third Oblivia incident" the protagonist talks about is an actual thing in the games, specifically it's the Arceus DLC mission of Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs. The first Oblivia incident refers to the events of that game's main story, and the second is the Giratina DLC mission (which I don't actually know if I'll ever make relevant, but I made mention of it just in case). I briefly visit the orphanage, solve Shelly's puzzle, and now I can no longer put off grinding my new team members. It's weird though, I feel like I'm forgetting something... Or someone... eh, whatever it was must've not been very important.

As of me typing this, Vulpix's moves still haven't been fixed. She would've been very helpful for this fight, but she's also an extremely lucky mystery egg Pokemon that I wouldn't have otherwise, so I would've felt bad relying on her. Let's see if I can win without her. Well actually you already know how it went, since you've probably read the story section.

Reveal hidden contents

After a brief test run I realize that 1: I can't lead with either of my two trump cards for this fight or Anorith will wreck them, and 2: I need to get Anorith on the field as soon as possible so that I can start using those trump cards. Masquerain has intimidate, so I lead with my two special attackers who both outspeed it, double up on it, and kill it. Illumise does what it's programmed to always do, set up Rain Dance.

I get bad luck with Moody lowering speed but it doesn't really matter anymore because Anorith's out. I have my guys attempt to attack, but Splendifowl gets oneshot by Rock Slide and Trawpint gets confused and hits himself. In case you didn't know, Anorith is an absolute monster because it has Swift Swim and boosted attack from its Telluric Seed, as well as being invincible on the first turn. But now that turn's passed, so I can send in my first trump card: Tubareel. She can use priority rain-and-sea-incense-boosted Aqua Jet to outspeed and-

Or she could get hit with Prankster Confuse Ray and hit herself instead. That's fine, I can still salvage this. She actually lands the next Aqua Jet, oneshotting the Anorith easily. Tanscure (who I sent in after Trawpint got wrecked) bites Illumise for over half her health and gets a lucky flinch, because the AI saw she was quad weak to bug and went for an attack instead of another Confuse Ray. Next is Sponaree, which replaces Araquanid in this mod. I have my Pokemon switch targets this time, Illumise dies but Sponaree doesn't and X-scissor will obviously kill Tanscure in- wait, Tanscure survived? Uhhhh (checks the Pokemon Uranium Wiki) oh that's why, Sponaree's physical attack stat is only base 35. Uh, Fervis? WHY does this thing have X-scissor for its main Bug-type attack if its physical attack is base 35?

Well Heather's out next and that means this battle is basically over. I finish Sponaree off before she double-KOs my guys with Struggle Bug, allowing me to send in my other, stronger trump card.

Ursaring, who is already poisoned, has Guts-boosted-double-power-stab-facade, AND the Telluric seed. How is she already poisoned? Simple: I went to an alleyway and had a wild Pokemon poison me, ran back to Shelly, used healing items to bring Ursaring to full hp without curing the poison, and began the battle. Even if I want to try not using items in battle, using them outside of battle has always been fair game. I have plenty thanks to Pickup, too.

Ursaring absolutely obliterated both remaining Pokemon. I'm sure the attack boost from the seed wasn't necessary, I just used it for the first turn invincibility. Oh right did I mention that "Bugsy" is a Harylect in this mod and not a Volbeat? Not that it really matters anymore.

And that's all for today.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

CURIE · April 1, 2022

Chapter 5

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay section:

Reveal hidden contents

So I've got Rock Smash now, which means I can do mining. I soft reset until I got some more plates and two Fire Stones for Growlithe and Vulpix, then used the rest of the mining spots for shards and sellable items. In Plates of Arceus the chances of getting plates from mining is raised, because they are consumed when you use one to access the altforms that the mod revolves around. Since I'm not using altforms though, and since I can exchange them for any type I want, I'll only ever need 6 or less... well, for now at least. This mod adds a Nuclear plate but I don't know where you get it, I can't exchange for it, and I'm pretty sure it's not available through mining.

By the way, it's worth noting you can get the mega stone for Gargryph here... except Gargryph doesn't actually have a mega in the original Uranium, Fervis made it up just for this mod. The sprite is from a special mystery gift version of Gargryph that was released to commemorate the game's 4th anniversary. Its ability becomes Wonder Skin, and its type becomes Rock/Psychic. I don't know the exact base stats, but both its attack stats go up, its special attack seemingly more so. Its special defense goes up a little and its speed goes up massively, but in return its defense goes down massively. I know all of that because I tried it out with debug on a different save file.

None of this actually matters to me because Gargryph doesn't have a nuclear form. I just thought it was cool so I wanted to talk about it.

Don't really intend on using Nidoqueen, but I picked her up just in case because I have no reason not to.

Double rival time.

Reveal hidden contents

You know, unlike Victoria I actually did consider writing Cain out of the story completely because he's unfunny, obnoxious, bogs down the already bloated story of Reborn more than any other character, and also he's a highly sexualized minor. Yeah, did you know the wiki says Cain's fifteen years old? EDIT: At some point after episode 19 was released, the wiki deleted all the character's ages. But guess what? I got a screenshot of how it looked before. The internet is forever, Ame.

Reveal hidden contents

Anyway it wouldn't have been too hard for me to write him out, because like all bad comic relief characters he doesn't even impact the plot all that much, despite getting more screen time than any other character. I ended up keeping him because I actually want to do something with his character later. I'm cutting out all the gay sex stuff though.

Anyway, no one in the orphanage gave me too much trouble thanks in part to Shelly's Yanmenga having a good matchup against most of their Pokemon. All that's left is Shade in terms of required battles for this chapter, but there is an optional boss I want to do first.

No, not that one. There's no point in that because Scraggy doesn't have a nuclear form.

That one.

Reveal hidden contents

This Tubareel he leads with is a monster. Since it's actually dark type unlike my own, it gets STAB from Crunch ON TOP of the Strong Jaw boost. After a couple attempts where it sweeps most of my team, I found that Arbok was faster and could paralyze it with Glare before gettting oneshotted (yes, even at -1 attack from the Intimidate). Then I can send in pre-poisoned Ursaring, who'd normally get outsped and oneshotted, but since it's paralyzed she goes first and-

...Yeah, turns out on top of being strong enough to oneshot most of my team, it's defense is also SO HIGH that a Guts-boosted-double-power-STAB-Facade only does half. But I get lucky with the paralysis and take it down next turn. It Aqua Jets me before dying, but doesn't do nearly as much damage.

Next is Daikatuna, who I know is gonna outspeed and wreck Ursaring so I get off a Baby-Doll Eyes before going down. Now I send in my own Tubareel and can get in some actual use of Magnitude... Or at least I would, except that I get low Magnitude levels and he gets a crit. He proceeds to outspeed and oneshot the rest of my team, yes, even at -1 attack.

I need a different strategy. Or mabye just not be unlucky with Magnitudes and crits?

I try again and get two Magnitude 7s and no crits, which is enough to take Daikatuna down.

Last up is Sharpedo, and holy crap it's level 45. Maybe I can't do this at my current level... but I really want the reward for beating this... Well I try to do at least a little damage with Aqua Jet, but it uses Aqua Jet of its own and kills me instead. It proceeds to outspeed and oneshot the rest of my team. Something I considered doing was changing the weather to harsh sunlight (I don't consider that cheating, I can do it normally by just waiting... it'd just take days or even weeks), but this Sharpedo primarily uses Crunch so it wouldn't even help here... Wait, actually yes it would! I didn't have Baaschaf on the team in these attempts, but if I did the Sharpedo would probably go for a water attack which he would survive, and then Revenge might kill. I go back and put Baaschaf on the team, give Tubareel an Earth Plate to increase my chances of winning the 1v1 against Daikatuna, re-poison Ursaring, change the weather (did I ever mention that the weather-changing mod comes packaged with the Uranium mod? Because it does) and try again. It takes several soft resets to get the good paralysis luck I need, but eventually I make it back to where I was.

Actually it's better than where I was. The Earth Plate was enough so that Magnitude 7 or higher is a twoshot on Daikatuna, giving Tubareel enough health to deal some damage with Aqua Jet before going down. It's only, like, a tiny amount of damage though, so it doesn't really matter.

Okay, here we go. Moment of truth. Sharpedo uses Slash-

It oneshots me. Wasn't even a crit.

But wait, I'm not giving up yet! You may have noticed that Tofurang has kinda stopped being useful, right? Well she's still got Intimidate! At -1 attack, Slash will probably not kill unless it's a crit! I go back and put Tofurang on the team, and start soft resetting for good paralysis luck again. Eventually I get to Sharpedo again.

Tofurang's underleveled because I haven't been using her but it doesn't matter, I only need her for Intimidate. She goes down in one Crunch, and it's time for the moment of truth again. I send in Baaschaf, it uses Slash again...

It doesn't kill! But then my Revenge barely doesn't kill either. If I had given Baaschaf the Fist Plate it would've killed, but this is fine. I still have one Pokemon left, and it's Tanscure. She's also dark type, meaning Sharpedo's AI will use Slash on her too, which won't be a oneshot unless it crits...

Which it didn't.

By far the hardest fight I've had in the run so far... AND IT WAS THREE POKEMON. I'm worried for the future of this playthrough.

This is the reason I worked so hard to beat Archer, Houndour has a nuclear form. I soft reset for a +attack nature, Sucker Punch for its egg move, and a non-shitty attack IV. It takes... a while, and I end up passing on a shiny before getting this:

I mean, it's what I said I wanted, but like... a ZERO defense IV? Maybe I should... You know what, no. I'm taking this one.

I begin grinding, and notice a bug:

Nuclear Houndour isn't actually Nuclear type!

THANKFULLY Nuclear Houndoom is. Imagine if I did all that work only to throw him away because a bug made him illegal-

Wait wait wait WHAT? But he was just-

Turns out Nuclear Houndoom is even more bugged than Nuclear Houdour: he UN-NUCLEARS after every battle! I guess that isn't too big a deal, because I can re-nuclear him just fine. I also don't really have a problem with level grinding him when he's non-nuclear, because that's just grinding. This needs to be fixed though.

I evolve Baaschaf a bit early by using a couple of the Rare Candies I've picked up along the way, then Common Candying him back down.

I train Growlithe up too. Waited until level 40 to evolve her so she could learn Flamethrower.

Vulpix's moves are fixed now, but since I'm about to raise the level cap up to 45 it's not worth training up that "temporary" Vulpix at this point. I'm just gonna wait until I can breed one with Heat Wave.

Reveal hidden contents

Even though the story section cuts off right before Shade, I'm not gonna deprive you of it here.

THIS is why I was so determined to beat Archer. Corey would have done a ton of damage to my team making a win without items really difficult if even possible, but Houndoom can just neutralize him instantly with Sucker Punch. Knowing the AI it'll send in Mimikyu next...

Yep. Houndoom's way too valuable to lose this early so I switch to Arbok. She survives a Play Rough just fine, but she ended up being slower and got killed next turn. Arbok's actually the fastest Pokemon I brought, so Mimikyu here's faster than my whole team. I send in Tubareel and break its disguise with Aqua Jet. It Thunderbolts me but gets a low damage multiplier and she survives. I consider gambling it all on getting another low Thunderbolt roll, to do more damage with Aqua Tail but then realize that's stupid. I could just use Aqua Jet, and if I DO survive, use another Aqua Jet. So I do that.

I do survive! I use one more Aqua Jet, but all that does is activate the Sitrus Berry and bring her health almost back to where it was.

I send in Arcanine next and we trade blows for a while. Arcanine WOULD have come out on top, but Shade used a Hyper Potion and so she barely loses. That's fine, Houndoom can kill with Sucker Punch from here-

...Nevermind. At this point I'm completley screwed and have to try a different strategy. Mimikyu kills Arbok with Shadow Claw, so I put Splendifowl on the team and use it as a safe switch in. I now, once again, have to rely on RNG sleep strats.

I get Sing to land first try and WOULD have killed it, if it weren't for Hyper Potions. When Mimikyu wakes up it doesn't get flinched by Air Slash for once, uses Thunderbolt, gets the maximum possible multiplier, and oneshots me from full health. That's fine though, this is Sucker Punch kill range and I'm pretty sure the AI won't use its second Hyper Potion.

It doesn't, and Mimikyu goes down. Next is Runerigrus, and I use Beat Up hoping it's enough to kill... it barely isn't. It would've been if Splendifowl were still alive... Whatever. Houndoom gets oneshotted by Body Press but Tanscure finishes it off.

