DemICE

Also Shuckle is dope if you let it set up.

For a bug mono, it felt like quite a smooth-sailing. Then again, you were doing proper EV training, and i have experienced myself what a huge difference this makes when trying to overcome the major fights. I never skip leg day EV training the moment i gain access to power items. This, combined with a good battle plan works wonders even against fights previously expected to be near impossible. I agree about the asking others "how to beat this fight" . In my opinion these people just dont wanna go through the effort of looking up stuff themselves. I have played through rejuvenation intense two times so far, with different pokemon each run. Like always, my first blind run was hell. My second one which was a run where i used weaker pokemon, was almost smooth sailing. If you are familiar with rejuv, i would suggest intense mode even for a bug mono, since ...once again Jan nerfed some fights Same goes for reborn actually. The moment i played Hardcore, i just can't go back to regular reborn since it feels unnecessarily easier.

Unless Mason's brow had natural twitching tendencies, this was not good at all. Of course just apologizing wouldn't simply delete the facts from the past. But did she mess up and made it worse? And... just how angry did this guy be? Did he take it on a personal level because he was Vice Prez? Cadets not respecting the system he (partially at least) represented to be responsible towards it and whatnot? ... What was with that undertone? It didn't match at all the purpose those words would normally have. No matter how this man would present himself ever since she stepped inside this room, he would never get rid of the "scary" stain poured all over him! He then opened his drawer and took out... the "weapon of the criminal", her successfully modified repel bottle. Seriously this was starting to feel like a police interrogation or a trial. He placed it next to Suzie's ball and, after once again fixing his death disintegrating ray stare that had temporarily sidetracked, back to its original target (her very soul), he went on When you are merely 12 years old, and can already be able to catch the implications behind a presumably experienced diplomat's speech, while being scared shitless no less, it would mean two things: one, you are very intelligent and mature for your age, or two, the speaker does not even try to hide his intentions, to the point of them be mentally screaming at you. In this case Cathode could be pretty sure it was the latter. Both she and Mason knew she would be dancing along his song in this here room. He was never planning on preventing her progress as a Cadet. In fact he wanted her to advance, so that he could use her, since for some reason he finds it so damn special to do something so simple as make a spray bottle work both ways! The realization that due to this man's greediness she was not in an immediate danger of any long-lasting punishment, and the fact that the initial shock from all those intimidating postures was slowly wearing off, had made her revert to her more calculating self. It was funny, she was freaking out when interacting with other kids in the academy, but right here, when she should have been in her most freaked out state ever, she was here, analyzing the situation she was in, trying to choose the best way to respond. He was not letting this slide out of the kindness of his heart. He wanted to use her, and every implication screaming at her made it clear that it was not for the sake of the Cadet's goal, which was the re-establishment of the relationships between the two species as individual towards individual, but rather for quite possibly selfish reasons. He saw her as nothing but a possible tool he could invest on, pretty much how all those jerks she met at the academy were seeing their pokemon partners. What did those assholes chose to be Cadets for ? She would never think of Suzie like that... she was a gentle soul that had been the only individual on her side apart from her father. She saved her from the loneliness that an antisocial (as she overheard some people calling her) girl like her would normally have, she was her moral support when she was feeling down and her father was not there, and needed no human words to achieve that. And yet at the same time she would be overprotective to a fault, not letting any other lifeform, human or not approach her unless proven one hundred percent not harmful... after all that's how they first met, her protecting all of them even in a near-collapsed state. And here was this man, in such a high position, who would have that same mentality. People or 'mons, he would use them all the same. For Cadets, men like him were those that should be fought. They were the reason progress in the cause was so slow. No... she could not afford to lose her Cadetship when such a man was in the loose and no one knew about it! In this situation, it was good that despite her internal thinking, that only took mere moments, her external appearance was still one of a shocked girl. If only he knew what was she really shocked about.. With a hopefully realistic tone fitting her shocked and still reasonably scared facade: "R-really? You will allow me to graduate? Thank you! Thank you very much! I worked so hard this year to finally succeed and I failed once too! My father would be so broken if he learned that just like him, I failed to achieve my dream too!" Which was true, no matter how some would say that she was just trying to live her father's dream, but in reality, her bond with Suzie, and all the pokemon abuse she saw around her, made her want to add her own effort in the combined one to make things right. It was first and foremost, her dream. And if her affinity towards creating makeshift inventions assisted her towards that goal, all the better! "If there is anything i can do to show my appreciation for your kindness and understanding i am fully willing!" I bet that's what you want too, right Mr. Smoothtalker? Using people can work both ways, just like my repel bottle. Thinking of which, "I-I see you found my Sleepyspray interesting! Ehehe... it was hard to make (just a little) but I'm so happy it works! it may sound funny seeing as you have confiscated it anyway, but please keep it!" Now that she had made it once, she could reproduce an even better Sleepyspray overnight anyway. "It may come of use! But more importantly, I promise to honor your lenience by working hard and contributing a lot towards the Cadets' goal!" Something that you clearly have no interest in. I will have to work double shift to cover your part too. Hoping to have played her part at least decently, she lowered her glance, took her standard defensive pose yet again, and finished with "F-forgive me sir, I got a bit over-enthusiastic..." She wondered in the awkward silence that followed how will he respond to all this.

