CURIE

Update 63: Say hello to the new slave With Sampson done, I got an even better water move for Strider in Surf. Again, it feels like a bit of a waste of blue shards to use Water Pledge for such a short time, but I’ve got plenty of shards anyway so it doesn’t matter. Oh, and remember how Apollo has Dry Skin? My idea is to pair those two up in double battles, and have Strider constantly be healing Apollo while also damaging his opponents by spamming the move. Oh right, I almost forgot: There’s a bit of a story choice here. To admit to Titania you were reading her diary, or not to? To tell Amaria about what Titania wrote in her diary, or not to? Well, I’ve scouted ahead and out of all four possibilities, the dialogue and events of that scene and the following one are exactly the same, down to the last letter. I take this to mean that your choice doesn’t actually affect if you get the secret ending or not. But in case it is, I opted to admit to reading the diary, and refuse to tell Amaria. It seemed like the more stand-up guy thing to do. Well now that I can Surf, I can explore some of the three mountains, which means I can catch a new Pokemon: Clauncher. I named him “Surfboard”, because he’s gonna be my new slave for surf related stuff. Yes, Strider can learn Surf itself, but Dive and Waterfall are physical moves and I don’t want to waste them on him. That’s where Surfboard comes in, he’s able to learn all three of those moves. And maybe whirlpool if Ame ever decides to make that a thing in the future. Other than that, I spent the rest of the day going around the three mountains with the itemfinder and mining kit. Nothing else to talk about since there were no trainers. Oh, but there were a ton of wild Pokemon. Up until now I had never really considered repels to be a worthwhile investment, but I had to buy a whole chunk of them because of how bad the mountains were. Not like I was running low on money or anything, I’m getting rich off of this itemfinder business.

Update 62: Samson I always seem to use Pumpkin in my gym matches, so this time I’m gonna challenge myself to go a match without his dual screens. I went in with his sister since she’s psycic type, the two fairies for obvious reasons, Strider since he can become Psychic type, and Jack since he’s a ghost type. My sixth pick might seem strange to you, however: DiggersbyTho, a normal type. She may be at a type disadvantage, but she's fast and can take advantage of the field since her ability is Huge Power, which makes her always get high rolls on the high striker. I have temporarily replaced Strength with Bounce, since it’s super effective against Sampson’s type. He starts with Haryiama and I led with Sassy, and started out with a Charge Beam hoping to get the attack boost. It’s a good thing I did, because the opponent’s Heavy Slam got a “Powerful” and almost killed me. Sassy responded with a Charge Beam-boosted Psychic, which one shot it. Next up was Mienshao, who outsped Sassy and killed her with U-turn. Lucario came in to replace it, so I sent out DiggersbyTho and used Earthquake. To my dismay, the Lucario outsped me and used Swords Dance. Why would I be dismayed at it using a status move you ask? Because it had a Focus Sash and, despite my Earthquake getting a “Powerful”, I couldn’t take it out before it got another hit in. Now I’ve got a +2 Lucario who’s got type advantage and is faster, and no one to switch into. I decided to just take the hit and die, and send out Jack… but then Samson decided to prolong the inevitable with a Hyper Potion. The thing didn’t restore all of its health, so when DiggersbyTho hit it with another “Powerful” Earthquake, its Focus Sash didn’t activate, so it went down. I got lucky there. Next was Mienshao, who I knew for a fact was faster than Diggersby. I switched to Strawberry and used Cotton Guard, expecting the U-turn, but instead I got Brick Break, which was “weak”. It still did about a quarter damage, though, because critical hit. I went for another Cotton Guard, but then found out it had Poison Jab, which ALSO got a crit. I barely survived it, but guess what, it poisoned me and the poison was enough to take Strawberry down before I could heal. I knew there was only one guy I could use against this: Strider. I went for Extrasensory, hoping that it would use Brick Break and not U-turn (both are effective against Strider before he changes to Psychic), but as it turns out Mienshao outspeeds even him and used… poison jab? It did over half damage and poisoned me, but I’m not complaining because Brick Break would have KOed me. Oh, and Extrasensory took it down in one hit. Next was Hawlucha. I was pretty sure it would outspeed DiggersbyTho, I didn’t want to keep Strider in in his state, and I didn’t want to switch to Jack for obvious reasons. My only choice was Dashie. It was a good choice, because it used U-turn and went to Blaziken. It was at this point that I realized: I forgot to ready the Nuclear Trump Card. I tried a Moonblast, and to my surprise it got a crit and OHKOed the thing, but not after it almost killed me with Blaze Kick. I tried healing, but it Hawlucha used Acrobatics and took out the exact same amount I healed. I knew what I had to do: Heal Strider instead, let Dashie go down, and hope he can outspeed the thing and OHKO it with Extrasensorry. But instead of having Hawlucha finish me off, Samson switched to his ace, Conkledurr. Not one to miss an opportunity to save Dashie, I healed her only to find the thing had poison jab and killed her. I sent in Diggersby, knowing she would outspeed it, and used Bounce. I got another “Powerful” and one-shot it, leaving only Hawlucha. I sent in Strider for the moment of truth, and as I hoped, Extrasensory outsped and one-shot it. After getting my badge, I replaced Bounce with Strength again. It seems like a waste of two purple shards to only use that move once, but I don’t mind because I have a metric ton of those things thanks to the itemfinder. Also, I decided to replace Hammer Arm with Brick Break. It has less power, but I think the lack of speed reduction makes it worth it. That battle overall was harder than it needed to be, next time I’m definitely bringing Pumpkin.