Tanscure's barely unable to oneshot Banette and gets hit with a quad-super-effected-and-field-boosted Dazzling Gleam that I was SURE would oneshot me from full health, but it didn't! I kill it next turn.

Next is Dhelmise. Not much to say here, Tanscure weakens it before dying and Arbok finishes it off.

To my surprise, Arbok was actually faster than Rotom. I wasn't thinking very hard and clicked Glare, forgetting electric types were immune to paralysis. I should've used Screech or Crunch instead... I go to Baariette next, who gets almost killed by Discharge and paralyzed, but thankfully hits with Feint Attack anyway for the kill.

Things would have been a bit easier if I had made use of my one Synthetic Seed, but even still I'm pretty sure this would have been flat out impossible without Sucker Punch Houndoom. I'd have had to use items or... or something, I don't even know.

For a while It's been surprisingly not hard to be weak to every type, but those days seem to be over now.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

Candy · April 11, 2022

On 2/10/2022 at 1:24 PM, CURIE said:

She's only cosplaying as a terrorist.

Expand

bro that's sus xD

Finished reading the first chapter so now I can comment yayay~

I never played Uranium cause I think it was suspended for a whale, and when I did get a copy of it, I wasn't interested in fangames as much (my interests and hobbies drastically change, sometimes overnight) so I only know like the first movie with the mom(?) kinda low key going missing cause a lab went kaboom or something I wonder if the reason for the body suit will be uncovered in your story or if it's something I should've known from Uranium?

Idk if this would interest you but you can use Quicktime Player to record your screen and then add music on top of it using a movie editor. That's how I make my gym/important battle vids. I found it much easier than writing out how the battle went, which is why I recommend it

CURIE · April 11, 2022

On 4/11/2022 at 4:11 AM, Candy said:

bro that's sus xD

Finished reading the first chapter so now I can comment yayay~

I never played Uranium cause I think it was suspended for a whale, and when I did get a copy of it, I wasn't interested in fangames as much (my interests and hobbies drastically change, sometimes overnight) so I only know like the first movie with the mom(?) kinda low key going missing cause a lab went kaboom or something I wonder if the reason for the body suit will be uncovered in your story or if it's something I should've known from Uranium?

Idk if this would interest you but you can use Quicktime Player to record your screen and then add music on top of it using a movie editor. That's how I make my gym/important battle vids. I found it much easier than writing out how the battle went, which is why I recommend it

Expand

Don't worry, the protagonist would be no less shrouded in mystery if you had actually played the game. The only absolutely required knowledge at this point is what you've already been told, directly or otherwise. When the events of Uranium really start becoming important, I'll make sure the reader's told what he/she needs to know then too. I guess in the end it would still be better to have played Uranium, but that much is inevitable with something like this. As for the battle thing, I actually prefer writing about it.

CURIE · April 14, 2022

Chapter 6

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay section:

Reveal hidden contents

This scene sure hits different after you've played the true route. Anyway you don't really unlock any important stuff immediately after beating Shade so I just cut straight through the story to the next boss. I did get Ditto, which means NOW I can breed Light Screen onto Baashaun, but at this point I don't think it's worth the trouble.

Reveal hidden contents

I was hoping Close Combat would oneshot Glaceon, but it didn't and I got hit with Icy Wind before taking it down. Expecting to be outsped by Espeon I do what damage I can with Extremespeed, which surprisingly isn't much considering Espeon's defense is supposed to be crap. I send in Tanscure, whose -speed nature bites her in the ass and she almost oneshot by Signal Beam before taking the Espeon down. Umbreon's slow so Scary Face isn't gonna help much. I try to get in what damage I can with Facade, but it didn't matter anyway because Umbreon had Quick Attack.

I send in Arbok to hit it with one Intimidate and two Acid Sprays, and attempt to switch to Splendifowl right before she dies, but Umbreon gets a crit and I actually die instead. I was hoping to keep Arbok alive for the main attraction. Splendifowl comes in and since Umbreon's at -4 Special Defense he goes down to one Hyper Voice. Now it's time for the main attraction!

PULSE Muk has super high Special Defense, so Splendifowl's only use here it to try and put it to sleep. He fails and gets oneshot by Discharge. Next up is Tubareel, and since it's electric type now I can use Magnitude-

YES! A high roll! And then she gets absolutely destroyed by another Discharge, but that's fine. I think Baariette should kill with Jump Kick from this range, and I know for a fact he's faster. I just

have to

NOT

miss a 90% accuracy move.

You thought I was gonna miss the way I built up that joke, didn't you? No I actually hit, I was just wrong and Jump Kick didn't kill, and so I lost. Not a big deal, if Arbok hadn't got crit, or if Splendifowl had landed sing I'd have won first try.

I try again and things go the same way up until Umbreon comes out. Predicting the Quick Attack I switch out to Arbok this time to conserve Tanscure for the main attraction. Arbok doesn't get crit this time either, so she's alive for Muk too. I take out Umbreon the same way I did last time.

Splendifowl misses sing again and dies, but that's fine because I get Arbok in and use Screech. THAT'S why I say I would've won if Arbok hadn't been crit. Tubareel almost oneshots it with a Magnitude 7, and Tanscure finishes it off.

So close to a first-try victory.

This scene is really dumb by the way. Solaris here sees that Amaria has the Sapphire Bracelets, which are like, the centerpiece of his evil plan, and then a few minutes later he gets the PERFECT opportunity to snag them when he injures Amaria, but just... walks away for no reason whatsoever. At least say he TRIED to take them and some other bullshit happened so he couldn't! Say that Deliverance stopped him or something! Come to think of it, it's pretty stupid that he was even able to injure Amaria in the first place without knocking out Deliverance. Isn't the whole point of a Pokemon battle against a villain that your Pokemon are protecting you from his Pokemon? Maybe this scene is fixed in episode 19 but from what I've heard it's only the first 3 episodes that are majorly changed. If the scene IS fixed in episode 19, feel free to call me a dumb idiot in the comments.

I forgot about this in the previous update but you can catch Frynai here, who has a nuclear form.

I see Daikatuna as more of a side-grade to Tubareel. You'd think that with Sheer Force and a bunch of powerful moves by level up that he'd be an upgrade, right? But take a look at the moves he learns... most of them don't have secondary effects that activate Sheer Force. ~~You'd have to wait until getting the Shell Bell or Life Orb for his otherwise-really-strong ability to actually matter~~ EDIT: Turns out I remembered the mechanics of Sheer Force wrong, the Shell Bell and Life Orb only have their secondary effects skipped if the move you used is already boosted by Sheer Force. So without the moves, Daikatuna just can't do much with his otherwise-really-strong ability, ever. I already have a lot of grinding in my near future, so I'm going to stick with Tubareel at least for now.

The other Pokemon with Nuclear forms that I can get now are Lavent, Corsola, and Shuckle. Corsola in particular has an evolution in Uranium with some... interesting stats:

So this guy could either be all defense no offence, OR all offence no defense. The problem with all offence no defense is that he'd still have a speed of 25, and the problem with all defense no offense is that those defenses are undercut by me being weak to every type. If I ever use a Trick Room strategy, though, Corsoreef is definitely gonna be a member of that team.

I got a +Special Attack nature because its moves in the original Uranium were mostly special, but then remembered movesets are different in this mod, checked, and it turns out they're mostly physical now. Oops. Whatever, if I ever use a Trick Room strategy I'll have access to the nature changer by then.

This scene's also pretty dumb. No, I'm not talking about Kiki going "oh but the rules tho" in this dire situation (although yeah that's dumb too), I'm talking about the fact that only graduate students of the martial arts academy can use the HM Strength. Strength is flat out required for the league challenge... so like what, is every league challenger ALSO gonna have to study karate for [indeterminate number of years] before they can fight the rest of the gyms? Even for the world's hardest league that's just stupid. As you saw in the story section I changed it so that league challengers can get it by defeating her in battle. If that's actually how it is in episode 19, I should clarify that it was just a lucky guess on my part. I did not play the leaked beta.

Time to fight Cal-

WAIT WHAT? Hey Fervis, you forgot another one on your spreadsheet! This'll make the grinding I gotta do later on a bit less bad.

Reveal hidden contents

Victoria's immediately after.

Reveal hidden contents

As is tradition, I do all the team grinding right before the gym fight. And this time it's gonna be more grinding than usual, because I'm finally going to get around to raising myself a Ninetales.

Starting with this completely unrelated bug that I found in the volcano. Why? Because she learns Heat Wave at level 45. You can also find her pre-evolution in Jasper Ward, but this one's 11 levels higher so that's 11 fewer levels of grinding.

There we go. Now, you're probably saying "but I'm pretty sure Firoke isn't field type, you can't breed it with Vulpix!" You're right, but you know who is field type? Ratsy. Now I know I said earlier that I'd breed for a male Ratsy, but I've since realized there's an easier way, Cute Charm. When a Pokemon with Cute Charm is in the front of the party, wild Pokemon have a 2/3rds chance to be the opposite gender regardless of their normal gender ratio, unless their species is mono-gender or genderless. I grab the Skitty in Coral Ward, make sure she's female with Cute Charm, run around the slums for a bit and:

I catch him and grind him up to level 21 to learn Sketch. Now I need a double battle. Hey, remember these guys from chapter 1?

Well guess what it's NOT them. Heat wave would kill both opponents immediately and the battle would end before Ratsy could actually Sketch it.

It's these guys. They appear in the grand hall only on Saturdays and are infinitely rebatleable.

The next grind is IV chain breeding, so it's a good thing I have access to Magcargo now. Mamma Vulpix has the best IVs I could hope for, but Ratsy's are shit. I breed them until they give me a Male Vulpix who has at least some of his mother's good IVs, then breed him with his own mom until they give me another son, who will be more likely to have more of his mother's good IVs, and so on until I get a son who's got all of them. At one point I get a daughter who actually has even better IVs than the mother and make her the new mother. Also, with each new kid I level him/her up a bit just to make sure Heat Wave doesn't get overwritten before the next egg is laid. In the Pokemon world, incest is wincest. Literally. It helps you win battles.

Eventually I get both parents to have the same IVs:

You might be wondering why I didn't just take the one female who was better than her mother and raise her. It's simple: I want a shiny. And I want that shiny to be close to if not as good as his/her parents. Am I overdoing things here? Almost certainly, I'll readily admit that. But this Vulpix is a gift from RNGesus, possibly even actual Jesus (I am a Christian IRL), so I'm treating him/her with the respect he/she deserves.

Now the grind is soft resetting until the next egg is shiny, hatching it, and...

Perfect. Not having drought isn't a big deal because I just use an Ability Capsule. The final grind before Kiki is of course, leveling her up and evolving her after getting Extrasensory at 28. I found a weird bug while leveling her up though, she can learn Nature Power by TM:

This isn't supposed to be possible, and in fact non-nuclear Vulpix can't learn it. I think I know what happened here: Plates of Arceus has a grass type altform of Vulpix and Ninetales, who probably can learn Nature Power, and Fervis somehow accidentally copy/pasted that TM learnset instead of the regular Vulpix/Ninetales TM learnset. I'd really like to have someone with Nature Power because it's unironically great in Reborn, but using it like this would be cheating so I won't.

I lied I also grinded the shiny Nupin from earlier. I wasn't sure whether I wanted Chlorophyll or Solar Power more, but since she hatched with Solar Power I guess I'll go with that for now.

Reveal hidden contents

You know, this rule's also really dumb. You're telling me that every time a leader retires or dies, all the people up on Victory Road are gonna have to come all they way back down just to fight the [insert type] gym all over again? Since episode 19 changes it so that Kiki and Corey are former gym leaders, it's possible that this rule has been quietly retconned away. I hope so. Well in this story it was just never a rule in the first place.

Wait... wait what? Why is that water blue? I didn't somehow wrong-warp to neo-azurine Island, the encounters and music are the same as well as the boat still being there when it'd be gone if the city were restored. The puddles on the ground are still brown like they're supposed to be, but not the rest of the water. In fact, if I try fishing I get Grimers and Hagoops like you do when the water's polluted, it's just... blue for some reason. Is this a Plates of Arceus thing? I doubt Fervis' changes caused this. Well if I can continue the story just fine then I guess it's not a big deal. Anyway, you can get Yanma here in the mornings, who has a Nuclear form.

