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kjorteoLast time: I detoured from the main game into the Pokewalker.
On my first outing in Refreshing Field (while I was out walking to a nearby Pokemon Go gym and back, because why gameify physical activity for one Pokemon game when you can do it for two?) Scout managed to catch a Doduo (no nickname yet), gather two Revives and a Chesto Berry, and still come back with 155 watts to spare out of the 200 or so I'd racked up. It turns out was wrong about those extra watts going to waste; unspent ones actually go toward an in-game counter that unlocks more Pokewalker courses, which have different kinds of Pokemon and items in them. Considering you get one watt per 20 steps and course unlocking only counts the watts you don't turn around and spend on catching Pokemon/Items, I'd have to walk a total of two million steps without using the Pokewalker for anything else to unlock all the courses (except the now-defunct Wifi event ones and such.) So, uh, I think I'll be okay. Even my 10-12K steps/day lifestype won't outpace this thing that quickly.
It will, however, take the actual game's already low difficulty and smash it into a fine powder. There are no plot-related barriers to unlocking any of the courses up through Town Outskirts; only watt requirements. (Hoenn Field and beyond also require the National Pokedex, though.) If I were to do a heavy amount of walking all week without having time to check in with the actual game--you know, like I said was exactly what was going to happen--then I could unlock those courses and build a team of rare powerful Pokemon before I've even gone after my first gym.
Those 155 watts I gathered on that first excursion were good enough to unlock Rugged Road, which is where I went the next day. There, I caught a Ponyta and Magby and got a Red Shard, Star Piece, and Antidote, with enough spare watts to unlock Beautiful Beach, where I can get some OP Water types that would more than cancel any advantage Silver might have gained over Empress by picking Fire. Geez, next time we fight him, I'm going to come at him with an entire team of Pokewalker Pokemon and he's going to have one single starter that's like half their level. I almost feel bad for him.
Of course, this is the exact sort of thing I mentioned before when I said it's easy to play Pokewalker more than actually playing Pokemon SoulSilver, so maybe I should get back to that. I don't need to raid Beautiful Beach right now. Let's earmark that for tomorrow's walk, and advance the plot a little for now.
The Star Piece I got from the Pokewalker sells for more than enough to cover an ample supply of every starting item I could want, so I am more than adequately stocked for the next leg of our journey, which is... uh....
Right, someone gave me a map card for the PokeGear. North from Cherrygrove, onto Route 30, then Route 31, and then Violet City, apparently.
The part of Route 30 continuing onward past Mr. Pokemon's house used to be blocked by two other trainers having a battle that you couldn't walk around. Now that the plot has advanced, so can we. They're done with each other and I can pass, except that now they both want to fight me. The first one says "I just lost, so I'm looking for Pokemon," then declares that I look weak, and I suddenly find myself challenged by...
Oh, God in Heaven, it's Youngster Joey.
He has one Pokemon, a level 4 Rattata. My party at this point consists of Empress (level 10 Chikorita) and a level 9 Magby and level 8 Doduo who don't have nicknames because Pokewalker captures don't have that screen. (I also caught that level 7 Ponyta on the Pokewalker as well, but the Magby kind of made it obsolete already.) It took less time to destroy him than it took you to read this paragraph.
After the battle, Joey asks if he can get my number, so he can ring me up to battle.
Oh, boy.
So, a feature the Gold/Silver games had was that you could exchange numbers with certain trainers, who would call you up randomly. Most were just for random banter that served no use but provided some flavor, but sometimes they called you to challenge you to a rematch, which was basically the only way to get more money in this game because wild encounters don't pay. Also, some specific ones sometimes called you to alert you about swarms of certain rare Pokemon appearing on a certain route, if you wanted to drop what you were doing and go catch them.
They brought back this feature in the HeartGold/SoulSilver remakes, at which point the Internet zeroed in on the "call you up randomly for useless banter" aspect of it. I didn't mind this back in original Silver, because it was part of what made the world feel so alive to younger me, and because if anyone ever truly would not stop then I could just delete their number. There was a limited number of room in your contact list, so the game had the ability to remove old numbers to make room for new ones if you so choose. HG/SS expanded the contact list to comfortably fit every trainer in the game, because space limitations were clearly the only reason you would ever have to not want to talk to someone. Thus, the "what is it with the trainers in this game pestering you for no reason" aspect became more apparent at the same time we all discovered to our horror that the ability to block them was the one feature Gold/Silver had that HG/SS actually removed.
Youngster Joey in particular became a meme for his inability to shut the fuck up about his fucking Rattata (the one we just clobbered in two rounds,) a sort of precursor to the "arrow to the knee" thing in Skyrim that took off for basically the same reason.
The only way to stay safe in this game is to know what's coming and never, ever, ever give anyone your number.
