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kjorteoI really wanted the last entry to include all of Goldenrod City, ending with a climactic gym battle the way Azalea Town's entries did. I should have remembered that 1) Azalea Town was a two-parter as well, and 2) Goldenrod is big. Last entry was running long even from the preliminary stuff. There is so much more of this city to explore, from checking out the random buildings to furthering the plot, which itself first involves a trip to the radio tower before we can do the gym.
In the end, part 9 of this run ended up being more or less part 8-2. And also gigantic. Fair warning.
The Goldenrod City Game Corner's slogan is "A Safe and Sound Playground!" I can't tell if that's because it only offers the more child-safe Voltorb Flp instead of those old evil slot machines, or because (unlike the Game Corner in the previous game) this one isn't a front for a secret Team Rocket hideout. You can earn coins through Voltorb Flip, and then exchange them for Pokemon or TMs. The top prize on the Pokemon side is a Dratini, but the Pokewalker kind of already beat the game to the punch on that one. Just as well, since I only worked my way up to about 71 coins after a good 20 minutes of playing, and that Dratini costs 2,100. The top prizes on the TM side are moves like Thunderbolt and Flamethrower, which I do want, but at 10,000 coins I think I'm going to look elsewhere for them.
There used to be a booth where you could just buy coins for some hideously expensive exchange rate, but I don't see one here. Do they seriously want me to Voltorb Flip my way up to 10K? Good God, no. Moving on.
There's a train station that connects this city to the Johto region, but obviously there's an RPG-style broken bridge that keeps the train coming in for now, because of course we can't just skip the entire rest of the pre-National Dex game.
The Global Terminal is in this town, and oh my God, this is the saddest, eeriest thing. The whole thing is massive, laid out like one of those bright shiny "in the future, everything will be an Apple store" sci-fi movies, and even comes with a futuristic theme to match. It's the sort of thing where I seriously went around looking to see if this generation's "Technology is incredible!" guy was in here somewhere, but I didn't see him. Fortunately(?), the entire rest of the town is there to marvel at the wonders of Nintendo WFC instead. They're all so joyously excited for this technology. I... I don't have the heart to tell them.
"What you see here is how much people around the world love Pokemon," one person says.
Seriously, all this place needs is the "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" line as an inscription on that giant rotating globe in the lobby.
Youngster Ian calls me while I'm walking through the building, and at this point I'm relieved to hear him prattle on about how he used the tricks he learned from watching me battle to take down a Drowzee. Yeah, let's... let's get out of here. Seeing an entire part of this world--especially such a hyped and vaunted one--completely erased like this is unsettling. It's the sort of thing that has very uncomfortable connotations for someone who named half her team after Neverending Story references. I will try my best to make sure this isn't your fate, Empress. And everyone on my team.
Outside, Joey calls to tell me he saw a wild Rattata and went for it, but failed to catch it. You know, we're this far into the game yet, and he still hasn't said anything about his Rattata yet. On the other hand, this is the second time he's given me the "tried and failed to catch a ___" speech. (And the third, too; he called again later about a Hoothoot.) It's almost as if the meme blew the wrong quote out of proportion.
Back in the department store, a random customer wants to trade my Drowzee for his Machop. I already have Atreyu, of course, so this is unnecessary. There are plentiful Drowzees just outside the city, though, and it's easy to go grab one to make the trade anyway. It is beneficial to have lots of Pokemon whose Original Trainer data is someone other than you, for reasons I will get into later. His Machop is named "Muscle," and comes with a Macho Brace. I promptly unequip Muscle and stuff him in Box 2.
Quick reshuffling with the current party while I'm messing with the PC anyway, and we set off with Auryn, Bam Bam, Falkor, Nimbly, Empress, and Sweetie.
There's still more to Goldenrod, but I'm about to sequence break a little. I'm currently writing this paragraph very late on a Saturday evening and I need to get to bed, but there's something that happens on Saturdays that I don't want to miss. The rest of Goldenrod can be done tomorrow; this can't.
I sneak north out of Goldenrod, avoiding most of the trainers and battles I can because I'll do this route for real later and I just want to skip past as much of it as I can for now. On the other side is... ah, yes, there it is.
Welcome to National Park.
Oh... oh, this music. Yes....
National Park is a relaxing hangout of a zone, and the music reflects that. The Game Boy version of its theme sounded like this, and because this is one of those areas and songs that was very personally meaningful to me growing up, I was a little worried about the remix being as disappointing as their treatment of Goldenrod's theme was. All they had to do for this one was keep it soothing and relaxing, and... well, that's exactly what they did. This is... this is nice. This is a place to come sit down and rest when the rest of the world has you down. I like this.
The park itself, as you can see from the map in that video thumbnail, is just a zone with grass and sidewalks shaped like a Pokeball. There are trainers that want to battle you if you step into the grass, but everyone outside is a non-combatant and the zone is perfectly peaceful if you stay in what the sign calls the "Relaxation Square."
Great moments in NPC dialogue: "It's fun having a Pokemon out of its Poke Ball to walk with it, but the Pokewalker is a whole new dimension." They finally have someone break the fourth wall and mention that feature. Given that the very first route in the game had someone talking about saving their game, and given how important the Pokewalker has been to my entire run, it was a very strange omission up until now. As if to make up for lost time, though, almost every NPC in the Relaxation Square talks about all the Pokewalkers they have, except for the one sitting on a bench who randomly gives us a Quick Claw instead.
(Fun fact: These same NPCs were all touting the merits of the Game Boy Printer in original Gold/Silver, and had their dialogue updated to reflect this version's tech.)
Hiker Anthony calls while I'm basking, and mentions he tried eating berries after seeing his Geodude eating them, but maybe that wasn't the best idea. Good luck with that.
Anyway, as much as I'd love to sit in Relaxation Square and listen to that music forever, that's not the reason why we skipped ahead and came to National Park tonight. No, we're here for the Bug-Catching Contest.
National Park's Bug-Catching Contest is held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It's a special event where every trainer in the region gathers around to have as much unprotected... oops, excuse me. It's where we all get a bunch of special event Sport Balls and try to catch Bug Pokemon. The contest ends after 20 minutes, if you use up all 20 Sport Balls, if you choose to call it done from the menu, or if your Pokemon runs out of HP and faints. Afterward, there are prizes for who has the best caught Bug Pokemon, with score determined via some arcane formula taking into account how rare or common the species is, how much HP it had left when you caught it, its level, and its IVs.
You can take one Pokemon into battle, and it has to be one that's strong enough not to die, but with at least one offensively unimpressive move such that you can weaken all the bugs without destroying them in one hit. The goal is to catch them, after all.
After some consideration, I decide to try my luck with Falkor.
