sound of silence

Mewtwo is pretty bad, I will admit, but outside of crithax, there are certainly pokemon that can match-up well enough against it, particularly bulky psychics that carry calm mind or sacrificial paralysis user + bug poke. I probably have exaggerated somewhat how awful jirachi would be on a field specific to it though, especially considering the AI won't immediately go for flinchax if the flinch attack is resisted (Or at least that is how my match against ciel's togekiss went) Fighting 5 in a row isn't bad unless Ame puts a limit on item usage for the E4. Between items and field abuse, it should be possible for most teams to match-up well enough.

You can get to spinel town at the end of the episode since at that point Ame is nice enough to allow you to backtrack through agate while we wait for ep. 16. Alternatively, there is also an illegal way to get to spinel town if you are willing to abuse the strength glitch, and have completed the north west corner of the adventurine woods pinsir/heracross puzzle. Can't tell you how I did it because I forgot the path I took through the ice mountain, but probably don't do that unless you have a spare copy of episode 13/14 handy.

Am I the only one greatly disturbed by the idea of people wanting to go up against the legend of paraflinch? Most likely on a field favourable to it?

Sceptile will shine later in the game due to its high speed and access to nature power. With nature power, you should find it a bit more useful as the field effects almost always allow you to fire off ridiculously high powered attacks.

Oh that. I didn't find that too much of a problem until getting to Samson (Though bennet is a pest...pun intended).

Another way I found that makes things easy against charlotte is if you can remove the darmanitan early, setting sand storm while the field is burning leaves her with no way to deal any sort of major damage to rock types outside of lucky burns. If you have something that can survive long enough to set up sand storm with a few rock types, she is completely stuffed.

I actually found the level curve to be okay in terms of getting pokemon close to the levels of ciel. I do see the issue with it though, especially if you haven't got any electric types well levelled at this point of the game (rock and steel are okay, but they do have shortcomings in the big top arena). I ended up spending ages grinding a lanturn for the sole purpose of preventing parahax spam from togekiss and grinding was not pleasant. More trainers before samson is certainly required, as indra is really quite difficult to face upon first entering the circus, as its rare to be above level 65 at that point, let alone the lack of experience before samson. The water treatment centre also needs to be harder, as its far too easy to let Titania do all the work with aegislash.

I should have known better than to be that lucky person who finds the special hidden item/pokemon that no-one else did. I am totally shattered now.

Happens to me, but usually very late in the game, about ciel, when I realise I have absolutely nothing that resists flying and anything that stops the paraflinch monster of togekiss is good for one time only (for some reason I'm not huge on electrics after noel, nor steels in general) Also happens at the end of the episodes. Strange as it is I find myself drained completely getting so far into it only to have to wait. I mean I could just do another playthrough but the energy you invest, the many riveting storylines not yet fully told just make going around again...sort of hollow in a way. I feel once we reach the end game, that might subside though.

In Calcenon city, in one of the houses, there is a youngster that asks you this question. I assume there is something of significance to this and I figured it might be from the jukebox on the pokegear, but if there's any songs with electric guitar in, I'm stumped as to which it is. Or is there another Item you can give him? Or is it nothing? I kind of feel there must be something about him since the comment makes no sense and Ame surely just didn't put in that character for a laugh. Apologies if its nothing.

I'm guessing the following M-Mawile I agree with for adrienne, as it gives xym access to intimidate initially for physical attackers, as well as covering the few weaknesses the fairy type has (and in case anyone tries to win by changing the field to corrosive mist) For Titania, despite it being used by 2 gym leaders already, I'm going out on a limb and I'll say that she has a mega-lucario. That will hit hard enough regardless of fields chosen, while it also kind of suits her based on the lucario event in ametrine city/mountain. Titania is very much a lone wolf that only interacts with others when vitally needed, while resenting contact with just about everyone. The only reason I second guess my choice is given we know she has skarmory, aegislash and excadrill already, it really doesn't leave a lot of defensive backbone to her team to cover weaknesses of the steel type. I suspect she will also have a new field, as there isn't really any field other than the ashen beach that really suits her team. Amaria is going to be hell regardless of whether she has a mega or not. I see Ame making amaria to be a combination of Flobot, Swagplay, and Scald Hax. Due to the water's surface, she will outspeed any non-water type/swift swimmer on your team, use whirlpool to trap you and cause confusion hax, then proceed to spam scald. This will be a nightmare in the extreme end of the scale, and I almost hope she doesn't have a mega because of how evil this fight will be. Hardy...going with mega-aggron, for the sole purpose of annoying everyone who thought water type spam will see you through this fight. Despite lunatone and solrock being rather subpar pokemon, access to trick room is a major selling point, as well as psychic typing + levitate to mitigate 2 major weaknesses the rock type has, while sand stream will fix special attacks. It would not surprise me to see cradily rear its ugly head again if only to deter people trying to spam rain + surf to end this fight quickly. Saphira will almost certainly have mega charizard X. There just isn't another dragon other than dragalgae that deters fairy spam for this fight. Also fixes a key ice weakness too. Additionally, if Ame is feeling truly sadistic, a burning field would compliment it very nicely

