Quickslip

Eh. I don't think its that crazy. I mean, worse comes to worse, I just end up needing to catch and train some other Pokemon. I can easily believe that Gengar would outspeed everything though. I wasn't even sure Zebstrika was going to outspeed it before I tried. Also, this one is gonna be another short one, sorry. Real life says I need to pay greater attention to it. There, we confront mysterious man again and Amaria saves us from being another specter on Shade's monitors. Ultimately, Amaria gets Mr. Mysterious to spill the beans, and we learn he wants to run everyone out of town for reasons he doesn't care to share. He's very interested in Amaria's Sapphire bracelet, however, and decides he will take it. Amaria tells us to stop the machine while she holds him off, but ZEL stands in our way. Now outnumbered, Solaris(mysterious man) mocks out efforts, claiming it is all too late as the waters are already too poisoned. He then assault Amaria directly with Tyranitar, then retreats. Hurt, Amaria offerus us the key to her warehouse and boat to chase after Cain. We take the boat and find ourselves on a beach. There, we find many trainers who like martial arts, a few interesting caves, and a gym. We come across both a meditite and a heatmor. After a bit of exploring, we find both Kiki and Victoria. Due to reasons, we must prove ourselves worthy of the Machine by climbing to the top of the nearby volcano and beat the trainer there in a battle while Victoria must also pass some other unspecified test. So...we climb the volcano, defeat the nefarious puzzle, and find Cal. He's apparently trying to cool off his anger by meditating up here. He also apparently knows Shelly; they had a bad fight before he left and this plays a large part in my she's so timid now. With that off his chest, he feels content to battle us. Wasn't that hard at this particular point, but I didn't realize the whole "the next gym doesn't actually increase your level cap" thing until right after Cal, so some of them are kinda strong comparatively. xD Next section still within 3 days probably.

Gratz then, because the game is looking good. So we're headed back to the beginning, but first we stop off to pick up that Lunatone under the stairway just in case. We also break up all the other rocks to see what's in there and discover mining. Lots of interesting stuff drops, but most importantly one of the blasting powders Silk has picked up over time finds a Fire Stone. At the station, we find Fern doing the thing we were going to do. He brags about being able to enter the wastelands for his next gym battle, and taunts us saying he'll tell us how to find another key we beat him. Well that's entirely fine by me Afterward, he basically tells us to find Cain in the graveyard from earlier. As is tradition, we first check out underneath the bridge and break the rocks there. We don't seem to be able to go further without Strength as well, so we head back to the graveyard. We check out the cave with breakable rocks first. There's no light, but there's no pokemon and I have escape ropes so I explore. There's a nidorina in there that's probably Corey's, but it doesn't like me at all. Not sure how it ended up locked in a cage. There's a golett right outside of the other end of the cave though. At the graveyard, we find Cain, who has set up another grave it would seem. Though he seems kinda down too, be agrees to give us a key...if we can beat him in a battle. After the battle, things get...interesting. So, eventually we make out way to the Power Plant/Gym and that Absol shows itself again. -.- Inside the place, its pretty much pitch black. I wander around pressing buttons, which are there to show various people dieing in various ways. Marvelous. Even Corey's is in here. Eventually, we find shade floating around and challenge him to a battle, hoping Anna is right about him. He grins. Some of the lights do come on, but that grin... With that, Shade effortlessly turns the power back on by telling it to, then shows us on a monitor what happens when the door was opened. Ah. There's the disaster. Huh. Scary, floaty, sharp-teethed dude does care. Go Anna. Also, apparently the sun decided to celebrate Shade's defeat. I've never seen this weather before, so decided to go up on top of that one suspicious building that's been empty day, night, clear, and stormy. Sure enough, there's a Pokemon there now. That looks like a speedy SpAer. Maybe member 6, though I kinda worry about not having anything that's super effective vs. poison unless we come across a TM for Dig or Earthquake or something. Shade felt fine. Given that I still think my team is in one of its weaker stages, it seemed right that it had trouble. Not much more to say; excited for Roost/Belly Drum/Arcanine I suppose. Next section within 3 days.