Yeah, looks like the story continues normally when I enter the building. Hopefully this bug doesn't cause problems post-restoration. Anyway time to fight these guys again.

Reveal hidden contents

I burn one and Giga Drain the other, which is enough to oneshot. Day form Lycanroc comes in to Replace Solrock and I'm confident Gellin won't outspeed it so I have Ninetales disable Lunatone's Rock Slide he just used while she's still alive. I'm right that Gellin's slower, and she goes down. Maybe I should've gone with Chlorophyll after all... well I'll keep going with Solar Power for a while longer because Ability Capsules aren't just handed out like candy... yet.

Gellin gets flinched (not so fun when it happens to me!) but her life is saved by the disable. I send in Arcanine hoping the level difference makes her faster, but it doesn't and rock slide oneshots her too. It would have been a double kill but Gellin gets a lucky dodge and kills Lunatone. Honestly if I had known that'd happen I'd have targeted Lycanroc.

Splendifowl's probably faster than Lycanroc (he's only two points slower than Ninetales), but now I'm conflicted. Do I go for Lycanroc or Passimian? Lycanroc's obviously the bigger threat overall, but Passimian can kill either of my guys and I don't actually know if Gellin's faster. I look up Passimian's speed, find out he's probably faster, and decide to go for Lycanroc anyway. The following set of events can only be described as a rube goldberg machine of accidental success. As predicted, Splendifowl is the fastest but Mirror Shot only does half health. But then it got the 30% Accuracy drop, which causes the following Rock Slide to miss BOTH my guys! And contrary to what I thought, Gellin was actually faster and landed a Leech Seed, but it didn't matter because the AI decided to knock her out even though I'm sure a Brick Break would've also been a oneshot on Splendifowl.

Knowing Passimian's probably gonna target him next, I have Splendifowl Air Slash him hoping for a flinch or a oneshot. Neither happens and he dies. Arbok tries to finish off Lycanroc with Bite but it isn't enough. Now I'm down to just Arbok and Tanscure, I think I'm gonna have to try again...

...And the AI misplays by hard switching Day Lycanroc out to Night Lycanroc! I kill Passimian and do some damage to the Night Lycanroc, and Day Lycanroc comes back in. I might have a chance...

Nevermind.

What really screwed me over was that first flinch on Gellin. And the fact that I didn't have Chlorophyll, I guess. I try again, first thin that happens is Ninetales missing Will-O-Wisp and I'm like "nope" and try again again. The flinch doesn't happen this time and Day Lycanroc goes down.

Solrock's completely impotent now (yeah I killed Lunatone first this time, it didn't change anything) so I Leech Seed him but otherwise focus on the other Pokemon. Night form Lycanroc barely survives Close Combat (I had taken switched the Fist Plate for a Flame Plate just for Kiki, I REALLY should've remembered to put it back on) and double KOs me, I send in Tanscure and Splendifowl to finish the job. Only now does the AI decide to switch Solrock out to Passimian, and when Nigh Lycanroc dies sends Solrock right back in. Great move there AI.

I got a lucky Special Attack boost from Moody, so Air Slash is actually a oneshot this time as I have Tanscure go for Solrock with a +1 Bite (I set up howl the turn before while I had Splendifowl kill Lycanroc). But the AI... Hard switches again... to Oranguru who's ALSO weak to Dark and ALSO gets oneshot... Only to be forced to send Solrock right back in afterward to his own death.

I think the AI's on drugs today.

And immediately on to the next boss.

Reveal hidden contents

Ninetales, Arcanine, the field, and the fact Victoria leads with a fire type of her own means that the fights going up the volcano were a joke. Now I WOULD say it's the moment you'e all been waiting for, but chances are you've already read the story section, so you already know what happens.

Reveal hidden contents

The moment you've all been waiting for. I've said before that I'm going for the true ending, but Murkrow doesn't have a nuclear form. So how did I beat Solaris' Garchomp?

Well first of all I made sure to catch the Drifloon that you encounter during the quest for the third Department Store sticker. Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to make sure it was a male Drifloon, and it ended up being female. That's fine though, I can still work with this. I evolve her and level her up to 36 where she learns Destiny Bond. Now if she were male I would just be able to breed with Tonemy/Tofurang right away (they're both Amorphous type) but if you're one of the two people in the world who reads the gameplay section first you already know that I have a male Ratsy for situations like this.

I common candy Ratsy back down to 20 so that he can learn Sketch again, and use these guy's double battle to get Destiny Bond from Drifblim. I then grab a female Tonemy in the railnet, have them breed (they're both field type) and boom.

I don't even need to level this guy up, he can beat Solaris' Garchomp at just level 1 and I don't even need to spend an extremely valuable focus sash for it. Since he has Levitate, the AI is forced to use one of Garchomp's other moves, all of which have a chance to miss. I simply soft reset until I get a miss, land Destiny Bond, let Garchomp kill me next turn, and I win. Theoretically if Tonemy here were a level 45 Tofurang with an Air Balloon and I had weakened Garchomp beforehand with a party full of Ekans using Intimidate, I could actually survive a hit or two and not have to rely on a miss. But that would be even more grinding and I'd rather just soft reset for a miss.

There we go.

EZ fight only took me like 20 something tries

If you go back to the top of the mountain after Kiki's death you find this:

Yeah turns out Plates of Arceus adds a whole bunch of extra TMs to include gen 8's changed TM list as well as the TRs. Using this would be a clear cut violation of rule 4 so I soft reset away picking this up. The last battle for today's update is the one to gain access to the wasteland.

Reveal hidden contents

Man that was probably the longest chapter I've done so far. Even if not in word count (haven't actually counted) then definitely in gameplay time.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

Episode 19's officially releasing soon, so I would like to clarify that any similarities between its story changes, and the changes to the story I've made are coincidences (or in the case of Corey and Kiki being former leaders, has been public knowledge for a while now). I did not play the leaked beta, and I'm probably not gonna play the official release a while longer because I'm a busy person IRL and this is a bigger priority to me. And I'm certainly not gonna be playing the whole game again from the start just to see what the early-mid game story changes are, ain't nobody got time for that.

CURIE · April 29, 2022

So episode 19's out now, and I don't know how long it's gonna be until Fervis updates the mod. Until he does, I'm gonna keep going on episode 18, at least for a while longer. If I get to Agate's "point of no return" and he still hasn't updated, then maybe I'll stop and wait.

Chapter 7

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

Along the way to the gym I fought wild Pokemon to get Tanscure up to 46, so I could Rare Candy her and FINALLY get Crunch. And then Common Candy her back down, of course. Also we can get Zubat now, who has a nuclear form. I picked one up who had pretty much the exact opposite nature you'd want from a Zubat, but the IVs were good so I kept it.

You might have seen the screenshots in the story section where I had flash and thought "He's cheating! You can't use Flash yet at this point in the game!" but you'd be wrong. You CAN use Flash, Shade's badge is what enables it, you just don't find the TM until later. You need a Pokemon who learns Flash by level up, and it just so happens that the Birbies in Opal Ward come with Flash already learned.

I apparently haven't played Reborn from the start in a REAL long time because I didn't even know that you could spare Mr. Bigglesworth and get all the items in the room without fighting him! It poisons your whole party but that's not exactly a big deal, since you can use healing items or just run back to a Pokemon center. That being said, I wanted to see if you got anything extra for fighting him.

Reveal hidden contents

So what do I get for winning? Nothing. Or rather, nothing that you couldn't get from sparing him.

So I soft reset his death away and spare him instead because he's a sweet innocent boy who didn't do anything wrong. I mean, he DID reduce an entire ward of Reborn City to an unlivable wasteland, but that was just an accident! And yeah, killing him might be the only way to potentially make this side of the city livable again, but uh... Look I'm just not doing it okay? Unless Ame added an actual (worthwhile) reward for beating him in episode 19, in that case he's fuckin' dead as soon as Fervis updates.

Another one of the very rare and probably very useful Focus Sashes. Unlike Garchomp, I don't really have a plan for killing Ditto-Arceus without using one.

Time for the next boss on the list.

Reveal hidden contents

I know Fern is using Serperior in this mod instead of Decidueye, but in the story I'm keeping it as Decidueye since it's actually relevant to the plot in episode 19 (and I suspect Plates of Arceus will change it to Decidueye when they eventually update to episode 19 for that very reason). Anyway, everyone's already at the level cap so I only do a tiny bit of grind to get Baariette to learn Sucker Punch at 46 and Common Candy him back down. I guess that's how I could have beaten Shade without Houndoom, although the level cap at the time was 40 so the grind would've suuuuucked.

Reveal hidden contents

I did a quick test run without taking any screenshots and almost won first try. What I did was led with Tubareel and pre-poisoned Ursaring (I could have given him a Telluric seed for the same effect, but why do that when I can do it for free?). They both oneshot Aya's first Pokemon, but not before Nidoqueen set down Stealth Rocks. In the wasteland field, Stealth Rocks only deal damage once, getting spat back out at the current Pokemon at the end of the turn they're set. They are also Rock/Poison type instead of just Rock, and Nuclear's weak to both those types, so in other words my Pokemon lose half their health right on the first turn. She sends in Drapion and Venasaur next, and they outspeed and kill both my guys. Not a problem because Ninetales comes in and cleans them up (I also send Baariette in but he gets killed without doing much), but then in comes Salazzle. That stupid sexy lizard uses my own sun against me, has a Focus Sash, and since both the priority move users I had brought were already down, there was nothing I could do to stop her from destroying the rest of my team with Heat Wave. The solution is obvious: Just don't get Baariette killed pointlessly.

I do the same thing on my second attempt, or at least try to, but it turns out Nidoqueen can barely survive the Aqua Tail depending on the damage roll. That's fine, I have Aqua Jet to take care of that.

Aya sends in Venusaur next, which I thought "that's cool, I'm pretty sure Ursaring's faster and can oneshot it" but I was wrong. Turns out Venusaur's faster. But then I got lucky and Power Whip missed! I had given Ursaring the Lax Incense (which you find in the wasteland) just in case something like this happened! I actually get to hit Facade, and sure enough it's a oneshot. Nidoqueen, obviously, got Aqua Jetted. Come to think of it, Venusaur was probably targeting Tubareel anyway, and the miss was just due to Power Whip's natural 85% accuracy... meaning the Lax Incense didn't actually matter.

Drapion and Salazzle next. I know they're both faster and are gonna wipe both my guys, so I use priority Baby-Doll Eyes and Aqua Jet to weaken Drapion and break the Salazzle's sash. Ursaring actually gets a miss on Heat Wave from his Lax Incense, but it doesn't matter because Drapion hits her anyway. I send in Ninetales and Baariette, and Sucker Punch the Salazzle before she can take advantage of the sun. Drapion barely survives Heat Wave, but I get a lucky burn so he does minimal damage in return. He wouldn't have killed anyone even without the burn, I know that from the first attempt.

Aya's last Pokemon is Haagross in this mod. What makes it a threat is Parabolic charge, which hits both my Pokemon and drains their health... BOTH of their health. I hit it with Sucker Punch + Heat Wave, but Parabolic Charge recovered almost all the damage I dealt to it!

Of course that trick won't work as well the second time because my Pokemon now have less health to drain. I hit it again, get a crit on Sucker Punch which means Heat Wave would've killed, but miss Heat Wave, it kills both my guys, but this time it's only at a bit over half health. My last two guys are Arbok and Tanscure, and Crunch is able to kill it after a Screech.

Did you know that Salazzle's pheromones are stated to "attract males of all species, including humans"? That's actual Nintendo cannon.

Now that I've got Strength I go back to the optional places I can use it before continuing the story. Got the TM for Double Team, that might help against Serra. Not much else of interest.

That includes you. Misdreavus doesn't have a nuclear form so you're not worth the effort.

I accidentally still had Ursaring when I went here even though there would be no way to pre-poison him. You lose relationship points with Cain for leaving after you've begun the team-up section, but I don't care. In fact, even if I DID care about relationship points, they're all going to be reset to 0 when I switch to episode 19 anyway. So my "mistake" here literally does not matter. That reminds me, Plates of Arceus' free HM usage is relevant here: Sirius/Connal (depending on your story choice) is a boss where you need an HM move on the team to fight him, with no access to a PC to switch an HM slave in or out. However I've got multiple guys on the team right now besides Ursaring who can learn Strength, and could later get whatever move was overwritten back through either TM or the move relearner (who is unlocked immediately after the boss). Therefore I don't see using the free HM here as a violation of rule 4, just a convenience that doesn't affect the difficulty.

