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nuzblog · 6 years

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DECEMBER 7th, 2017

I knew this was going to happen. Here I am, on December NINETEENTH, a whole 12 days after the previous play session, only just now sitting down to catalogue my journey so that, just maybe, I'll be able to play some more of this game later. I knew this would happen because it's Gen 2, and... well. I have some feelings on Gen 2, and on Johto. I intend to at least finish the game before I go too in depth here, but suffice to say, I think that Johto is lacking hard in biodiversity, its level curve is preposterously unbalanced, it doesn't have enough interesting unique landmarks to actually ever grab my attention, and I overall consider it a low point in the series.

To add to that, this run, despite how far I've come, has kind of sucked. I'm sort of stuck using Exeggcute but it is really honestly turning out to not nearly be worth the amount of trouble it's causing. For example, over the course of this post, I will hatch THREE MORE EXEGGCUTE because the damn things keep dying on me. Oh, and Furries, my sole hope for Dark type coverage for the upcoming Ghost-type gym (and, later down the road, for Will of the Elite 4 and Sabrina of Kanto), died pretty early into my play on the Morning of December 7th. If I had started with, say, Totodile, I wouldn't have this problem, and also I wouldn't have to deal with this absolutely godawful shit rat. I mean. Quilava, a Pokemon that a lot of people understandably like quite a bit. (But really it's just. So bad.)

Anyway, I backtracked back to New Bark to grab berries and then forwardtracked to where I was, and on the way, Furries died and also my egg hatched. I named the exeggcute Light Show, and while I was trying to grind it to a useful level, naturally, it died. GROAN.

I hatched another, and named it Bustin, eventually. This hatching process takes forEVER.

On Route 39, I look for a Pokemon I can catch, and... this is what I'm talking about with the biodiversity. There's 251 Pokemon in this game, and what do I find on this route? Literally only Raticates and Meowths. I CAN find Magnemite here, supposedly, but I sure as hell didn't actually get one. No, what I found in here was... oh, god damn it, and also Bustin died!! Fuck!!! And then I found a Miltank and critted it to death!!! God damn it!!!!

Anyway, whatever. I head South towards Olivine, and then my rival pops up out of nowhere and I nearly have a heart attack because, oh jesus if he fights me I'm literally dead. Fortunately, he doesn't, just shows up to blab at me. Whoopdedoo.

Anyway then I stopped playing for like a week or something.

DECEMBER 12th, 2017

But I'm gonna keep it in the same post. One long post is easier than two not long posts. And I wanted to take a break from Mario for Pokemon. Oh, yeah, did I mention Mario? I've got Mario Odyssey and it rules and is basically better than this game in every conceivable way!

I fought through Morty's gym trainers. I want to have an actually usable Exeggcute with Confusion for Morty himself, since despite Gen 2 adding literally exactly one Ghost type, this gym is still entirely Gastly's evolutionary line, which means they're all weak to Psychic.

I run back for more berries, I run back and forth, I heal in New Bark... hey, that's another thing I can complain about. I think this Pokemon Center rule kinda sucks? Like... you know how in some video games, mistakes are punished not by like, a game over or just a notch closer to death, but with a slow obnoxious trek out of your way to get back to progress? Like... in a lot of the 2D Sonic games, there are levels where you're up high doing a platforming but if you fall, you don't drop into a pit or anything, but you do fall into some water and you have to climb up in the slow and unpleasant water to get out?

Well, at this point in the game, backtracking to New Bark anytime I want to heal but don't want to like, spend all my money or use all my chances elsewhere, is basically like that, but executed poorly. It doesn't actually punish me for mistakes, because if I make an actual mistake then a Pokemon will die. Instead, I get to choose between this awful slog back to New Bark, spending a limited resource, and putting my Pokemon in danger. None of these are pleasant or make the game more fun, but they also don't turn out to make the game more challenging.

And once I beat Chuck I'll be able to Fly, making this essentially entirely obsolete as a gameplay concept, since the slog will no longer be a slog. This makes it an even worse rule, and quite frankly, I'm just about done with it. I'll still hold myself to it for the remainder of this playthrough, whether it goes all the way to the Elite Four or not, but once I have retired the character of Sheen, I will also be retiring the limited Pokemon Center heals rule. I'm not sure what I will replace it with, but mark my words, the rules WILL change. Cause right now, they're just not fun.

ANYWAY. Back to gameplay. I hatch my next eggs and I name them Busta, and hope that I don't need to name another, cause I'm already running pretty low on egg names.

I grind... I fall asleep...

DECEMBER 13th, 2017

I grind... Busta learns Confusion! Friggin' finally! Of course, that also means it's basically at its endgame moveset until Kanto, when I get access to Psychic and Giga Drain. Hey speakng of the "Drain" moves, what is WITH them having such garbage PP? Like, they're not nearly strong enough to warrant the PP cost. Giga Drain should have 10, Mega should have 20 and Absorb should have 30. At least. That's honestly what makes me backtrack to New Bark the most, is needing PP for Mega Drain.

While grinding, I did battle my way through the Lighthouse, talking to Jasmine to activate the Cianwood quest. I could just go there now, I guess, but first I'm gonna heal in Ecruteak and head in to battle Morty. My full team can join me here, so IndieCindy, TIME, Wiggles and Busta are all here.

Busta OHKOs his Gastly, and is cursed by Haunter while beating him, and doesn't even get hit by it before switching out to IndieCindy, who I needed to fight Gengar anyway because it has Shadow Ball. Smokescreen doesn't deter it from trying so very hard to combo Hypnosis into Dream Eater. Cindy falls asleep and I switch back to Busta, and again - Morty has SHADOW BALL here, but no, it keeps trying to Hypnotize me through the smokescreen. Busta beats Gengar and then 2-hit KO's Haunter, and I'm golden! Hooray! That's 4 Gym Leaders down, and only 12 more to go! "Hooray."

So, let's talk about Surf, because this is another thing that would be fine if, say, Rainwater hadn't been tragically lost to me, or if I had started with Totodile. Right now, the only Water type in my box is Amnesia, and I... just plain don't want to use a Slowpoke here. I could just use it as a Surf slave I suppose, but I WANT something that can actually be of use to me. There's a few things available, and some I want more than others, so let's look around with the Good Rod, huh?

In Cherrygrove, I catch a Krabby. I name it Copper.

Now, what I want to have happen here, optimally, is that I will catch either a Chinchou or a Shellder in Olivine. In order to optimize my chances of that, I need to catch a Magikarp and a Tentacool. First, I teach Copper Surf and surf on Route 40, and am set upon, naturally, by a Tentacool... which I mess up and murderize! WHOOPS!

I head down to Route 41, not realizing that I actually do have the same fishing chances here as I do in Olivine, and a Tentacruel shows up, and I catch it. Because, of course, there is literally no life in the oceans other than Jellyfish, apparently. I name the Tentacruel Deep Ocean, and head back to Ecruteak to catch a Magikarp. It's low level, so I try to use something it will resist and at low power... and yet, a single Ember still murders it. Shit!

I head to Olivine, fingers crossed, and... god damn it. Magikarp. My plan was an absolute failure in every way and I don't get shit for good water types. I name this thing Boat and, out of stubbornness, and since it's already level 20, I grind one level onto it without even healing it from its damage and sleep, and then ride it as a Gyarados all the way to Cianwood without waking it up. It really is just a boat. Ugh.

I get a free Shuckle. Hooray. I like Shuckle a lot, but I'm not sure I want ANOTHER Rock type. Also it doesn't fit the name scheme.

I grab the medicine I need, and... ugh. I need to fight Chuck, huh? And then Jasmine? Siiigh. I'll do that next time.

My apologies for how acerbic this all is. I just... am not a fan of Gen 2.

#pokemon #pokemon silver #nuzlocke #entries #lemon demon

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 29th, 2017

MORN

At 4:30 in the morning, I healed my team using the fight against Bugsy and headed West to Ilex Forest, to be confronted by my rival, Luster, with IndieCindy switched for Rainwater.

Rainwater's Mud Slap took out Gastly with no issue. Rock Star's Rock Throw does similar for Zubat.

And then... well, I already knew thanks to the fishermen on route 32 that I've been having issues with water types, and unfortunately, the answer to that problem is on the other side of this battle.

Luster's Croconaw one-shots Rainwater. As they say in the business... "oh fuck." I switch to DrinkyBird, trying to get SOMETHING going, but she gets critically low on health, and Rock Star is 4x weak. I get stuck just using potions over and over, but I'm either gonna run out or he's gonna crit and I'll be done for, so I make a snap judgement and switch to Rock Star. As expected, he does down, but it gives me that extra turn of healing, and it lets me reset his Leers.

At this point I notice that he's using Leer and Scratch instead of the STAB Water Gun he's got, because he knows that my Special Defense is my highest stat. I Growl him down and try to survive as best as I can until he changes gears and starts using Water Gun instead, healing when I can. I use a found X Attack, and keep attacking and healing, trying desperately to hold on, at one point being dropped all the way down to 1 hp but managing to survive... and after an awful slog of a battle, losing two dear friends, I beat him. This was very nearly a run-ender.

Ilex Forest is my next stop, for a Pokemon capture and Farfetch'd herding. Now, my initial plan here was to enter at night, where I would essentially either capture an Oddish or a Paras, both of which would cure my Water problem, and then also get Headbutt and be able to potentially catch an Exeggcute, which would do similar but would also be a Pokemon I haven't used before.

Of course, I entered in the morning, so I got a Weedle. Which, is fine, it just means I can DEFINITELY get an Exeggcute from Azalea Town. I name it "KnifeFight" and, with a lack of anything else I particularly want to teach Cut in the party, I start backtracking to collect berries and grinding it to level 10.

Speaking of grinding, the level curve in this game is already bothering me. Why is the highest level Pokemon encountered in Ilex Forest at Level 6? We are two gyms into the game, have fought Level 16 Pokemon with trainers behind them, and yet, the wild Pokemon aren't even level 10. They're 2-3 levels higher than the ones found on the first route of the game. This is dumb! Why is it this way???

Anyway grinding takes six eternities but whatever, eventually I have a Beedrill and I can teach it cut and actually progress through the game. I also get to knock out some of those cut trees from earlier in the game, which mostly just makes the walk easier.

Back in the forest, but not for long, I grab Headbutt and re-exit to Azalea Town, find a nice tree and start butting it.

After 6 Weedles, followed by a Beedrill, followed by 11 more Weedles and a Kakuna, FINALLY, some eggs fall out of the tree. I mean, an Exeggcute. NOW I can progress through the game! Its name is "Deliver", and...

Hm. I hadn't actually checked its movepool until now. It might not be as useful as anticipated. The TMs for Psychic and Giga Drain are both in Kanto, and while it'll get Confusion in just 9 levels, the first and only STAB Grass move it gets by level up will be... SolarBeam at Level 43.

My only other option is Mega Drain... which is an egg move. Well, fortunately, I am about to be at the Pokemon Daycare... so, I guess that's what I'm doing - catching a Sunkern at the National Park during the day, hoping that's my first encounter, and hoping it's male so I can breed it with my thankfully female Exeggcute. That's a lot of hopes. And, to muddy the issue, I then stopped playing for the day, and the next day was Thursday, which means the Bug Catching Contest is on, which if my understanding is correct, would have prevented me from catching a Sunkern.

November 30th, 2017

MORN

I drop Deliver off at the daycare, and head for Goldenrod, where the Name Rater lives, allowing me to change the name of my Hoothoot from DrinkyBird to T.I.M.E.

Speaking of time, just do be extra safe, I decide to play around with it a bit. I set it exactly 36 hours forwards, putting me in the daytime of Friday, and safely outside of the reach of the Bug Catching Contest. I do this by holding Down, B and Select at the title screen and inputting a password that is generated from my character's name, ID Number and current money total. Thanks, PsyPokes.com!

I head to the National Park ASAP, and... yes!! The Sunkern I need is exactly what I get! I name it Sundial, shove it right into the daycare, and go attend to some business in Goldenrod. I grab the Bicycle, I fight some guys without meaning to... actually, can I say some stuff about the dialogue in this game? One guy said he gave his Pokemon a haircut, which would make sense cause the haircut place is right there by him... but then he sent out a LICKITUNG. Which, if it has hair... I super duper don't want to know where. Also, one trainer said "Behold my graceful BALL dexterity." Like, capitalized like that, because of this game's weird thing with capitalization. (Seriously, how did it take until Gen 5 for them to fix the antiquated adventure game CAPITALIZATION of KEYWORDS?) Which is just hilarous.