I actually dislike changing around my team much after most of it is set. We'll see just how much I stick to that as the game goes on though. Also, I thought one of the things I read was that Megastones weren't in the game yet. I guess that just applies the protagonist then. xD Pokemon center, then bridge, since who knows what's gonna happen there. Oh cool, there's an absol up there. Oh crap, Absols are harbingers of disaster or some such thing. xD And Much Disaster did ensue. Mechanically, the only important thing to note here is I picked up Growlithe and there were still some trainers along the path. So we follow Victoria down the hole. Where she has been captured by the Meteor Duo, who pretty promptly run away with her before we team up and beat them up. So we just follow them deeper down the passage, pick up Rock Smash along the way(though we can't use it), and eventually come upon the one they were probably referring to as "boss." He essentially tells us this city is inherently corrupt and built over a sort of sacred site of power; that the city is poisoning the land and 4 seals named after gemstones must come together to change that. Interestingly, one of those is the Ruby Seal. Maybe...that ring? Then he leaves, telling us he just wanted to tell us that and that Victoria and I are free to leave. The grunts aren't too happy about that though. We finish our escape and make it back to Shelly. There, Shelly doesn't seem to be getting any better after having witnessed the scene, so we try to see about getting her a doctor to talk about it with. There's actually a psychiatrist in this ward, so we go and see about enlisting his aid. On our way in, we bump into someone on her way out in a serious hurry. Inside, we find two more kids and an older one who might be a teenager, who are wards of the doctor. The energetic one introduces us and, while she makes many claims the others brush aside as delusions, some of the things she says that the others say nothing about are disturbing. Chief among them is that we should -not- bring Shelly here. Also of note, she says that her brother in front of the couch is a gym leader and the girl in red is one of the elite four. Um. Interesting. Before she goes much further, the doctor appears and questions our presence. We take our queue from the wards and just claim interest in the rumor that there were gym leaders here, which prompts him to have an orderly conduct an "examination" on me. This Doctor is weird. With that, the Doctor gives us his apologies, but says that he cannot allow the other gym leader to battle due to their current emotional development. The energetic one jumps on this and pushes us to leave, showing us to the door. Her whispers as she leads us out make it seem like we might be detained if we stay. She also gives us some advice for Shelly right before we leave. We tell Shelly this and she snaps out of it a little bit. She still seems shaky, but wants to go look for her friend now. Thinking of her job though, she decides that she should stay and give us a battle first. Terribly, and unaccountably, apologetic about the whole thing, she shakily leaves to get ready. Victoria is not convinced with this performance. Fearful of the stress it might put on the girl, she tries to get us to stop by having a battle with us. So then we go and tackle the bookcase puzzle. This actually took an embarrissingly long time for me to do. Like, I could have had everything up to here posted last night, but I didn't think it would take me so long to finish a puzzle and thought I could fit in the Shelly fight at the time(hehe...yeah right >_>) I evolve Pride here then give him a Common Candy. Beyond the scary puzzle waits Shelly. Also a leaf stone. Also also, that vs. popup makes me look like I'm threatening to beat her up or something. Shelly seems really down after that fight, but this apparently doesn't stop her from trying to do what's right. Seems reasonable, so we head out. First, we heal everyone and put Pyroar back in the box though. That Shelly fight. Doubles matches are entirely different in some ways from normals, and I'm not sure whether I build properly in my head when I try to take them into account. Still, I think Arcanine or a stronger STAB than gust would have made a huge difference, so I'm not too worried yet. Besides, I still need to find that 6th speedy SpA member! So yeah, sorry about the Monstrous Post. I feel like normally, the number of pictures is large but fine...but when the post is this big, that many all at once might be a bit too much. >_> I'll try to be more conservative with milestones from here on. Next section within 3 days, probably.

Really, boomburst? That's actually horrifying, xD Also, know I said I wouldn't be able to post, but turns out if I just post this really late and restrict myself to just one fight, I can still get it in. And it was interesting enough to warrant it I think. So the leader gets away by vanishing. Just how many people can do that in this place? I wanna know how to just vanish. He ruins the affect by telling us where he's going though. Eventually we work out the color puzzle, beat the drugged police officers, and challenge the depressed and angry gym leader. Oh, he's actually a ninja. Ok, I suppose vanishing is acceptable then. Instead of giving us a badge, Corey, with what I assume is an evil smirk, tells us to meet him at the bridge and vanishes again. After checking on the site, I noticed that Air Slash is actually changed into a poison attack while in Corrosive Mist, but the game doesn't mention this when the attack is used, like when Quillfish uses Bubblebeam. Odd. Nice fight otherwise. Also, there is no possible way following the bad guy's instructions that he gave to me without any witnesses can go wrong. Nope. Totally not a one. xD Next section within 3 days probably.