Running around the grass, the first Pokemon we run into is a Butterfree. Not the most exciting Pokemon available in this competition, but definitely not the least. I catch it on my second Sport Ball. If I catch anything better later, I can replace it. If not, there are certainly worse ways to end the competition.
The end of the contest may come soon, though, because that asshole Butterfree poisoned Falkor before I could catch it. You do not have access to your item menu during the contest, and Poison does not wear off after battle. I have no choice but to keep running around, watching helplessly as Falkor's HP plummets with every step.
The second Pokemon we run into is a Caterpie, which is an awful catch. The Butterfree we already have is a way more impressive, so this entire encounter is a waste. I don't want to risk Falkor losing more HP from a tick of Poison damage if it lasts more than one round, so I just flee.
More running, more of that horrible "oh God your Pokemon is Poisoned why aren't you helping it" screen effect with each step, then the third battle comes around. Bear in mind, this is supposed to be very early on in the competition; this will only be the third Pokemon I've encountered so far, I still have 18 Sport Balls, and I have around 18 minutes remaining, too. However, Falkor is perilously low on health and only getting lower, and so something tells me this will be our last battle before an early exit.
It's a fucking Scyther.
FFFFFFFFFFF--
Okay. I desperately want a Scyther. It is one of my all-time favorite Pokemon, and getting one was my goal all along, the end prize, the reason I even entered this contest in the first place. They are very rare (5% chance of an encounter being one, I believe?) and seeing one in the third battle of my first contest is unreal. The only way I could have been any more lucky with this draw is if it had been shiny.
Alas, this is horrible timing for an otherwise great find; Falkor is barely conscious. I estimate one round left for her to live, if even that. I have to make it count, I guess. God, this is going to be close.
I don't know how hard Falkor's moves are going to hit, and I don't want to risk knocking the Scyther out in one hit before I can catch it, so I start with the somewhat weaker Twister. In the end, I overestimated Falkor's strength, or underestimated Scyther's toughness, as Twister barely scratches the thing. This Scyther doesn't know U-Turn the way Bugsy's did, so it instead hits with Pursuit, which does even less damage than Twister did. Of course, then the Poison damage kicks in....
Good news: Against all odds, Falkor actually survives the round!
Bad news: With one hit point.
Worse news: Scythers have a difficult catch rate anyway. They're one of those Pokemon where it can be a pain to get one to stay in the damn ball, even at death's door. This one is still close to full health. The odds could not be lower that this is going to work, but I don't have another round to weaken it any further. Fuck it, now or never.
I toss a Sport Ball.
It works.
What is it with Scythers in this game and me lucking out, defying all odds, and pulling off something I really shouldn't have been able to do, all with one hit point remaining?
By the time I calm down and start breathing again, finish writing everything you just read, return to playing the game, and advance past the "Scyther was caught!" screen, the 20 minutes are up, and the contest officially ends. Not that I wouldn't have retired early from the menu the second I regained control anyway; I wasn't taking another step with Falkor at 1 HP and Poisoned. Even if I could, there is no better catch in this contest than a Scyther. (Pinsirs are tied for first rarity-points-wise, but I like Scythers better as a personal preference.)
Official contest results: Third place is Bug Catcher Ed, "who caught a writhing Scyther" for 301 points. Second is Bug Catcher Don, "who caught a wriggling Pinsir" for 304 points. First place is me, Celine, "who caught a whopping Scyther" for 324 points.
I forgot the competition was so heavy in these contests. That Butterfree wouldn't have come close to cutting after all. A near-full health Scyther is enough to take first, because if that's not then what would be, but the margin is far closer than I would have expected.
I win a Sun Stone for my victory, but of course the real prize is my brand new Scyther. He's a boy and his name is... "Dark Mantis" doesn't fit in the character limit in this game, but Atlantis suffices.
The peaceful music starts again and we're free to walk around Relaxation Square once more, but Falkor is going to die if I take one more step, so how about I use an Antidote and some Potions first? Nice try, game, but I haven't forgotten.
My team is fairly full by this point, but a Scyther is just too awesome not to use. Maybe Atlantis can be a capture Pokemon? It can't use Hypnosis or Mean Look like Hunter can, but it can use a Technician-boosted False Swipe like Hunter can't. Or maybe Atlantis could become a full-on main member of my battling party. It's not like Bugsy didn't prove how good they are in a fight, and I still have the U-Turn TM I got from him. That would involve rethinking type coverages with what he adds versus what I'm losing by replacing someone, and if I still have an answer for any ___-type Pokemon I may encounter.
Hmm. I'll have to think about this. This LP is getting far more attention than I ever expected it to, so maybe one of my holy crap why do I have this many readers has some feedback. Either way, if Hunter can live in Box 1 for now despite my not having used her once this whole game, so can Atlantis.
With the timed portion of this update out of the way, and with me about four hours late for bed, I'm going to take a quick one-sentence jump cut that represents me coming back and finishing the rest of this tomorrow.
...
Good morning! Last night sure was a thing, huh. I'm feeling a bit stressed this morning due to general life stuff, but parking in Relaxation Square and just listening to the music for a while is... still nice.
Back in Goldenrod, Ethan calls me to mention the really high cliff on Route 47, and how he's always shaking with fear when he goes there. Ethan, honey, I was almost positive you weren't even an actual competitive Pokemon trainer so much as a bright-eyed boy with a cute pet. How the hell are you already making it to and from Route 47? That's like a zillion hours from now. I call him back out of curiosity, and it seems he's this game's "Oh, you're in (current location)? Well, here's a random comment about that location!" service. In Goldenrod, he mentions that the gym is shaped like a Clefairy, and if I bring a Clefairy there myself, probably nothing will happen but it would be really cute.
I like Ethan. I'm going to be calling him as much as all these other trainers call me.
We go through the underground tunnel (there are a couple shops and some enemy trainers down there,) play some more Voltorb Flip just for fun, and then Joey calls and oh there's the conversation about his super-cool top percentage Rattata.
The radio tower has a Rocket grunt scouting outside the entrance. It's unclear at first what Team Rocket's interest in the radio tower is, but it can't be good.
Nothing seems amiss inside the building, though. The receptionist offers to give us a Radio Card for the PokeGear if we can answer some trivia questions. Upon receiving it, this city's gym leader (who was away from her duties to try to get one, remember) marvels at it, sulks that she got question three wrong, and runs off back to the gym, which means we can now go there.
First, let's talk about the radio feature, though.
The radio, along with the Bug-Catching Contest in National Park, were the features that made me feel like I was living in original Silver and not just playing it. I've spoken about how immersive the time-based features felt back then, how it made this game seem like a living world that I was a part of, and how important it was to have something like that. I had a fairly angsty puberty, was picked on in school, etc. so this game became my escape from a lot of things.
