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Yeah, barbaracle is a beast in reborn who is quite capable of wrecking both serra and noel with ease. Also a good way to breeze through the meteor grunts. Learns Nature Power so it can abuse just about every field in reborn possible. It gets crazy bonuses from nature power + tough claws. Ame was right to make it harder to find, as much as I'm shattered to learn this.

None. The team you currently have might just be enough to get you over the line. If you have to drop someone, it might be swalot, but his toxic will be useful for a few of shade's pokemon. Cofagrigus won't help as much as the others. If you're still stuck, you could try getting a mightyena with snarl + intimidate to soften up a few of his attackers.

Cofagrigus could work, but I'd be concerned about betting on the AI doing something stupid when it comes to matters of type advantage. I'd raise yamask in the way that you described anyway because it will be useful for a few upcoming battles after shade at least, and it doesn't help shade no longer gives shadow ball away as a TM either. I'd pass on purrloin. If you want a dark type that might help, I'd consider doing the nuzleaf event in the beryl cave/rhodocrine jungle. It will be very hard to beat that event, but getting nuzleaf will help immensely.

Won't hit hard enough and will get mauled by energy ball in return. He's better off changing the field and using either emboar or camerupt against it. Or trying to fish for flinching from persian.

I'd be bringing in Noctowl back into your team, making sure to get it to level 37 to learn air slash. Swalot and Luxray will both help. I'd also get numel back in too as camerupt will help against a couple of shade's pokemon. I don't see swoobat or floatzel being too useful at this stage, so they could both be dropped. Luxray needs charge beam for this fight to change the field from short circuit to factory. That will stop shade getting any major bonuses from the field effects, so give it that over facade for now. Biggest issue I see is that you have nothing that will be any good against shade's lead pokemon. Persian with a chesto berry equipped seems the safest choice if it has plenty of speed EV's.

Siding with the aqua gang makes battling several gym leaders a lot easier (shelly, shade, kiki) as the prizes for joining magma are a lot worse in comparison.

For Corey's fight, you should also specify whether you are facing him on the corrosive field or the corrosive mist field too, as depending on what you did with the police officers determines which field you fight him in. You've also missed a golden opportunity to get gulpin evolve and grab body slam as a swalot, which is a real pain, since swalot would've helped a fair bit for this fight. Regardless, pignite and gulpin should both be taught facade over their respective normal moves. I would say lead with meowth regardless of either field, and if corey has the corrosive mist field on, give it facade over one of its normal moves. You should also grind your pokemon a bit more. Level 26 is too low for this fight sadly, his ace hits very hard for this stage of the game. I would make sure to keep both luxio and swalot in reserve for his ace too, and try and take out as much of his team as you can with the other members.

When you encounter Taka for the first time with the tangrowth PULSE, he explains that a pokemon that stays too long in the machine becomes badly hurt, or something like that. I can't see Solaris carrying a weak excadril because he left it in the PULSE for too long.

I think you can make the fight a lot easier with other pokemon, not ground types. My advice to you would be to catch something that learns blizzard from ametrine mountain/city and use it to freeze the field so as to change it to the ice field and nullify all the advantages of the PULSE pokemon. A water type that learns blizzard or Rotom Frost are the best choices, but equipping an abomasnow with an air balloon will work too (a vendor at the circus will sell you them rather cheaply). Air balloons should be on every pokemon you have that isn't a water type, poison type, flying type or has levitate/magic guard/poison heal. That gives you at least one turn to outspeed the PULSE and damage it before having to endure the field effects. Alternatively, if you have anything that can learn mist, grassy terrain or electric terrain (especially the last option), stick an air balloon on it and use that move turn 1. It will make the fight much more bearable. Electric types work really nicely for this fight as well.

Another option is using bugs like speed boost scolipede and sturdy forretress to get off a few uses of struggle bug on the arceus. That should lower its SPA down low enough that you have a chance to fight it normally.

Also, since this fight occurs outside, you could try manipulating the weather to be a sunny day, to boost your fire type attacks. I'd also really recommend a team of 6 as others have said. One of those being a poison type, the other something that can at least deal with poison types. Even if you get past this point, you're not beating corey with that team, period.

More to the point, I don't think there is a way to get the shell bell yet. The only teams that are really vulnerable to F.E.A.R at this stage of the game is Samson. Serra has hail/hax, Noel has healing from the field, Randomus is a doubles fight, Luna has sableye/SR, Samson can potentially be beaten with it although you need shell bell. Not possible for Charlotte. Terra has sand immunity and ciel you need to remove both togekiss and talonflame before F.E.A.R has any likelihood of working. So as long as there is no shell bell before samson, it is fine.

To add to the ability capsules, as of episode 15, if you reunite the boy who can't find his mom after the plants with his mom, you can get an ability capsule as a reward.

Any poison type should make it infinitely easier to deal with cottonee. Surprised ame didn't make it a whimsicott instead. Plenty of great poison mons that can tank the initial sand tomb and then KO with a STAB attack. Trubbish, Arbok, Gulpin and Grimer are all good options at this point. Weepingbell and gloom especially as they are neutral to sand tomb and immune to the status conditions/drain effects of leech seed while using a SE, STAB acid.

is that the new mon? Still no t-spikes abosrber... Anyway, while I'm a few battles off this one, I'm intending to use gulpin with encore. Wait until it uses a move other than smack down, and then encore lock it while using acid spray. Seems easy enough.