In Dragon's Dogma, when you go confront the Dragon in his lair. You know, when he stands tall and spreads wide his wings in front of your now fragile, tiny, and insignificant-looking self? Yeah. That was incredibly awesome the first time.

Espeon just looks so sleek and elegant on the 3ds battles. #1 Leafeon is a really close 2nd though. Almost cool enough.

The wind has died off; the night is still. The people outside the gym have changed, so I check up on things. Turns out one of the students at the gym feels bad and is offering me use of the upstairs garden. There we find nothing particularly interesting until random clicks bring us to a Pichu hiding behind a tree. Skitty wins 4th prize in the lottery again, so I should nickname her lucky or something. Nothing else seems odd though. Heading to Jasper, we stop off at the snubbull girl's house. Don't think I'll use the snubble either...but it -does- have close combat. Eh. We also come across a Budew walking on a wall. Upon entering Jasper, we are asked to find and help the policemen that have gone missing. We save one from a team meteor member, and find another trapped behind a vine Bayleef can't cut. While exploring the destroyed city, we find out that the egg we were given is a Cacnea, which is put into the box. We decide to focus on the two earliest evolving pokemon in the party, so blitzle and pineco get the bulk of the exp here. Night shifts to day and we come across an Emolga that I might have just not seen or it may have appeared due to the time change. That seems to be all, so deeper into the forest we go. Only blitzle has evolved before we make it to the source of the problem in jasper. Its not there alone of course, but Taka tells us not to take it personally. After Taka vanishes we turn to leave and find a little girl. She declares that it was mean of me to beat the Tangrowth before her, then...flies off on a Salamence? xD Well ok. Probably a gym leader then. We check on the one policeman that was trapped and find a lady who was trapped on a high up floor of a building since the elevator wasn't working., then head on to Beryl Ward. To the right there's another gym or power plant, but its locked. West, then. Another forest has sprung up here. A trap is set in the floor that there doesn't seem to be a way around, so we spring it and fall into a cage. Some Nuzlead lock us in and run off. After a bit, Fern comes, saying he'll let us out if I beg. Since I have an escape rope, that seems dumb, and Fern runs off in a huff. After clicking around for a bit and wondering if I really would have to use the rope, a chatot comes by and lets us out. There's only one person so far that I've seen with a Chatot, but lets not jump to conclusions... Nah, its totally Taka. We head along, rescue some policemen, evolve Pineco, and eventually find the final machine. There, he says he invited me, so I'm taking that as empirical evidence that he had the cage opened. Important story stuff happens resulting in a 2v1 vs. the Meteor Admins. K. Hopefully this isn't 6v12 xD Its surprising how Taka didn't feel like a pushover when I fought him 1v1, yet still he didn't feel overbearing when paired with ZEL. Nice. Forretress has become the mid-game monster he tends to end up being, so that's good. I really, really want to replace Loudred, but nothing's come up that I like and makes sense yet. I'm not even entirely sure of the qualifications yet, since I might trade out Zebstrika as well. I'm pretty sure I'll keep the rest of my party though. We'll just see what the future pokemon and TMs open up. Next section within 3 days probably. Almost certainly won't be tomorrow though, as my chances of playing this then are close to nil.