Update 61: Route 2 New area means new Pokemon to catch! Two new Pokemon, in fact: Bergmite and Hawlucha. Avalugg it a great physical tank and Hawlucha is a powerful sweeper, but I already have both of those on my team so I don’t think I’ll be using them. As for Route 2’s infamous Crustle rock hopping puzzle, I honestly didn’t find it very hard, just tedious. Well, actually, there is ONE part I have trouble with: For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get to that rock up there! It’s infuriating, because the itemfinder says there’s an item on it! I bet it’s an amazing item… Anyway, there were only a few trainers along the route, so there isn’t much else to talk about here. I got to Fiore mansion no problem and got the battle pass, so next time I’m gonna fight Samson. People say that episode 15 was one of the shortest episodes of Reborn story wise, but I think the one is Samson (12, I think?) holds the record for all time shortest. Just a couple cutscenes, a tedious puzzle, and a gym battle. Not even a minor boss battle. I think this may be the only episode without one of those.

So, "Ace" had survived getting wet. Darn. Water had seemed to be the Demon's kryptonite, so he had assumed submerging it would kill it. Oh well, he would have to destroy the toy completley next time. Not yet though; for all he knew the thing was the source of her powers, and he needed all the help he could get. Maybe, if he got to the center of the maze, he could wish it away. The conversation had gotten akward, but he didn't care. Years after this is all over, she would understand why he did what he did. "Well, I don't expect you to understand right now, but I did that to Ace in order to protect you Sorry if it was unpleasent, but it had to be done. Anyway, after you played dead, one of those two girls who were with you went beserk and tried to kill me. I got away, but then followed your little group for a while in secret, also to protect you from anything that attacked. Eventually, something did, or rather, someone did. I never learned his name, but he was this crazy serial killer dude who gets stronger by killing people. He wanted to kill the three of you, but I jumped in and distracted him so you guys could get away. Then, just when we were about to fight, this other dude named Akuma appeared. You probably don't know who he is, but he's this famous japanese warrior who achieved superhuman power through an evil force called the 'Satsui no hado'. He used this special attack on serial killer dude, that not only kills a man but destroys his soul, meaning he probably won't come back to life ever again. Turns out he had been looking for me, because he wanted me to join him in the dark side, and offered to teach me the way of the satsui no hado. I gotta admit, it was tempting. After all, killing people doesn't mean much down here, but the ability to destroy souls seemed like a bit too dangerous an ability for me to weild. You see, if you give in to the satsui no hado, you abandon all conscience and turn into a merciless killing machine, so there's no telling who you could hurt, kill, or kill permanently. So I refused." "Akuma didn't take too kindly to that. He attacked me, and while I had the superhuman stats to keep up with him, he's also a master martial artist. I didn't stand much of a chance. He beat the crap outta me, and just as he was about to use the soul-destroying technique to kill me permanently, I saved myself by blowing myself up, killing him in the process. While waiting to come back to life, I-" Wait, crap! He didn't want to talk about what he does when he dies in front of Enya, there's no telling how Ace could react! As far as he knows, his involvement with the higher powers is a secret to the demon, one that potentially gave him a huge advantage. He needed to come up with something else to say... But just then, an ear splitting scream reverberated through the icy maze. Whoever made that sound, didn't seem to be very far off. Thankful for the distraction, he spun around in the direction it seemed to be coming from. "What was that? You think we should go check it out?"

Well I just now realized I made a mistake long ago. When Edward said Taylor had been hit by the Shun Goku Satsu long ago, I actually meant to say Marcus and hadn't realized my mistake this whole time. Sorry.