The Bug-Catching Contest was this cool even that you could do a few times a week, which gave me reason to hold out even on the hardest days. It kept me going. It gave me something to cling to. "Yes, today was awful and you may want to cry over everything that happened, but hey, there's a Bug-Catching Contest tomorrow! That will brighten things up at least a little. Hang in there just a little longer, okay?"
The radio, by contrast, was a constant friendly reassuring presence as I went through the game. I didn't have to wait for it (except for the weekly lucky number drawings.) Wherever I was, whatever time it was, I could just open up the radio, turn it on, and there were all my favorite shows, running 24 hours a day. It was welcoming. Reassuring. They were there for me. They would always be there for me.
Some of the shows were better than others, of course, and I think the weekly lucky number show was the only one that served an actual useful purpose to me. But my favorite show, just to listen to it, was Pokemon Talk with Mary and Prof. Oak.
The formula was simple: Professor Oak would pick a randomly generated Pokemon and say what route it was on. Mary would then provide color commentary by fitting together pieces from an equally randomly-generated phrase list. The formula was "OAK: [Pokemon] can be found on/in [location]." "MARY: [Pokemon]'s [Line 1] [Line 2]." Repeat forever.
The thing that made this show so great, and the reason I would just let it run for ages even when I wasn't even interested in where the Pokemon could be found, was that Mary's lines made her sound like a raging Pokephile. Seriously, everything she said was "CATERPIE's/wiggly and slickly/stimulating." or "GROWLITHE's/so mischievously/hot, hot, hot!" or the like. Basically the entire show came down to various randomly-generated synonyms for "OAK: [Pokemon] can be found in [location.] MARY: I'd tap that." It was delightful.
(Artist's rendition of Pokemon Talk live in studio.)
Belive it or not, this was the feature I was most afraid of them messing up in the remake. After all, the original show was a very primitive form of procedural generation--I could figure out how it was building her lines from the banks of fragments even back then. It would have been easy for someone to replace it with something more sophisticated, but less dirty and "this is the show I remember" charming.
So... did they?
I listen in, and,
"Mary: WEEDLE,
you won't be able to resist,
you'll feel totally at ease."
"Mary: GASTLY,
if you just try calling out its name,
you'll think it's so wonderful..."
... Nope. She's still got it. *hearts*
The rest of the building is several floors' worth of NPCs to talk to, but for now there's nothing actually happening here with anyone, and we're prohibited from going up beyond the second floor anyway. I do take a moment to giggle at the "Pokemon Talk with Professor Oak - The Hottest Show on the Air!" sign, though.
Okay, I know. I should quit stalling and go to the gym. I tag Auryn out and put Atreyu in, and off we go.
The leader of Goldenrod's gym is none other than Whitney's Miltank. It's a first for the series, letting a Pokemon itself become a trainer, let a lone a gym lead... oops, sorry. The leader is Whitney, "The Incredibly Pretty Girl!" Her Miltank has gained a sort of infamous That One Boss reputation across the internet. I don't recall the thing being a problem in original Silver, but then again, I didn't recall Bugsy or his Scyther being a problem, either. This battle is either going to stomp my face in, or it... won't? Maybe it will be an even more harrowing battle than Bugsy was, or maybe I'll breeze past it like, "wait, that was it?" We'll see what happens! I'm a little nervous.
Whitney only has two Pokemon and she leads with Clefairy, so I guess she's saving the big guns for last. Bugsy led with his ace, but then again, his ace knew U-Turn and switched right back out anyway, so I guess that makes sense.
I lead with Atreyu, who Karate Chops Clefairy down to about 5% health in one hit. Clefairy counters with Metronome, which could be bad since it's basically a roulette wheel that calls forth almost any other move in the game at random, and a lot of moves are quite devastating. Instead, Metronome turns into Drain Punch, which does barely any damage. Whew.
Next round, Whitney uses a Super Potion to heal Clefairy, and then Atreyu just shrugs and Karate Chops it again, critting this time and taking it out entirely, and also getting most of that Drain Punch damage back thanks to Shell Bell.
So far, so good. Hey, we even got that Super Potion out of the way. But here comes Miltank.
I don't really know what to expect at this point, but I do know that Fighting moves have a type advantage, so I press on with my "hit them with Fighting damage" strategy. Rather than Karate Chop, though, I decide that Miltank looks kind of heavy (being a cow and all) and therefore vulnerable to Low Kick. I pick that and... Miltank goes first and uses Stomp, which doesn't do a whole lot of damage but it makes Atreyu flinch and waste his turn.
Oops. Okay, let's try that again.
Round two, Miltank goes first again--I guess she just outspeeds poor Atreyu. She throws Attract, which does this. Oh. Well. That's inconvenient. I mean... okay, yeah, I would too, so I can't really blame Atreyu here, but... hmm.
Atreyu then goes ahead and does Low Kick anyway. I guess attraction is like like confusion in this game, where it's basically an X% chance to waste your turn swooning instead of doing the thing you tried to do. Typically, when I'm under the effects of things like that, I just keep picking the move anyway and hoping it goes through. The first Low Kick dealt a good 60% damage and Whitney's Super Potion is gone, so all I have to do is get one more of those off and it's game.
Miltank uses Stomp again. Oh, right, I forgot she had a move with a flinch property. I don't know what the actual odds are at this point, but the endgame basically comes down to: can Low Kick get through a chance of flinching and a chance of Attract?
Yes. Yes, it can. First try, even. Then Miltank faints and that's that.
God, what even is my luck in this game.
Final verdict on Whitney and her Miltank: In paper, this could have been even worse than Bugsy and his Scyther. Her Miltank can charm, flinch, or otherwise shut my offense down, and that's not even getting into her big damaging power moves. (She never did use Rollout, for example.) She had a lot of tools at her disposal, and a lot of strategies she could have used against me, from disabling me to just hitting me really hard.
In practice, though, she just based her entire strategy on piling up layers of "you have to pass an RNG check just to get your move off" curses on me, and then I did. Other than losing one turn to a flinch, I wasn't slowed down at all, and the only actual damage she hit me with came from two incredibly weak Stomps.
So, could she be That One Boss? Sure. It's a luck-based mission, and I only got off light because everything went my way. It's just... did you see what happened with the Bug-Catching Contest? If you're a rival trainer trying to defeat me, don't base your strategy around me being unlucky.
Whitney breaks down in tears after the battle. Oh geez, honey, no, it was a good effort, really, it was. After giving her some time to cool off, she gives us the Plain Badge, which lets us use the HM move Strength outside battle. Yay, another HM we don't actually have yet! She also gives us the TM for Attract. Finally, she mentions something called the Pokeathlon Dome having opened right next to National Park. That definitely wasn't in original Silver, so this must be some new feature. Hopefully it's not Nintendo WFC-based.