As long its not some boring OU thing im in with all my limbs and head

Happy bday Highcrocs, may your crocs keep getting higher!

When Cathode had woken up and looked at the time, she knew she had messed up. And pretty horribly at that. Her years in the academy had taught her that her new world she was getting into, was an environment dependent on rules vs punishment to thrive. She had never intentionally tried to break any of those rules of course. Though there were quite some unintentional cases, mainly involving the side effects of (most of the time) failed tinkering on stuff or (actually not so unusual either) successful ones too. And of course some others courtesy of Suzie, who due to her size, was initially causing various accidents when roaming out of her ball due to her clumsiness, and the blame was always directed to the one responsible for her... At least the latter was for the most part taken care of, by spending time with her exercising in doing activities that required precision and/or observation to the point of her being once again allowed to stay out of her ball in a less limited amount of areas than initially. She still was one of the 'mons that spent the biggest amount of time in their ball, which made her quite thankful of Mr. Heather for allowing her to modify and keep the luxury ball instead of moving Suzie to those new models. Yet again though, she had managed to be in the receiving end of a possible punishment, and this time, she was sure it was a good candidate for her #1 screwup! There was only once in a cadet's live where he is to attend his graduation ceremony. A pretty easy task even! Yet she did manage to get herself in her current position! The shame she felt felt boundless. Her father, Ms. Heather, both people who believed in her, she had let them down big time. They might as well disqualify her from graduating this year even after her successful written exams, and force her to academic courses for yet another year. Yet all of that shame, all of that fear of the consequences, were completely thrown out of the window the moment she entered the elevator and joined the two most scariest creatures seen in her life so far. She had always been jumpy towards other humans' way of associating with her, quite the opposite of how she dealt with situations with pokemon, even hostile ones. Yet never before was she overcome with such a primal fear, as if she was being crushed by the mere presence of those men. Shades were doing little to hide the deathly straight-ahead stare that completed their emotionless masks for a face. They were carrying weapons, that they no doubt had used to harm others before. Their posture was intimidating at least, and they didn't even need to spare a glance at her. They didn't even say a word during their descent to the abyss depths of the facility. Usually people were pressuring her by asking her questions or even barraging her with irrelevant talking subjects, but this silent treatment was sooo much worse! By the time the lift stopped and she got brought out, she was trembling and sweating. She didn't have much time to sigh in relief though, because in the room she was guided to, she was placed on the opposite chair of a man so terrifying, that her previous escorts felt like pyukumuku compared to a gyarados! The fact that unlike them, this man was actually death-staring right into her eyes, to the point of feeling her very soul withering away, was multiplying her previous sensation tenfold. Of course she knew Vice-President Mason, though this was her first actual interaction with him, and it was a complete transformation of the usually stoic man accompanying her hyper-active partner. Even worse, he also gave her this torturous silent treatment. It was so unbearable she felt that this whole situation as a punishment alone would suffice for her. She wished she would have been scolded at least instead! Then he sighed, easing out a bit (a teeensy bit) and pulled out Suzie's ball and held it in his machoke-sized palms. Cathode's gaze immediately got magnetized by the ever familiar luxury ball. Suzie, normally big and sturdy, when being in that contrapion she seemed so small and