Anyway, while waiting for my eggs and seeds to breed, I run to some freshly available routes and catch some new boys for my team.

On Route 34, I find a Drowzee, who I name Nightmare. Again, this is a Pokemon I used recently, so... boxed.

On Route 35, I found a Male Nidoran! I name it Showdown, and since it has Double Kick, I'm definitely at least gonna use it for Whitney! Speaking of, that's a whole dangerous thing. She's well known as being a difficult fight. As I collect andrun around to grind and hatch the egg, I think about my strategy. I also backtrack for berries while trying to hatch it, and rematch Hiker Anthrony while I'm at it.

Eventually, the egg hatches into more eggs, which I name Fine, and I'm grinding it from Level 5 to something usable! And yes, it has Mega Drain! I use both my heals in the process of grinding, the one in Goldenrod and the one from the Luster fight at the beginning of this post. Also, wow, they are REALLY pushing the Game Boy Printer in this game, huh? Like, wow.

NITE

I slept, and kept playing when I woke up! I fought the gym trainers, and backtracked ALL THE WAY to New Bark to heal, and then went back to Goldenrod, and... sigh, bluh, FINE. I go ahead and fight Whitney.

The really dangerous thing here is that since she only has two Pokemon, well... so do I. Showdown and IndieCindy accompany me, while the full-health T.I.M.E. and Fine (and the essentially obsolete KnifeFight for that matter) are boxed, and I head for the leader herself.

As with most gym leaders, their non-ace Pokemon are basically meaningless. Clefairy goes down quick and easy. Miltank, though... hff. I lead against it with IndieCindy and get off two Smokescreens before his health got too low to keep going. I switched, healed, used Double Kick, and was disappointed by how much damage it did. Showdown (who had evolved in the process of grinding) was infatuated, so I switched back to the restored Cindy and got off some more smokescreens, and so it goes. Friggin' Milk Drink... such garbage.

Showdown got killed by a critical Stomp, which leaves me one Pokemon away from the end of the run, yet again. Ember burned Miltank, but I was infatuated back. It could be a simple war of attrition thanks to the burn, if not for Milk Drink making it last way longer.... but I did, EVENTUALLY, manage to do it!!

I lay Showdown to rest. He wasn't with me for long, but he served his purpose very well. I pull TIME and Fine from the PC, and head off towards Route 36, to fight that Sudowoodo!!!

Rock Throw takes down a solid half of Fine's health. That's less than ideal. I manage to put it to sleep and heal, and drain its health, catching it handily! I name it Wiggles. Since I'm close enough, I run back to Cherrygrove, and heal there, finally.

On Route 37, after 3 Hoothoots, I run into a Stantler! But... I ran out of balls trying to catch it.

While exploring Ecruteak, Luster appears, catching me off guard. Fortunately I match his team size (4 to 4) but I'm unprepared for the battle.

I mostly get through it alright. T.I.M.E. evolved into Noctowl. And Fine... well. Fine died. Which sucks, and means I wasted a lot of time, but also... I have an infinite supply of fresh Mega Drain Exeggcutes. I run back to the daycare after talking to Bill in the Center, retrieving another egg egg, and in Goldenrod I visited Bill's house, and he gave me an Eevee, which I named Furries! Which also means I can't get a Pokemon from the Goldenrod Game Corner. :P

You may notice that “Furries” doesn’t lead to a link to the song in question there. That’s because the official video from Neil’s own Youtube channel featuring that song has been wrongfully taken down based on a false copyright claim, despite it being Neil’s original mashup work. If you want to listen to it, it’s track 3 on the freely available album Mouth Silence.

I catch Pokemon in the Burned Tower (a Koffing, named Fuzzy) and on Route 38 (Meowth, named Cat Hacks) and box them both before going to work... and then I put off writing this for nearly a week! But I did that, so I'll be playing again soon.

#pokemon #pokemon silver #entries #nuzlocke #neil cicierega #lemon demon

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 25th, 2017

The second generation of Pokemon is my least favorite. It is the generation with the most lackluster Pokemon designs, an absolutely borked level curve, garbage Pokemon distribution, and a whole mess of other design issues. But then... all of those criticisms are based on my experience with SoulSilver. Perhaps things will be different playing the originals? I do think they made some pretty important improvements over generation 1, fixing a lot of those games' issues. Hard to say at this point.

Now, before I discuss my entry into the world of Johto, I think it is worth discussing rules. Since my last attempt at Blue ended successfully, I think I'm going to keep the same general ruleset for a bit longer. The only real question the new mechanics in the game brings up is that of eggs - do hatched Pokemon count as acquired where they are acquired as eggs, where they are hatched, or what?

For this, I think I'm going to use the logic that I can't exactly breed a Pokemon I don't already have, and say that, with the exception of gift eggs such as the Togepi one in this game, eggs are essentially free. If I ever want to spend a chunk of time while nuzlocking to breed for better natures, abilities, egg moves or IVs... then I'm freely allowed to do so. That's the simplest thing, I think.

It's also worth mentioning what does and doesn't count as an important battle for this game. At the moment, I'm only counting the battles against the rival and against gym leaders - I can heal after either, and I must match party size for both.

Oh, and then there's the matter of Pokemon Boxes. In Gen 1, a Pokemon would be identical when retrieved from the box as it was when it was put in. In Gen 2 and onwards, Pokemon Boxes heal the Pokemon put into them... which is no good for a restricted-healing challenge, right? I think my solution here is that, while Pokemon can be put INTO the box whenever, they can only be removed from the box under one of two circumstances - either on the other end of a battle that I had to restrict my party for (in which case, the boxed Pokemon needs to be at full health when boxed), or when healing at a Pokemon Center. Which, yes, means my box usage is limited too. That's the only way I could think to keep it fair.

Now that that's out of the way... I started playing Pokemon Silver at 2 AM, on the 25th.

NITE

After speaking to Oak, setting the time, naming myself Sheen, and getting the game started, I make my die roll for my starter. In this generation, I find all 3 starters pretty lackluster, but Chikorita is a cutie that stays cute, and Totodile has a solid charm to it, so I would be happiest with either of those. Naturally, then, I get the worst possible result - Cyndaquil, a Pokemon that I find completely unimpressive, and that others around me have a tendency to call far worse things. So, maybe not optimal in terms of me loving it. That's fine.

At this point, I took a short break to figure out my nickname scheme for this one. I think attaching a guessing game to this one is pretty silly, because it's not really a puzzle of any kind. If you already know about the thing, it's obvious, and if you don't, then it's impossible without Googling. Also literally only one person has ever indicated any interest in this guessing game for name scheme thing, so like... I don't feel bad about forgoing it for this playthrough. The theme for this run of Silver is that I'm using the titles of songs by Neil Cicierega, who is my favorite human being. His musical projects include Lemon Demon, for his original music; Deporitaz, his far older, mostly instrumental stuff; his mashup albums in the Mouth series; one-song wonder Sunshine and Grapes; and his internet filmmaking prowess often extends to music as well, with some oddities being exclusive to videos on his Youtube channel. If you're unfamiliar with his work, I encourage you strongly to get familiar.

I name my Cyndaquil "IndieCindy", for the song Indie Cindy and the Lo-Fi Lullabies, off the album Dinosaurchestra. You can listen to that song here. I'll try to link the songs when I mention the name of the Pokemon named for them.

From here, I start the trek to Mr. Pokemon's house. What kind of name is that for a character? Mr. Pokemon? Like, really? Also, you know how in Gen 1, there is a single short route that is designed to be navigated in two directions between the professor's lab and the macguffin that lets you start actually playing the game proper, Pokeballs and all? In Gen 2, there's a fairly lengthy route with Cut trees and ledges that don't actually make the return trip any better, and then a city, and then a route North that is bisected (but half of it is cut off with a Pokemon Battle, which is tbh a pretty smart way of restricting your path compared to most Pokemon games) and lengthy and again, clearly not designed with a hasty return in mind. Oh, and there's a red herring path off of that first route.

Anyway, I make the trek. Maybe it's supposed to feel like a burden of an errand? If that's the case, then mission accomplished, but it still sucks not being able to train anything other than IndieCindy the entire time. By the by, I didn't realize that they started the starter off with a berry attached! I actually think that's pretty cool. I mean, the "Pokemon are holding items" mechanic is new to this game, so adding a held berry to the starter Pokemon is actually pretty clever. It does also keep me from having to use the Pokemon Center in Cherrygrove. I do purchase some Potions there though. And, I get the Map for my PokeGear.

The walk to Mr. Pokemon's house is generally uneventful. I pick berries (Hey! It's BERRY!), I fight stuff. I get the Mystery Egg and Pokedex, I walk back. But first I fight my rival!!!! Now, in Gen 1, the first rival fight was scripted immediately after both you and your rival get your starter. As such, the playing ground is equal - both combatants are at the same level, and both essentially have just one normal type attack of equal power and one status move. In this game, however, the first battle is on the other side of two full routes worth of encounters. I was around level 8, but if I really wanted to, I could have been grinding even higher. I had Smokescreen and a solid stat advance. In other words, I got a head start. Meanwhile, my rival had just stolen his Pokemon, and for that matter, while mine came with a berry and I had since equipped a fresh berry to it, his lacked the berry. So, it was an easy battle. I'm not sure if this was a good or bad design decision. Future games have gone back and forth on this change - Gen 3 also has plenty of grinding time before fighting your level 5 rival, but Black and White have you fight both your friends before even leaving your house. I think it's just different, and not better or worse necessarily. Which, is fine.

Anyway I beat ???'s Totodile, and move on to Professor Elm's lab. Interestingly, this is my infinite healing spot for this game, because Sheen's mother apparently doesn't love him. I mean, all she does is take a cut of his money to spend on the stuff she wants, and doesn't even heal him. Messed up! I, of course, make sure my mother doesn't get shit. I have enough issues about my money being co-opted by my family already, I don't need it to be happening in the virtual world too.

I get to name my rival, and his name is Luster. Since I'm playing Pokemon Silver, I think Sheen and Luster are reasonable names for the characters. I also get 5 Pokeballs, and NOW the game is open to me!

I caught a Rattata on Route 29, named it Jaws... and promptly fell asleep.

DAY

I woke up and started playing again around 4:30 PM, because I'm working overnights so my sleep schedule is now the weirdest. On the way to Cherrygrove, I stopped at Route 46, and caught a Geodude, whose name is Rock Star. Now THAT's useful. After all, the first gym is flying type. I could have got an Onix in an in-game trade in Violet City, but that means forgoing Togepi. Not that I really am interested in using Togepi... but just getting a wild rocky boy is really more optimal. I heal my new teammates at Elm's lab, and start grinding Rock Star and IndieCindy a bit. Mostly, this is so that it will be night-time in-game, and the Hoothoot I want will be available on Route 30.

NITE

Surely enough, once I do pass enough time, I do see that Hoothoot, who I catch and, after careful consideration, I name Drinky-Bird, before realizing that T.I.M.E. would have been WAY better. The Name Rater is in Goldenrod, so I can fix this pretty soon, I guess. I box Jaws away, and move on with the game. Going towards Violet, I get Youngster Joey's digits, so that I can get obnoxious phone calls about his failed attempts to catch Hoothoots ever 20 minutes or so. Hooray.

On Route 31, we get our first brush with the duplicate clause as I first encounter a Rattata before finding a Bellsprout. Now, I LOVE Bellsprout, so this would rule... if I didn't JUST use a Bellsprout in Blue. Now, I know Nuzlockes are all about working with what you get, but I just... I would find that so boring. I loved Penthes, I can't just tarnish his memory like that. I catch the Bellsprout, name it Stickly, and box it.

In Dark Cave (which has awesome music, by the way. One of the best songs in the series, just about, I'd say), I catch...!! A Zubat! Amazing! I call it King Bob and box it too, when I arrive in Violet City. I also heal when I do, since I was running low on PP. After a touch of grinding, to get a STAB move (Ember, Rock Throw and Peck) onto everyone, I head into Sprout Tower. My encounter there, a Gastly, sadly goes down because getting moves that could actually touch the ghosts also increased my power too high to not oneshot them. Oh well. First wild Pokemon murdered instead of caught. It happens!

I ascend the tower, getting as much XP as I can out of it, and also the Flash HM, which is... basically useless. Hooray? Encountering Luster but not fighting him here was pretty cool. I then fight the gym trainers, before briefly diverting over the the Ruins of Alph to catch an Unown, mostly for funsies.