That's the closest we get to a hint where to go next, though. Well, that and the fact that the flower shop owner is suitably impressed with my victory and now entrusts me with her highly dangerous watering pail. Still, there's only one path out of Goldenrod, so finding the next plot point is mostly a matter of "just keep going."
And there you have it. Next time: Back to National Park, and beyond!
In the end, part 9 of this run ended up being more or less part 8-2. And also gigantic. Fair warning.
The Goldenrod City Game Corner's slogan is "A Safe and Sound Playground!" I can't tell if that's because it only offers the more child-safe Voltorb Flp instead of those old evil slot machines, or because (unlike the Game Corner in the previous game) this one isn't a front for a secret Team Rocket hideout. You can earn coins through Voltorb Flip, and then exchange them for Pokemon or TMs. The top prize on the Pokemon side is a Dratini, but the Pokewalker kind of already beat the game to the punch on that one. Just as well, since I only worked my way up to about 71 coins after a good 20 minutes of playing, and that Dratini costs 2,100. The top prizes on the TM side are moves like Thunderbolt and Flamethrower, which I do want, but at 10,000 coins I think I'm going to look elsewhere for them.
There used to be a booth where you could just buy coins for some hideously expensive exchange rate, but I don't see one here. Do they seriously want me to Voltorb Flip my way up to 10K? Good God, no. Moving on.
There's a train station that connects this city to the Johto region, but obviously there's an RPG-style broken bridge that keeps the train coming in for now, because of course we can't just skip the entire rest of the pre-National Dex game.
The Global Terminal is in this town, and oh my God, this is the saddest, eeriest thing. The whole thing is massive, laid out like one of those bright shiny "in the future, everything will be an Apple store" sci-fi movies, and even comes with a futuristic theme to match. It's the sort of thing where I seriously went around looking to see if this generation's "Technology is incredible!" guy was in here somewhere, but I didn't see him. Fortunately(?), the entire rest of the town is there to marvel at the wonders of Nintendo WFC instead. They're all so joyously excited for this technology. I... I don't have the heart to tell them.
"What you see here is how much people around the world love Pokemon," one person says.
Seriously, all this place needs is the "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" line as an inscription on that giant rotating globe in the lobby.
Youngster Ian calls me while I'm walking through the building, and at this point I'm relieved to hear him prattle on about how he used the tricks he learned from watching me battle to take down a Drowzee. Yeah, let's... let's get out of here. Seeing an entire part of this world--especially such a hyped and vaunted one--completely erased like this is unsettling. It's the sort of thing that has very uncomfortable connotations for someone who named half her team after Neverending Story references. I will try my best to make sure this isn't your fate, Empress. And everyone on my team.
Outside, Joey calls to tell me he saw a wild Rattata and went for it, but failed to catch it. You know, we're this far into the game yet, and he still hasn't said anything about his Rattata yet. On the other hand, this is the second time he's given me the "tried and failed to catch a ___" speech. (And the third, too; he called again later about a Hoothoot.) It's almost as if the meme blew the wrong quote out of proportion.
Back in the department store, a random customer wants to trade my Drowzee for his Machop. I already have Atreyu, of course, so this is unnecessary. There are plentiful Drowzees just outside the city, though, and it's easy to go grab one to make the trade anyway. It is beneficial to have lots of Pokemon whose Original Trainer data is someone other than you, for reasons I will get into later. His Machop is named "Muscle," and comes with a Macho Brace. I promptly unequip Muscle and stuff him in Box 2.
Quick reshuffling with the current party while I'm messing with the PC anyway, and we set off with Auryn, Bam Bam, Falkor, Nimbly, Empress, and Sweetie.
There's still more to Goldenrod, but I'm about to sequence break a little. I'm currently writing this paragraph very late on a Saturday evening and I need to get to bed, but there's something that happens on Saturdays that I don't want to miss. The rest of Goldenrod can be done tomorrow; this can't.
I sneak north out of Goldenrod, avoiding most of the trainers and battles I can because I'll do this route for real later and I just want to skip past as much of it as I can for now. On the other side is... ah, yes, there it is.
Welcome to National Park.
Oh... oh, this music. Yes....
National Park is a relaxing hangout of a zone, and the music reflects that. The Game Boy version of its theme sounded like this, and because this is one of those areas and songs that was very personally meaningful to me growing up, I was a little worried about the remix being as disappointing as their treatment of Goldenrod's theme was. All they had to do for this one was keep it soothing and relaxing, and... well, that's exactly what they did. This is... this is nice. This is a place to come sit down and rest when the rest of the world has you down. I like this.
The park itself, as you can see from the map in that video thumbnail, is just a zone with grass and sidewalks shaped like a Pokeball. There are trainers that want to battle you if you step into the grass, but everyone outside is a non-combatant and the zone is perfectly peaceful if you stay in what the sign calls the "Relaxation Square."
Great moments in NPC dialogue: "It's fun having a Pokemon out of its Poke Ball to walk with it, but the Pokewalker is a whole new dimension." They finally have someone break the fourth wall and mention that feature. Given that the very first route in the game had someone talking about saving their game, and given how important the Pokewalker has been to my entire run, it was a very strange omission up until now. As if to make up for lost time, though, almost every NPC in the Relaxation Square talks about all the Pokewalkers they have, except for the one sitting on a bench who randomly gives us a Quick Claw instead.
(Fun fact: These same NPCs were all touting the merits of the Game Boy Printer in original Gold/Silver, and had their dialogue updated to reflect this version's tech.)
Hiker Anthony calls while I'm basking, and mentions he tried eating berries after seeing his Geodude eating them, but maybe that wasn't the best idea. Good luck with that.
Anyway, as much as I'd love to sit in Relaxation Square and listen to that music forever, that's not the reason why we skipped ahead and came to National Park tonight. No, we're here for the Bug-Catching Contest.
National Park's Bug-Catching Contest is held on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It's a special event where every trainer in the region gathers around to have as much unprotected... oops, excuse me. It's where we all get a bunch of special event Sport Balls and try to catch Bug Pokemon. The contest ends after 20 minutes, if you use up all 20 Sport Balls, if you choose to call it done from the menu, or if your Pokemon runs out of HP and faints. Afterward, there are prizes for who has the best caught Bug Pokemon, with score determined via some arcane formula taking into account how rare or common the species is, how much HP it had left when you caught it, its level, and its IVs.
You can take one Pokemon into battle, and it has to be one that's strong enough not to die, but with at least one offensively unimpressive move such that you can weaken all the bugs without destroying them in one hit. The goal is to catch them, after all.
After some consideration, I decide to try my luck with Falkor.