defenseless. What were Mason's plans? He was eyeing the ball with an obvious disdain. Would her punishment be to have Suzie confiscated for her? For how long? Maybe even forever? The way this man was right now, she wouldn't be surprised if he crushed Suzie in her ball with his very hands. During her stay in the academy made her witness many ways that people treated pokemon with. As friends, as pets, or even as expendable tools that they would feel nothing by discarding them. No! Anything but that! Do whatever you want with me but do not harm Suzie please! It was at that timely moment that the man finally put the ball down on his desk (Phew!) and spoke for the first time, in a surprisingly gentle tone, which, though, did nothing to alleviate the deathly stare issue: Cathode was never so thankful that someone actually asked her a question (not a technological one)! So much that she would never again react to people asking her questions the same way she did till now! But with the question, which reminded her the subject at hand, all of her previous shame resurfaced yet again, her face became redder than a tomato, and if she had a tail, it would curl below the chair, and keep curling all the way to the front side, till it hit her nose, had it been long enough. Yet the previous suffocating silence made her want no more! She took her trademark defensive stance, by lowering her posture, and grasping her left arm with her right hand, while at the same time pressing against her still undeveloped chest, and let her apologizing cascade flow out: "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I know, I screwed up big time! I managed to modify an empty repel bottle [momentarily the excitement of talking about her tinkering kicks in] to be able to work both ways, like to not only release substance, but also have a function to absorb, so I used it to absorb some sleep powder that Ms. Pinkles was so kind to provide, but when I successfully sprayed some out of the window in order to test if a substance different than repel is expelled properly by the mechanism, a wind current happened to blow inwards and I took it all in the face, and [sudden realization of her current situation. /excitement_mode off] ... I ended up falling asleep and failed to uphold my responsibility of attending such an important event of which I was an important part! I feel so ashamed! I let down Ms. Heather, who went out of her way and let me keep Suzie in a ball not authorized by the rules! I have no excuse for my misstep and I'm willing to accept any punishment but pleasepleaseplease anything but separating me from Suzie or at least don't do anything to her! It's all on me!" Every split second passing after she finished her barrage of words felt like an eternity...

Happy birthday CG, may the force be with you o\

I thoought your 2nd set of screenshots (the one that showcased the playable characters) showed custom battlebacks

Custom tiles, animations, battlebacks, and graphics in general? That's impressive! i'm also an edgelord so i like where the game is going. Your team seems to have put a ton of work in this. Will be interesting to experience the results firsthand in the future

Its a pokemon game. There are tons of them around you to catch depending on your needs. The game is as hard as you want it to be. By rotating your team depending on the challenges you re gonna face, you are making your progress easier, you get to try out interesting pokemon choices, and all of that at the cost of some extra training.

Desperate players ... right .. i wonder who those nolifers are >.> <,<

No, nothing like that, it's just that hardcore aya only has one physical attacker, which is her Drapion which appears later in the battle. And even then it opted for ... Poison tail on my shuckle. I had paired it with a Heal Pulse Blissey so it had no issues spamming rock slide in every round. But i think it would have pulled its weight just fine even if i just used rest sometimes, because really aya's special attackers were doing so low damage to it. Seeing as you have a bug monorun, you could have found other mons that would support shukle while rock-sliding with other ways.