It's J. I name it Worddis, and try to figure out its Hidden Power type. First, I test it on another Unown, which is Psychic type. It does neutral damage, ruling out Psychic, Fighting, Dark, Ghost or Bug type Hidden Power. I head into Sprout Tower, and try it on a Gastly, where it also does neutral damage, ruling out Normal, Poison, Grass, and Ground. I head to the route, testing it on a Hoothoot, and AGAIN the damage is neutral, ruling out Electric, Ice or Rock. I then enter the Dark Cave, and try it on a Geodude... and it's STILL neutral, ruling out almost every other type EXCEPT for Dragon. So... Dragon Hidden Power. Absolutely useless. Thanks for nothing, Worddis. Welcome to the box.

I heal again in Violet City, since I had one leftover from my battle against Luster, and I battle Falkner and his weird ass level 9 Pidgeotto.

As you might expect given the fact that my Geodude must be at least level 11 to know Rock Throw, making it higher leveled AND being super effective and STAB... it's basically a joke. IndieCindy returns to my party, and I grab the Egg from Elm's Aide while I'm there, counting as my Pokemon for Violet City.

Route 32 grants me a Wooper, which... rules! I haven't used a Wooper, but its typing is great (4x Grass weakness is a fine trade for an Electric-immune Water type!) Its name is Rainwater. I grind it up a bit, teach it Mud Slap, and make the trek back to Elm's lab to heal again before I stop playing for the 25th, so I can catch Farfetch'd in Pokemon Go and also go to work.

NOVEMBER 26th, 2017

When I get home from work around 5:40, I keep playing, because I'm a disaster. Berries respawned, so I grab a few, although I don't go too far out of my way for them. I keep heading down Route 32, reaching Union Cave. I find pretty quickly that the cave's only new Pokemon for me is Onix, which would have made that in-game trade even uselesser. I heal using Route 32's Pokemon Center before venturing further into the cave, which I guess counts as Johto's first dungeon? It's so short and easy with Rainwater. I do end up finding the Onix while going through, and I name it My Trains. I consider using it instead of Rock Star, for that eventual Steel typing... but I decide to keep Rock Star for now.

On the other side of the cave, on Route 33, I catch an Ekans, who I name Goosebumps. Can I just say how pleasing Ekans' sprite in this game is? Maybe it's because I just had to spend a whole game that is, quite frankly, ugly as sin, but something about the direction of this Ekans sprite is just... so nice. Noticing this, I recalled the long-abandoned endeavor of the "Pokemon Sprite Guy" to review the sprites of every Pokemon to determine the best. He ended up choosing Ruby/Sapphire's, but somethng about how this Ekans is facing away from the direction most sprites face is really pleasant to me.

As I'm walking to Azalea Town, my egg hatches, and I have a Togepi! I name it Cookie, and keep it, My Trains and Goosebumps boxed. I speak to Kurt, and enter the Slowpoke Well, catching my Slowpoke first. Luckily, I get a female one. Why luckily? Well, so I can name it Amnesia. I box it too, though. I have a perfectly servicable Water type.

IndieCindy evolved beating the rockets in the well! I heal once I'm done, and head in to fight Bugsy...

Who is also a total pushover. Cindy's got Fire, Drinky's got Flying and Star has Rock. Bug is weak to ALL of these, and Bugsy's ace, Scyther, is DOUBLE weak to Rock.

I didn't realize this game had the Twins trainer class in it, though. Weird, given its lack of double battles! Might they have intended to include doubles in this game but not had the time or cart space? Anyway, seeing two trainers send out one Pokemon each, one after another, definitely reminded me of the encounter I had in Pokemon Sun where I was definitely expecting to be fighting all 5 Team Skull Grunts at once in a Horde Battle a la the Aqua/Magma Grunts in ORAS... but since Gen 7 hates every type of battle that is newer than Gen 3, it's just a single encounter with 5 Pokemon.

That's where I stopped playing, and it's been a few days as I put off writing this. But now it's written! ... Of course, I can't quite post it until my blog looks nice, and this literally took me all day, and I have a headache and I just want to play more, but I can't until I get my Pokemon Silver blog theme looking choice. Blugh.

#pokemon #entries #pokemon silver #nuzlocke #lemon demon

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nuzblog · 6 years

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Pokemon Blue Hall of Fame

I am currently writing the first entry in my first attempt to nuzlocke Pokemon Silver. But I have one last post to make before posting that.

With the change in game, the blog’s design will change too. It will still look similar, but with different art to reflect the change in version. And, of course, the team in the sidebar will be changed to reflect my in-game team in Silver. As such, I think for posterity, I’m going to put links here to my whole team in Blue, including those that were boxed, and, in memoriam, Minos’ last-updated page. Click the Pokemon’s nickname to navigate to their page!

HALL OF FAME

Penthes / VICTREEBEL / Lv. 51

Cingu / SANDSLASH / Lv. 51

Nessie / LAPRAS / Lv. 50

Moschops / MACHAMP / Lv. 50

Baku / HYPNO / Lv. 51

Wakinyan / ZAPDOS / Lv. 53

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Sciari / VENOMOTH / Lv. 39

Lanius / FEAROW / Lv. 39

IN MEMORIAM

Minos / WARTORTLE / Lv. 29

#addons #hall of fame #pokemon #pokemon blue

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 24th, 2017

As I mentioned, I've started my Silver playthrough... but before I can tell you THAT story, I have to tell you THIS story.

This story isn't a particularly fascinating one. It's one of post-game content! These will become longer and longer as the games start to have more and more robust postgames.

In Gen 1, however, exactly one thing is official post-game content, and that's Mewtwo and the Cerulean Cave. Because there is no actual plot-based postgame in this game, I'm going to ignore nuzlocke rules. By which I mean, I actually attempted to catch Mewtwo without doing the other post-game thing first, and whited out then resetted.

So, with that in mind, my first stop is... well, no playthrough of Gen 1 is complete without a brush with Missingno.! I grab a Rare Candy from the first floor of the Cerulean Cave, and duplicate it by talking to the old man in Viridian City, getting his tutorial, and then flying to Cinnabar Island. Interestingly, besides the Level 135 Abra, Level 145 Haunter and both Missingno. and 'M, I also encountered some of the Pokemon available in Cerulean Cave.

Anyway yeah, found Missingno and, ta-da! ◣9 Rare Candies! I then spend a big chunk of time "grinding", i.e., mashing Rare Candies until my boys all hit Level 100. To immortality!!!

After that, it's pretty simple to get through Cerulean Cave, and get to Mewtwo. I lead with Hypno, use an X Accuracy, put it to sleep, damage it to low health, and spam Ultra Balls. It's pretty uneventful! I caught Mewtwo, technically, but it wasn't really... rewarding.

And, of course, I do close without slaving, so it's not like I actually get to keep the Metwo.

I still have my team in my copy of Blue, so I can still come back and try again to do it legitways. But for right now... well, let's just say I'm making quick progress in Silver. This update is hella short - the next one definitely will not be.

#entries #Pokemon Blue #pokemon #nuzlocke

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nuzblog · 6 years

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As promised, what follows are my thoughts on the 151 Pokemon in Gen 1 that I have something to say about.

#001: Bulbasaur I really appreciate this guy's concept. Reptomammals are dope and that's pretty much definitely what it is, and the concept of a plant and animal reaching this sort of symbiosis is definitely really awesome. The fact that Bulbasaur manages that while also being beautifully simply is great. Bulbasaur is great, and very good, conceptually. That said, I feel his design and especially his evolutions' designs are missing something somehow. Perhaps it's that the animal half of the pair is so plain? Perhaps it's that as it evolves, it only becomes uglier but not particularly cooler? I'm unsure. I do love them, but they aren't my favorite starter in this generation.

#008 Wartortle This guy is. Yes, the middle form. I love middle forms so much. Now, Squirtle itself is pretty simple. A tortoise that shoots water, big whoop, right. And I can agree with that. But Wartortle brings it to the next level. Besides getting a clear and distinct attitude, it also gets these beautiful ears and tail, that flow so elegantly with its design. They're definitely referential to the minogame, the legendary 10,000 year old Japanese turtle with a tail made of seaweed, likely a legend spawned by turtles that would swim through seaweed and carry it with them. The coloration and pattern of Wartortle's "fur" also makes it look like seafoam, and its Hermes-esque ears and trail of seafoam are the perfect fit for a fast swimmer like Wartortle.

#010-#015 Caterpie, Metapod, Butterfree, Weedle, Kakuna, Beedrill I really love the "larva-chrysalis-adult" evolution line as the game's tutorial for the mechanic of evolution, and I think having Pokemon that follow that evolution pattern so early in the game that evolve so quickly is a frankly brilliant design decision. I think here is the place that makes most clear that Pokemon's original inspiration was insect collection. The subversion of expectations with Beedrill is great too. I could mention other things about these guys, like how Caterpie is straight up a faithful recreation of a real life caterpillar, and how Kakuna has arms, but my main point is that these guys fill a great gameplay purpose. My only thing - they don't necessarily need to be Bug type insects every time, do they? Bagon in Gen 3 has already shown that insects aren't the only ones that follow the same evolution pattern. I'd be interested to see some other type of creature follow the same evolutionary pattern.

#024 Arbok Why doesn't Arbok's hood have different designs depending on what region it's caught in? They stopped even giving it different hoods based on the game it's currently in. That's so lame, yo.

#042 Golbat I don't... hate Golbat. I think his giant mouth is fantastic. But... it also loses Zubat's fantastic lack of eyes, AND after R/B it loses its fantastic giant tongue and tiny squinty eyes, the best alternative to no eyes for a bat. Like... what happened? Where did all of Zubat's charm go?

#047 Parasect This is my favorite Pokemon in Gen 1. Cordyceps is basically my favorite fungus, and I urge you to look into it as the real world basis for Parasect if you're unfamiliar. I also love that Paras is like... it's like a cicada with mushrooms on its back, but it seems like a sort of symbiosis, right, like Bulbasaur. But instead of growing together, Paras' growth is stunted and its brain emptied, its eyes losing their pupils to signify that it has become completely zombified as a puppet of this fungus that has grown through its body. This is the first hint in the Pokedex that Pokemon are actually absolutely horrifying, and I love it. I love it so, so much.

#050 Diglett I find the simplicity in Diglett's design absolutely perfect. It has exactly as many features as it would ever need, and it does exactly what you'd think it would. The fact that it's more of a whac-a-mole than an actual mole is brilliant to me, and I find the "what's it got underground" mystery absolutely brilliant as a design decision.

#061 Poliwhirl Neoteny ahoy! I love the Poli line's tummy swirls, but even more, I love that Poliwhirl and Poliwrath are neotenous tadpoles, the exact opposite of what you'd expect from a game where just 50 Pokemon ago, real life metamorphasis was serving as the inspiration for an evolution family. Like, tadpoles are the second most instantly recognizable creatures that exhibit metamorphasis, and yet, these ones don't. And their visible intestines!!! So good. Such perfectly simple designs.

#069-#071 Bellsprout, Weepinbell, Victreebel Pitcher plants are awesome and these guys bear the perfect resemblance to them. I love that Weepinbell is more of a trap than a creature, with its tree hanging hook and its acid-slobbering mouth. I love that Bellsprout is a walking nozzle thing on these flimsy looking root limbs. I love Victreebel's angler lure, and understated teeth. I love that James had one that kept trying to digest him. I just... this guy rules.

#083 Farfetch'd "A duck comes bearing green onions" is an approximate translation of a Japanese phrase with two separate meanings: a fortuitous but unlikely happenstance (such as, while starving in the woods, having a duck approach you holding the perfect garnish for duck soup), and a fool ready to be taken advantage of (such as the duck itself, offering you green onions while being clueless to its own implied demise.) Farfetch'd is, fascinatingly enough, BOTH - it is an incredibly rare Pokemon granted to you in exchange for a very common Pokemon... but it is also a fairly weak Pokemon with low stats that is foisted upon you in exchange for a Pokemon that can yet evolve to greater power. Absolutely brilliant.

#091 Cloyster Okay, so, I've danced around this topic with the name Okeefe for my Sheller, but like... let's be real here. Cloyster looks exactly like a vulva. Some people might list this as a bad thing about Cloyster... but I would not. I think it's great.

#108 Lickitung Why don't more Pokemon have giant tongues? Anyway this guy rules.