Running around the grass, the first Pokemon we run into is a Butterfree. Not the most exciting Pokemon available in this competition, but definitely not the least. I catch it on my second Sport Ball. If I catch anything better later, I can replace it. If not, there are certainly worse ways to end the competition.
The end of the contest may come soon, though, because that asshole Butterfree poisoned Falkor before I could catch it. You do not have access to your item menu during the contest, and Poison does not wear off after battle. I have no choice but to keep running around, watching helplessly as Falkor's HP plummets with every step.
The second Pokemon we run into is a Caterpie, which is an awful catch. The Butterfree we already have is a way more impressive, so this entire encounter is a waste. I don't want to risk Falkor losing more HP from a tick of Poison damage if it lasts more than one round, so I just flee.
More running, more of that horrible "oh God your Pokemon is Poisoned why aren't you helping it" screen effect with each step, then the third battle comes around. Bear in mind, this is supposed to be very early on in the competition; this will only be the third Pokemon I've encountered so far, I still have 18 Sport Balls, and I have around 18 minutes remaining, too. However, Falkor is perilously low on health and only getting lower, and so something tells me this will be our last battle before an early exit.
It's a fucking Scyther.
FFFFFFFFFFF--
Okay. I desperately want a Scyther. It is one of my all-time favorite Pokemon, and getting one was my goal all along, the end prize, the reason I even entered this contest in the first place. They are very rare (5% chance of an encounter being one, I believe?) and seeing one in the third battle of my first contest is unreal. The only way I could have been any more lucky with this draw is if it had been shiny.
Alas, this is horrible timing for an otherwise great find; Falkor is barely conscious. I estimate one round left for her to live, if even that. I have to make it count, I guess. God, this is going to be close.
I don't know how hard Falkor's moves are going to hit, and I don't want to risk knocking the Scyther out in one hit before I can catch it, so I start with the somewhat weaker Twister. In the end, I overestimated Falkor's strength, or underestimated Scyther's toughness, as Twister barely scratches the thing. This Scyther doesn't know U-Turn the way Bugsy's did, so it instead hits with Pursuit, which does even less damage than Twister did. Of course, then the Poison damage kicks in....
Good news: Against all odds, Falkor actually survives the round!
Bad news: With one hit point.
Worse news: Scythers have a difficult catch rate anyway. They're one of those Pokemon where it can be a pain to get one to stay in the damn ball, even at death's door. This one is still close to full health. The odds could not be lower that this is going to work, but I don't have another round to weaken it any further. Fuck it, now or never.
I toss a Sport Ball.
It works.
What is it with Scythers in this game and me lucking out, defying all odds, and pulling off something I really shouldn't have been able to do, all with one hit point remaining?
By the time I calm down and start breathing again, finish writing everything you just read, return to playing the game, and advance past the "Scyther was caught!" screen, the 20 minutes are up, and the contest officially ends. Not that I wouldn't have retired early from the menu the second I regained control anyway; I wasn't taking another step with Falkor at 1 HP and Poisoned. Even if I could, there is no better catch in this contest than a Scyther. (Pinsirs are tied for first rarity-points-wise, but I like Scythers better as a personal preference.)
Official contest results: Third place is Bug Catcher Ed, "who caught a writhing Scyther" for 301 points. Second is Bug Catcher Don, "who caught a wriggling Pinsir" for 304 points. First place is me, Celine, "who caught a whopping Scyther" for 324 points.
I forgot the competition was so heavy in these contests. That Butterfree wouldn't have come close to cutting after all. A near-full health Scyther is enough to take first, because if that's not then what would be, but the margin is far closer than I would have expected.
I win a Sun Stone for my victory, but of course the real prize is my brand new Scyther. He's a boy and his name is... "Dark Mantis" doesn't fit in the character limit in this game, but Atlantis suffices.
The peaceful music starts again and we're free to walk around Relaxation Square once more, but Falkor is going to die if I take one more step, so how about I use an Antidote and some Potions first? Nice try, game, but I haven't forgotten.
My team is fairly full by this point, but a Scyther is just too awesome not to use. Maybe Atlantis can be a capture Pokemon? It can't use Hypnosis or Mean Look like Hunter can, but it can use a Technician-boosted False Swipe like Hunter can't. Or maybe Atlantis could become a full-on main member of my battling party. It's not like Bugsy didn't prove how good they are in a fight, and I still have the U-Turn TM I got from him. That would involve rethinking type coverages with what he adds versus what I'm losing by replacing someone, and if I still have an answer for any ___-type Pokemon I may encounter.
Hmm. I'll have to think about this. This LP is getting far more attention than I ever expected it to, so maybe one of my holy crap why do I have this many readers has some feedback. Either way, if Hunter can live in Box 1 for now despite my not having used her once this whole game, so can Atlantis.
With the timed portion of this update out of the way, and with me about four hours late for bed, I'm going to take a quick one-sentence jump cut that represents me coming back and finishing the rest of this tomorrow.
...
Good morning! Last night sure was a thing, huh. I'm feeling a bit stressed this morning due to general life stuff, but parking in Relaxation Square and just listening to the music for a while is... still nice.
Back in Goldenrod, Ethan calls me to mention the really high cliff on Route 47, and how he's always shaking with fear when he goes there. Ethan, honey, I was almost positive you weren't even an actual competitive Pokemon trainer so much as a bright-eyed boy with a cute pet. How the hell are you already making it to and from Route 47? That's like a zillion hours from now. I call him back out of curiosity, and it seems he's this game's "Oh, you're in (current location)? Well, here's a random comment about that location!" service. In Goldenrod, he mentions that the gym is shaped like a Clefairy, and if I bring a Clefairy there myself, probably nothing will happen but it would be really cute.
I like Ethan. I'm going to be calling him as much as all these other trainers call me.
We go through the underground tunnel (there are a couple shops and some enemy trainers down there,) play some more Voltorb Flip just for fun, and then Joey calls and oh there's the conversation about his super-cool top percentage Rattata.
The radio tower has a Rocket grunt scouting outside the entrance. It's unclear at first what Team Rocket's interest in the radio tower is, but it can't be good.
Nothing seems amiss inside the building, though. The receptionist offers to give us a Radio Card for the PokeGear if we can answer some trivia questions. Upon receiving it, this city's gym leader (who was away from her duties to try to get one, remember) marvels at it, sulks that she got question three wrong, and runs off back to the gym, which means we can now go there.
First, let's talk about the radio feature, though.
The radio, along with the Bug-Catching Contest in National Park, were the features that made me feel like I was living in original Silver and not just playing it. I've spoken about how immersive the time-based features felt back then, how it made this game seem like a living world that I was a part of, and how important it was to have something like that. I had a fairly angsty puberty, was picked on in school, etc. so this game became my escape from a lot of things.