Damn its hard to keep track on this when its crushed under the v9 hype! Where did pangoro get the twig? Well where did Alakazam get the 2nd spoon? At least in Pangoro's case you can say that the leaf that it always munched as a Pancham evolved along with it... into a twig lol. Isnt Goldenleaf chapter of the game the best chapter? So many strong emotions... It's okay Sean. the game just wants you to win the bet that you made with your mons. You just can't see that its all a help attempt!

Started reading this today, because even without screenshots, your fluid way of writing and humour makes this a great read! The bronze 5 line cracked me up xD So far in my reborn, desolation and rejuv runs, i have used quite some underdog bugs like Buttefree, Dustox, Beautifly, Vespiqueen, Forretress, Scolipede, Vivillon, Venomoth and some of the more popular ones like Heracross and Galvantula. All of them had moments where they were the MVPs, and many of them were constant team members. But honorary mentions to Butterfree, that carried me throughout all my first virgin reborn run, which was pretty hellish.. and to Vivillon, that hard-carried me through all my even more masochistically hellish virgin intense rejuvenation run, by wholly or at least partially sweeping nearly half of all major fights in there. I'm mildly weirded out that you didnt't opt on sleep powder + quiver dance combos. I mean, Braveheart and Fiery Wings have quiver dance, but not sleep powder, and Generosity has Sleep Powder, but no quiver dance. With compoundeyes, the first two would have been able to sweep a lot of stuff very easily. Also i'd like to point out that you have missed the god, Shuckle, that is able to be found by rock smashing on the spot where Kiki was lecturing. This unparallelled beast swept Hardcore Aya by spamming Rock Slide after a Power Trick, but i havent progressed much more on that run yet. I expect even more accomplishments from it in the future.

Character sheety is here. I tried to not make it too big.. . . . . . Tried.

As someone who has gone through intense version 2 times, and one of those times with pokemon of 480 BST and below, i can definitely get the feel that there is a lot of space for improvement, and if anyone can do it, its you. My inner masochistic gamer just wasn't satisfied enough by rejuv intense's difficulty. Some leaders were even nerfed sheesh. I can understand nerfing the regular mode but intense should be left intact if not made harder. TL;DR > Go for it with my blessings! The fact that you are asking us to actually choose between those is a hard gamgle you damn gambler. I can live without level limiter and breedable TMs since reverse candies are dirt cheap. Thing is, 2 and 3 are both very awesome ideas. I would like some alternate battles, but i would also like the trainers to be harder too. What will ultimately make me choose is if, in what you have in mind as Intense v2.0 the leaders fights are redesigned to be harder, just with no alternative fights. I would be content with that because i dearly feel that some leaders did not even come close to 80% of their field's and team strategy's (if they even had one) capabilities in current intense mode. So yeah before moving to alternate fights, it would be nice to see the current fights, in their maximum hardcoreness!

I explored the Darchlight caves with Erin. And i chose to expose Flora. Now i am on my first meeting with Cassandra. I am doing a "Naive" run with this save file, since i have chosen to hide Flora's identity on my main file. Problem is, the game does not let me tell everything to Cassandra like the naive person i am! I guess i will pause this run here until this is fixed.. And go to my Flora-supportive run for the moment.

Same thing with the battle against the electric leader. There is no field effect. Just a blue background,,,

well i went there first, and searched for things like slash, slush, rush with ctrl+F. Didnt find anything

A-Slash has regular slash's abilities (?) i.e. no Slush Rush

If its not possible revert to v7 for safety xD

Happy birthday o/

Oh cool Unfortuntely tho this does not help the purpose of the question, since it might be well past midnight by the time Strider's evening comes xD

U say that but what time is it there? xD

Just wait a little longer my dear Chikorita...