Type: Rock Battle type: Doubles Field: Murkwater field Setting: A cave with two floors, the lower one containing the toxic water surrounding platforms, the upper floor with strength boulders. Basically a rip-off of Clair's gym from Gen II GSC. Push boulders in to create a safe path across the sludge to get to the gym leader. Opening: ...So much for being left alone, I suppose its not possible when you hold any sort of power that others will come to best themselves against it. Still, it makes it all the sweeter when fools come to test me, only to lose without having done a thing. Let me show you what it means to be able to do nothing while you succumb to poison. Team Tyrannitar @ Smooth Rock Sand Stream -Rock Polish -Rock Silde -Thunder Punch -Aqua Tail Kabutops @ Life Orb Swift Swim -Nature power -Swords Dance -Rock Slide -Low Kick Solrock @ Colbur Berry Levitate -Heat Wave -Rock Slide -Zen Headbutt -Will-O-Wisp Mega-Aerodactyl @ Aerodactylite Unnerve/Tough Claws -Thunder Fang -Aerial Ace -Rock slide -Aqua Tail Omastar @ White herb Swift Swim -Shell Smash -Surf -Earth power -Ice Beam Cradily @ Leftovers Storm Drain -Giga Drain -Earth Power -Sludge Wave -Recover The idea of the team would be to spam rock slide aiming for flinchax while the other team takes damage from the murkwater. Half my team is immune to the field effect, while the other half takes reduced damage due to being rock types. Other than tyrannitar (initially) and cradily, my pokemon should outspeed the other team and commence making someone extremely upset. Additionally, most of these pokemon have electric/poison/water coverage to take advantage of the field. Due to all water attacks gaining posion typing and sand from tyrannitar, surf spam is not an effective tactic, as is EQ due to the field negating physical ground moves. Grass types cop it bad from the field effect, and those that don't get picked off by M-aero or solrock. In a wose case scenario, Cradily can attempt to stall out the other team by spamming recover. Eventually with sand up and the toxic water, Omastar can set up a shell smash and annihilate any remaining resistance. Freezing the field is okay, but solrock has heatwave to thaw any blizzard tactics. Whirlpool to clean the field can work, but cradily will use storm drain to stop surf spam while using sludge wave to reset the field back to murkwater. Steel types are a nice deterrent, but this team still has plenty of coverage to deal with them, or they can be burnt by solrock if physical. Edit: Rock slide is given as the TM for victory.

Strange, I thought Close combat already had its own animation, at least when I use it on heracross it appears to be the case. Still, it looks great.

Mudkip for my first playthrough, chespin for the second abandoned run, and delphox for the third. Out of all of those 3, delphox is easily the best of them. Its ability to support the team and punch holes in teams makes it so useful. Chespin second as it did quite well in beating solaris and pulled its weight in all gym battles except for aya. Swampert third as while it was useful early, it really struggled late game, even with charlotte (although that was when typhlosion had energy ball still)

Apologies for the wasted thread. Should've done my research better there.

So I've just completed the water treatment plant part of the story line in a second playthrough, and I've noticed something is a bit amiss. I remember in the community release that somewhere in the plant I found a TM for rock tomb, but in this playthrough I can only find a TM for sand storm. Was rock tomb removed for the public release or were both TM's present and I just failed to find one?

Gigalith. It's slow as all hell and it doesn't help I'm not abusing TR or SS for this playthrough, but its limited movepool does exactly what is needed of him. Nature power is also a godsend. Was key in getting past serra and charlotte. Florges is a godsend in reborn. Most would have gardevoir, maybe clefable as their fairy of choice and be done with it, but forges titanic Sp. Def stat, access to 2 field changing moves, moonblast, wish, cleric support if needed has made me see why ame took great pains to hide it in the adventurine woods. Was pivotal to ruin fields for randomus, luna, samson and combined with delphox to turn blake into easy mode.