Get a heart scale and teach magneton thunder wave. That will make porygon-z a lot easier to beat, though you will have to sack it to win the fight. Lead turn 1 with dragalgae and use sludge wave. Hopefully that OHKO's wigglytuff before it can set stealth rock down (give dragalgae a cheri berry to hold in case of thunder wave). I'd also get another rock/steel because swellow will be very difficult to beat otherwise, since you have nothing better to deal with it. I'd also change scrafty's ability to intimidate for this match, as you might have to swap pokemon in and out frequently to stop swellow/cincinno from running through you, even though that will hurt due to changing his field to the corrosive field from sludge wave.

You need to complete the 7th street section of the story before you can evolve magneton to magnezone now. Luna should give you a crystal plug that should allow you to bypass the obstacle at the end of that part of the story, IIRC.

Hmm, then perhaps have the grassy terrain field effect in place then? It would make things harder with the PULSE getting health back and grass moves being boosted, but also strengthening fire moves and allowing the field torched. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to assume a park has grass... Edit: Oh, well if Ludo's comment is correct, I guess you can't have any field effect if it can't be applied to the rest of the ward.

So I just finished fighting the PULSE tangrowth at this point of the game and I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed. I realise over-levelling was a problem and that trainers needed to be removed. That is fine. What I'm not fine about is the removal of the forest field which you used to fight it on. That made the fight so much harder, and gave a real sense of achievement in beating it. I came armed with a vanillite with mist, gulpin with encore, expecting to have to use several different methods of negating the effectiveness of the pulse. But it was a let-down to curb stomp it without losing a single pokemon. Between all the good poison types, stage 3 evolutions of bug types, the numel event, the ability to get vanillite and the crazy amount of type advantage you can get before this fight, is there any chance that the forest field can be added back into the game for this episode? I'd like to experience a challenge again if at all possible.

If you have any sacrificial mons with intimidate, now would be a good time to sack them.

You should also mention about how some pokemon that are crap in competitive battling are great in reborn too. There are some well hidden gems in reborn, and some great ones hidden in plain sight.

Apparently he got a gallade over exeggutor. regardless, bug types are very good as long as you KO him with them first. The chess attacks pick up rock typing which unfortunately allows him to squash bugs with the chess pieces if you cannot achieve the OHKO.

While I did enjoy reading Ame's response, there are still some ways in which I think the game could use some rebalancing so that its harder. I like that the first couple of leaders act as a sort of learning curve so as to get the player used to the field effects, moves becoming stronger/weaker etc. I also really like how grinding is now a lot less of a requirement in getting past leaders 9-11. And despite grinding multiple pokemon, its great to be able to use different pokemon to get past certain leaders. The thing I found, although I haven't tried playing the game solely on EP 15 yet, is that the difficulty curve of the game is fine right up until you beat Noel, because as you progress through the game, you get used to dealing with stronger attackers from field effects, moves being neutered or hard to kill walls. After that it seems to have a lot of issues going up and down all over the place with Randomus (although fair enough, you can't get the AI to do that well with doubles), then Luna (I have to say, I can't see the ability to turn the crystal fields into a cave field as a good choice, I really want to see Luna make a dark sand team so tyrannitar can stop players just using sunny day to get the advantage back so easily). After those two, Samson and charlotte almost feel like a really nasty tomato surprise in the jump in difficulty the first time you fight them (in terms of levels and use of field effects), before both Terra and Ciel drop off again (Terra mostly, Ciel can still be very annoying). What makes me think that the game has some level of easy to it is that for the most part, you can find pokemon close by that can really pull their weight in a gym fight, and that is fine. The problem is that while most gyms do have a few tricks so as to not let said pokemon go through their team so easily, it is really apparent for both Randomus/Luna, and Terra/Ciel that the nearby pokemon/items ruin said balance. I'm really pleased Randomus has gallade so it can (hopefully) use a chess boosted strength to stop bugs going through his team like a hot knife through butter. Luna is the worst example due to having answers to problem types but being weak in general to fire/ground/bug/fairy from all the ways to reshape her field, especially with EQ now being a complete cop-out to dealing with her Umbreon. This is compounded further with Terra having way too many answers nearby to easily beating her team (air balloons right before her gym, abomasnow, the ametrine mountain in general, the placement of the grass knot TM) without her having some sort of check to any of those answers. Ciel has similar problems (very weak to ice + ametrine mountain, good TR users nearby, the rock tomb TM) with almost no checks to any of those (Only talonflame comes even close). I liked how the episodes are balanced so that some of these issues are addressed (see vulpix, azurill and trapinch) but there are still quite a few more to address mid to late in the game in the latest release. That would be my main issue (Oh and echoing everything said about the AI so far).

I Hope Adrienne keeps the mist field myself. Although that being said, that depends on whether Adrienne will be a single or double battle. If its a singles battle, I'd say the mist field is fine. Faeries have access to some truly devastating sweepers (belly drum pokemon, SD Mawile, Cosmic power unaware Clefable just to name a few) and being unable to burn them or wear them down via toxic/toxic spikes would make it an incredibly hard match to win. If it's a doubles battle, I wouldn't mind something else unless Adrienne gets either a mega altaria of his own or a mega gardevoir. That way you can have shenanigans like Sylveon spamming pixilate, STAB boosted hyper voices while you have Soundproof Mr Mime or Klefki set screens in order to make it really difficult to take down the pokemon spamming the high base power attacks. I'd hope a few also have icy wind given that move gets a boost so adrienne has the capability to abuse togekiss for flinchax. Regardless of Adrienne's team, I hope to see a possibility of ame abusing whimsicott with prankster nature power so we have to deal with whimsicott attacking us with priority, field boosted, STAB moonblasts, just to rub it in to anyone who thinks you can simply outspeed faeries easily, since most other faeries are quite slow.