Update 60: Circus Tour It seems I’m as prepared as I’m gonna get. I passed the Agate threshold, and now I won’t be returning to any of those previous areas until episode 16 comes out. And who knows how long that will take. The thing I’ll probably miss the most, is the lack of easy and cheap access to Moomoo milk. But it’s not all bad, because there’s a shop in Agate Circus that introduces me to a new source of healing: The ultra potion. It’s not that much stronger, though, only 20 more hp points. Other than healing items that Ame clearly made up on the spot while sleep deprived one night, the circus offers an actually good Water move for Strider in Water Pledge. I’ll probably never utilize its field changing capabilities, not only because I don’t have anyone else that can learn any other pledge, but because I don’t think my team would really benefit from any of the fields they make. Also, if I simply wanted to make the field something other than what it is, I have other moves for that. Also, I WOULD have gotten uproar on Dashie, but she can’t learn it for some reason. First of all, that’s disappointing. Second of all, WHY? She can learn Echoed Voice and Hyper Voice, so why not Uproar? It just seems dumb. And no I’m not just butthurt that I don’t get a base 90 Pixilatable move to make my walking nuke shooter even more deadly or anything! Next stop on the circus tour is the Hidden Power guy. Strider’s hidden power is Water, which means I could have conceivably had a slightly stronger water move than Water Pulse long ago! Not sure if the extra 10 base power would justify losing the ability to confuse, though. DiggersbyTho’s power is Rock, which would be AWESOME if it weren’t a special move and she weren’t a special attacker. Braveheart’s is ghost… Meh. Dashie’s is Electric, which is interesting in the fact that she could have a move other than Fairy type. Buuuut I don’t think I wanna go for it, the four all fairy moves she has are just too good. Apollo’s is also Ghost, also meh. Pumpkin’s is Dragon, completely useless. Jack’s is poison, which again sounds cool except he’s also a physical attacker. Strawberry’s is fire, also meh. But what got me interested is Sassy’s: Rock type. I’ve been noticing a need for a rock type move on my team lately, and since Strider’s a special attacker his physical Smack Down just won’t cut it. And remember how I said Sassy was starting to fall behind the others? Yeah, this is exactly what she needs to stay relevant again! But the question is: Which move to replace? She’s got Psychic, obviously I won’t get rid of that, and Signal beam to take down Darks and other Psychics, and Charge Beam which is a necessity for someone with subpar stats like hers, and Shadow Ball for ghosts. I ended up dumping shadow ball, because I already have a ghost type. Next stop, the Ice Cream stand! You see, there’s an event in the future, probably required for the secret ending, where you need to have Blue Moon Ice Cream as the only food-type item in your bag. To get it, you need to go to the ice cream vendor and repeatedly enter and exit his shop menu. Eventually, the rare flavor will appear, and it’s very expensive (20,000). Despite only needing one, I bought 4 because they’re powerful healing items in emergency situations. I could have gotten them an easier way earlier in the game, by spam buying ice cream at vending machines, but the problem is I couldn’t buy vanilla because the first one you buy will always be vanillite. And spam buying chocolate is too expensive for my taste. Get it? Taste? Because it’s… nevermind. And today’s final attraction is: the “test your strength” thingy. The grand prize is the TM for Swagger, which I want, but there’s a problem. The second place prize is a pokedoll, but the first time you get it it’s not a pokedoll but an actual Clefairy. And obviously, I can’t have that, so I had to keep soft resetting until I got an “over 9000” before getting a “powerful”. It took me 12 resets and 104 tries total, and on the final reset I tried 27 times. But I got a “nice” 5 times and got my money back each time, so that means I spent a total of 7,700 on this TM. I taught it to Pumpkin in place of the weather moves, but if I need to go back to Rain Dance or Sunny Day I can easily do it since I have the TMs for all three. I also have the TM for hail, but I seriously doubt I’ll ever use it.