The Bug-Catching Contest was this cool even that you could do a few times a week, which gave me reason to hold out even on the hardest days. It kept me going. It gave me something to cling to. "Yes, today was awful and you may want to cry over everything that happened, but hey, there's a Bug-Catching Contest tomorrow! That will brighten things up at least a little. Hang in there just a little longer, okay?"
The radio, by contrast, was a constant friendly reassuring presence as I went through the game. I didn't have to wait for it (except for the weekly lucky number drawings.) Wherever I was, whatever time it was, I could just open up the radio, turn it on, and there were all my favorite shows, running 24 hours a day. It was welcoming. Reassuring. They were there for me. They would always be there for me.
Some of the shows were better than others, of course, and I think the weekly lucky number show was the only one that served an actual useful purpose to me. But my favorite show, just to listen to it, was Pokemon Talk with Mary and Prof. Oak.
The formula was simple: Professor Oak would pick a randomly generated Pokemon and say what route it was on. Mary would then provide color commentary by fitting together pieces from an equally randomly-generated phrase list. The formula was "OAK: [Pokemon] can be found on/in [location]." "MARY: [Pokemon]'s [Line 1] [Line 2]." Repeat forever.
The thing that made this show so great, and the reason I would just let it run for ages even when I wasn't even interested in where the Pokemon could be found, was that Mary's lines made her sound like a raging Pokephile. Seriously, everything she said was "CATERPIE's/wiggly and slickly/stimulating." or "GROWLITHE's/so mischievously/hot, hot, hot!" or the like. Basically the entire show came down to various randomly-generated synonyms for "OAK: [Pokemon] can be found in [location.] MARY: I'd tap that." It was delightful.
(Artist's rendition of Pokemon Talk live in studio.)
Belive it or not, this was the feature I was most afraid of them messing up in the remake. After all, the original show was a very primitive form of procedural generation--I could figure out how it was building her lines from the banks of fragments even back then. It would have been easy for someone to replace it with something more sophisticated, but less dirty and "this is the show I remember" charming.
So... did they?
I listen in, and,
"Mary: WEEDLE,
you won't be able to resist,
you'll feel totally at ease."
"Mary: GASTLY,
if you just try calling out its name,
you'll think it's so wonderful..."
... Nope. She's still got it. *hearts*
The rest of the building is several floors' worth of NPCs to talk to, but for now there's nothing actually happening here with anyone, and we're prohibited from going up beyond the second floor anyway. I do take a moment to giggle at the "Pokemon Talk with Professor Oak - The Hottest Show on the Air!" sign, though.
Okay, I know. I should quit stalling and go to the gym. I tag Auryn out and put Atreyu in, and off we go.
The leader of Goldenrod's gym is none other than Whitney's Miltank. It's a first for the series, letting a Pokemon itself become a trainer, let a lone a gym lead... oops, sorry. The leader is Whitney, "The Incredibly Pretty Girl!" Her Miltank has gained a sort of infamous That One Boss reputation across the internet. I don't recall the thing being a problem in original Silver, but then again, I didn't recall Bugsy or his Scyther being a problem, either. This battle is either going to stomp my face in, or it... won't? Maybe it will be an even more harrowing battle than Bugsy was, or maybe I'll breeze past it like, "wait, that was it?" We'll see what happens! I'm a little nervous.
Whitney only has two Pokemon and she leads with Clefairy, so I guess she's saving the big guns for last. Bugsy led with his ace, but then again, his ace knew U-Turn and switched right back out anyway, so I guess that makes sense.
I lead with Atreyu, who Karate Chops Clefairy down to about 5% health in one hit. Clefairy counters with Metronome, which could be bad since it's basically a roulette wheel that calls forth almost any other move in the game at random, and a lot of moves are quite devastating. Instead, Metronome turns into Drain Punch, which does barely any damage. Whew.
Next round, Whitney uses a Super Potion to heal Clefairy, and then Atreyu just shrugs and Karate Chops it again, critting this time and taking it out entirely, and also getting most of that Drain Punch damage back thanks to Shell Bell.
So far, so good. Hey, we even got that Super Potion out of the way. But here comes Miltank.
I don't really know what to expect at this point, but I do know that Fighting moves have a type advantage, so I press on with my "hit them with Fighting damage" strategy. Rather than Karate Chop, though, I decide that Miltank looks kind of heavy (being a cow and all) and therefore vulnerable to Low Kick. I pick that and... Miltank goes first and uses Stomp, which doesn't do a whole lot of damage but it makes Atreyu flinch and waste his turn.
Oops. Okay, let's try that again.
Round two, Miltank goes first again--I guess she just outspeeds poor Atreyu. She throws Attract, which does this. Oh. Well. That's inconvenient. I mean... okay, yeah, I would too, so I can't really blame Atreyu here, but... hmm.
Atreyu then goes ahead and does Low Kick anyway. I guess attraction is like like confusion in this game, where it's basically an X% chance to waste your turn swooning instead of doing the thing you tried to do. Typically, when I'm under the effects of things like that, I just keep picking the move anyway and hoping it goes through. The first Low Kick dealt a good 60% damage and Whitney's Super Potion is gone, so all I have to do is get one more of those off and it's game.
Miltank uses Stomp again. Oh, right, I forgot she had a move with a flinch property. I don't know what the actual odds are at this point, but the endgame basically comes down to: can Low Kick get through a chance of flinching and a chance of Attract?
Yes. Yes, it can. First try, even. Then Miltank faints and that's that.
God, what even is my luck in this game.
Final verdict on Whitney and her Miltank: In paper, this could have been even worse than Bugsy and his Scyther. Her Miltank can charm, flinch, or otherwise shut my offense down, and that's not even getting into her big damaging power moves. (She never did use Rollout, for example.) She had a lot of tools at her disposal, and a lot of strategies she could have used against me, from disabling me to just hitting me really hard.
In practice, though, she just based her entire strategy on piling up layers of "you have to pass an RNG check just to get your move off" curses on me, and then I did. Other than losing one turn to a flinch, I wasn't slowed down at all, and the only actual damage she hit me with came from two incredibly weak Stomps.
So, could she be That One Boss? Sure. It's a luck-based mission, and I only got off light because everything went my way. It's just... did you see what happened with the Bug-Catching Contest? If you're a rival trainer trying to defeat me, don't base your strategy around me being unlucky.
Whitney breaks down in tears after the battle. Oh geez, honey, no, it was a good effort, really, it was. After giving her some time to cool off, she gives us the Plain Badge, which lets us use the HM move Strength outside battle. Yay, another HM we don't actually have yet! She also gives us the TM for Attract. Finally, she mentions something called the Pokeathlon Dome having opened right next to National Park. That definitely wasn't in original Silver, so this must be some new feature. Hopefully it's not Nintendo WFC-based.