It's kind of weird that you even have the option to just walk past this guy and not fight to get Heather back. Like, let's be real, who took this option on their first playthrough? Well it's actually the option you need to take for the true ending. So we're not fighting him and just leaving Heather here. By the way, if you did pick "no" on your first playthough but it was because you already knew about the true ending, that doesn't count.

By saying no to fighting Connal we instead fight Sirius on the next floor, whose Pokemon are a couple levels higher.

Reveal hidden contents

I lead with Arbok because both of Sirius' leads are physical, and y'know, Intimidate. I Screech Minior and it uses Shell Smash, putting it at -3 defense. Cain Shadow Balls the Tyrantrum so I would've liked to Acid Spray it before losing Arbok, but after Shell Smash Minior is too fast. It hits me with Charge Beam and gets the boost, which puts it pretty comfortably in the "way too dangerous" zone. Thankfully Nidoking hits it with Throat Chop for over half its health, meaning I can kill it with Aqua Jet next turn.

Corviknight comes in next and I expect Cain to go for Tyrantrum, so I whack it with Aqua Tail. I guessed right but things don't really go well: Tyrantrum doesn't die, Nidoking does die, Corviknight hits hard with Brave Bird, and Aqua Tail hits less hard. Good news is that Tyrantrum's in Aqua Jet kill range. Bad news is that Cain kept targeting Tyrantrum, specifically with Psychic which did pitiful damage when it hit Corviknight instead. Worse news is that it's got Roost.

Golisopod comes in next, who resists all of Tubareel's attacks, so I just resign myself to Aqua Tailing the bird until one of us goes down. Which ends up being me, because First Impression. Meowstic sets up Light Screen... even though all of these guys are physical attackers........... thanks Cain............................

I send in Ninetales and Kill Corviknight while activating Golisopod's retreat, but not before Meowstic was Sucker Punched. Next is Chandelure, so I guess Light Screen wasn't completely useless- OH WAIT, IT HAS INFILTRATOR. SO LIGHT SCREEN IS COMPLETELY USELESS. Well since I know it doesn't have flash fire I just use Heat Wave again. Golisopod barely survives, and Chandelure wipes both of us out from full health with a double crit (it had a Synthetic Seed, and one of its benefits on the factory field is applying laser focus).

Thankfully I still have a Pokemon with Sucker Punch so we can count this threat as neutralized-

WHAT

W H A T

Well I'm in trouble.

Okay good Splendifowl's faster. He got Sucker Punched but THANKFULLY barely survived.

And then I remembered that Arcanine, my other remaining Pokemon, had Flash Fire anyway.

Oops.

Pimarina finished Golisopod off and all that's left is Seviper. Unfortunately I got a speed debuff from moody with not-useful buff in return (special defense), meaning I get outsped and killed. Arcanine's Flamethrower is sun boosted though, almost kills, and Primarina finishes the job.

Not gonna lie, having Meowstic carry Light Screen but not Reflect when the only enemy special attacker has Infiltrator is a genius troll move.

There are now only three major bosses between me and Nuclear moves.

Here's another dumbass scene. The characters specifically state that the rubble doesn't go all the way to the ceiling and can be climbed over, but "Oh that would be too dangerous. Instead let's CRASH A TRAIN STRAIGHT INTO IT AND ALSO WE'RE STILL ON THE TRAIN WHEN IT CRASHES". How about just... don't point out that the pile can be climbed over? Just imply or even outright state that it goes all the way to the ceiling. Then the crazier option is a little more viable.

I now can use the Move Relearner. In older versions of the mod this was how you'd get Nuclear moves, but now they're taught by a unique tutor later in the game. There's also a rather... interesting feature regarding the move relearner in Plates of Arceus: she can actually "relearn" egg moves even if you didn't breed for them. The question is, would this count as breaking rule 4? I mean, I CAN get these moves without Plates of Arceus, just not on the Pokemon I'm currently using... I'd have to breed new ones... For now I think I'll hold off on that. In the meantime I get Flare Blitz and Play Rough for Arcanine, Cross Chop for Baariette, Nasty Plot for Ninetales, Growth for Gellin, and Thunder Fang for Houndoom. Those are all regular level-up moves.

Now that I have the actual TM for Flash, the mod will let me use it for free like the other HMs. Unlike the othere HMs, I have no qualms using it for free. Flash is purely a convenience and does not actually affect the game's difficulty.

I now have access to the type berries. You'd think that in a run where I'm weak to every type, they'd be a godsend right? Well you'd be wrong, because THE AI CHEATS! Let me show you what I mean by using Debug for a bit. Don't worry, I'm gonna soft reset this all away afterward.

So I'm using Debug to re-fight a generic trainer from earlier in the game. Her Pufluff has the moves Fairy Wind, Icy Wind, Fury Swipes, and Charm. I know this because I used a Ditto. Now, Ursaring is 2x weak to both Fairy and Icy Wind, and Pufluff gets STAB from both, except Icy Wind has higher base power and a special effect while Fairy Wind doesn't. Icy Wind is just the strictly better option here, and the AI will always go for it. By the way, that's a different Ursaring I'm using here, one I generated through Debug because my own is too high level and causes the AI to switch out.

See? The AI uses Icy Wind because why would it ever use Fairy Wind. You can redo the battle as much as you want, and the AI will use Icy Wind every single time.

Uuuuuuunless I have Ursaring hold a Yache Berry.

Hey look, the AI is suddenly using the OBJECTIVELY WORSE move all of a sudden, I wonder why? It couldn't possibly be that it magically knows I have a Yache Berry? Because of this, type berries go from being a godsend to almost completely useless, because the AI will just use a different move that's still super effective. There may be some specific fights in the future where I really don't want the AI to use a certain attack, to the point where it's worth holding a type berry so that it won't, but that's it.

Back to the real game, there are two new Pokemon with Nucelar forms I can get now. the first is Pahar, and no I didn't hunt for a shiny. Legit the first one I ran into was shiny and had pretty good IVs.

The other is Eevee. I didn't add this to the rules until sometime after I started, so you may not have noticed if you've been following this from the beginning, but ~~I've made "don't use Nucleon" a bonus goal just like not using items or switch mode~~ EDIT: On further reflection I've changed the rule so that Nucleon is postgame-only, rather than permanently banned. Because Nucleon is suuuuuuuuuper broken. For those of you who haven't played Uranium, let me explain. You know Sylveon? You know how she's really strong because of Pixilate? You know how in Reborn in particular, she's even stronger because she can set up Trump Card before a boss fight? Imagine all of that, but her "pixilated" attacks are Nuclear type, meaning they're strong against all types except Steel. And yes, they still get the 1.2x power boost (Actually, Uranium uses gen 6 as a base so it's 1.3x in that game). And her speed's base 90 instead of 60. And she doesn't even need to wait for a tutor to get Hyper Voice, she learns it on her own through level up. And her special attack's slightly higher just because. That's Nucleon. I don't know why the Uranium developers thought that was a good idea.

That doesn't mean Eevee is useless though, because Fervis has ALSO made Nuclear forms for all of the other Eeveelutions! In fact, I do like the idea of using Sylveon and her pre-charged Trump Card. I'll take this Eevee, grind her to level 45 to get Trump Card and-

Oh right, this uses gen 8 movesets, I forgot. I guess Eevee doesn't learn Trump Card at 45 in gen 8, let me look up what level she does real quick.

...Oh. She doesn't. At all. In fact, Trump Card the move doesn't even exist in gen 8. Okay then.

I mean I'll keep her around since I already level grinded her this far, and she's still a strong Pokemon, it's just that... without Trump Card she's a whole lot less fun.

Hmmm, a Water/Fairy Pokemon who's based on a selkie and a siren, with elements of a mermaid? Where have I heard that one before? In case you didn't know, Uranium was finished BEFORE Sun and Moon, and had been in production for like nine years. I wonder if Syrentide in particular had anything to do with the DMCA. Well anyway none of this actually matters to the run because Syrentide does not have a Nuclear form.

Reveal hidden contents

I've been saving Mirror Shot on Splendifowl just for this occasion! It's gonna totally wreck Serra-

Oh, I was hoping that'd be a oneshot. Well it lowers her accuracy (30% chance normally but guaranteed on the mirror field) and I got an extra evasion from the Lax Incense, so Glaceon might miss her attack- no, she hit and almost kills Splendifowl. But I can get a special attack buff from moody and then I'll- no, it actually lowered my special attack. Okay, next turn I'll have better luck- no, it lowered my speed too. You know what, I'm just gonna try again.

There we go, got the miss.

Froslass comes in next, outspeeds me and sets up Aurora Veil. Now, I'm not sure what to do here. Another Mirror Shot won't kill and I'd likely die in return, but I don't have much to switch to either. Froslass has Snow Cloak and Brightpowder, each of which gives +1 Evasion on switch in. Aurora Veil gives another +1 when it's used, so she has effectively +3 evasion plus Brightpowder and Mirror Shot is my only guaranteed hit move. I could smash the field with Hyper Voice (don't care about relationship points), but I'll probably die afterward and Froslass won't... And then I'll still be stuck with a +3 evasion Froslass and no moves to hit it. I guess I'll go for another Mirror Shot and hope for the best.

Oh right. Crit rate is boosted for each evasion or accuracy buff in the mirror field, so at +3 this Froslass has guaranteed crits.

So. I'm gonna have to keep trying until not only does Glaceon miss, but I also get a Special Attack or Speed buff before Frosslass comes in.

...or until the AI sends in Aurorus instead of Froslass for some reason? (this happened the very next attempt by the way) Well Aurorus is quad weak to steel so...

Bye bye!

I actually get the special attack boost, but it doesn't matter because Froslass comes in, goes for Ice Beam instead of Aurora Veil this time, gets the 50/50 crit (she's at +2 this time), and kills me. I'm still in the game though, because I send in Baariette to Sucker Punch her and actually hit.

Alpico's next so I switch to Ninetales. It used Fake Out so I didn't take much damage, I outspeed and hit it with Heat Wave, and it dies. Serra's own Ninetales comes in to override my sun, I switch to Arbok, which might have been a mistake as she sets up Aurora Veil. I paralyze her and hit her with Acid Spray before going down, effectively equaling out the Aurora Veil... but only for special moves, and only for this one Pokemon.

After Arbok's death I send my own Ninetales back in and try to use Heat Wave. But Serra switches to Jynx, who has a Brightpowder and gets a +1 to evasion from it, and I miss. I hit next turn but she barely survives thanks to Aurora Veil, and I barely survive Psyshock in return. However, since Jynx is at such low health, and I've got the sun out, and she has Dry Skin, she ends up dying!

Alolan Ninetales is all that's left. I hit with Heat Wave, but it does surprisingly little damage. I send in Baariette next to try and kill with Cross Chop, miss, and die. I send in Arcanine to try and kill with Flare Blitz, and hit.

For a second there I was afraid I'd miss everything and fail right at the finish line. Also I got the relationship points with Serra, nice! Except not really, because even if I DID care about them they're gonna be reset to 0 when I eventually switch to episode 19.

There is now only one major boss between me and unlocking Nuclear moves.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

As of typing this I've played some of episode 19 but not much. I'd prefer anything post-Hardy and especially post-main story not be talked about here. If it's about pre-Hardy changes to the story though, go ahead and say whatever you want about that. As I've mentioned I have no intention of replaying from the start anytime soon.

Candy · April 29, 2022

On 2/16/2022 at 10:57 PM, CURIE said:

everyone who saw us assumed she was mine and no one tried anything

Expand

That's some galaxybrain move lol Poplio is my fave starter :p glad to see her in the story

On 2/16/2022 at 10:57 PM, CURIE said:

So this is the masked Torren lady with the nuclear Pokemon? The one that Ame hates so much?

Expand

Bruh gossip travels fast af xD Imagine trying not to look sus, but then everyone and their mom knowing you're sus in like your second day

On 2/16/2022 at 10:57 PM, CURIE said:

Reveal hidden contents

Kinda anticlimactic for the last fight of the chapter to be so easy compared to Florinia, but I have a reason to end it here instead of there.