So yesterday, I looked at what I had and thought there wasn't enough to bother posting. Now I look at this and think its just too much. Sorry guys. xD The lightning appears to have stopped, but its still raining outside. Pretty wet week. There was alot I could do before actually challenging Florina. Long story short, I found a Castform, a Minun, a Lillipup, a Glameow, and a Happiny. I could have gotten a Litleo too, but the SpA IVs would't go above single digits before I got bored, so I skipped it. All in all, I don't think I'll use any of these, but eh. Buuuuuut, if you want the whole story... Onward to the gym! Fern does that really annoying thing were he's a jerk and locks us out for no good reason. Going around through the school, we pick up the Coin Case, which prompts me to immediately leave and get Facade. The Voltorb game isn't the most engrossing thing in the world after a bit, so in the end I just sell one of the nuggets Silk has found and buy the rest of the coins. We teach Facade to Pride, since all of his attacks are at 40 or 50 power otherwise. :/ Neat to note that we're in 'TMs can be used any number of times' mode. If I had to guess earlier fromt he feel of the game, I'd've thought it would only be usable once. We come across some diaries of some important people...I get the feeling reading these is important somehow. Feels wrong though, so I don't do it(and by that I mean I save, read them, then soft reset of course >_>). Eventually, we answer all the questions on the machines and make it to Fern. Its worth noting that all of my current team are sitting on the level cap at this point. Common candy pig-out time incoming! Anyway. Fern, on his throne, still refuses us entry. After insulting us some more and claiming that if I could do it, the Gym League must be easy, Fern leaves to begin his own journey. More importantly, this leaves the way to Florina clear, but first we heal up our party and hand out a few candies. Then...we challenge Florina. After our battle, Florina offers to clear us for passage to Jasper if we check on the situation there. Of course, that's an easy choice to make. ...also, we immediately replace Natural Gift with the Nature Power we just received from Florina. >_> Event pokemon with egg moves(I think) is interesting. Makes finishing events much more interesting. Fern wasn't that difficult, but I don't think he really is supposed to be considering he comes right before what amounts to the boss. And yeah...she is. I'm trying to think of something constructive to say about the fight, but nothing is coming to mind. I like it alot. The only thing I could really say is that the Tropius has the potential to be really, really obnoxious depending on the RNG...but at the same time i feel like people with flyers and fire types won't have any trouble with it and its more of a check against lower damage teams like mine, which makes it fine as I have less trouble with other things like her lead, ace, and Grotle. I do feel a little like the Cacturne might be a little weak defensively and easy to make inconsequential through one shotting unless its holding something like an assault vest that would still let it lay spikes or something. Other than those, the fight feels really nice. Next section within 3 days prob. Can't be sure since I'm mostly in the dark from here on out.

I can see the obvious commercialism behind Halloween, but that doesn't make me like it less. I mean, that's just how the industry works. Its going to be hyping something at any given point in time. I'll not begrudge the holiday just because alot of markets pander to something that a large portion of people in an area are already excited about. I've rarely celebrated the holiday itself. I think I've been trick-or-treating all of twice. Usually, my family doesn't buy much in the way of treats, and if people knock even though the lights are off, we just don't answer the door. However, those knocks have never bothered me, and the general feeling the holiday tends to nurture in people is far and away worth anything I've lost giving away maybe $10 of candy a year. YMMV, but people are just more fun around October-ish. We can be happy and ready to do things as much as we like, but its always better when the people around us are too. Excitement abounds around Halloween, and do we really need a reason to get excited? Being excited and having a good time over nothing is fine with me and I see nothing wrong with people having an established day to throw away alot of money to have fun together. Valentine's Day does seem to kinda devalue how we should care for each other on a normal basis, but Halloween? Its always confused me that people would have a problem with it. I think its a great holiday; not for what happens on the day, but for what people do when its near.