Yeah, episode 14 is a lot harder in terms of gym leaders, except for randomus (gallade makes a fair bit of difference to his team instead of exeggutor, or so I found), and terra (the assault vest on garchomp does make more difference than leftovers), the exception to that rule being if you used ninetales or azumarril in general. I think if ame really must get another shadow claw user in, shade needs to get either sableye or dusknoir. I'm certainly in favour of the latter as it gets thunderpunch to abuse his field effect more while being close to impossible to one shot at this point of the game outside of scrafty gaining a moxie boost. Sableye would also be good to fix his dark weakness while deterring physical attackers (although given how difficult it is to know about the department store sticker quests in the early game, especially the lost kid chased by the drifloon, maybe not sableye) One of those should replace banette. IDK how to feel about trevenant, but gourgeist should probably come back in for it.

The AI really makes some bad decisions with shade's team I find. I beat shade by exploiting the illusion ability to get gengar to hit manetric with thunderbolt, and abusing the field and spa bonus from there (got lucky that the event electrike had flame burst for trevenant). However it took shade 3 pokemon getting KO'd before he finally sent rotom in to stop me spamming discharge, which I found to be incredibly stupid. I'm also highly annoyed that gengar has been nerfed hard for this fight. Please Ame, I know you want the gym leaders to showcase their TM's that they give you, but giving gengar shadow claw is really unnecessary. It was quite beatable before you nerfed it. Now all you need is an electric resist with a chesto berry, which are easy to get your hands on at that point of the game. Please consider fixing that.

Just for reference, I forget where, but its possible to fish for mantyke somewhere in the game (I think maybe tanzan cove if I have to guess) The most speculation I have to offer is that we'll get frillish in this episode from diving into the tanzan lake, and find the corpses of the meteor grunts slain by saphira. Upon getting close enough, they will reanimate as a pack of frillish and a female jellicent (Tara). You will have to fight them all in the underwater field, but at the end of the fight, one or more will join you seeking vengeance. Sort of similar to the nuzleaf event, except with much darker origins. There's also another cave on the east side of the lake if you surf up that side with a dive spot inside. I'm going to wildly speculate that diving into it will somehow take you into yet another secret part of the wasteland, where you'll encounter some sort of tentacool/tentacruel event, and probably a rare item or two. I think there's one more dive spot in the secret spring section of tanzan mountain, which might have access to a few rare pokemon/items, but I'm much less sure of what could be shoved into there.

Walrein requires the least effort at present, and is extremely useful against the remaining gyms after samson (be sure it has its ability of thick fat though). Only moves it really needs are blizzard, surf and rain dance.

Lucario can if it uses CM first. The other you've forgotten is gallade which doesn't go down to psychic. I suppose it depends on how EV concious the player has been up until this point too, but IMO psyshock > psychic given how poor the defenses of kiki's pokemon are compared to special defense (psyshock is also a lot more useful against Aya as well) Don't know what psychics are hitting hard enough at this point of the game to get past her either. Only delphox strikes me as an answer, as meowstic-F is too weak/needs substitute against toxicroak, ditto for swoobat. The rest of the psychics at this point are too slow and get ruined by dark coverage or just general hard hits from kiki's team.

IDK why people think kiki has such a huge psychic weakness. Half her team is neutral to psychic, toxicroak has sucker punch for faster psychics and both hitmonlee and machamp will punish anything that fails to land the OHKO on them. Kiki's team is probably one of the most difficult teams to face unless you're fighting her under the sun or you're using meowstic-M.

Drapion could work nicely too, as its ability of battle armor prevents it from being critted, has night slash to abuse field effects (works best with a hone claws boost) and also can set toxic spikes which will cause everything but cryogonal to take damage regardless of how many evasion boosts serra gets (Not sure anything on her team even has leftovers outside of glaceon, which makes it better). If you sided with team aqua in the game, I'd also recommend completing the storyline there so you can get a carvanha. Sharpedo can be quite deadly with night slash, ice resistance and outspeeding everything with speed boost

Except forretress is the only steel available at that point of the game, and from experience, it takes a very long time to grind it to level 31. Last move on crobat is roost.