Expand

E19 is out and y'know I've been watching a playthru of it cause I ain't restarting. Ame overhauled a lot of it, not just adding the last episode! It's almost like a different game from up to E18 lol. Fervis will have a lot of work to do if they want to make the mod for E19 cause there's many more battles than before me thinks. Anyway, nice chapter 2 and prolly nice new chapter too :p

CURIE · April 29, 2022

On 4/29/2022 at 2:14 AM, Candy said:

Bruh gossip travels fast af xD Imagine trying not to look sus, but then everyone and their mom knowing you're sus in like your second day

Expand

To be fair it wasn't quite the second day, I remember stating at some point in chapter 1 that a few days had passed.

Candy · April 29, 2022

On 4/29/2022 at 6:29 PM, CURIE said:

To be fair it wasn't quite the second day, I remember stating at some point in chapter 1 that a few days had passed.

Expand

Hehe it was a hyperbole lol but even then, being a stranger to most people but becoming kinda famous in a few days is a feat on its own xD Imagine how many wannabe YouTubers wish they could have the same luck haha

CURIE · May 7, 2022

No, it's not time for chapter 8 yet. I want to slow down a bit on the chapters for now, Fervis has recently said he's gonna wait for the full release of episode 19 before he updates the mod (remember it's still in beta, even if a publicly available one). That could be months away, and I'm only 3 or 4 chapters away from the point of no return at Agate Circus where I'd want to stop and wait for the episode 19 update. I'd rather put those chapters out more slowly than all at once and then have months of nothing. Is what I say now, but if a big name Youtuber begins (or resumes) playing the game I'm gonna push out a chapter asap in a shameless bid to get more views out of the increase in traffic this site would get.

In the meantime though, I've been playing more of episode 19 and its postgame and it got me thinking about the Nucleon ban. Urayne is actually stronger than Nucleon, or at least on the same level of power. His base stats are higher, he doesn't have the incredibly powerful Atomizate, but he makes up for it in other ways. No one's gonna call him game-breakingly overpowered though, because he's a postgame legendary while Nucleon is only an Eeveelution. So rather than permanently ban Nucleon forever, I think I'll "promote" him to postgame-only status.

Fervis · May 10, 2022

Sorry that I can't give a certain date, but yes it's gonna be a while until all is set and ready to release.

Regarding the nucleon, I intend to adjust the stats to typical Eeveelution distributions:
BaseStats=95,60,60,65,110,130 (It's read Hp/Atk/Def/Spd/SpAtk/SpDef)

This is what I will go for, at least for starters. Meaning that it's gonna have a crippled 65 Speed and "only" 110 in Sp.Atk, decent Hp bulk and very good Sp.Def as a niche.

But for that I am also open for suggestions to balance it out!

Really enjoy your nuclear journey so far!

CURIE · June 1, 2022

Episode 19's fully released now, but it's probably still gonna be a while before the mod is updated. Until then, I'll still be doing these on episode 18.

Chapter 8

Story section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

The only thing of significance between Serra and Connal is me getting the sixth sticker, which isn't even really significant because it's more of a stepping stone to other, better department store floors later. This one unlocks the type gems, which are just garbage. "But wait" you might be thinking, "I thought they completely dominated the metagame in gen 5? So much so that Gamefreak NEVER brought them back, even to this day? How could they be garbage?" Well there's three reasons: One, they've been nerfed starting in gen 6. Yes, Gamefreak never brought them back, and yet nerfed them at the same time. It's really dumb. Nowadays they supposedly boost the move by 1.3x instead of 1.5x. I say "supposedly" because that brings me to my second point: I SWEAR they just don't work in Reborn. Every single time I try to use one, I don't see a difference in damage. Maybe I'm just getting super unlucky with damage rolls every time or something, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen a move almost oneshot a Pokemon, thought "maybe a gem will make it a oneshot", and then no. The target still just barely survives. Finally, even if the gems DO work, Plates are just... better. They boost the move by 1.2x, which isn't a lot of difference from 1.3x, and don't disappear after one use. And unlike gems I actually HAVE seen a difference in damage when using plates. Also there's no Nuclear gem.

On to Connal, who is the "final boss" before unlocking Nuclear moves. There are a few more required battles after this, but they're just generic Meteor grunts.

Reveal hidden contents

Normally Sucker Punch is just barely not enough for a oneshot, even with the Dread Plate, causing Baariette to get curbstomped by Dazzling Gleam. I tried a couple more times to see if there was a damage roll where I actually killed it, considered equipping a Roseli Berry, and then got this run where Baariette actually survived too. Another Sucker Punch takes out Musharna.

Uh, AI? What are you doing? You do realize Rotom's just gonna get slapped by Sucker Punch too right?

What did I tell you?

Wait... does... does Sigmund just not have a way to deal with Sucker Punch Baariette?

Okay that'll stop him. Probably should've, you know, sent Electivire out from the start. I get one last Sucker Punch in before going down, which takes about half his health. I send in Arbok who ends up being useless because not only does he still twoshot at -1 attack, but Ninetales would've outpsed and taken him out anyway.

I try to do just that, but he sitches to Drampa who tanks the Heat Wave for about a quarter damage (so no Berserk yet). I try setting up Nasty Plot in the hopes that Extrasensory would kill, but not only does it not, but it activates Berserk and I die. Pajay tries to finish it off with Air Slash, but it's not enough and she dies too.

Arcanine finishes it off (I won't lie, I totally forgot he had both Close Combat and Play Rough otherwise I wouldn't have thrown Pajay away like that) and next is Hypno. Sun boosted Flare Blitz oneshots.

I don't think Extremespeed will kill from here so I take a gamble that Arcanine's faster and... I'm wrong. My last Pokemon is Gellin though, who I've used an ability Capsule to switch to Clorophyll. She's faster thanks to the sun and can finish him off with Giga-

...Nevermind.

So that's a wipe but it isn't a big deal, I threw away two of my Pokemon for no reason so I'll just... not do that, and I'll be fine. I go back to the city and get a Roseli Berry just so that I don't have to soft reset for damage rolls on Musharna, start the fight again, and-

Nevermind. Now that the AI doesn't see a kill with Dazzling Gleam, because it cheats and knows what my held item is, it used Psychic Terrain and now Sucker Punch is useless. I talked about this last chapter but if you only read the story sections you missed it. Honestly if you're skipping the gameplay sections, you're missing half the experience.

I try equipping a Dark Gem just in the off chance that's enough to oneshot, but no. I lead with Tanscure instead to deal some damage before getting wiped so Baariette can get the kill, and that works out even better than before. Now, Musharna tries to use Moonlight (still not enough to survive Sucker Punch the following turn) allowing me to set up Focus Energy. With Focus Energy, my Sucker Punches have a 50/50 chance to crit. If only I had access to the Scope Lens, it'd be guaranteed. Rotom and Raichu come in and get knocked down normally, but Connal does something different this time by sending in Drampa instead of Electivire. I use Cross Chop, it's super effective and with its boosted crit rate plus Focus Energy it's a guaranteed crit.

I was too slow on the screenshot button, but yeah it was a crit. Again, not sure why the AI thought that switch in was a good idea.

Electivire comes in and Sucker Punch gets the 50% crit, but it's not enough to kill. I barely survive Thunder Punch though, so one more Sucker Punch and a Beat Up later (I ran out of Sucker Punches but was faster than Hypno) and it's over.

Would've been a lot harder if the AI sent in Electivire from the start.

You know, this scene's really dumb too. In my version of the story the protagonist still has the Ruby Ring while Sirius has the Amethyst Pendant, but in the actual game Sirius already has both. So... why is he wasting his time and manpower attacking the Belrose house exactly? Yeah, the Sapphire Bracelets were here in the past, but they aren't anymore and he knows that. So why? Because he "promised" the Doctor he'd get back the runaway orphans? But this is SIRIUS we're talking about here! His ENTIRE CHARACTER is that he's an evil double-crossing bastard, and at this point he doesn't need the Doctor anymore! There's a throwaway line Ame used to try and justify it, where he's like "I've suffered too many heavy losses, I can't just leave here empty handed" or something like that, but it still doesn't work because that was AFTER he devoted a bunch of time and manpower to something that doesn't benefit him in the slightest.

Anyway, in case you didn't know this already you need to guard the kitchen to get the true route. It's simple logic: You already know that Laura's guarding the stairs, and no one but you is guarding the kitchen. This is only if you fulfilled all the other requirements for the true route, otherwise it doesn't really matter what you pick.

On to the meteor base, none of the grunts gave me too much trouble other than the fact that I had to run back to the Belrose house in between almost every battle. That's just how it be when you're weak to every type.

Also Tanscure learned Sudden Strike. It's a move invented by Uranium which is basically Dark-type Quick Attack.

Finally I reached the room with the PULSE Abra and before I could attack, it teleported me away to the Tanzaan Depths. In a regular playthrough this is treated as another obstacle you have to overcome, but in my case the Tanzaan Depths are exactly where I want to be.

This is it, I've finally unlocked Nuclear moves. That Nuclear Trawpinch there is the special tutor that teaches them, and yes they cost shards but I have a ton of them already from mining. What's that? Laura? Ehhh she'll be fine don't worry. This is more important.

Let me take you on a tour of my new toys. First of all, you may have forgotten since it hasn't been relevant up until now, but Nuclear type attacks are super effective against every type except Steel and itself, which both resist it. That's the benefit you're supposed to get from being weak to every type, an extremely high offensive potential. Of course, a Pokemon can only learn them in the first place if it's nuclear type, because having that kind of power without the drawback would be way too strong even without STAB. Also to balance things out a bit more, most Nuclear attacks have lower than average base power. And, just like with any other type of move, each Nuclear Pokemon can only learn certain ones. For example, Tanscure only learns Nuclear Slash, Nuclear Waste, and Gamma Ray. As for the actual moves themselves:

Nuclear Waste: A 90 accuracy status move that inflicts bad poison. It's literally just Toxic but I get access to it earlier than I normally would the Toxic TM. Unlike the Toxic TM though, not everyone learns it.

Expunge: Okay so this is a weird one. In the original Uranium, only Hazma could learn this move. It was base 100 power, 70 accuracy, special, and had the unique effect of being super effective against other Nuclear types. Hazma's whole gimmick was being strong against other Nuclear Pokemon (and shitty against anything else tbh) and this move was meant to complement that. Fervis changed it completely. Now it's base 60 power, 100 accuracy and does double damage if the opponent has a status condition. So in other words, it's a Nuclear type Hex. And unlike the original Expunge, a whole bunch of Pokemon can learn it. I like it way more this way.

Nuclear Wind: A base 65 power, 100 accuracy special move that hits both opponents in a double battle. In the original Uranium it had a secret special effect, but that doesn't seem to exist in this mod.

Gamma Ray: Useless. It's basically the "Water Gun" of the Nuclear type, in the original Uranium the earliest Nuclear types you encountered would have this, while the ones you fought later on would have the better moves. But in this mod where you get access to all of the "common" Nuclear moves at once? There's just no point. Base 40 power, 100 accuracy, special, no added effect.

Gamma Ray: No longer useless. Starting in the episode 19 update, Fervis changed it to be base 65 power and have a chance to lower accuracy. I don't know what the exact chance is though.

Half-Life: A 90 accuracy move that reduces the opponent's HP to half its current amount. It's basically Super Fang, the only difference being that it can hit ghost types.

Radioacid: A base 65 power, 100 accuracy special move that has a 30% chance to burn. ~~Also fun fact, the name is two words in this mod but one word in the original Uranium.~~ Starting in the episode 19 update, Radioacid is one word again.

Nuclear Slash: The only "common" Nuclear attack to be physical, and as you may have guessed from the name it's got an increased crit rate. 100 accuracy, and while its base power was only 55 in the original Uranium it's been buffed to 70 in this mod to make the Nuclear type a bit less specially-dominated.

The moves aren't the only important things in this room though, and no I'm not referring to Laura.

First of all, this. As far as I'm aware it's the only one in the game. Yes, this means Arceus has a Nuclear form, not that it really matters.

Finally, among the wild Pokemon in here are the last couple of "natural" Nuclear types that aren't a postgame legendary or an overpowered Eeveelution. I'll get more into them later. I teach what moves I can/want to the Pokemon who happen to be in my party, learn that Arcanine cannot learn a single Nuclear type move (is that an oversight or something?), and move on with the story.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "is this run just gonna be easy mode now?" After all, up until this point I've been playing with only the drawbacks of the Nuclear type with no benefit, and yet it hasn't really been that hard. The only battles I really struggled on were Archer and Shade, and Archer doesn't really count. Now, I have the benefits of the Nuclear type and they're admittedly really powerful ones. However, I still think it's gonna be hard. There are some pre-Hardy fights I'm still worried about, Hardy and everything after him is where the game really starts to amp up the difficulty, and the postgame is just bullshit. Also, there's no Nuclear move tutor beyond Agate, so once I get locked out of the city, any new Pokemon I pick up won't get Nuclear moves until after I beat Ciel. And remember, at the end of the day I'm still weak to every type.