TIL 1 slice of bread + peanut butter + black pepper = delicious

So Double Battles can be kinda silly. Got it. Interestingly, I forgot to save at the end last time, so my pokemon ended up leveled slightly differently >_>. Also, just noticed, but this Victory Music playing ambiantly after the Julia fight is actually really nice. I wonder if its different at each gym? Huh. Stepping outside, its still raining, but there appears to be some lightning as well. Victoria's there too. She congratulates me on my win, then goes off to fight plant monsters or something. Weird, but its where the next gym is, so I guess I'll see what she's talking about anyway. And was this Blitzle just standing there the whole time and I just didn't notice it? >_> Well. That's a non-powder paralyze anyway. Extremely helpful. Unsurprisingly, the next area is still blocked off, but Florina uses the power of her clout to let me though. Wonder how Victoria made it through? Because, through the blockade and wreckage all around, she still got here. The situation inside is so bad, that she won't agree to stand aside unless we battle first. Well, that's fine with me! Blitzle takes a trip to the PC for a bit, since I want Panpour one last time for Pignite. With Victoria's blessing, Into the slums we go! We find another link in the stolen pokemon chain thing. Still no stolen pokemon, but a fight is a fight I guess. xD However, there is also a suspicios box. Everyone in the slums seems slightly insane, possibly. Until we find the offending box. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut...it just turns out to be some pokemon. Not even ghost types. Augh. There is a band of fighting types though. It didn't occur to me at the time to take alot of screenshots of the this, as in the original version they were all just 'Scraggy'. But in this one they were named and had different abilities. I lead with Bayleef and Pride. Bayleef kept Reflect up during the battle till he got KO'd, even though it got brick broken occasionally. One of the Scraggies was a wall with Toxic, so I had to antidote Pride at some point. When Bayleef was KO'd, I sent out Silk. Other than that, pretty straightforward until Big Boss was the only remainder. Then, Silk and Pride both Sand Attack'd it into uselessness, then spammed headbutts for flinches and gusts for damage till it was KO'd. Afterward, the leader of the Pokemon Gang opened a lock on the far wall and left us to leave. Out of the slums, we find the area we are to meat Florina in sectioned off, so we go south instead. There, we find yet another Gym leader. We are no help to her, but Cain comes along and saves the day. Though he's a Poison-type user, he agrees to take the Oshewatt with him, then challenges us to a battle. With that done, we head to the pokemon center, fight a fisherman, then head up to help Florina. We also pick up a Skitty and Lotad here from events, but I'm not really considering using them currently. There was a Lilipup down here, but it ran away. I think I vaguely recall some guy running after one earlier, so I'd guess I could run around and find it again if I wanted. Or possibly just return to the house and tell him. I'll probably go back to the house at some point, then. There's also something locked in a warehouse down there, but the door is locked. I assume I'll need rock smash or something to get in. Hopefully I'll remember. xD We head north and recieve Cut. Bayleef gets the honor of learning the terrible move for now, and we head into the newly forested area. Our two gym leader friends get grabbed and restrained before they can call out any pokemon, so its all on us to beat the weird 3 personality person(?) that calls him/herself collectively ZEL. And his/her Scary Tangrowth, which is the source of this mess. After some words of anger of his/her own overconfidence, ZEL threatens us and vanishes. The leaders get up, complain only a little about getting strangled by what was effectively a tentacle monster, and head back to their respective gyms. I head back to the pokemon center, tell a woman about her lost child, and receive another ability capsule. Closing Thoughts: None of the fights seemed hard in this section, though that may just be the nature of low-level type advantage talking more than anything. Vs. Victoria, I had so many super-effective attacks to use that any strategy she had wasn't particularly apparent. Everything just got knocked out too fast as most her pokemon's base stats are just so low. I can see her getting significantly scarier later in the game if her team finishes evolving though. Much the same could be said of Cain; grimer and venonat just don't learn that much that's threatening this early and their base stats aren't that good either. Gastly might be scary attacks-wise(assuming half your team isn't randomly normal type xD), but it has no HP or defense to back it up yet. Nidorino, Dewatt, and Pignite were comparative monsters when looking at the other pokemon at this point. Its all nightmare fuel for when we inevitably fight them again and everything is evolved. xD However, I could also see the argument that might be made that it has to be around this level at this point so that the teams aren't just overpowering to anyone doing a mono-type run or any other thing significantly more difficult than what I'm doing here, so I dunno. As for tangrowth...i dunno. Status afflictions just seem like they'll destroy any 6v1 pokemon fight that isnt' decided by the 1 just 1 shotting all the 6. I suppose it could just be flat out immune to all non volatile afflictions, but I could easily see that being too much. Maybe if it just cured itself of non volatile afflictions every 4ish turns without it taking up its turn? I dunno, it just doesn't seem impressive right now. Really interested to see what Florina does now. Next section within 3 days, probably.