...
I give Youngster Joey my number.
Look. Safe is boring. This is part of the SoulSilver experience. If I wanted to avoid it, I wouldn't be playing this. No, we're drinking it in. Let's see what you've got, game. Send me to phone hell. Pour that Rattata all over me.
Anyway, we trade numbers and I'm on my way. "I knew it," he says as his parting words, "If you don't have many Pokemon, battles are harder! I need to catch more Pokemon!" He says that, but he'll remain faithfully and monogamously married to that Rattata until the end of time.
I exchange numbers with Bug Catcher Wade on this route, too, because sure what the hell let's add them all.
Onward to Violet City, where there's a guy named Primo who will give you PC backgrounds and eggs if you tell him secret passwords using that keyword system from Ethan's email. The passwords are generated based on your Trainer ID number, so you would have had to acquire them as a perk for being signed up to an official fan site or--hahaha of course there's a generator. I go ahead and take a Mareep egg because the Pokewalker just wasn't cheating ENOUGH.
At this point my party is close to full, even though I still have yet to catch a Pokemon that's actually from inside the game itself, except for Scout.
The leader of Violet City's gym is Falkner, who specializes in dry yet unintelligible novels your English teacher makes you cover even though I'm sorry but they're fucking unreadable. Wait, no, Falkner specializes in Flying-type Pokemon. Sorry.
For most gyms in Pokemon games, the "strategy" is to come in with whatever Pokemon has a type advantage over theirs and rain merciless Super Effective death on everyone. Here, the answer to Flying would be Rock or Electric, but we don't have a Rock-type and that Mareep egg we just got is still an egg. Fortunately, there's random NPC in town who wants to trade a (Rock/Ground) Onix for an easily-available Bellsprout. I leave town just long enough to make my second official in-game capture, come back, make the trade for "Rocky" (NPC trades come with their own nicknames,) and... oh wow he's Level 3 and doesn't even know any Rock moves yet.
After a bunch of grinding, now we can... oh, no, the gym is closed until we fight our way through Sprout Tower, also in town. Which we do, and at the top is Silver, because the police are useless. He completed the "climb the tower" challenge shortly before we got there, and the Elder gives him a TM and everything, but tells him that he should be nicer to his Pokemon. His current treatment of them is a bit harsh. "Remember, Pokemon are not instruments of war...." That line will become retroactively painful a few games/generations later, but for now, Silver is like "lol nah strong Pokemon are all I care about" and disappears. The Elder battles us, praises how we handle our Pokemon (in contrast to critiquing Silver for how he does it,) and gives us our very own Flash TM, which we'll need later.
There. After all that, now we can take down Falkner's gym. Which we do. He grumbles a bit but admits that a victory is a victory, hands over the Zephyr Badge, and suggests we go to Azalea Town next.
On the way out, Professor Elm calls and asks me to meet his assistant in Violet Town to pick up that egg we left with him, because they discovered that if we carry it, it may hatch! Wow that sure is a neat discovery that I totally didn't already know and I'll just, uh, put this egg next to the Mareep one that I'm probably not supposed to have shhhhh.
A mysterious kimono-clad NPC immediately rushes up to me and notices my egg like"OwO what's this?" "Oh, if this egg was delivered from Mr. Pokemon to Professor Elm and then to me, it must be really important. Be sure to take good care of it!" (paraphrased) And then she walks off.
Um, okay.
Anyway, next time: Onward to Azalea Town, bringing the eggs with me, apparently!
On my first outing in Refreshing Field (while I was out walking to a nearby Pokemon Go gym and back, because why gameify physical activity for one Pokemon game when you can do it for two?) Scout managed to catch a Doduo (no nickname yet), gather two Revives and a Chesto Berry, and still come back with 155 watts to spare out of the 200 or so I'd racked up. It turns out was wrong about those extra watts going to waste; unspent ones actually go toward an in-game counter that unlocks more Pokewalker courses, which have different kinds of Pokemon and items in them. Considering you get one watt per 20 steps and course unlocking only counts the watts you don't turn around and spend on catching Pokemon/Items, I'd have to walk a total of two million steps without using the Pokewalker for anything else to unlock all the courses (except the now-defunct Wifi event ones and such.) So, uh, I think I'll be okay. Even my 10-12K steps/day lifestype won't outpace this thing that quickly.
It will, however, take the actual game's already low difficulty and smash it into a fine powder. There are no plot-related barriers to unlocking any of the courses up through Town Outskirts; only watt requirements. (Hoenn Field and beyond also require the National Pokedex, though.) If I were to do a heavy amount of walking all week without having time to check in with the actual game--you know, like I said was exactly what was going to happen--then I could unlock those courses and build a team of rare powerful Pokemon before I've even gone after my first gym.