That's the closest we get to a hint where to go next, though. Well, that and the fact that the flower shop owner is suitably impressed with my victory and now entrusts me with her highly dangerous watering pail. Still, there's only one path out of Goldenrod, so finding the next plot point is mostly a matter of "just keep going."
And there you have it. Next time: Back to National Park, and beyond!
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Date: 2017-09-24 08:35 pm (UTC)I used to love that back in GS.
It got much easier once you got a high level mon with false swipe. :p
Grats on getting a scyther! :D
That's awesome!
I rarely get anything that can learn false swipe in early game (until SuMo where they give you the TM early), and I personally like to keep a false swipe mon in my main party, so I'm always ready to capture, but I'm not sure if that's your style.
I like Ethan. I'm going to be calling him as much as all these other trainers call me.
Aw, I'm glad you made an ingame friend. :3
Basically the entire show came down to various randomly-generated synonyms for "OAK: [Pokemon] can be found in [location.] MARY: I'd tap that." It was delightful.
XD
Basically, in the actual Pokémon verse there's no way people aren't banging Pokémon. Which is less skeevy than IRL because mons are clearly sapient.
But the only reason we're not seeing it is because Nintendo likes to stay kid-friendly. :p
Ah man, I remember the young days of Pokémon fandom...
So many terribly-written NC-17 fics...
Grats with the miltank fight!
My problem with her was the constant use of Rollout. Stomp was strong and hurt me a lot, but Rollout does more and more damage every time it hits. It starts weak but quickly gets... bad. Very bad.
My best tactic against it was using Sand Attack.
Actually, that's my best tactic for everything until I start learning moves with 80+ attack strength and one-shotting things.
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Date: 2017-09-24 08:44 pm (UTC)My plan going in was to toss out Low Kick or some generic "hits with damage" move like that to scout, see how much damage it does, how much damage she does in return, what move she just used on me, etc. and then recalibrate my strategy from there. Ideally, I was hoping she would open with Rollout. I'm pretty sure that Atreyu could have survived at least the first two hits of it. The first hit would signal "Oh, okay, she just committed herself to using this straightforward damage-dealing move on me next round," and the second hit would be attacking into--and thus powering up--Revenge. That probably could have, if not OHKO'd her, at least done the job after factoring in the damage from that opening scouting attack. It would have been beautiful.
But, uh, this works too, I guess! I was thrown off by her going for flinching and Attract-based nonsense instead, but when I saw my "let's just toss this straightforward attack out and see what it does" scouting Low Kick hit for over half health, I realized all I had to do was hit with one more of those, and I adapted accordingly.
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Date: 2017-09-24 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 12:01 am (UTC)One of them I have saved as RABBIT.TXT because this was back when I was in full on grumpy angsty teen phase, and anything I was tired of or personally not into was the worst thing to ever happen in the history of bad things, and I thought Pikachu was overexposed and pushed too hard and therefore hated Pikachu to the point where I couldn't even bring myself to say the species' name, instead referring to them as "those stupid electric rabbits."
... This apparently is also back when I thought Pikachus resembled rabbits, presumably before I learned about or discovered the existence of rodents.
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Date: 2017-09-25 12:25 am (UTC)I was writing "Pokemorph" stuff where kids in the anime universe get Animorph powers and turn into Pokemon.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:39 am (UTC)Your interpretation of actual Pokemon verse sounds about right to me.
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Date: 2017-09-25 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 11:49 pm (UTC)Huh; Bulbapedia's article on poison says “Generation IV: Outside of battle, if a poisoned Pokémon is brought down to one HP due to poison damage, it will be cured of poison instead of fainting.” (Not that I think it matters in this case. c..c)
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Date: 2017-09-24 11:56 pm (UTC)That is a new change. Huh.
(Well, new as of generation IV I guess, but shh.)
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Date: 2017-09-25 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 04:01 am (UTC)(My watched list: Agito, Ryuki, Den-O, OOO ... and little bits of Double, Decade, and Kuuga. Really MUST get back to Kuuga too someday. I like his... straightforwardness.)
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Date: 2017-09-26 09:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 01:01 am (UTC)Between the abandoned Global Terminal and your gentle reminder that the Game Boy Printer used to, like... exist... this is a very dead-end technology sort of deal, isn't it? Nintendo does have a habit of doing an idea once, briefly, very hard and then never touching it again. Sigh. (Goodbye, Miiverse.)
Good heavens, that whole Scyther thing was a TENSE situation. Glad you made it up there and got one. Hell, you've talked the poor thing up so hard -I- half want to cheer for you to use it.
I have heard you go on about Pokemon Talk At Length before but I had forgotten what the NEW version was like. Okay, Mary's still absolutely hot for pokemon. Good to know.
Remember that near supernatural luck I mentioned earlier? ...you appear to have it on loan, or perhaps it's comin' out of your big ol' ears or something because holy crap that's the most anticlimactic Whitney-off I've ever seen. A++ nice pokebopping.
(And as the other comments mention, yeah, it's usually Rollout that's a Big Issue.)
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Date: 2017-09-25 01:54 am (UTC)What I said was that Votorb Flipping your way up to 10,000 coins for a TM is bullshit. Because it is.
I absolutely want to use Atlantis in some form. I just need to figure out what form. But come on, I can't just go through that much of a wildly lucky close call just to get something I leave in Box 2 for eternity.
(And as I mentioned elsewhere, I actually had more of a plan in mind for if she had tried Rollout, and this was the "oh shoot my strategy is pieces now what" fallback. It's entirely possible my plan wouldn't have worked, though. I guess we'll never know!)
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Date: 2017-09-25 08:13 am (UTC)Well okay no I had to get that goddamn Dratini. Fortunately, once you're at like level 3-4 you start making decent chunks of cash and level 5 can get you to 1000 in a single sitting. Still quite a lot of grinding though.
I just hate that you cannot buy them at all.
Also I love how Almighty Gen I Death Machine Abra is a shitty consolation prize now.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 08:43 am (UTC)Scyther is Top Tier A+ Pokémon alright, no question. It would make an absolutely brutal physical sweeper capable of obliterating entire teams without letting anyone else get a turn, and the game just gave you U-Turn like it's saying "here, just wreck everything". It does have that double-weakness to Rock you gotta be careful of though.
However, eventually, Falkor is going to evolve and utterly outclass it, because Dragonite is dragonbest.
It's certainly worth taking it out for a test drive, and having False Swipe on a brutally fast ludicrously high-Attack pokemon is sweet. But what to drop in favor of such a monster?