#122 Mr. Mime This thing is so creepy... I love it. It's like a horrible marionette, and it takes mime powers literally by turning moves like light screen into the gimmick of the Pokemon. Its weird joints and suckered fingers are so brilliant and just... augh it makes my skin crawl in the most perfect way.

#124 Jynx Okay, so, here's the thing. Yes, Jynx definitely uses the same racist shorthand as minstrel shows or DBZ's Mr. Popo, and that's awful and changing it was a good decision. But beyond that, Jynx is also an aquatic seeming creature (given its fins, at least) that has long human like hair, and a body that resembles a long flowing dress, and has pretty plain breasts. It's also a creature that sings and dances and gyrates to manipulate minds. In other words, it's a SIREN, and not only that, but it's a siren that, rather than being some kind of pretty fish lady, looks to me a lot like a mollusc of some kind. There's so many parts of its lore that fascinate me, like its speech that supposedly closely resembles human speech but is in no recognizable language. Oh, and it also looks like an opera singer, and also some people seem to think it resembles a certain yokai (even though the only reference to some of the traits used to justify that resemblance seem to have been made up by the Pokemon fans trying to justify the comparison.) And, just as a side note, I think the fact that this mollusc, in trying to seduce humans, decided the most beautiful form it could try to emulate would be that of a short and rotund person of color is pretty fantastic. Like, yes, that absolutely is the pinnacle of human beauty, thank you for noticing, Jynx. Just, please do try to look a little less like a thing humans do to be racist.

#126 Magmar Boober.

#137 Porygon It is a tragedy that this guy has been basically banned from anime, since it's such an appealing design motif. Computer generated graphics as a concept for a Pokemon is clever in itself, and like... it's a weird red and blue duck thing! And it's so blocky and weird! I love it.

I actually had less to say about a lot of these guys than I thought I would. Let's real quick go over my top ten Pokemon in the gen:

#1. Parasect #2. Porygon #3. Victreebel #4. Scyther #5. Paras #6. Grimer #7. Diglett #8. Jynx #9. Cubone #10. Weezing

At least, last time I listed them out. This seems about right to me.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Pokemon of Gen 1. Maybe some day I'll talk about some others? But that's as much as I think I needed to before starting Gen 2.

Speaking of, I've already started playing Silver. Not sure when I'm gonna write and post that update though. I still have another entry for Blue in the process of being made still.

#addons #pokemon #pokemon gen 1 #parasect #my dumb opinions

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nuzblog · 6 years

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Now, full disclosure, the naming theme for my sweet boys was guessed some time ago. As such, I have no problem now saying that the theme was... the thing the Pokemon is based on. Since some of them are a little obtuse, I thought I'd go through and just name every single one throughout the entire playthrough. Fun!

Minos - Wartortle is base on the Minogame, a mythical turtle said to grow a tail after living for a very long time. Horus - The Pidgey line, besides various birds, resembles Horus, the Egyptian bird god, and the Eye of Horus in particular. Pincho - Raticate, among other large rodents, resembles a capybara. Are there other rodents it resembles more? Yes. But capybaras are cool. And they're also known as carpincho. Xuth - Caterpie is plainly based on the Asian swallowtail caterpillar, from its coloration to its markings to its prominent osmeterium. The species name for the Asian swallowtail is Papilio xuthus. Vlad - A few levels removed, but Zubat is based on vampire bats, which are called that due to their similar pattern of hematophagy as the mythical vampire. Dracula, the most famous vampire in popular culture, is based on Vlad the Impaler. Lanius - Spearow, besides a sparrow, has the hooked beak of a Lanius shrike. Penthes - Bellsprout's family is based on pitcher plants. One of the two most species-rich families of pitcher plants, including the ones that Victreebel most directly resembles, are of the family Nepenthes. Maneki - Meowth, with its head-mounted coin and signature move Pay Day, is pretty clearly based on the beckoning cat, a commonly seen statue representing good fortune, and in the original Japanese, called Maneki Neko. Whaca - Diglett isn't just a mole... it's a Whac-A-Mole. Cingu - The order to which armored mammals such as armadillos (one of Sandshrew's origins) belong is Cingulata. Bara - As before, this is for the capybara. Mick - Voltorb's role in the Power Plant is to decieve the player into believing that a powerful monster is in fact a treasure. In other words, it fills the same niche as a Mimic. Moschops - Machop's name and face resemble that of the extinct synapsid genus Moschops. Kitan - Vulpix is of course based on the kitsune. -tan is a childish Japanese honorific denoting something as cute and mascot like, and also that gives it the same name as the Zelda kitsune, the Keaton. Vulpix is an immature kitsune, so I'm using essentially the same logic. Imugi - Dragonair's entire design is based on the Imugi, a serpent that would gain pearls and become a dragon in Korean folklore. Sogenbi - Gastly resembles a Japanese yokai said to be the decapitated head of a monk wreathed in flame, called the sōgen bi. Bernie - Snorlax is based on the habits of bears, which hibernate, eating a lot of food and then sleeping for a long time. HiBERNate. Tad - Poliwag is a tadpole. :) - According to Junichi Masuda and Ken Sugimori, Ditto was originally based on the smiley face. :) Arctid - Arctiidae is a family of moths with similarly poisonous properties to Venomoth due to their diets. Moa - It's literally just the name of an extinct, large flightless bird which Doduo resembles. Matsya - The fish avatar of Vishnu, which Goldeen particularly resembles given its horn. Sciari - Sciaridae are flies which Venonat resembles the larva of. Aster - I didn't actually mention this name when I mentioned catching the Staryu, huh? Anyway, Staryu is based on sea stars of the class Asteroidea. Harp - Seel is based on the harp seal! Okeefe - Cloyster is very clearly based on a Georgia O'keefe painting. Ooze - It's. Uh. It's ooze. Wakinyan - According to a website, Wakinyan is the traditional Sioux name for the thunderbird of Native American mythology. Baku - Drowzee and Hypno are based on the Japanese myth of the baku, a tapir-like creature that devours dreams. Desmod - The common vampire bat is the desmodus rotundus. Campus - The seahorse is also called the hippocampus, from the Latin words meaning "horse" and "sea monster".

There ya go. With the exception of whatever crazy thing the Cerulean Cave has in store for me, that's all the names explained.

#addons #pokemon #name scheme

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 23rd, 2017 - VS ELITE FOUR

First, I use the heal I got from beating Dingus on Route 22, to make sure everyone's in tip top shape. Wakinyan in the lead, I head in to fight Lorelei.

Pincho. Whaca. Maneki. Kitan. Imugi. Xuth. Minos. Lola. Idelle. Arctid. My departed friends.

Red. Satoshi. Gary. My predecessors.

This is for all of you.

VS LORELEI

Lorelei's Dewgong is in the enviable position of essentially getting a free hit on Wakinyan. It uses Aurora Beam, which does 60 damage, while I'm using my X Accuracy.

Now, the thing about Zapdos is, it's very fast. Thunder with perfect accuracy OHKOs Dewgong, and then also OHKOs Cloyster, Slowbro, and Jynx (with a crit) before letting any of them touch Wakinyan, who levels up after all that.

Lapras is the big boy, and it also has such high HP that it manages to tank a Thunder, just barely surviving with a sliver of health. In return... it hits Wakinyan with Blizzard. My heart sinks as I see its already reduced HP fall, and fall, and fall...

To four. No joke, Wakinyan has FOUR HP LEFT. Thank god for the outspeed. I finish it off with Thunder, beating Lorelei!! I make damn sure to Full Restore, I switch to Cingu, and... well, this is hardly fair, is it?

VS BRUNO

Not gonna lie. Cingu beats Bruno without taking a single hit. His Onix uses Harden while I'm X Accuracying Cingu, and Fissure just... wrecks shop. Bruno has no flying types, so it just. They all lose. They lose and fail and die. Onix, Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee, Onix and Machamp. Cingu levels up and gets an Ether for his troubles.

VS AGATHA

I switch Baku to the lead, and head in to fight Agatha. She actually ends up being the hardest battle. Her ghosts outspeed Baku, and while Night Shade isn't particularly powerful and they're not smart enough to get a Dream Eater off, Confuse Ray, Toxic and Hypnosis are really obnoxious, especially since the Full Heal doesn't actually heal confusion. Still, Baku manages to Psychic his way through Agatha's party anyway.

VS LANCE

Wakinyan leads and manages to first-turn Thunder his Gyarados down with no accuracy boost. After that, I switch to Penthes, because his poison type makes Lance use Agility exclusively on his dragons. Which is hilarious. He just doesn't touch me with them.

I switch over to Nessie for Aerodactyl. She tanks a Hyper Beam, going from 216 to 120 health, but Surf OHKOs it back, and I switch back over to Penthes, chipping its health down, even in spite of Lance's Hyper Potions, without getting hurt.

I use a Hyper Potion on Nessie, an Ether on Wakinyan's Thunder, and an Elixer on Penthes, so I'm all set for Dingus... and head in.

VS DINGUS

Wakinyan vs. Pidgeot

While Pidgeot does the first turn of Sky Attack, I use an X Accuracy on Wakinyan. Wakinyan hits with Thunder next turn and KOs Pidgeot before it can get to the follow through.

Wakinyan vs. Alakazam

Alakazam actually outspeeds, since it's super broken, and Psychic brings Wakinyan to 108/174. Thunder doesn't even KO it, leaving it with a chunk of health left. But thankfully, Alakazam's next move is Reflect, and Thunder KOs it, leveling Wakinyan up once again!

Penthes vs. Rhydon

Razor Leaf OHKOs it. Level up!

Wakinyan vs. Gyarados

Thunder misses, allowing Gyarados to get off a Hydro Pump, bringing Wakinyan down to 45/178. I use a Max Potion, takn a Dragon Rage, and use an X Accuracy... to which Gyarados responds with FREAKING LEER. Like, really? LEER is what you're going with? Lmao. Thunder OHKOs it.

Wakinyan vs. Arcanine

Thunder brings it low, and it retaliates by... leering again? What the hell, Dingus? Thunder KOs it.

Wakinyan vs. Venusaur

Drill Peck is super effective, and critically hits... but still doesn't OHKO. Dingus leads with a Full Restore, which actually... confuses me? Like, he did it after the Drill Peck but not at the beginning of a new turn? That's not usually how it works? Weird. Anyway, Drill Peck hits it again, not critting, and bringing it to sub-half. It uses Razor Leaf, which, as you can imagine, is not very effective. A third Drill Peck KOs it, and...

That's it. I won! The Elite Four has been beaten without a single death.

... Nice. One game down! Like I said, I've got some side stuff I wanna get out of the way before I start actually playing Silver, which is the one I've chosen, so look for that. And... well... Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Happy ending get!

#entries #elite 4 #nuzlocke #pokemon #pokemon blue #victory screech!!!!

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 22nd and 23rd, 2017

Well. Here I am. The front gates of the Pokemon League. It's finally time. Time to face my destin- okay by now you've probably cottoned to this thing I keep doing where I build up to a thing that is definitely not the thing that's about to happen, so it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that I have a little bit of stuff to do before facing the Elite Four and Champion. Most of that is grinding, but before we get quite there, I'm going to do some other stuff first. That other stuff is as follows.

First, I wanted to get the EXP All. At this point in the game, my Pokedex is at 45 caught out of the 50 needed to get the EXP All. Now full disclosure - this number is partially bogus. If you went back and counted every Pokemon I caught or evolved through the course of this blog, it would come to 43. The two extras are the Kakuna that was used as trade fodder so I could get Machamp, and a Tentacool I mistakenly thought was my first Pokemon on Route 20, because I don't know the numbers of the ocean routes that well and for a hot minute I thought Route 20 was Route 23, where I had not, at the time, caught a Pokemon. Not a huge difference, but here it does increase my number by one erroneously. Sorry about that. I COULD try and bump my number up to 52... but getting it to 50 was as much of a pain as I could possibly have wanted for what is, spoiler alert, a useless item.

So, my first step was to grab Okeefe and Aster, my two stone evolvers in the box, buy two Water Stones, and evolve them up nice into Cloyster and Starmie. 47/50 Next, I went to Route 23, Super Rod in hand. I encountered two Seaking that I'd have been happy to catch, since the form of that line I have is Goldeen... but the rules are that I can't catch a dupe, to prevent me scumming a bit for better natures or abilities if I'm dissatisfied, once that is changed later. Or even to keep me from doing exactly this - catching a bigger form of something I have a small form of. As such, I waited until I encountered a Seadra, which I caught and named Campus. 48/50 Now, I technically could have fished more in Fuschia or Celadon City, but instead, I decided to just grind up some unevolved Pokemon from my box. Desmod was already Level 22, so one more level turns him to a Golbat. 49/50 Finally, I ground 3 levels into that Rattata, Bara, to evolve it into Raticate. 50/50!