But for the immediate future? Haha ohhhhh yeah it's gonna be babytime easy cakewalk mode.

On to Steelix.

Reveal hidden contents

Fun fact, in Plates of Arceus the Steelix drops a TM when you beat it. I'm not picking it up though, because rule 4. It would disappear when Fervis updates the mod anyway, because he's making the mod its own thing separate thing from Plates of Arceus.

Now that we're at that point of the story, you might be curious where I got those black and white pics of Steelix getting Capture Styler-ed. It was from a manga adaptation of the first Ranger game called "Mobilize!! Pokemon Ranger" which as far as I'm aware, never got an English translation. But hey, I don't need to read Japanese to see a cool shot of a Steelix getting Capture Styler-ed!

Now for Abra.

Reveal hidden contents

Now let's go back down and check out those new Pokemon I can get.

Hazma is a pure Nuclear type and as I've mentioned earlier, his whole gimmick is being strong against other Nuclear types. He's got the ability Lead Skin, which makes him immune to Nuclear Moves, and was the only Pokemon that could learn the old version of Expunge. Obviously these benefits are useless in Reborn, and his base stats are just shit so he can't do much else. There is one good thing I can say about him: Not only does he learn both Reflect and Light Screen by level up, but he comes already knowing them in the wild at this level. So I pick one up, although I'm not sure if I'll ever use him. It seems like that one good thing would also become useless once I get the TMs for those moves.

Geigeroach is a Bug/Nuclear type with an awesome concept and design... and that's the only good thing I can say about him. His base stats aren't much better than Hazma's, he has the same useless ability, and while he does learns a "rare" Nuclear move, it doesn't really matter because of:

Her. Before you ask, no I didn't hunt for a shiny. I was just looking for a Xenomite with decent IVs, and just so happened to find a shiny who had decent IVs. Anyway, Xenoqueen is a pure Nuclear type who has *gasp* actually usable base stats! She also learns two "rare" nuclear moves:

Proton Beam: A base 100 Power, 90 accuracy special move that harshly lowers your special attack. It's basically Nuclear type Overheat, but with less base power to balance out the fact that it's Nuclear type. Geigroach also learns this, but Xenoqueen is just way better. Doesn't learn it until level 67 though.

Fission Burst: Basically Nuclear type Explosion. Base 150 Power, 100 accuracy, and makes the user faint. The problem is that like regular Explosion, it's physical, and Xenoqueen's base attack stat is 44. So it's basically useless, and the only other Pokemon who learns it is Urayne.

There's actually a third move she's supposed to learn, but it's not programmed into the mod yet. And on top of all this cool shit, she's based off the queen from the Alien movies which is just badass. Oh and her ability is actually useful so that's a plus. There's a drawback though: It's a miserable grind. As you can see, she comes at a substantially lower level than everyone else, and is stuck in her first form with pathetic stats until level fifty five. Oh well, I guess I'm gonna have to deal with it.

IS WHAT I THOUGHT, but while grinding found that you have a really low chance of finding ones that are in the 60s! Y'know, I don't really care THAT much about Xenoqueen's shiny sprite, maybe I'll just use this one instead-

Nevermind I'm grinding the shiny.

There.

I forgot last chapter that I could have gotten Chimical, so I go back, pick one up, and train it because I intend to use a Chimaconda on the team too.

So, Chimaconda are supposed to have a gender difference where the females don't have the manes that males do. But when it's a Nuclear Chimaconda, it always has the mane regardless. I don't know if that's a bug or something... but I'm not complaining because to be honest, Chimaconda looks worse without the mane. I do the last bit of grinding for the other four Pokemon I intend to use against Noel, and begin the battle.

Reveal hidden contents

While going through my box teaching Nuclear moves, I realized that Nidoran doesn't get Radio Acid which uh... kinda ruins the whole reason I wanted him. Was gonna go with a whole special attacking Sheer Force Life Orb build, but the only Nuclear attacks he learns are Expunge and Nuclear Slash, neither of which are affected by Sheer Force... so yeah... I mean I could still make that build, but then he won't be using any Nuclear moves and would just have all the drawbacks of the type with no benefit... I may have wasted my time grinding those casino coins and soft resetting for that shiny.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

And yes I know that Plutonium glows red and not green, and that spherical cores are used in bombs while reactors use rods. It's just that a Uranium core would need to be WAY bigger, and the only visual reference I had was the in-game item Energy Core, which is a green sphere. Besides, as I'll get to in the gameplay sections of later chapters, Pokemon Uranium doesn't give two shits about realism in depicting radiation or nuclear power anyway. So why should I?

CURIE · July 13, 2022

Fervis has put out the episode 19 update to the mod! This update changes a LOT, so some rules are gonna have to change as well:

-First of all, it's no longer part of Plates of Arceus but its own separate thing. So the whole "no Plates of Arceus content" rule is moot.

-I'll use the weathermod and easyHMs passwords for convenience, but not in any way that would affect the game's difficulty. That is to say, if a boss requires an HM move to reach (with no access to a PC to switch out an HM slave), then someone on my team has to be able to learn that move. Also, I can't set a weather condition that can't naturally occur in whatever area I'm in.

-A bunch of my Pokemon got overwritten due to some IDs getting shifted around, I made an exception to the "no debug" rule and used it to get replacements.

-Nucleon's been nerfed, so he's (tentatively) unbanned.

With that out of the way it's time for

Chapter 9

Story Section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

Let's get right into it.

Reveal hidden contents

After absolutely decimating Fern I spend a while doing all the optional shit there is to do around Route 1. Thanks to Kinetmunk I have more than enough ice cream to get all the honey I'll ever need.

In the small area of Celestine you can access, we can find Buizel who has a nuclear form and may be useful in the future due to him being really fast.

The only way (at this point) to get more of these Berries is to plant and harvest them, and it's not like I'm speedrunning this game anyway, so I might as well. The entrance you see in the Lum Berry pic leads to a Plates of Arceus area, so we're just gonna ignore that.

And of course you can't expect me to forget this, now can you? I'm literally the guy who wrote the sticker guide!

Around the time I had wrapped up Route 1 and started writing the scenes in Radomus' gym, was when Fervis uploaded the long awaited episode 19 update to the mod! I download it, load my save file, and immediately shit hits the fan. Prior to updating my team looked like this:

And after updating it looked like this:

And it's not just the Pokemon in my party. Every single Uranium 'mon I've ever caught has been magically turned into some other Uranium 'mon. This is because Fervis is not only keeping gen 8 Pokemon in his mod, but also adding Hisuian Pokemon, which shifted the IDs of everything beyond Galar in the Pokedex. You may notice that the levels have been altered too, because different Pokemon have different leveling rates. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do about it, except get replacements. At least all my non-Tandorian Pokemon are fine, including my almost-perfect Ninetales. Some of them turned un-nuclear for some reason, but that wasn't a big deal as I could re-nuclear them just fine.

At some point I picked up a Plates of Arceus key item, which now doesn't exist and crashes the game if I scroll over it in the bag. And since it's a key item, I can't get rid of it even if I went back to the old version, so I guess I just permanently have a bomb in my backpack that explodes if I so much as glance at it the wrong way. It's kinda funny actually.

Well, the first order of business is replacing my "lost" Pokemon. I'll be honest with you here: I used debug for this. I don't see it as cheating because it was a bug that made me "lose" them in the first place. The debug in this mod doesn't let you change IVs, so I just had to accept that they'd get re-rolled. I did make sure the natures and abilities were the same though.

I made sure Chimaconda was male this time, because Fervis fixed the female sprite issue and I think the males just look better.

I always liked non-shiny Xenoqueen more anyway.

To be honest I'll probably never use either of these two again, but I might as well make replacements just to be safe.

Kinetmunk still has potential use as a pickup slave though.

The debug menu also doesn't have a "make it shiny" button, and I didn't feel like grinding, so these two are just not shiny anymore. Ninetales is now even more special, because she's the only one who isn't green and black.

So long, perfect speed IV :'( I never really got to use you, since I was stuck with a minus speed nature the whole time.

Not actual team members but still potentially useful enough to warrant replacing.

Going back to re-teach nuclear moves, I find that the tutor's been replaced by a talking Praseopunk, although he isn't actually nuclear type... nor does he have a nuclear form... eh whatever. More importantly there have been some changes to the nuclear learnsets, such as Baariette getting Nuclear Slash like he's supposed to. Arcanine gets it now too. And remember how I complained earlier about Nidoran not learning Radioacid? Well I was wrong, Nidoran actually could learn it the whole time... Female Nidoran, that is. I spent all that time shiny farming the wrong one. Oops. Anyway, Gamma Ray has been changed to not be completely obsolete anymore: It has 65 base power and has a chance to lower the opponent's accuracy. I don't know what the exact chance is though. There was something else interesting I found down there, but you know what, I'm gonna keep that as a surprise for later. No it's not the Hazma you see in the corner there. That's just a regular-ass wild Hazma encounter.

Wait a minute, why am I catching a Geigeroach? I thought I said Geigeroach sucked? That's weird. I wonder if that's foreshadowing for something.

I only have one data chip right now, so I guess I won't be changing the weather for the time being.

I make sure to pick this up on my way back to the move relearner.

A weird other thing I found on the way back, Cain's here and repeats what I assume is the scene where he opens the door to the wasteland if you talk to him. I say "assume", because he talks about Team Meteor attacking his family and Victoria saying... something, idk I didn't play the neo-early game and don't have any intention to. After seeing this cutscene I went to his house in the wasteland to see if anything changed, but nothing did. The door was already open before the cutscene, and I don't know if triggering it screws up my story progress flags in the code, so I soft reset it away and left Cain standing there.

Okay I finally made it back to the move relearner, and now I have to mention the TMs. Remember how Plates of Arceus had those extra TMs to include gen 8? And I said I wouldn't use them because no Plates of Arceus content? Well now the mod is its own separate thing, but it still contains gen 8 and therefore the extra TMs, so now I say they're fair game. Similarly, the move relearner still teaches egg moves without you actually having to breed for them.

Well now I've got all my replacement Pokemon knowing the same moves as their predecessors, but of course their EVs have all been reset to zero. I was planning to hold off on the EV training until I beat Luna, or at least until I beat the Ditto-Arceus and opened the grand gates... But hey, sometimes you have to change your plans because a glitch deleted the majority of your Pokemon. I spend over half my money buying the power items at the department store and get to work. For the most part I train them in speed and offense, because in case you haven't noticed Nuclear is the "glass cannon" type.

Speaking of buying stuff from the department store, this is significant because combined with Nuclear Slash's increased crit rate, it gives me 50% crits. I buy several. I leave the un-replaced team members the way they are for now, since EV training them would require a bunch of berries which would cost a significant amount of money and I'm running low on that now.

Huh, there's that Geigroach again. He's EV training too, in... HP and Speed? What's he planning?

Well anyway remember that Sylveon I picked up earlier but never used? She's one of the Pokemon who somehow un-nucleared, which is actually lucky for me because Fervis made it that Nuclear Pokemon can't breed at all (previously they could, but the kids would be Nuclear too). That means I could breed another Eevee to get this:

As was discussed earlier in the thread, Nucleon's base stats have been nerfed, most notably his speed has been reduced to 65. For that reason I'm tentatively unbanning him. By the way, even though this mod still has gen 8 Pokemon in it, the non-gen 8 Pokemon have gone back to their gen 7 movesets. You know what this means?

In the past I've referred to using a pre-charged Trump Card as the "Nuclear Trump Card" strategy, but here we have a LITERAL Nuclear Trump Card. It's interesting to note that the happiness-based eeveelutions take priority over Nucleon, so by the time I had trained him up to level 45 for Trump Card, I needed to lower his happiness with bitter herbs to get him to evolve correctly. Not very often you find yourself needing to lower a Pokemon's happiness, huh?