Magby. Magby is Gengar but bad. If you have an avenue for trading and you can get Gengar, you can definitely get around slapping TM Flamethrower onto oh hey again Dragonite, or even Kangaskhan.
On the other hand, if you can stomach going through the Pokéathlon to win a Steel Coat, and you can trade with someone, you can get Scizor. Lose Scyther's speed, gain massive defenses, trade Scyther's weaknesses for a single double-weakness to Fire and seven freaking resists and even immunity to Poison. Scyther can be a massive sweeper, Scizor is a shockingly good tanky attacker, except now it can punch mountains in half and the best part? Still has Technician, so if you grab a Heart Scale, Technician-boosted STAB Priority +1 Bullet Punch. Who even needs speed?
tl;dr Scyther could probably beat out Bam Bam in the short-term, and Scizor would probably make a good long-term replacement for Bam Bam, or Atreyu, or possibly even Sweetie once Her Royal Childishness evolves into the defensive goddamn wall that is Meganium.
But that's just my two cents. Er...pokecents?
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Date: 2017-09-25 01:25 pm (UTC)I will admit that if I were making a team based around cool Pokemon I like and think are awesome (which is kind of the point of a single-player story mode run; you don't need a Smogon team to beat gyms or else I'd have swapped Empress out a long time ago) then Scyther would be at or near the top. I already regret Atlantis not being in that team photo I just took. Hopefully there's another photographer somewhere so I can do that again later. (Besides the one in the Goldenrod tunnel; that one wanted me to dress up as a Rocket Grunt for the photo and sorry but no.)
Meanwhile, Magby... does not have that kind of special connection in my heart, no. I've come to love way her cry and brief animation when she's sent out look like she's bowing politely and saying "Hello," but she's going to lose both of those when she evolves anyway. On a matter of pure "switch out a Pokemon I don't like as much for one I have my heart set on," that's an easy choice.
I guess it comes down to type coverages. Having someone burninating the countryside/people/thatched-roof cottages is important, which is why I briefly looked into Flareon when I wasn't super enamored with Magby. (Then I found out Flareon is cool and cute and all but has such a limited movepool that even Empress could probably beat it in an actual fight, even with the type advantage.) Post-National Dex, I plan to pick up a Houndoom, but until then... hmm.
Flamethrower-ing up someone else could work I guess, except Kangaskhan is strictly there as my HM utility belt. Dragonite... this is going to sound absurd to have access to an early-game Dragonite and have your eye on anything else, but I was sort of considering adding a Flygon later. Flygons can Dragon too, but they can also Ground, which is probably the biggest hole in my current team. I mean, a few of them can pick up Earthquake as a "Counter your own counters" self-defense add-on, I guess, but calling that my Ground coverage is like saying "Oh hey it's cool, I have a Water sweeper now because Houndoom can learn Solarbeam."
Granted, I was the one who made the brilliant tactical decision of sending in Murkrow as my answer to Bugsy, so I know I don't exactly have room to talk on that one.
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Date: 2017-09-25 02:15 pm (UTC)And then Ninetales got Drought as its Hidden Ability and became actually terrifying.
For like five minutes ;__;
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Date: 2017-09-25 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 02:40 pm (UTC)But dang it Trolltales lives on in my heart.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 03:10 pm (UTC)Hang on no that's Diebuster again.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:13 pm (UTC)At least outside that other comment thread that's clearly going places.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 02:39 pm (UTC)And yeah STAB Earthquake on a fast physical attacker is awesome.
On the other hand, of course, Dragonite can learn Waterfall and actually USE it to pretty impressive effect. On the third, smaller hand, Dragonite has kinda meh speed but even better physical Attack, but then....
gah don't ask me to pick between bestdragon and bestestdragon they are both great.
Well, I suppose we'll just have to see where things go from here. I'm cheering for you either way.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:07 pm (UTC)Man, Dragonite is great too, though, huh. I do tend to hinge a lot of my general strategy on pretending every enemy trainer in the game has Wonder Guard, and that I need to always have some Super Effective STAB to use in any situation I may find myself in. Maybe just ignoring types and Dragoning everything in the face twice will work just as well, or at least maybe it will get me by until the National Dex.
Gah, choices.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 03:15 pm (UTC)Dragon people in the face!
Dragonited!
Flygone'd!
All dragons, all the time!
Entire team is dragons!
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 01:17 am (UTC)We're totally not a hive-like entity with two main coalescences.
(spoiler alert: we totally are)
(something something clutch sizes?)
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 03:19 pm (UTC)Cheating jerk.
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Date: 2017-09-25 09:56 am (UTC)It's that she's a bulky, somewhat RNG-happy boss that openly laughs at your attempts to try to cheap it. It's probably for the best you didn't use a Ghost-type, or you'd learn what Scrappy does. (Spoilers: that Miltank can Stomp ghosts just as well as it can Stomp everything else.)
Stomp is actually the danger move here, since Rollout both has a miss rate and locks her into the same move for several turns.
Stomp, on the other hand, has a 30% flinch rate, and that Miltank is fast enough to use it. If you're unlucky, between Stomp and Attract (50% chance of wasted turns until the Attracted pokemon is swapped out or KO'd) you can just never get a turn, ever.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 10:31 am (UTC)And also this Stomp business just reminds me of Cynthia's freaking Togekiss. Everyone loses their panties over Garchomp but holy shit I hate that Togekiss. Huge speed special attack and Wing Attack flinchspam will just shred your team while you flail helplessly.
Oh and it has Water Pulse so it'll confuse you first lawl
I'm not bitter.
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Date: 2017-09-25 01:36 pm (UTC)But yeah, like I said, that Miltank seemed to be going for a solid annoyer shutdown strategy, where by the end I only had a... what... 35% chance of getting a turn, total, if I'm doing my math right? Which is not a bad strategy! If the RNG hadn't gone my way, she could have Stomp-spammed me to death, or even started a Rollout after Attract was there to keep me from answering.
In the end, Whitney just experienced the problem that real trainers have with relying on this strategy (or at least the parts Smogon hasn't banned,) which is that unless you can get that percent chance of getting a turn down to 0, sometimes they just luck out on their roll and get a turn anyway and then you're boned.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:15 pm (UTC)Got a solid team? Here's a heaping mound of crap hitstun and flinch chances and enjoy parafusion lawl
And then you beat that and the game fucking cheats itself hacked Horn Drill No Guard Rhyhorns
FUCK Battle Frontier.
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:20 pm (UTC)wait what
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Date: 2017-09-25 03:55 pm (UTC)No wonder all the NPC trainers you meet in that place are always screaming incoherent sentence fragments.
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Date: 2017-09-25 11:20 am (UTC)GUYS WE NEED TO MILK WHITNEY
(don't worry the game will milk Whitney plenty)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-25 01:28 pm (UTC)