I grab the EXP All, and... after a little bit of testing I figure out that, oh whoops, it actually really sucks and it is way quicker to just grind each Pokemon manually. Whoops. Pointless! Well, at least it is good for completion's sake. Not that I'm Completionisting this game, but, hey, I did that thing.

Next, I'm going on an item hunt. Specifically, since PP Ups and PP Restoration items such as Ethers, Elixers, etc. are so limited in this game, I went around the map finding them. I ended up finding 4 PP Ups, which I used to max out the PP of Fissure and increase the PP of Thunder. I also used the vitamins and TMs I was holding onto.

Alright, grinding time. Because I'm a dummy, I decided to first try using the Safari Zone, since it has high XP yield Pokemon such as Chansey and Pinsir. And by that I mean, Cinnabar Island's coast. Unfortunately, since it's got a low encounter rate, and the Pokemon there max out around level 30 instead of around level 45, and the Pokemon with high XP yield are hard as hell to come across compared to, say... Nidoran... well, suffice to say, it was probably not the most efficient. After running out of PP on most moves and healing at Cinnabar Island, I then fly to Victory Road to finish up grinding in there.

After running low on PP again, I healed at the Indigo Plateau, and then got everyone all the way up to level 50. I bought healing items there, and vitamins at Celadon Department Store. I'm as well equipped as I can be, and before I head into the Elite Four... I'm going to show everything I have right now.

First, my team. Since Lorelei is first, I'm leading with Wakinyan.

Wakinyan / Zapdos Level 51 HP: 171, ATK: 105, DEF: 97, SPD: 114, SPEC: 150 Thundershock Drill Peck Fly Thunder

Penthes / Victreebel Level 50 HP: 166, ATK: 134, DEF: 96, SPD: 94, SPEC: 128 Razor Leaf Cut Solarbeam Acid

Moschops / Machamp Level 50 HP: 167, ATK: 155, DEF: 112, SPD: 81, SPEC: 92 Low Kick Submission Rock Slide Fire Blast

Cingu / Sandslash Level 50 HP: 160, ATK: 129, DEF: 145, SPD: 102, SPEC: 87 Slash Earthquake Fissure Strength

Baku / Hypno Level 50 HP: 166, ATK: 95, DEF: 98, SPD: 96, SPEC: 136 Psychic Toxic Hypnosis Dream Eater

Nessie / Lapras Level 50 HP: 216, ATK: 112, DEF: 101, SPD: 95, SPEC: 124 Surf Ice Beam Rest Confuse Ray

That's my team. But I also have inventory!

I am currently holding: 17 Hyper Potions 13 Lemonades 27 Full Heals 33 Full Restores 3 Max Potions 3 Ethers 2 Elixers 3 Max Ethers 2 Max Elixers 20 X Accuracies

My name is ARTHUR, and I am about to become the Pokemon League Champion.

Expect a follow up entry later this same day. Happy Thanksgiving.

#entries #pokemon #nuzlocke #pokemon blue #elite 4

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 21st, 2017

This is the second of two new entries, which were at one point slated to be one entry. I’m glad they weren’t, since both of them got long as hell. I blame the fact that I’m also chipping my way through a 7 hour video essay on Pokemon for my long windedness. If you don’t remember the one where I caught a Drowzee, I recommend scrolling down. Now’s also a good time to remind you that it’s possible to read the entire thing chronologically, by clicking... well, any word in this sentence, how about. Also the Pokedex in the sidebar.

Now seems as good a time as any to mention what I forgot to in my admitted rush to finish the prior entry - while grinding up Baku, I was also hanging out with friends, and finally actually did the damn thing: Moschops was traded for a Kakuna, and then traded back, evolving it to its final form. This is the second time in my lifetime of playing Pokemon that I've actually used the evolved form of a trade evolution, and the first is my Alolan Golem in Sun which I am still not actually finished with yet, largely due to this playthrough superceding it as a priority in my mind, and also because, maybe it's just me but that game's pacing really falls off by the time you're on Poni Island. Not that it was really well paced to begin with, but-- oh, bugger, I'll save this all for when I nuzlocke that game. Uh. If I get there. Maybe I'll be so put off by how much I hate 2nd Gen that I'll simply not get to 3rd. (That's probably not true, I love 3rd Gen so much, I'll slog through garbage to get to it.)

Anyway yeah, I have rad friends and I love them very much and so I have a Machamp now. Weird! I've used Machoke before, but never actually Machamp.

Blaine's gym is the next one, and I actualy have notes on it beyond "the gym trainers were easy." As the series progresses, gyms will become more elaborate - here, they're just. Walk in a straight line, walk in a straight line and then turn left, rifle through some garbage, cut some trees, follow an "invisible" path, just choose a teleport tile and pray, and the two I'm about to knock out back to back.

Blaine's gym is really weird. I definitely understand what they were going for, but it turned out super strange. So Blaine is like, this researcher professor guy, like not quite Pokemon Professor but he knows his shit and wears a lab coat sometimes and the works. So his gym is a quiz. There's these quiz machines that ask you a question that varies from bafflingly simple, such as "does Caterpie evolve into Butterfree", to just plain baffling, either due to strange wording or ambiguous wording. Like... on the one hand they are clearly meant to test your knowledge that you've gained as you adventured, since you're essentially at endgame territory here. But Blaine isn't the kind of professor that seems to legitimately want to test your knowledge, oh no, his questions seem purposely worded to confuse. For example, the first one, "Caterpie evolves into Butterfree?" On the one hand, yes, one of Caterpie's evolutions is Butterfree... but at the same time, Caterpie DOESN'T evolve into Butterfree. Caterpie evolves into Metapod, and Metapod evolves into Butterfree. The correct answer is yes, but it's not technically accurate. Another question asks if Poliwag evolves thrice, which is false, it evolves twice, but it's easy to count each form - Poliwag, Poliwhirl and Poliwrath - and assume that that matches up with the "3" in the question. Also, in what I can only assume to be translation error, one question manages to not only refer to the Electric type as "Thunder", but also refers to types as "element-types". Super weird.

Anyway, I did all the trivia and also fought all the trainers. Used to Firered, I find the lack of unique overworld sprites for the gym leaders interesting. I didn't even realize it was Blaine I was next to until I saw that there was no quiz machine behind him. Of course, with my Nessie and Cingu, the gym is no issue at all. I brink Moschops in too for his rock move, and Wakinyan just in case things got hairy, which they did not - I beat him handily.

Speaking of being beaten handily, the final gym has this mystery behind it, but I appreciate that before you are face to face with his widow's peaked mug, you have every opportunity to guess that the final gym leader is Giovanni of Team Rocket. The "Champ in the making!" dude tells you he uses ground types - and Giovanni, excepting his Kangaskhan, uses Nidoqueens and Rhyhorns and such consistently. That, and the puzzle here is the same pushing tiles that were used in the Rocket Hideout - I guess he likes those things? I know we encounter them in the hideout before the gym, but I like to think that it's the other way around. We don't get as much backstory on Giovanni as I'd like, but I like to imagine that he was a perfectly legitimate gym leader before starting Team Rocket, and he used the puzzle tiles the Pokemon League provided for him in his top secret casino hideout just cause they were the same kind of puzzle he liked enough to put in his gym.

As for fighting him... it's a joke. I was a little nervous going in about his powerful last 'mon and its Fissure, but... it's got 30% accuracy and I outspeed it anyway. Giovanni is defeated, this time for the last time. In this game - and this was removed in the remakes since it is counter to his characterization in his later appearances - if you speak to him after beating him, he says he is giving up on crime for good in order to research Pokemon. I think that's compelling and, again, hints at something a little more earnest in his past and in his motivations. Allow me to extrapolate for a moment here: Team Rocket's goals, in the anime and in the games, are consistent: find and capture rare Pokemon by any means necessary. In this game, they are first found in Mt. Moon, where rare Pokemon fossils can be found that can be resurrected at Cinnabar Island; then, the Silph Scope is recovered from them in Celadon, which is used primarily to be able to observe Ghost Pokemon in the Pokemon Tower, where they can also be found holding one of the region's well known Pokemon caretakers hostage. After that, they are in Silph Co., a powerful organization that has manufactured the Master Ball, which can be used to catch any Pokemon with perfect success. While the grunts may be using common Pokemon like Zubat and Rattata, the big boss has typically got Rhyhorn, Kangaskhan, and Nidoqueen, all Pokemon that are either only or most commonly accessible by way of the Safari Zone, where rarer Pokemon are sequestered for preservation.

What if Giovanni's real purpose is to study these rare Pokemon? Not money, nor pride, but simply the pursuit of knowledge? Taken to extremes, sure, but perhaps from his perspective, the real crime is holding these creatures away from researchers (which, as seen in Silph Co., Team Rocket also employs) that can learn more about them. Bam. There's my wild theory of the week.

Anyway yeah I went in without Wakinyan and just wrecked up his face. Hard not to, with Lapras and Penthes and Moschops and Baku. Cingu didn't do much, nor did he need to.

Speaking of Cingu, I then taught him Fissure. Now, normally, I would pretty much ignore OHKO moves. I mean, it'd be fun to give it to Moschops, but since all transferred Pokemon have their hidden abilities, it still would not be a Fissure/No Guard Machamp, so there's no point to that - instead, I gave it to the faster Cingu, after a bit of research. You see, I did not realize until around 24 hours prior to the time of this writing when I has beaten Giovanni's gym that the X Accuracy was changed in Gen 3. In Gen 3 onwards, which are the only generations I've played extensively, the X Accuracy is a very situationally useful item in a set of items that are essentially like Hardens, Howls, and Focus Energys that you can pay for. Those same moves aren't really that useful either, since far better moves like Swords Dance and Agility are just plain better versions of them. X Accuracy is probably the best of the set since it actually increases your own accuracy by a stage, allowing the effects of moves like the obnoxious Sand Attack or Minimize to be negated or at least mitigated... but since the overwhelming majority of attacks hit 100% of the time, and if you've been sand attacked then using the X Accuracy only gives them another chance to fling sand in your face, the usefulness is not exactly on the level of say, Potions and Pokeballs.

Except, things are a little different in Gen 1. You see, when an X Accuracy is used on a Pokemon in battle in Gen 1, it makes all of its moves hit perfectly every time until it is switched out or fainted. All of them, bypassing accuracy checks a la Swift, which I believe means it isn't even able to fall prey to the dreaded 1/256 glitch, which makes 100% accuracy moves miss one out of every 256 times. Including one hit KO moves like Fissure. (As a side note, this may also be handy with Thunder, which has only 70% accuracy - if it becomes a perfect hit then I'm far more confident of Wakinyan's ability to sweep Lorelei, at the least.)

Which, obviously, is ridiculous. Of course, Fissure only has 5 PP... but I've also not used a single one of the limited Ethers, Elixirs, etc. that the game provides. And with the exception of Dingus, every member of the Elite 4 has 5 Pokemon. (Of course, almost all of them also have a Flying type, and I'm sure SOME of them will outspeed Cingu, which should make Fissure fail regardless.) So like... basically, it's completely busted but fuck me if I'm not gonna take advantage of it. I'm already taking advantage of how busted Slash is. Honestly I'm gonna be sad to push Cingu through the Bank, since it's gonna go from utterly disgustingly broken to like... a normal Pokemon, basically.

Anyway then I slept, woke up, and played more Pokemon.

Now, at this point, I could go to Victory Road. But. Some unfinished business first! The Seafoam Islands are a fairly simple dungeon, with a Strength boulder dropping puzzle that's fairly memorable. Also there's a bird at the end. I murdered this bird, since I couldn't catch it. It actually brought Moschops to fairly low health. Serves me right for trying to use my 4x effective move that just happens to be on my "weak to flying" Pokemon.

NOW I'm ready for Victory Road, except for the fact that I absolutely forgot that there was a rival fight on Route 22 as you're headed for the Pokemon League. I was all healed up anyway, and I don't need to box anyone since he's got 6 Pokemon by now (but apparently no Fire Stones, lol - really, still Growlithe?), but I was still caught off guard, which I'm sure is the point.

Moschops handles Pidgeot and Rhyhorn, which hurts bad enough to switch him for Wakinyan, who, not gonna lie, is basically literally only here to OHKO this Gyarados. Nessie beats Growlithe but Alakazam puts it to 40 health, the lowest any of my Pokemon has been in a long while. Baku has the psychic resistance, so he finishes off Alakazam and then hits Venusaur for super effective damage, but I switch back to Wakinyan to finish him off.