Update 59: Final Preperations The moment I progress the story any farther than it is now, I will be locked out of pretty much the entire game I’ve explored up to this point and be stuck in a new, smaller area. For that reason, there’s a bunch of things I want to get done before I pass through the point of no return. But before any of that, check out another glitch I found! You can walk around anywhere in the room where you’re supposed to find Sableye. Once you use Dark Pulse to turn the place dark, however, the walls become solid again, so don’t get yourself stuck. Okay so first of all, I went and combed pretty much the whole game with the Itemfinder. I got some stuff from it that could potentially be useful, including another Shiny Stone for one of my Floettes, and a lot more things that aren’t and I sold for tons of money. Also while mining I found a Dread Plate, which will make a good replacement for Strider’s Splash Plate until he gets a better water move. I especially need tons of money at this point, because I went to the department store and bought a bunch of friendship berries. I used them to get rid of the unneeded EVs my team has accumulated (Attack EVs on Apollo, for example), and spent some time replacing them with EVs that I’ll actually use. While doing this, I used the exp share to evolve all the Pokemon that I can so far in my box. Yes, even the Amaura and Shiny Noibat. So that means I had to buy extra friendship berries just in case I ever decide to actually train them. And finally, I grinded the whole main team up to the level cap of 70. Again, not something I usually do until I’m about to face a gym leader, but I’m already doing so much grinding anyways so why not. Oh, and I also went and did the Beldum and Rotom sidequests. Obviously I didn’t catch them. I explained why I wanted to do the Beldum quest already, and the Rotom quest gave me some good exp with all those Electrodes. While doing that, I found another glitch: So now I think I’m ready, but if you think there’s anything I’m forgetting I suggest you speak up now. Next time, I’m going to enter the second half of the game, and when I do I won’t be able to come back for a very long time. P.S. remember the “Rare Candy” hallucinogenic drug that you can trade for a Piplup? I found out that it sells for a ridiculous amount of money- as much money as 3 gold nuggets! I didn’t sell it, though, because there’s only one in the game so far, and I never know if it’ll be required for another event that involves a sixth gen ‘mon.

Update 58: Luna First of all, sorry for the delay. You see, I was in the middle of doing the stuff that will be the events of update 59, which took forever, and then when I came back here to check something, I realized I never posted update 58 even though I had already written it all long ago. My bad. For round one I led with Pumpkin, not just to set up screens, but also to use Sunny Day. The sunny weather nullifies the effects of the darkness field, so- wait, it doesn’t? Yep, I found ANOTHER glitch. According to the field effects guide, Sunny Day is supposed to turn the Darkness field into a Crystal field temporarily, but in episode 15 it just doesn’t. Okay, round one take two. I didn’t even bother with the screens this time and led with Braveheart, to melt her Carpenter before it could set up Stealth Rocks. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep the Moxie streak going, because the Bandersnatch was next. Now that the threat of Stealth Rocks was gone I was able to switch to Pumpkin and use dual screens, and then switched to Strider to Water Pulse it. Water Pulse did a disappointingly low amount of damage, requiring 4 hits to take down the foe. I really need to get a new water move. But on the bright side, Bandersnatch destroyed its own field effect with Earthquake, so the Sunny Day glitch isn’t all that bad. When It was about to go down, however, Luna switched it with the March Hare, who Confuse Rayed me. Strider fought through the confusion and almost killed it with another Water Pulse, but I knew the Hyper Potion was coming and didn’t want to risk Strider wasting a turn. I switched to Dashie. Whatever move the March Hare was gonna use next, it wasn’t a status move, because Dashie actually outsped it and OHKOed it with Moonblast. Just then, my Reflect faded, and Bandersnatch was coming back in. Not wanting to risk my specially defensive fairy falling to a Physical attacker (with Iron head), I replaced her with my physically defensive fairy, Strawberry. Two Cotton Guards and a Fake Tears later, he had the foe in a hopeless situation, although Luna prolonged the inevitable by wasting all her Hyper Potions. Humpty Dumpty was next, and I remembered it had physical attacks, so I decided to stay in and two-shot it with Play Rough. But remember how play rough lowers the opponent’s attack? And how Humpty Dumpty has Contrary? Yeah, I ended up boosting its attack, but it didn’t really matter because I was at +6 defense anyway and knocked it out next turn. Jubjub Bird was next, and it almost died in one hit to Play Rough. Just as I was about to finish it off, Luna Switched it out with the Cheshire Cat. I sent out Dashie for a climactic battle of eeveelutions, and she got Toxiced coming in. No matter, I fired the Nuclear Trump Card and- no wait, I got confused and hurt myself. Hold on, lemme just full heal her and try again. Nope, same thing happened. How about I skip the full heal and just try again. No? How about now? No? How about now? Finally! Good thing Dashie’s such a huge tank, and that Cheshire’s only attacking move is Dark Pulse. As expected, the nuke OHKOed the inferior eeveelution without even having the Misty Field boost. Jubjub bird came back, and since it was 5 against 1 anyway I decided to stay in and see if Dashie could finish the job despite the confusion. She… kinda did. Jubjub outsped her and KOed her with Brave Bird, but also died to the recoil damage. Now that I’ve kinda awkwardly won my Eclipse Badge, I finally have access to another actually good move for Strider in Dark Pulse. I replaced Lick, because Dark is super effective against the same types as Ghost, it’s a far stronger move, Strider’s special attack is higher than his physical attack, and in the later game I don’t find myself using the sudden immunity to normal/fighting moves anymore.