A couple more things before I move on with the story. First of all, it's worth mentioning that, at least for the most part, every Pokemon that would have a nuclear form is already implemented in the game. However, only Pokemon up to gen 5 have had nuclear sprites implemented as me typing this, and anything gen 6 or beyond still just uses their regular sprites. For example:

I'm going to not use Pokemon until they've had their nuclear sprites added, otherwise you know I'd get "why are you using that Pokemon when it's not nuclear type" comments. I also release all my old "mixed up" Pokemon, because several of them turned into species I'm not supposed to have access to yet.

It's actually quite convenient that Fervis updated the mod when he did, if I had fought the Ditto-Arceus on episode 18 I would've permanently missed the chance to pet this Umbreon, making the entire eeveelution quest impossible... even though the rest of the NPCs associated with the quest still remain, and you can still interact with them, leading to a false idea that the quest is still possible to complete... which leads to you spending an unreasonable amount of time looking for the "missing" eeveelutions... yeah, it's terrible game design. I don't know why Ame thought that was a good idea. Well this time around I'll actually be able to complete the quest, which'll get me a Choice Scarf slightly earlier than I would normally.

Uh, no? This line is straight up wrong, and it baffles me that it's gone uncorrected all these years. It feels like a mistranslation, except the game was originally written in English! You can hear Gardevoir's voice in video recordings played over television. That's not "psychic thought projection", she's just speaking. What's more, there are other Pokemon in this very game who speak through telepathy, and you can tell it's different from normal speech because their dialogue has these -things- around it, while Gardevoir's dialogue doesn't. I've seen people on the forums try to explain away this line, saying that maybe she uses psychic powers to vibrate the air, to make sounds that resemble human speech or something like that. But that just sounds stupid. You know what'd sound less stupid? Saying she can just speak English. There are other Pokemon in this very game who can do that. There's a Pokemon in almost every episode of the anime who can do that.

Whatever. Moving on.

(I don't know why it took me until now to think of changing CURIE's versus bar to a more appropriate green)

Reveal hidden contents

First boss fight since updating to episode 19. And it's really conveniently timed, because the new version of the chess field is actually my favorite in the whole game! Arbok and Muk are both the pawns of this match, which doesn't matter much because neither can oneshot the other anyway. I'm faster so Muk goes down first, and I get lucky with the Radioacid burn so I take minimal damage in return. Oh by the way, Radioacid's one word again. Not sure why Fervis felt the need to change that, but he did.

Raffiti is a bishop, has field boosted Sucker Punch, and a Life Orb, making him extremely scary. I know this because I had to redo the fight a couple times, not because of its difficulty, but... well, you'll see why soon. Armed with this knowledge, I can use Glare and-

Oh. He used Fake Out, and between the field boost and his +1 Attack, it was enough to kill. He never used that before... weird. Well, I can still abuse my knowledge of him having Sucker Punch!

By sending in Arcanine (also a bishop) and using Extremespeed! In case you didn't know, if you use Sucker Punch and your opponent goes first anyway, even if that move is an attack, Sucker Punch still fails. Raffiti wastes his turn and I kill him with another Extreemespeed.

Next is Nidoking, who is Cain's queen. Those defensive buffs don't help much, because he's still quad weak to nuclear and I'm at +1 attack. For this reason I mistakenly think I can kill with Nuclear Slash, but it turns out Nidoking's faster.

Not faster after a Petrify though.

SURPRISE! I actually went into the PBS files and changed Cain's Primarina to a Ditto with Impostor, to match the story. This is why I had to redo the fight a couple times, because I couldn't get it to work right at first. Turns out the problem was that when I made the changes to the trainers.txt file, my computer was saving them using UTF-8 encoding by default, when I needed to use ANSI instead. If, in the off chance that you reading this have ever tried to edit the PBS files and couldn't get it to work, check what type of encoding you're using. You can find it by using "save as" and it should be in the bottom right corner. Anyway, this change actually makes the fight quite a bit harder because Ditto is Cain's king, but also copies my bishop stat buffs, making him effectivley a king AND a bishop at the same time. And because of my own Petrify, he's faster now too. I try to Toxic him, but miss and die.

I send in Splendifowl next, who's my own king. Arbok actually has lower HP, but she was in the front of the party and became a pawn instead. Since we're both Kings, who goes first is of course determined by the speed stat, and mine is higher. Hyper Voice oneshots.

Mimikyu was originally Cain's King, but because of Ditto she's now a Knight. Splendifowl breaks her disguise before getting Drain Punched and I send in Xenoqueen, who is also a Bishop. Cain hard switches to Paraboom, a play that doesn't help him at all because Paraboom goes down in one hit as well. Mimikyu was faster than Xenoqueen anyway...

In-game, Cain claims to have no idea what the chess field was and didn't understand what was happening in the fight, and yet he just happened to roll in with a team that takes advantage of the chess field. What a weird coincidence!

If I were actually allowed to choose I'd have sided with El simply because he's way cooler. Also he was kinda right about everything the whole time, despite Ame's attempts to depict otherwise. Unfortunately, I am required to side with Lamedomus to get the true route, which means I'm also required to actually defeat the Ditto-Arceus. So let's get to that.

(I replaced the Legendary Battle theme in the files too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM81oEEy8NI)

Reveal hidden contents

By the way, in case you didn't know. The "Jhoto's eternal night incident" is an actual episode of the anime.

Now that the grand gates are open, I sweep through the game with the Itemfinder and find another bugged story cutscene. If I stand next to Amaria or talk to her, it triggers the associated dialogue and battle. After the battle, however, the game softlocks. I'm not sure what's preventing the rest of the scene from playing, but whatever.

Also Heather's standing here...

Except she's not! She's a ghooooooost!

In this update, Fervis added Nuclear Gems. I've already talked about how I don't really find gems useful, but the difference here is that there's only one Atomic Plate in the game (as far as I'm aware), making these gems potentially useful. I buy several. All that's left is a bit of level grinding (now MUCH faster thanks to exp candies) and it's on to the last boss of the day.

Reveal hidden contents

You may notice my money's more than doubled since I mentioned running low on it. That's the power of sweeping through the game with the Itemfinder and selling all the stuff you know you'll never use.

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

Aphelli · August 31, 2022

Wow, I really wish I hadn't taken so long to get up to speed on this. It's well-made, entertaining, and full of good ideas!

While I know very little about Pokemon Uranium, I've enjoyed all Ranger games a lot (the first one was not that hard because I had a guide, but a lot of the bosses would have been incredibly tough without the right Pokemon, which the guide told me about) and I'm glad that they're given some love! It's great to see the Styler in action, it's a great tool!

I think I know who Isaac is... but I don't know who CURIE is. There are a few clues, but I'm not sure who they're pointing towards (because our lead is not an all-loving hero... they're secretive and somewhat self-serving, but only in a limited way). I think I can make a guess as to the endgame, but I'm not saying it out loud: it'll be embarrassing if I get it wrong, and worse if I somehow get it right.

Keep up with the good work!

PS: I'm not sure where you're at, but if you haven't, do play (or watch) E19. It's definitely worth it, and may shed light on part of the game's plot. But given you mentioned Euphie, it's probably moot.

Xaphon · September 19, 2022

On 4/29/2022 at 12:58 AM, CURIE said:

I'd also ask "How can Heather use Fly" but let's be real here, every single person who reads this knows she's an Elite 4 member, and that's why.

Expand

Hey, as somebody who's only been reading the chapters as I get up to them myself I had no idea about this! :V (though spoilers are obviously bound to happen if I'm reading somebody else's playthrough of a game.)

CURIE · November 4, 2022

It's been a while, huh. Sorry for going so long without an update, I've been busy with real life. It also doesn't help that this website sucks at its job and deleted my post when I was halfway through writing it... TWICE. You're probably about to say "shouldn't you start saving backups somewhere else?", and I've tried that, but doing so fucks up the format and basically forces me to re-write it all again anyway. If you're reading this then it means I finally got around to writing it all a third time and actually finishing it before the website wiped it away a third time.

Chapter 10

Story Section:

Reveal hidden contents

Gameplay Section:

Reveal hidden contents

So, you finally know that the protagonist is actually Kellyn. Now there's some stuff I wanted to talk about that I couldn't before!

First of all, remember how I said all the way back in the beginning that my biggest issue with Uranium was its misuse of the Nuclear type? Well my second biggest problem with the game is its misuse of the Pokemon Rangers. They, and Kellyn in particular, are "technically" an important part of the story, but I say "technically" in quotations because... How would I put this? The fact that they're Rangers doesn't matter. You could have replaced them with generic Police officers, who use Pokemon like regular trainers do, and replace Kellyn himself with a generic police chief, and ~~the story would be EXACTLY THE SAME.~~ EDIT: After looking back, I realize that this statement isn't... entirely accurate. There is ONE part of the story where Ranger elements are actually relevant: when Nuclear Pokemon first start showing up on the mainland, the Ranger's Stylers don't work on them, and since they have no permanent Pokemon of their own they're forced to rely on trainers, including you the player. But then later on they just invent a new Styler modification that DOES work on Nuclear Pokemon and we're right back to "these could have just been police officers and it'd be the same". I'm not pretentious enough to suggest my shitty fanfiction is any better than Reborn or Uranium's stories, but I at least feel like I've made better use of Ranger elements.

Speaking of those Ranger elements, let's talk about some of them! It's already been mentioned in the story that the Capture Styler projects a forcefield, and guess what? That's actually part of Ranger cannon.

And if you think "okay but maybe no-selling the train explosion is a bit much" Then you're wrong. In the Ranger games, Guardian Signs in particular, the Styler withstands some crazy shit; including giant explosions, falls from extreme heights, and direct attacks from legendary Pokemon. Those legendary Pokemon include Lugia, who according to the Pokedex can cause storms that ~~envelop the entire planet~~ (I remembered it wrong, it's storms that last for 40 days. That's still a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy though), Regigigas, who can move continents, and even Arceus himself.

Remember in chapter 6 where it was briefly mentioned that the Styler resists EMPs? I didn't make that up either. There's an episode of the anime where Ash and friends walk into an electromagnetic field that screws up all their electronics, including their Pokeballs. Solana's there too, but her Styler works just fine. When asked why, she says this:

Which makes NO FUCKIN SENSE BY THE WAY. "Hermetically sealed" literally just means it's air tight! That would do nothing to protect against EMPs! But hey, cannon is cannon. Stylers resist EMPs even though the reasoning is stupid and shouldn't work.

Remember how the Styler can't protect against forced teleportation, though? That's cannon too. In the games there are multiple stealth segments where you have to sneak past certain psychic or ghost-type Pokemon or they'll forcibly teleport you out of the area.

As for blocking out mental attacks... okay I'll admit, I made that one up.

It's also mentioned this chapter that Stylers don't work on trainer-owned Pokemon. This is a weird one. It's never explicitly stated, but very heavily implied to the point where it's weird that they don't just flat-out state it. It doesn't come up in the games, since no one uses Pokeballs in those regions (are they illegal or do people just... not use them because... reasons? Never explained). Pokemon Uranium has Trainers and Rangers in the same region, but the subject is never brought up. Trainers and Rangers also cross paths in the anime, which is where we see the implication that Stylers only work on wild Pokemon. There are a couple points where Solana and/or Kellyn is facing down enemy trainers, who have their own Pokemon out, and instead of using the Styler on them, they use it on some wild Pokemon who just HAPPEN to be standing nearby. And then have those wild Pokemon fight the enemy trainer Pokemon. If Stylers did work on trainer owned Pokemon, why not just use it on them?

Also, there's this one panel from the manga.

NO WAIT NOT THAT ONE

That one. In case you couldn't tell, I went on a huge Ranger binge before beginning this playthrough!

As for that scene where Kellyn briefly takes off his suit. I intended to have him just take off the helmet, and the rest of him would be wearing the CURIE suit. Sounds like I could just take his head off his sprite and place it on CURIE's sprite, right? No. Those two have slightly different head-to-body ratios, not enough to really notice in game but enough that if you just put one's head on the other's body it'll look weird. I tried moving Kellyn's head a few pixels above the suit and drawing the rest in myself, but it just looked terrible. So screw it, we're just gonna say that Kellyn can make the suit disappear and reappear like Samus can do with her suit. I was going to have a scene in the story where a Meteor grunt got the drop on him and pulled off the helmet, only eat a facefull of radiation, but I guess that isn't gonna happen now. In fact, that was my original plan for how Kellyn's identity would be revealed to the reader.

Oh, also I've been using this as the rival theme and this as the "miscellaneous boss" theme. I never mentioned it until now because I felt like it'd give away that CURIE was Kellyn.