Those 155 watts I gathered on that first excursion were good enough to unlock Rugged Road, which is where I went the next day. There, I caught a Ponyta and Magby and got a Red Shard, Star Piece, and Antidote, with enough spare watts to unlock Beautiful Beach, where I can get some OP Water types that would more than cancel any advantage Silver might have gained over Empress by picking Fire. Geez, next time we fight him, I'm going to come at him with an entire team of Pokewalker Pokemon and he's going to have one single starter that's like half their level. I almost feel bad for him.
Of course, this is the exact sort of thing I mentioned before when I said it's easy to play Pokewalker more than actually playing Pokemon SoulSilver, so maybe I should get back to that. I don't need to raid Beautiful Beach right now. Let's earmark that for tomorrow's walk, and advance the plot a little for now.
The Star Piece I got from the Pokewalker sells for more than enough to cover an ample supply of every starting item I could want, so I am more than adequately stocked for the next leg of our journey, which is... uh....
Right, someone gave me a map card for the PokeGear. North from Cherrygrove, onto Route 30, then Route 31, and then Violet City, apparently.
The part of Route 30 continuing onward past Mr. Pokemon's house used to be blocked by two other trainers having a battle that you couldn't walk around. Now that the plot has advanced, so can we. They're done with each other and I can pass, except that now they both want to fight me. The first one says "I just lost, so I'm looking for Pokemon," then declares that I look weak, and I suddenly find myself challenged by...
Oh, God in Heaven, it's Youngster Joey.
He has one Pokemon, a level 4 Rattata. My party at this point consists of Empress (level 10 Chikorita) and a level 9 Magby and level 8 Doduo who don't have nicknames because Pokewalker captures don't have that screen. (I also caught that level 7 Ponyta on the Pokewalker as well, but the Magby kind of made it obsolete already.) It took less time to destroy him than it took you to read this paragraph.
After the battle, Joey asks if he can get my number, so he can ring me up to battle.
Oh, boy.
So, a feature the Gold/Silver games had was that you could exchange numbers with certain trainers, who would call you up randomly. Most were just for random banter that served no use but provided some flavor, but sometimes they called you to challenge you to a rematch, which was basically the only way to get more money in this game because wild encounters don't pay. Also, some specific ones sometimes called you to alert you about swarms of certain rare Pokemon appearing on a certain route, if you wanted to drop what you were doing and go catch them.
They brought back this feature in the HeartGold/SoulSilver remakes, at which point the Internet zeroed in on the "call you up randomly for useless banter" aspect of it. I didn't mind this back in original Silver, because it was part of what made the world feel so alive to younger me, and because if anyone ever truly would not stop then I could just delete their number. There was a limited number of room in your contact list, so the game had the ability to remove old numbers to make room for new ones if you so choose. HG/SS expanded the contact list to comfortably fit every trainer in the game, because space limitations were clearly the only reason you would ever have to not want to talk to someone. Thus, the "what is it with the trainers in this game pestering you for no reason" aspect became more apparent at the same time we all discovered to our horror that the ability to block them was the one feature Gold/Silver had that HG/SS actually removed.
Youngster Joey in particular became a meme for his inability to shut the fuck up about his fucking Rattata (the one we just clobbered in two rounds,) a sort of precursor to the "arrow to the knee" thing in Skyrim that took off for basically the same reason.
The only way to stay safe in this game is to know what's coming and never, ever, ever give anyone your number.
...
I give Youngster Joey my number.
Look. Safe is boring. This is part of the SoulSilver experience. If I wanted to avoid it, I wouldn't be playing this. No, we're drinking it in. Let's see what you've got, game. Send me to phone hell. Pour that Rattata all over me.
Anyway, we trade numbers and I'm on my way. "I knew it," he says as his parting words, "If you don't have many Pokemon, battles are harder! I need to catch more Pokemon!" He says that, but he'll remain faithfully and monogamously married to that Rattata until the end of time.
I exchange numbers with Bug Catcher Wade on this route, too, because sure what the hell let's add them all.
Onward to Violet City, where there's a guy named Primo who will give you PC backgrounds and eggs if you tell him secret passwords using that keyword system from Ethan's email. The passwords are generated based on your Trainer ID number, so you would have had to acquire them as a perk for being signed up to an official fan site or--hahaha of course there's a generator. I go ahead and take a Mareep egg because the Pokewalker just wasn't cheating ENOUGH.
At this point my party is close to full, even though I still have yet to catch a Pokemon that's actually from inside the game itself, except for Scout.
The leader of Violet City's gym is Falkner, who specializes in dry yet unintelligible novels your English teacher makes you cover even though I'm sorry but they're fucking unreadable. Wait, no, Falkner specializes in Flying-type Pokemon. Sorry.