I heal at home and NOW I'm actually going towards Victory Road.

First though, I run around in the grass on Route 23 for a wee bit before realizing that the only Pokemon I can find there are Sandslash/shrew, Sp/Fearow, or Ditto, all of which I still have living. I then think to fish, but I don't have my rod with me. Ah well, can't be arsed.

Victory Road! It's a road made of victory!! Let's see what EXCITING NEW POKEMON await us in this, our final dungeon of the-- oh. Zubat. It's a Zubat. I just caught another Zubat. ts name is Desmod, but it might as well be... Box 1. Cause that's where it'll be living. (Actually Box 2 though, I think.)

The dungeon here isn't actually that tough. The encounter rate is high enough that I got annoyed and put up some repels, but all that'll do is make grinding go a bit faster because you KNOW I'm not gonna fight the Elite 4 until everyone's AT LEAST Level 50. The trainers in here, to their credit, are reasonably tough. One Tamer in particular hurt me pretty bad with his sequence of Psychic types. I tried not to leave too often, since, at the very least, doing so would reset puzzle progress and drain max repels, but I did after this dude. Dig still takes me near Rock Tunnel. I literally haven't healed anywhere other than home since Rock Tunnel, lol. That'll change soon, I bet.

While here, I battled Moltres, the last of three legendary birds. As promised, I'll now discuss my thoughts on legendaries, because I quite frankly think that they're ruddy genius... in this game, and less so increasingly as the series progresses.

In this game, there are 4 legendary Pokemon - the three legendary birds and Mewtwo. Mew is a mythical and I'll talk about those another time, but legendaries are a distinct thing. In this game, despite all being birds except for the edgy one for whatever dumb reason, they are absolutely fantastically executed. Pokemon is a game that revels in boss fights - most routes have the strongest trainer strategically positioned last in a route, sometimes actively obstructing progress. Your rival shows up to fight you a total of eight times counting his final fight, which comes as a surprise at the end of the long foreshadowed gauntlet of four big bosses fought one after another with no Pokemon Centers inbetween, Team Rocket's leader fights you twice before being the last of eight town-based bosses themed around the elements, and that's not even counting optional bosses like the Karate King. However, all of these fights have something in common - they're all trainer fights.

While the distinction between trainer battles and wild Pokemon battles is not one that DRASTICALLY effects gameplay, it is one that exists. While the core principles are the same, two integral things about wild battles that are core to how they are approached are simply not options in trainer battles: running, and throwing Poke Balls. You can't steal people's Pokemon, but you can catch wild ones, and on occasion that capture is harder than most battles.

As such, legendary Pokemon are essentially the "wild Pokemon" answer to gym leaders. While gym leaders are a tough fight against a smart(ish) trainer with strong Pokemon, a legendary Pokemon is strong and, more importantly, very very hard to capture. I want to be clear, defeating these legendaries is not the hard part. I didn't actually do these bosses as they are intended to be fought, since I killed Moltres and Articuno and I used my Master Ball on Zapdos. But, had I gone the traditional route, I could have been spending 30+ Ultra Balls on EACH of them, and having to be so careful not to kill it or let it kill itself, or to let it kill any of my Pokemon. And this is a serious challenge! And THIS is what legendary Pokemon are for. They are out of the way, optional, very challenging, but rewarding intrinsically, because if you DO do the hard thing and catch them, then you have a powerful Pokemon you can use now. This is in opposition to the extrinsic reward of defeating a gym leader for a badge that allows you to train traded Pokemon to a higher level, to use HMs out of battle, to slightly increase stat growth, or whatever else. Getting handed something for winning a fight is great and makes sense... but with the legendaries, the fight is getting the damn things to stay in a ball, and the reward is the same as the reward for throwing a Poke Ball at a Rattata on Route 1: now you HAVE IT.

Of course... nothing stays good forever. In Gen 2, they introduce roaming legendaries. This is a different type of boss fight that takes place over the course of several fights, and is generally agreed to be way more of an obnoxious pain in the ass without actually being that innovative or fun. Instead of doing a cool dungeon that's hidden away and then fighting through your increasing worry to press onwards rather than resetting... an event flag happens in the story, and then you get to run aroung and do chip damage to a big cat or dog or something.

In Gen 3, for the first time, legendary Pokemon, rather than being hidden and out of the way, are thrust firmly in your face. This is the beginning of a change but, at least it's still a big lump of pain to actually capture Kyogre, Groudon or Rayquaza. While this gen also starts the trend of having more legendaries than it knows what to do with, it also makes up for it by having the most esoteric, "Mew is under the truck" type garbage puzzles in the whole series to get the golem-based Regis.

After this, things go bad quick. Starting in Gen 5 and continuing onwards, even being awkwardly shoehorned into the remakes of Gen 3, legendaries go from something you can seek out if you fancy a challenge or are a collector or want the power that comes with them... to being something that's literally handed to you on a silver platter, and that the game will not progress unless you acquire. This is bad and sucks. We'll get to it later.

Speaking of getting to things later. Next time, I guess... will be the Elite Four. After that, assuming I succeed, I'm gonna do some wrap up stuff. I do want to make some posts on here that aren't simply entries, talking about my overall opinion of Gen 1, my experience with nuzlocking it, and also discussing my opinions on some of the Pokemon found therein, which I will generally try to keep positive, since every Pokemon is someone's favorite and it's better to praise something that someone else might not have thought twice about than it is to criticize something that someone else might love. I may give a passing mention to which Pokemon appeal to me the least, but I would say that there are no Pokemon that I think are completely awful or unworthy of Being A Pokemon. (Also that gap will give me the time to finish Sun and buy an Ultra game which, given that MOST people I know who bought Moon were boring and then also bought Ultra Moon rather than buying Ultra Sun which I would think to make sense, will probably be Ultra Sun cause like, then I can trade my Blacephalon for their Stakataka or whatevs.) And then after that... Gen 2.

So, yeah. This has been an experiment so far and I'm really happy with how it has turned out. I look forward, not just to playing but also to writing each installment, and ideally, you look forward to reading them, even if they are uploaded at really weird times.

I'm gonna update the sidebar when I wake up in the... afternoon. Working overnights weirds time.

#entries #pokemon #pokemon blue #nuzlocke

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 20th, 2017

I didn't recieve much feedback, but I got enough to make my decisions.

My first stop was the Power Plant. I activated my repels before entering, and started my way through. Thankfully, Mick is still holding onto Flash in my PC, so the Voltorbs and Electrodes encountered as false items in the Power Plant pose no threat to my Nuzlocke. This dungeon is short but has a few nice items in it, including the TM for Thunder, which would be useful if the electric type I'm about to acquire didn't learn it naturally and also if anyone on my team could learn it other than, strangely enough, Nessie. Although I actually haven't checked since the changes to the party that happen here... it might be more useful than anticipated, if my other new party member can learn it. I'll be checking that when I next play, I suppose.

Anyway. Zapdos, right? I don't typically use legendaries, and I'll go into a bit of detail on my feelings towards legendaries in a general sense towards the end of this same entry, so stay tuned. Suffice to say, I think there's something relatively unengaging about playing through a large chunk of the game with a party of creatures that you've raised from tiny small forms to become big awesome badasses and become close to emotionally and learned the subtle intricacies of their capabilities... only to suddenly have access to creatures that not only are just plain more powerful in terms of how strong they CAN get, but also typically more powerful than your Pokemon when you get them. However, Zapdos fills both the niche of my team's flying type, something pretty much necessary to be able to navigate the environment stress free, and of my team's electric type, something that will make battling the Elite Four a more plausible proposition, given the high number of flying types (that would otherwise be relying on Moschops's rock throw, and Moschops is WEAK to flying attacks) and also Lorelei's high ratio of Water Pokemon despite her supposed focus on the Ice type. Of course, Zapdos is also weak to ice moves, so it's a bit of a tradeoff, but nonetheless, I will gladly accept that tradeoff for the high stats. (Although the other thing about getting a Pokemon at such a high level is that its EVs will be lagging pretty far behind, but come to think of it, I'm not even sure EVs work the same in this gen and quite frankly, I'm not arsed to check too closely.)

Now, if I wanted to be more traditional about it, I could definitely use Penthes' Sleep Powder while risking him to a Drill Peck, lower Zapdos' HP and hope for the best when chucking an inventory full of Ultra Balls. Maybe it would be more in the spirit of a challenge run to do this, but using a legendary isn't as much in the spirit of a challenge run either. I'm too far in to recover from a setback like potentially failing to catch Zapdos or worse, losing a team member to it, and quite frankly, I'm way not enthused about the idea of starting over from the beginning at this point. So instead, since it's a tool the game gives me that I have no other purpose for (since there are only a tiny handful of places left in the game where I even could catch a Pokemon anyway), I just chucked my Master Ball at it turn one.

Zapdos' name is Wakinyan. I like to spread out XP to those that need it, and since Zapdos is level 50 and at this point, the rest of my team was a solid 7 levels below that, I'll only be using it when it is really needed. Speaking of really needing XP...

The coast of Cinnabar Island has a weird property. Actually, it has a few weird properties. Firstly, since both routes leading to Cinnabar Island (and actually, basically all the ocean routes at the south of Kanto) have identical encounter rates while surfing (with a handful of different levels at which Tentacool can be encountered), the developers essentially told the game to use the same encounter rate as the last visited route for Cinnabar Island. During typical gameplay, if you surf around Cinnabar Island, you should be able to encounter the same set of Tentacools. However, the route has a second, weirder property. You see, when checking to see whether or not it needs to roll up a random number to see if you're able to encounter something, the game looks at the tile you're standing on. Each tile you can stand on is actually quadranted into four subtiles. For whatever reason, when determining IF you encounter something, it checks the tile to the lower right, to see if it is grass, water, or cavefloor. However, when checking to see WHAT you encounter, it looks at the tile to the lower LEFT - if it is the same dark color as the water then it uses the surfing table, but if it isn't, it uses the grass/cave table. Surfing on the right coast of Cinnabar Island will have your left side overlapping the coast, and your right side in the water. What this essentially means is that, while surfing along Cinnabar Island's coast, the game will use the same rate of getting an encounter as you would have anywhere else in the ocean... but it will use the list of Pokemon that can be found in the grass or the cavefloor of the last visited location. Sea Routes 20 and 21 don't have grass encounter rates, so typically this would mean you don't encounter anything. However, you can get to Cinnabar Island other ways, such as using Fly, or healing at the Pokemon Center there and then using Dig inside a dungeon or Teleport basically anywhere.

What this means is essentially that you can turn the encounter rate of the tiles on the eastern coast of Cinnabar Island into whatever other location's encounter rate you want. If you want to catch a ghost at sea, simply heal on Cinnabar, enter the Pokemon Tower, and then use Dig to instantly return to Cinnabar. This is most famously used in one of two ways - if you use this method inside of the Safari Zone, you can encounter rare Pokemon such as Tauros, Pinsir/Scyther, Chansey, Exeggcute, and Kangaskhan in a place that lets you normally weaken and capture them rather than relying on the heavily RNG-based and incredibly finicky Safari Zone capture system. (Of course, you do still have to wade through what is now a literal rather than figurative ocean of Nidoran family members, but at least when you find the super rare thing you can actually capture it.)

The other way it is typically used is in conjunction with the Old Man in Viridian City who teaches you how to catch Pokemon. When you watch his tutorial, which can be repeated at will, your name is temporarily stored in the wild encounter rate data, allowing the game to display the name "Old Man". Normally it is returned where it belongs when you enter a new route with encounter data, but since Cinnabar Island functions as just described, flying right from Viridian to Cinnabar maintains your name's location in the encounter data. Since both the encounter rate and your name are represented using the same language, the game reads your name as if it was a list of different Pokemon's levels and ID numbers that can be seen, and it uses that for its random generation. Since there are 256 different options for character or encounter hex codes, and only 151 Pokemon and 100 levels Pokemon can normally be, this results in Pokemon that can be far higher level than could otherwise be attained, and a large number of erroneous attachments of hex codes to nonexistent, glitch Pokemon, the most famous of which is Missingno. I could write a lengthy expose on all of the different things Missingno does, but suffice to say, it looks like a Tetris block made of what computers throw up when they get sick, encountering it turns one item from your inventory into as close to infinite of that item as it can go, and catching it has a chance to corrupt your game data permanently. It's really a whole lot of oddly specific stuff that is a lot of fun, especially since none of it is at all intentional.