Yeah, I played during the day that time. Wasn't sure whether or not pidgey could be found at night. Actually, I think I'll just shift some things around...play more during the day. Guess that means I should go get Synthesis back. >_>. Also yeah, thanks I found that one. Not yet sure one what to use it on, so I'll probably just hold onto this ability capsule until I absolutely need a different ability or I find another pokemon that just screams "use it on me!" Inexplicably, it starts raining as soon as Fern walks away. Searching around a bit more, we find some Pineco in the trees. I've always been a fan of foretress for some reason. He can be a nice spiker...eventually. Till then, a tanky self-destructer will be nice too. Just have to be wary about finding more things weak to fire. Chickorita with low SpD + Foretress is already somewhat worrying as far as flamethrower goes. Anyway, Atom joins the party! Also, I thought about it a bit more and decided Synthesis would be a decent thing to have. Gave Chikorita 2 common candies, and re leveled to get it. After training Atom up a bit, we head to the gym, only to discover that there's apparently more booming going on and that we should stop it. Reasonable enough goal, lets do it! ...except Fern's here too. Well, he's not being too obnoxious right now, so its all good. And...he's actually pretty helpful all things considered. xD Still Julia's mad at the unreasonableness of the booms, so we hurry along. Pride and Chikorita evolve along the way and Baleef learns Reflect. Fern looks smug as his Roselia Mega Drains all the things for monstrous damage...till we reach the new, improved duo at the end of the hideout. With the victory over the flunkies, the leader of the bomb expedition concedes defeat and vanishes. All the self-destructing leaves Julia salivating at the mouth however. So we all run for our lives. Job done, our impromptu gang splits up. We head for the gym, now that all the excitement is over. Fighting our way to Julia, both Silk and Whismer evolve. Ultimately, after blasting our way through all the defenses in the gym with the exploding voltorbs, we challenge Julia. (Just who ends up paying for all those repairs, anyway? >_>) Also, yeah, in game my character's name is Vllipsis. I kinda forgot which I used for this forum at the time xD ...and I really forgot to rename Pineco to Atom. >_> Closing thoughts: Wow, that Magmar and Electabuzz setup was a step up. Significantly stronger and worthy of the storyline bad guy's faith in them to deal with two other trainers, even though they only have 1 pokemon each. Nice. Not sure if they are actually overbearingly fast or if its just that fact that all my pokemon at the time were only middling as far as speed was concerned at the time. I really aught to have evolved Zigzagoon and found out, since Linoone is by far my fastest pokemon right now and would have made the fight loads easier to deal with, I think. I'm not really sure what locked Electabuzz into that almost-only-use-Swift loop though. A question if you read this Commander; does Fern's Loumbre actually still have Bubble during the duo fight with the Magmar and Electebuzz? I really like the Julia fight too. Seemed like she had more of her bases covered now. I think that maybe she should switch to Electrode if she only has Chinchou, Heliolisk, and it left, but I have no idea if that's an extreme amount of programming for such a small gain or not.

Thanks all. Yeah, I was confused at first when I started hardcore and it loaded up my normal file in the beginning. Didn't want that though; if I will hardcore, I must hardcore all the way! But no, not quite insane enough to try a nuzlocke challenge on a version of pokemon I know almost nothing about. xD Maybe later...hmm...my first impressions of hardcore are telling me to not try it. I don't listen to that voice very often when it comes to video games though, so maybe.