For most gyms in Pokemon games, the "strategy" is to come in with whatever Pokemon has a type advantage over theirs and rain merciless Super Effective death on everyone. Here, the answer to Flying would be Rock or Electric, but we don't have a Rock-type and that Mareep egg we just got is still an egg. Fortunately, there's random NPC in town who wants to trade a (Rock/Ground) Onix for an easily-available Bellsprout. I leave town just long enough to make my second official in-game capture, come back, make the trade for "Rocky" (NPC trades come with their own nicknames,) and... oh wow he's Level 3 and doesn't even know any Rock moves yet.
After a bunch of grinding, now we can... oh, no, the gym is closed until we fight our way through Sprout Tower, also in town. Which we do, and at the top is Silver, because the police are useless. He completed the "climb the tower" challenge shortly before we got there, and the Elder gives him a TM and everything, but tells him that he should be nicer to his Pokemon. His current treatment of them is a bit harsh. "Remember, Pokemon are not instruments of war...." That line will become retroactively painful a few games/generations later, but for now, Silver is like "lol nah strong Pokemon are all I care about" and disappears. The Elder battles us, praises how we handle our Pokemon (in contrast to critiquing Silver for how he does it,) and gives us our very own Flash TM, which we'll need later.
There. After all that, now we can take down Falkner's gym. Which we do. He grumbles a bit but admits that a victory is a victory, hands over the Zephyr Badge, and suggests we go to Azalea Town next.
On the way out, Professor Elm calls and asks me to meet his assistant in Violet Town to pick up that egg we left with him, because they discovered that if we carry it, it may hatch! Wow that sure is a neat discovery that I totally didn't already know and I'll just, uh, put this egg next to the Mareep one that I'm probably not supposed to have shhhhh.
A mysterious kimono-clad NPC immediately rushes up to me and notices my egg like
Um, okay.
Anyway, next time: Onward to Azalea Town, bringing the eggs with me, apparently!
no subject
Date: 2017-08-29 08:07 am (UTC)Is it really all that bad to overlevel if you're just in Tourism Mode, though?
no subject
Date: 2017-08-29 01:30 pm (UTC)I'm not super concerned about taking advantage like this, which is why I'm doing it. It's more just commenting, like "haha wow this game's difficulty was already meager and I just smashed whatever was left to pieces huh." HG/SS doesn't even have the early access Exp. Share like your "Balance? What's that?" experience with the later games, but it does have a half-hour-in Magby I sometimes forget isn't actually my starter, and some even more broken ones I can pick up at work today if the Pokewalker RNG likes me.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-01 11:23 am (UTC)[FIVE MINUTES LATER]
--Oh. Okay then. Well, at least it's been a good read so far! :D
no subject
Date: 2017-09-01 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 07:55 am (UTC)I always gave my number away in the original G/S because I wanted the extra XP from the rare battles you got called to.
I suffered.
I suffered a lot.
So much pointless chatter.
At this point my party is close to full, even though I still have yet to catch a Pokemon that's actually from inside the game itself, except for Scout.
I was about to make a comment that at this point I'd have a poochyena and one of those spider things.
Then I remembered poochyena is 3rd gen and I don't remember what my G/S layout would have been.
I wish I'd gotten to own HG/SS. :( I miss it.
My comment about poochyena in an earlier post is now much more embarrassing though.
and... oh wow he's Level 3 and doesn't even know any Rock moves yet.
I thought you get all trades at the level of the Pokémon you traded them? Should have raised that bellsprout a bit.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 02:33 pm (UTC)In original Silver, I added everyone until my phone book was full, then got beseiged by pointless chatter, and then took advantage of the clearing-out-space Delete This Person's Number function to make more room for precious silence.
My first time through trying SoulSilver when it came out, I was paranoid and never gave my number to anyone. It kept me safe, yeah, but... well, as I mentioned, I think my first time through trying SoulSilver was with the wrong mindset and missed the point in a lot of areas anyway.
I am now drowning in inane chatter as every damn trainer in the region calls me to talk about that time they saw a Weedle, but that's fine. It's part of the experience.
"I thought you get all trades at the level of the Pokémon you traded them? Should have raised that bellsprout a bit."
Wait, really? I never knew that. I'll have to look into that....
Though, I mean, that would have meant grinding the Pokemon from 3 to 9 or so anyway, whether it was Bellsprout or Onix.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-20 02:39 pm (UTC)Though, I mean, that would have meant grinding the Pokemon from 3 to 9 or so anyway, whether it was Bellsprout or Onix.
True, true. I suppose it's a matter of which one is less of a chore to grind.
And also once you're dealing in trade mons in the 20+ range, trading a lower level then raising it means you get more control over which moves it learns, so...
Always minmaxing. :p