Now, given that my name is ARTHUR, I had the option of using the Old Man Glitch to summon a Missingno to multiply my items, an Abra whose level is in the 130s somewhere (and therefore can't actually learn moves if it evolves into Kadabra), or a Haunter at level 145. But none of that is particularly useful.

I could also have given the Safari Zone another go, but the most useful thing I could find there would be Exeggcute, and I already HAVE a good Grass type.

No, no. Instead, I'm doing something WAY more mundane. I'm flying to Vermillion City, and going East to Route 11, where the only Pokemon I might encounter are Spearow, which I already have the evolved form of; Sandshrew, which I already have the evolved form of; and a tapir wading through feces. I mean, Drowzee. I then fly to Cinnabar Island, surf along the coast, and sure enough, after a few of those duplicate claused Pokemon, I find my Drowzee. I put it to sleep, chuck a couple of Ultra Balls its way, and capture it. At Level 11. Huzzah!

I boxed Sciari, who was useful for Koga and will always be worth remembering for that, and start training up my Elite Four ready Psychic type in the Pokemon Mansion. Its name is Baku. At level 26 it evolves into Drowzee, and at level 37 it learns Psychic, so just to be extra safe I train it up to level 40...

And then I go to work. I do continue playing afterwards and into the next day, so the next update will be up sooner rather than later. It does mean the sidebar won't be updated until then. I also have to go to work literally right now as I'm publishing this so that's fine anyway.

#nuzlocke #pokemon #pokemon blue #entries #glitches #if my glitch info is wrong please correct me i love learning new stuff this is only as far as i understand it!

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 17th and 18th, 2017

Extra long update here, comin' in real hot!

After some research, I established my plan going forward. The first step of that plan is to retrieve Arctid, my Venonat from Route 15, from the PC, and start ascending Silph Co. Psychic coverage is going to be very useful, and since my Jynx Plan A is foiled, Venonat will have to do until I can get something better.

Of course, once I'm in Silph Co. it becomes clear that that's where I was supposed to go first - the trainers are nothing to my Pokemon. Which... confuses the heck out of me, given that Koga is definitely meant to be Gym 5. Like, do you want me to be in Fuschia City or not?

Of course, once Arctid hits a level where I'm like "okay maybe now I can actually use him to fight this thing he has the type advantage against", he dies up good. Siiigh. Well, at least it means I won't have a big hole of "unable to catch anything but still not technically FAILING a capture" on my big list of captures by location. I head back to Route 14, where I quickly replace Arctid with another Venonat, this one dubbed Sciari. Back to Silph Co. I go!

Heh. TM for Selfdestruct. Good joke, video game.

I made the smart decision to actually look up Blue's team before heading in to fight him and... yeah, he's a bit too tough. Grinding time!

Oh, while I'm out, I might as well fish on Route 19. Goldeen is a dupe, but Staryu sure ain't! Boy, if I hadn't already spent my one and only ever Psychic TM on Lola, Staryu would be SO useful. Or if it like... learned Psychic STAB moves. Seriously, what is with movesets this gen? Every single Pokemon is such trash. Sandslash literally doesn't even get any ground type moves outside of TM. It might as well have been straight up Normal.

Grinding literally takes the entire rest of the 17th. That and losing at Pokemon Cards, but hey, this isn't a "let's nuzlocke Pokemon TCG" blog, is it? (Also how would you even do that? Burn every card that dies in battle? Only buy one booster pack at any given store you visit? Lmao)

While grinding, Moschops tries to learn Focus Energy, which... is another hilarious joke. Both because it's at such a high level, and because it's supposed to quadruple the crit rate... but it actually QUARTERS it, making you almost never get a crit after using Focus Energy.

Sciari, on the other hand, learns Psybeam, which means I can finally stop mashing B every time it tries to level up, and turn it into the beautiful moth it was always meant to be.

Psybeam in hand, my first move when I started playing the next day was to fight my way through the Fighting Dojo. I actually did this so soon after waking up that, when claiming my Pokemon, my errant finger erroneously hit "start" instead of "select" when naming the Hitmonlee I claimed. Its name is "B", but uh. Please pretend that it's "Bruce." Not that I'm using it. I HAVE my Fighting type.

I then checked out Koga's gym trainers, since I was on such a roll, and, funny enough... literally only the one dude with a Level 38 Hypno was even close to a challengingly high level. Everything else was a piece of cake. Koga included.

Oh, except for that Level 42 Weezing. That's pretty nuts, right? Well, actually... Maybe not.

Gen 1's AI tech is so primitive that NPCs, even gym leaders, will make real boneheaded moves in the interest of type superiority. Famously, confronting Lance with a Poison type makes you nigh untouchable, since most of his Pokemon will use Agility since Psychic is super effective, without even checking to see if Agility does damage.

His Weezing knows 2 poison moves, Smokescreen... and Selfdestruct. All I need to beat him, besides Cingu and Sciari, is something that resists poison, and can either for sure tank a Selfdestruct OR... that I don't mind losing.

Remember vlad?

My team for Koga is Cingu, Sciari, Lanius (my highest leveled team member at the time) and Vlad. His other Pokemon are easy peasy.

And as expected, when he switches in Weezing, I switch in Vlad... and he blows himself up. That's Koga's gym badge! Which also mens I can Surf outside of battle! Whoo-hoo!

First destination (floating from Pallet on Bernie's tummy, repels on), for easy flying, is Cinnabar Island. Now, I've mentioned my mysterious plans here... I'll discuss those later. I have not yet put them into effect.

Instead, I think it's high time we take down Dingus. I box Bernie back up, and for once my actual team is the same number of Pokemon as his team.

The one concern I had was with Gyarados, but I got it sleeping and lemme tell ya... it never woke back up. B)

Now I have a Lapras! Her name is Nessie. Of course since nothing in this game can be easy, I get it at Level 15. Sooooo grinding time!

While grinding, I started clearing out trainers on the surfing routes, and grabbing Pokemon. Oh, but first... Penthes learned Razor Leaf! And you know what that means...

Leaf Stone!!! Finally, my lovely pitcher plant is all overgrown up! (Get it? Overgrown, like, plants do? Do you get it? Do you see the humor in my joke?)

Okay so. Route 20, I fished! Horsea appears! Aaaand I killed it accidentally, cause Sing and Surf start with the same letter. Been a while since that's happened, huh? Feels like old times.

Seafoam Islands! I didn't actually go through here yet, although I plan on doing so - my intent is to battle all of the legendaries I can, treating them as additional boss fights. Still though, I stepped inside to catch a dude! After 5 consecutive Staryus, I finally found a Seel. Staryu isn't even that common I thought? Ah well. Seel's name is Harp.

Route 21, where I could catch a Tangela if I really wanted but look I have Penthes, I need no more grassy boys! After fishing up yet another Staryu, I caught a Shellder! Its name is Okeefe.

Since I still have grinding to do, I stepped into the Pokemon Mansion, hoping not to be completely owned, and... It's okay actually! I caught a Grimer, named it Ooze. I fought my way through, and Nessie actually started doing most of the work way earlier than I'd thought. Surf owns bones. Ice Beam is pretty solid too. I finished the mansion, grabbing the Secret Key, and... set out for the unfinished business in Saffron.

First, Giovanni. Nessie, Cingu, Penthes and Moschops join me for this fight, and, quite frankly... he's a little bitch and I could have made short work of him before doing the Pokemansion.

Next is Sabrina. She and her gym trainers are a touch tougher, but I manage fine with Lanius, Cingu, Nessie and Penthes.

Also now Nessie is finally at around the same level as the rest of my team! Hooray!

Now, here I am. Plotting and planning. Blaine shouldn't be too hard at all. Giovanni is just as much of a puss as always. I have three more dungeons to tackle - the Power Plant, Seafoam Islands, and Victory Road. The resting places of the three Legendary Birds. But most importantly...

The Elite 4.

Now, I'm planning here still. I know what I want to do, but I'm interested in getting any feedback there could be. Especially since the ask box which I didn't realize was closed this whole time, is now open! (That's "Option" on the menu!)

The first point: An Electric type would be super effective against almost all of Lorelei's Pokemon, against both Lance and Dingus' Gyarados, and against Agatha's Golbat and Lance's Aerodactyl. That's really really good. The Power Plant has electric types. In fact, it has options: Voltorb and Electrode would be duplicates, but that still leaves random encounter chances for Magnemite/Magneton, and Pikachu. Now, obviously one of those is way way better to have than the other. But is that a chance I'm willing to take, when the other option is repelling my way through until Zapdos, and hoping to high heck I capture it (or chucking my Master Ball at it, maybe?) Zapdos does have legendary tier stats, but it also is part flying type, which removes its ground weakness... but makes it weak to Ice, meaning its usefulness against Lorelei will be limited to its ability to OUTSPEED Lorelei. Zapdos is fast, but is it fast enough to body an elite four member without getting hit?

The second point: I really really need Psychic STAB. I love my big mothy boy, but he's just not cutting it. Now, stop me if you've heard this one: Cinnabar Island's coast acts very strangely. Since it doesn't expect to have an encounter rate but it can be GIVEN an encounter rate, basically any Pokemon can show up there as long as it can show up somewhere else. The question is one of gambling. You see, I could play it safe and get a Drowzee by going to Route 11 where I've already caught Sandshrew and Spearow and flying to Cinnabar... or take a bit more of a risk with a higher payout stats-wise by using Route 24 and trying to catch an Abra? Not only is there the slimmest margin of possibility for it to flee an Ultra Ball, it might also not show up, since that route also has Caterpies and Metapods that I don't yet have. I suppose doing the more traditional Safari Zone glitch is also possible, to try for an Exeggcute, but A: that'd supplant (ha!) my boy Penthes, and B: even less of a guarantee, and jeezy kableezy do I NOT want a dang Nidoran as my booby prize. So, what should I do? Play it safe or get dangerous?

The third point: If I'm adding these guys to my team, then it's going to exceed 6, and someone's gonna get boxed. Nessie is INTEGRAL to the Elite 4 gameplan, and also just kinda rules overall. Lanius is my flyer... but if I get a Zapdos, that replacement feels like a no-brainer. Sciari is right out as soon as I've got an actual real Psychic type, so really it's just a matter of who's losing out to my Electric type. Cingu's Slash will be incredibly helpful, and Dig should double down on effectiveness for the Onixes, Agatha's poison types, Rhydon and Arcanine. Moschops will make Lorelei that much easier. That really seems to leave it to Lanius, who feels more expendable but will probably be most useful in the Elite 4 fight (especially vs. Venusaur) and is also my flyer... and Penthes, who I've become so emotionally attached to as the first Victreebel I've used and a fantastic assripper who came from such a humble start (especially losing Vine Whip, lmao), who has, in lieu of my lost Minos, become practically like my starter. Can I really afford to leave one of them behind? Should I nix someone else instead?

Please, leave your thoughts.

#pokemon #nuzlocke #pokemon blue #entries

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 15th, 2017

Alright, time to catch many things.

First, I caught a Snorlax on Route 16, named it Bernie. Then, started going down Cycling Road, where tragically, Xuth's life was cut short. Fortunately, I already had a plan of what to replace Xuth with anyway. After all, Confusion is nice but it's not STAB.

I continued down cycling road until I hit Fuschia City, acquired the Good Rod there, and then flew to Vermillion, knocked out that dupe Snorlax, and then fished for a Poliwag! It was my first non-dupe encounter on Route 12, and its name is Tad. I started going down Silence Bridge training Tad. On Route 13 I caught a Ditto whose name is :), and while trying to find a Venonat on Route 14, Tad evolved into Poliwhirl! After that, I flew to Cerulean City and traded Tad for a Jynx, which, sadly, comes pre-named LOLA.

I flew to Fuschia, finishing the eastern path there from the other end, catching a Venonat after two consecutive Ditto encounters, whose name is Arctid. While clearing out trainers, LOLA reached Level 31 and learned Ice Punch, which, in addition to the TM Psychic, makes her officially a kick-ass addition to the party.

Of course, now Route 14 has nothing for me. If I were smart I'd have fished on Route 13 and caught Ditto on Route 14, but I'm NOT smart, so I didn't.

After that, I flew over to Cycling Road to finish clearing it out, now that I'm equipped with a Psychic type for all those Grimers and Koffings. After encountering 7 consecutive Spearows, I finally found a Doduo, who I caught and dubbed "Moa". Route 18 yields only fish, so I caught a Goldeen amed Matsya there.