Well enough of that, let's get to the actual gameplay part of the "gameplay section". I should start calling this the "gameplay but also stuff related to the story that I want to talk about but isn't actually part of the story section" instead.

I can now change the weather again. I also tried adding the unreal time mod for the same reason, but... it doesn't seem to do anything? Time seems to still pass at the normal rate. I dunno if something about Fervis' mod breaks it, or if I'm misunderstanding how to use the password somehow, but oh well.

Fervis added a bunch of TMs and tutor moves to 7th street, I dunno if I'll use any of them since I have Nuclear moves now but I take all the TMs with me just in case.

I also get better moves for my Pokemon, including FINALLY getting rid of Tanscure's -speed nature.

I may have mentioned it before, but Fervis added an Atomic Memory that turns Silvally Nuclear type. That means Silvally's legal for this run (as long as he's holding the memory of course). Problem is, Kellyn would NEEEEEEEVER do the Silvally quest as it is in Reborn! The obvious solution would be to just do it in gameplay and not have it come up in the story at all, but... nah, I wanted it to be in the story too. So the second-most obvious solution is to just change the events of the quest. This lets me kill a second bird with the same stone: I always thought it was stupid how Gladion just left that third Null in cryogenic stasis for seemingly no reason. I'm pretty sure the reason was that it'd become part of the plot in Sun and Moon 2, but then Gamefreak decided making a full-on sequel would be too expensive for the literal biggest media franchise on the planet, so we got the Ultra bullshit instead. And now that third Null is canonically still stuck in cryogenic stasis, presumably for all eternity. Well at least I can save it in my shitty fanfiction.

Oh by the way, I changed the protagonist's name in-game to Kellyn now that you know who it is, and-

And just... Hahahahahaha

So anyway, the Null/Silvally himself. He has the catch rate of a legendary, which is a problem because I'm weak to every type and still want to hold up the "no items in battle" bonus rule. How to do this when Null himself takes so long to catch? Well, I did use a strategy that actually worked, and I DID have it all explained here, but then the website deleted my whole post, forcing me to rewrite it, and I don't remember all the details. It involved switching between Arbok and Arcanine (whose ability I changed to Intimidate) to get him at -6, then paralyzing him with Glare, lowering his health, leaving Arbok in to keep healing with Black Sludge, spamming Timer Balls, and switching out whenever he got the defense drop on Crush Claw. I feel like I remember there being a bit more to it but I don't remember what that bit more was. Whatever it was, it worked consistently enough for me to soft reset for good IVs. Null is guaranteed to have 3 perfect IVs, so I wanted them in attack and speed while the other stats weren't complete shit, except special attack which I didn't care about.

In the end, I got this! FOUR perfect IVs and a not-bad special defense! And a zero for special attack, but like I said, don't care about that.

This is where you find the Atomic Memory, by the way.

And here's the complete package. I won't be using for a while though, because it'd be weird for me to use Nuclear Silvally in battles when Kellyn doesn't have Nuclear Silvally yet in the story.

This is what shiny Nuclear Silvally looks like, in case you're curious.

Oh, right, speaking of stuff I won't use for a while! Remember the Atomic Plate? Fervis moved it back, way back actually. Now it's in the locked room in El's sanctum, the one that you need the key for, which you can't get until you return to the restored city. So that Atomic Plate I have right now? It's illegal. I won't use that either. I can still use the nuclear gems though.

Now Fervis has updated the mod quite a bit in the months since I've posted the last chapter, so I take a quick look through what I have available to me right now, see if anything stands out before I- Oh!

Well then! Hey, remember that Geigeroach I was memeing about last chapter? I caught him because, while Fervis did add this move to the game, Xenoqueen didn't learn it, but Geigeroach did. I assumed this was to give people an actual reason to ever use Geigeroach, but it was at a higher level than the current cap (either 70 or 75) so I got him in preparation for when the cap was that high and I could use it. But I guess since then Fervis changed his mind and gave it back to Xenoqueen. So... bye-bye Geigeroach! At least you still have an awesome design!

Now, what single move could be so powerful I was willing to catch and train up an otherwise-terrible Pokemon to use? Allow me to introduce you to the third "rare" Nuclear move.

Fallout: In the original Uranium, Fallout was a weather condition that dealt Stealth Rock style hazard damage to non-Nuclear or Steel types every odd-numbered turn. It also was SUPPOSED to reduce Nuclear type's weaknesses by 25%, but didn't due to a bug. But in this mod, it's a field effect.

-At the end of each turn, everyone who is weak to Nuclear type takes damage (The actual amount has been drastically reduced though, I think 1/16 if 2x weak and 1/8 if 4x weak? The Stealth Rock style damage of the original Uranium would be WAAAAYY too strong)

-Nuclear-type attacks are increased by 1.5x

-Poison-type attacks have the Nuclear type added to them and are increased by 1.5x

-Expunge does double damage without needing a status (and that's on top of the 1.5x boost mind you!!!!!!)

-Activates Toxic Boost and Flare Boost (I bet you never even knew Flare Boost existed until you read this. No, Fervis didn't make it up, it's real. Only Drifloon and Drifblim get it)

-A whole bunch of moves that I'm not gonna bother listing get the Nuclear type added to them. They do NOT get a 1.5x boost though. Most notable among them is Explosion, meaning I could potentially have a version of Fission Burst that's actually, you know, useful. And you know who learns Explosion? Silvally!

-Roar of Time, Purify, Clear Smog, and Seed Flare change it to a corrosive field. Kind of strange to me... Some of those are moves about purifying an area, but it turns the field into another kind of corrupted field? I guess the idea is that it goes from "super duper corrupted" to "less corrupted"? Idk I feel like some of those should just flat out destroy the field.

-Nature Power becomes Nuclear Wind

-You'll never guess what type Camouflage turns you into. Go ahead, guess.

-Secret Power can inflict a burn

-As for the seed, it's... weird. The field effect readout SAYS it activates the Elemental Seed, boosts defense and special defense by 1 stage, and suppresses your ability, but it... doesn't do that. Instead it activates the SYNTHETIC seed, boosts ATTACK and SPECIAL ATTACK by 1 stage, and suppresses your ability. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a silly reference to the original Uranium's fallout weather being bugged, or if Fervis actually just screwed up.

By the way, that "other interesting thing" I found last chapter, but didn't want to tell you, was this field's readout.

I buy all these guys. Most of them don't have nuclear forms, but you already know I don't want them to use them.

While I'm in the area I might as well have my rematch with Archer, because why not. The reward's a TM I'll probably never use (Rain Dance), but I think I have to beat him to unlock the job application sidequest later on. THAT has a reward I want.

Reveal hidden contents

I'll be honest, this fight surprised me with its difficulty and made me reset a few times. He leads with a Pelipper who has Drizzle, and since it's slower than Ninetales I can't just lead with her or the rain will "win". I lead with Xenoqueen and set up Fallout, and it tries to hit me with Hydro Pump. Normally it'd do a ton of damage but not kill, but this attempt it didn't do any damage because it missed. I kill it next turn with Radioacid (Xenoqueen's faster) and-

Look, the nuclear moves have animations now! They're all reskins of existing move animations, nothing too special, but still cool.

Tubareel's got Swift Swim, and his massive attack stat + the rain boost spells disaster if I'm not prepared. Well this time, I am prepared. I switch to Ninetales to get rid of his Swift Swim, and-

Oh right, putting up sun while there's rain makes a rainbow field. I forgot. Oops. Well with the sun weakening water moves, Ninetales barely survives a hit and almost kills in return with Expunge before going down. I send in Baariette and even though Tubareel resists Sucker Punch, it's at low enough hp for me to get the kill anyway. I didn't want to risk it Aqua Jetting me.

...huh. I didn't realize until now that he had a freaking Seaking of all Pokemon, this is the first time he's sent it out. I kill it easily because Seaking sucks lmao. Relicanth too.

This was the other guy that gave me trouble. Mega Sharpedo has Strong Jaw and STAB Crunch, which oneshots anything I have that isn't part Dark type. Since Baariette is part Dark type, he goes for Ice Fang instead, which even still Baariette barely survives, and even then only because I grinded him up to the level cap. But barely is still good enough, and one Nuclear Slash is all I need.

Rain Dance TM get

I speedrun through the bullshit at El's Sanctum and now it's time for the chapter's obligatory gym fight. Iolia Valley requires Rock Smash to get through, so as per the rules I have to put someone who can learn it on the team. I pick Arcanine.

Reveal hidden contents

The whole "darkness doesn't equal bad" speech is kind of undermined by the fact that "Dark type" is literally called "Evil type" in Japan.

Oh what's that? The field effect that boosts all your attacks is dissipated by sunny weather? Well it sure would be a shame if my first Pokemon had Drought and a Heat Rock! Absol just spams Sucker Punch, allowing me to set up both Will-O-Wisp and Nasty Plot before attacking. On the third turn, when I actually attacked, the AI went for some other move so I ended up getting the kill without taking a hit.

Umbreon survives Expunge even when I'm at +2, and hits back with Dark Pulse. Normally that'd turn the field back into darkness, but since the sun's still up it stays as regular crystal cavern. I kill next turn.

Weavile is next and attacks with Power-up Punch, which isn't enough to kill. I would've dropped it with Expunge, but it has a Focus Sash. I sack Ninetales and Arcanine finishes it off with Extremespeed. The sun fades, bringing the darkness back.

Honchkrow comes in and kills with Night Slash, getting the moxie boost. I send in Tanscure, and since she's faster the Honchkrow goes for Sucker Punch instead. Unlike Night Slash, that move isn't boosted by the field, plus Tanscure isn't weak to it, so she survives. Only barely though, because Honchkrow got a crit.

Surprise, Fervis added the Gigantamax forms in the form of custom megas. "Mega" Grimmsnarl is kind of a monster: he has Tangling Hair for an ability, gets -20 to special attack but +30 to both defenses, and gets +20 to speed, attack, and HP. Yes, you read that right. A mega that increases HP. He Sucker Punches Tanscure, and Xenoqueen is next. Knowing the AI's gonna go for Sucker Punch again, I set up Fallout. He hits me with Sucker Punch on the next turn (probably should've stalled one more turn with Nuclear Waste but whatever) but I survive.

Fervis is really putting in effort to make the easiest gym in the game a challenge. On top of that mega Grimmsnarl, he added Beliaddon, one of Uranium's three pseudo legendaries who is also kind of a monster. Unfortunately the things that make her a monster don't matter in this case, because speed is her dump stat in favor of bulk and insanely high attack. All that bulk won't matter though, when Radioacid is field boosted and 4x super effective.

You know, Beliaddon is one of several Uranium Pokemon I wanted to use but wasn't feasible for one reason or another, in this case her ridiculous evolution level of seventy-two. This mod would've been my perfect chance to actually get good use out of her, if I weren't doing a monotype. Oh well.

An admirable effort on Fervis' part to make this fight harder, but I still won first try.

I change the player name back to "CURIE" for the trainer card screenshots because, well, that's the name Kellyn had printed on it. It isn't gonna magically change because you the reader know his real name.

Now, there's still a bunch to do before crossing the Agate point of no return. I still have Pokemon to re-EV train, there's several TMs and other potentially useful items left uncollected, and most importantly Fervis has already implemented all or at least most of the Pokemon with Nuclear forms, even if not all of them have sprites yet. I should collect at least one of each that's currently available before going to the circus, JUST in case I decide I really need one of them in particular and regret not picking it up. But, like... it's been almost 4 months since I uploaded chapter 9, I've had to re-write this chapter twice now, I just want to get it posted already... I'll get to all that later.

I feel like I'm forgetting something though... Oh right, Bennett!

I swept him with just Ninetales lmao

The team so far:

Reveal hidden contents

@Q-Jei and @Candy I assume you don't have a problem with the cameos you made here? I doubt you would but if you do I can just replace them with generic randos. @Aphelli You too I guess but like, your character is literally just Vero with a different name.

Candy · November 5, 2022

On 11/4/2022 at 7:29 AM, CURIE said:

@Q-Jei and @Candy I assume you don't have a problem with the cameos you made here? I doubt you would but if you do I can just replace them with generic randos.

Expand

For my part, I think it’s the cutest thing

to have Vanilla listening to Flannery’s stories in an AU hehe

Sign In

Setting Off a Chain Reaction: A Reborn Mono-Nuclear run/story

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation

Recently Browsing 0 members