Semi-blind how? Well, I played the original Reborn up to defeating the 2nd Gym. At that point, I realized hardcore existed, so I started over. So, I know a little about what happens up till then. I also know a few other random things about the original game, like the Tangrowth thing wasn't just a one-time occurrence, you needed rock smash to get a certain house key, mawile is in the game somewhere. Things like that. Not sure how much I know but don't remember, but it doesn't seem like much to me. And that's awesome! So please don't spoil anything beyond the point I've already reached and posted about here. Everything else is welcome, as I've never actually done one of these before, so I surely won't write it perfectly. Or maybe even particularly well. And its perfectly likely that there's a common pokemon in an easily reached place that I just obliviously passed by without noticing. Feel free to poke me about things in the areas I'm currently in or already passed. Playing the 1st time, I chose Snivy, because that's my favorite. However, the AI didn't really recognize Contrary, so it kinda felt like cheating, so no Snivy this time. I like mudkips, but the water/ground pokemon feels like cheating too. That basically leaves chikorita as my favorite remaining pokemon, so... ...yeah, I'm not much for using soft-reset a billion times, so this is as good as he got before I got tired of it. Not terrible, but I'll be sad that Body Slam won't be the house it could be. Chikorita's other strengths are its decent bulkiness, decent speed, and access to both Reflect and Light Screen, so those will still work out fine I think. Here's hoping there's a Light Clay somewhere! So we leave the choosing ground, and immediately fight Cain. Who is mildly creepy, but w/e. Battle! Not much to say though, Chikorita is strong enough and fast enough to win the tackle vs. scratch contest with Nidoran. However, Victoria is next, and Tepig proves to be too burly and takes revenge for nidoran. However, Chikorita got Razor Leaf already, so we've got some juicy, juicy crits coming later. I buy some potions and pokeballs, then walk out, looking for a pidgey. Big Pecks + Feather Dance seems like a decent combo with Chikorita's Reflect, and Pidgeot is cool looking, so it fits all the paramters. What I did -not- know, was that pidgey is apparently rare around here. >_> Still, we found: Can only stand to soft reset and search again so many times, so...yeah. That speed malus may come back and bite us later, but w/e. xD All Welcome Pride, the Pidgey. Oh yeah, and Rayquaza techie...um. Not touching him. xD So together, Chikorita and Pidgey work their way north and rescue the adorable zigzagoon. No soft resets here, that looks good enough. Pickup ftw. Silk joins the group. May have abused that lucky egg a bit too much though, expecting the opponents levels to grow really fast. Abandoning that egg for the moment before no one listens to me anymore. >_> At least Pidgey learned Gust though. Flying type STAB ftw Next, we all head up into the 'hood, as everyone there seems to call it. There's a random Teddiursa sitting there. Its not interested in Pokesnax and just runs away. Not a clue what that's about, but sad. This Whismur however, was very interested in the Pokesnax. Tried to take my head off for it. Not sure if she'll remain on the team, but for now she can stick around. Moving on, we explore, we train. Chikorita brings up the idea of learning Synthesis, but sadly, I travel largely by night, so I don't foresee it being particularly useful. Sorry Chikorita. However, we picked up a Rose Insence from a challenger a little later, and he seems to be pretty happy about that. We also come across this guy: Making a ruckus in some lady's house. Not sure if that frantic energy is needed in this party, but for now the more the merrier, right? Oh. And I may have made a bad investment earlier in the game. And maybe another one just now. So a bought a SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME(or something to that effect) pokemon early in the game and it got stolen from the dealer. Now, these jokers took my money again and still won't give me w/e pokemon it was unless I beat them in battle...and then it turns out they don't have it at all, because someone else stole it from them. -.- I think I see where this is going >_> Also, at some point, this happened. I mean. Who around here exactly would even have a nugget to drop? xD Anyway, at the end of all that, we have Fern. Good 'ole Fern. The put downs herald his challenge to battle. We will not disappoint. So...that fight was a bit of a jump, level-wise. Guess I should use that Lucky Egg some more huh? >_> Only Silk would have fainted there if I played it correctly from the start though, so not too shabby I think. Closing thoughts: still could use some sort of Pokemon with paralyze or poison or something, (you know...that isn't poison powder and thus not useful vs. Grass) but I don't like Grimer, Garbardour, or...umm...the one thing that jumps out of the dumpster at you. Probably gonna go and headbutt some trees and see if there's anything there, since I think I totally forgot to try it once Zigzagoon got headbutt. Also wooow, the format I put that in is ugly I think. Almost don't want to post it yet and just browse the forum looking for a similar but better format, but the img tags appear to have vanished and turned into pictures, so I don't think think I can just copy this now and paste it later. Unless I'm just missing the 'show BBcode' button or some equivalent. xD Comment away if you like! Next section will come within 3 days, most likely.

Hiya hiya. I just found this game a several days ago. Started two days ago, got through to the 2nd gym at some point, then realized that there's a hardcore version, so now I'm starting over again in that. Think I'm gonna try and leave a log of the head-into-wall-ness I hope will ensue down in the Team Showcase section. That and try to both browse the forums and limit my browsing so as to not spoil all the things before I finish losing to them and then taking my revenge. xD So....yeah. Hi all.