After clearing out every single trainer available to me the East and West of Fuschia City, I headed into the Safari Game, where I had four encounters for four different areas... and all of them; two Exeggcutes, a Nidorina and a Krabby; ran away from me.

I did get Surf and Strength though. I taught Surf to Minos, and decided I'd test the waters of Fuschia City's gym, to see what sort of level the gym trainers were at. At this point, I'm feeling pretty confident, especially since both Lola and Cingu are super effective on the Poison types there. Oh, it's also now technically November 16th.

... Sadly. The first battle I met in this gym, a Hypno... did do a murder. It did TWO murders, actually.

Minos - my starter, who has been with me since the beginning... and Lola, who had been doing SO well for me before... they BOTH fell.

This... discouraged me. To say the very least. This is a huge kick in the nards. I'm not even sure how to recover from this. I guess the Silph Co. Lapras will have me covered for Water and Ice type coverage (and for Surfing), but... my Ice Beam /and/ Psychic TMs both got eaten. That's downright disastrous. I'm so disheartened that I've been playing Pokemon Emerald just for some comfort food. Like... damn.

Xuth, Minos and Lola. Goodbye, dear friends.

I’m not going to bother updating the Pokemon in the sidebar until after next update. I’d like to at least know what I’m putting in those slots first.

#entries #pokemon blue #pokemon #nuzlocke

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 14th, 2017

After polling several personal friends I know to be Pokemon fans, as well as asking publicly on here, in Discord servers I'm in, in Facebook groups, etc., I got 17 votes. Of those votes:

Abra got ONE vote. Pinsir got TWO votes. Porygon got THREE votes. Eevee got FOUR votes. And Dratini got a resounding SEVEN votes.

Dratini makes the most sense to me as well, so I'm happy with that result. I cash in my tokens for it, name it Imugi, and head downstairs to start training it. It's only a couple of levels behind my team, and I quickly slapped on Body Slam so it has a harder hitting attack than Wrap, so it should be no problem to get it up to a high enough level to be viable and yeah it totally died.

That's a lot of hoopla for nothing. Whoops!

Well, that's okay. My team as is is pretty solid. Also, Dragonite can't even learn Fly in this gen for some perplexing reason. I send Imugi to hell and go back in to deal with these rockets.

Oh jesus these tiles go so goddamn slow. Whyyyyy. Who thought that was a smart idea. I swear half of my gameplay time was spent just, on the push tiles waiting for the animation to stop.

I emptied out the Rocket Hideout of everyone but Giovanni with no real issue. Like I said, now that anytime I'm hurting I can just fly home, the game becomes way super easy.

I then empty out Erika's gym of everyone but her, leaving me with three notable battle options to take: Giovanni, Erika, or Dingus?

After some quick searching I found that Dingus was the lowest leveled (since I was expected to fight him before even going to Celadon), so I definitely opt to go for him first. He has 5 Pokemon at this point - minus his Raticate, but plus Growlithe and Gyarados - so I box Penthes and head over to Lavender to battle my rival.

Pokemon Tower... the Pokemon Graveyard.

Pincho, the Rattata. Whaca, the Diglett. Maneki, the Meowth. Kitan, the Vulpix. Imugi, the Dratini. This is your final resting place.

Dingus has the nerve, in his grief over his departed Raticate, to jab me with the claims that my Pokemon are not dead, and yet... I too have lost. We could have bonded over our shared pain, but instead, he urges me to battle. And so I do.

Moschops takes down his Pidgeotto with no fear, since it still has no actual Flying type attacks - Rock Slide does it. He then gets off a rock slide on Gyarados, but Dragon Rage is scary as hell so I swap around. Gyardos also knows friggin' HYDRO PUMP, which is horrifying, but Xuth tanks that and kills the damn thing. Minos's part is mainly just to take down Growlithe, which is not hard at all, and Kadabra goes down to a Slash from Cingu. Lanius is left to pick off Ivysaur, which makes short work of Dingus. That's one down.

Inbetween battles, I did some research and realized that you CAN catch a Pokemon in Pewter City. It's Magikarp, by fishing with an Old Rod in the Statues. I do that, grabbing myself a nice fancy Level 5 Magikarp. Its name is Idelle. I get 4 levels on it while grinding it and my other dudes for Erika, and then it dies. That's okay. It is a Magikarp, after all. I have a delicious tuna salad, and move on to battle Erika.

Now, alongside Lanius and Xuth, whose flying and psychic attacks will be invaluable against her Poison and Grass types, I wanted to bring along Minos with Ice Beam against her three Pokemon... but then I remembered that I need Cut to actually get to her. So Penthes, who fortunately recently learned Acid and as such will actually be useful against Tangela at least, joins me instead. I head in to battle her, and... it's not hard. Grass types are kinda flimsy. I teach Penthes Mega Drain, and just like that it's now actually functional again! Only took me forever and a half to get Grass STAB back on it.

That Grass STAB, along with Minos' Water and Moschops' Fighting, makes Giovanni kind of a pushover too. Oh, and Moschops evolves! Which means that the next time I hang out with one of my friends who is also playing Virtual Console RBY, I can trade/trade back to get a Machamp on my team! Which is very cool.

Now it's time to return to Pokemon Tower with Silph Scope in hand. I catch a Gastly, whose name is Sogenbi, and box him up.

Ascending the Pokemon Tower isn't really hard, especially since there's a free non-Pokemon Center healing spot in there, that you KNOW I'm takin' advantage of. I rescue Mr. Fuji, get the PokeFlute, and... well, now I have a choice.

To the East is the Snorlax on Silence Bridge. If I catch that Snorlax, then that's my Pokemon encounter for that route. My other Pokemon options there are Venonat, another Magikarp, Poliwag, Goldeen, Tentacool and Krabby. However, the next route has Venonat and Ditto, and the next next route does too, so Venonat and Ditto I'm gonna get anyway - all it really robs me of is the opportunity to fish.

To the West is the Snorlax blocking the Cycling Road. If I catch that Snorlax, then that's my Pokemon encounter for that route. My other options there are Doduo, and the same exact list of fishy things. Cycling Road proper has similar encounters, and Route 18 has the same list but also an in game trade for a Lickitung if I were to get a Slowbro.

I think... it isn't actually worth overthinking, cause it looks like I'm gonna either way add Snorlax, Venonat, Ditto, Doduo, and probably Poliwag, Goldeen and maybe Tentacool or Krabby to my repertoire?

Almost the whole world is open to me now - all that's left is getting Surf so the water routes to the South open up, and getting all the gym badges so I can go to Victory Road. Exciting! Expect tomorrow to mostly be catching Pokemon and battling trainers! (And by tomorrow I mean, today when I'm writing this because you know I'm playing as soon as I'm done updating the blog.)

#entries #pokemon #pokemon blue #nuzlocke

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 13, 2017

Today, I spent all day gambling. Literally nothing else. I fought the one Rocket in the Game Corner to open the hideout but didn't go in, and mostly just grabbed coins off the floor, found a hot machine and mashed A for a few hours in total probably.

More pressingly, from my readers who I don't know in person, I super want feedback about which single one of the 5 Pokemon I might get from Celadon I should get. Porygon, Dratini, Abra, Eevee, or Pinsir? Please send a message!

#entries #pokemon #nuzlocke #pokemon blue #game corner

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nuzblog · 6 years

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November 9th and 10th, 2017

Alright, well. Looks like I'm going through Diglett Tunnel anyway - Flash is on the other end of it. Fortunately, I have caught 10 Pokemon, so it is actually accessible to me, unlike the ItemFinder. However... I do have a Pro Strat for the Diglett Tunnel! Namely, I'll pull Horus back out of the PC for Whirlwind to avoid battles! I do that thing, acquire Flash (which I teach to Mick, the Voltorb I don't intend to use on my team), go ahead and heal freely at home, and head back. Oh, I do also grab the convenient cut-barriered items such as Dream Eater while I'm over here on this end of Kanto.

It's a short hike back to Rock Tunnel, which I don't think will be too hard, I leave Minos in the PC so that I can hold onto my flasher (since he's highest leveled), and I'm on the way, pretty uneventfu OH FUCK ME.

Ladies and gentlemen and assorted other folks and ladies again just to be safe, I have for you some awfully bad news. A Level 25 trainer's Slowpoke in the Rock Tunnel has caused the first true party death of the run (i.e. not a Pokemon I had just added to the team to start grinding it). Maneki, who has of course already eaten my only ever TMs for Water Gun and, more tragically, Thunderbolt... has bit the big one. Kicked the bucket. Singin' with the choir invisible - he's an ex-Meowth, if you're catching what I'm tossing.

I release him on the other side of Rock Tunnel, which has no items in it for some reason. You'd think a dark tunnel would be the exact place people would lose stuff. I decide to start training up Moschops. In all fairness, it's not the most tragic - Moschops does give me better type coverage than Maneki did.

On Route 8, I encounter a Sandshrew - a duplicate. And then... oh jeez. It's a Meowth. It hurts to look at - too sad. I murder it. (Actually Moschops just accidentally critted it. Not that I could have goten another Meowth WITH THUNDERBOLT. ;_;)

Skipping over Lavender Town for now, I head through the underground path to Celadon. On Route 7, I cross my fingers for a Vulpix... and then I remember, oh wait. I used my last ball on Moschops and never actually bought more!!! So, I head for Celadon. Time for Supermarket Sweep!

First, I pick up the HM for Fly and teach it to Lanius. From now on, the run is gonna be WAY EASIER. I can just fly home anytime I'm really hurtin' for a healin'. Which... I guess would just be... hurtin'?

Then I go to the Department Store. I buy Great Balls, I buy a Leaf Stone for once I have Penthes' moveset how I want, I buy the TM for Submission so that Moschops has a fighting type move (Karate Chop is Normal in Gen 1 and Machop doesn't learn Low Kick (which is itself of pretty variable usefulness) until Level 20! What the heck!). I grab the TM for Counter from the guy at the counter, I head to the roof and give a little girl some water, soda pop and lemonade for Ice Beam (which goes right onto Minos), Tri Attack (which goes right into the PC) and Rock Slide (which I teach to Moschops to fill out his coverage a little more).

It's also worth giving some though to the idea of catching a Pokemon in Celadon City. Most cities have either a single gift Pokemon or a single body of water, or a trade or something... but Celadon has OPTIONS. Discounting the bodies of water that I could just get the same stuff from wherever, I can either grab the free Eevee OR I could try to get lucky at the slots to collect a prize Pokemon. Discounting the kinda weaksauce options, I could try for an Abra (powerful psychic types are very good to have in Gen 1!), a Pinsir (to replace Xuth as my bug type?) a Dratini (cause no way in hell am I getting one from the Safari Zone, lol), or a Porygon (oooooh a Porygon would be so nice, I love Porygon...) I'm as yet undecided, and I think I'd like to get some feedback from my readers before choosing. Eevee feels like the boring choice, but Jolteon with Pin Missile is optimal for Sabrina, who I have no other real counters for... Dragonite and Ala- well, KADABRA I guess, would be great heavy hitters to add to the team... Pinsir and Porygon would be kind of personal choices for because I love them, but maybe Gen 1 has some weird stuff about them I don't know about that makes them broken in their own fun way too?

Anyway. Now that I have balls (haha jokes) I head for Route 7 again. I run into a Pidgey, and then a Bellsprout, and then a Pidgey, and then a Vulpix, yay!! I name it Kitan.

I feed a beverage to a guard. Glug glug- gulp. Now I can access Saffron City! Not that I can DO anything there yet. If memory serves, once I chase Team Rocket out of their Game Corner Hideout and Lavender Tower, I'll be able to go into Silph Co. and the gyms in Saffron and so forth?

I send Minos to the PC again, since he's gonna be weak to Eirika anyway, and start training Kitan for her fire type.

Whoops. Then Kitan died. Looks like Eirika's gonna be a touch tougher than I wanted. Xuth and Lanius are gonna have to carry me through that gym. I might just do the Rocket Hideout first? Dunno. Oh, I guess Ice Beam on Minos would be a good last resort...

I check around to make sure I haven't missed any spots I could be catching stuff, and then remember the cycling road exists. And then remember the bicycle exists. And then remember that I never actually got the dang thing. So I go do that, and then I stopped playing on the night of the 10th because I had become a bicycle myself!

In that I was...

Two tired. B)

#nuzlocke #entries #pokemon #pokemon blue #puns

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