Brauvo

This is the coolest blog post of all time!

Unrelated to the discourse on who Madame X is, I must say: Chapters 14 and 15 do a great deal of dispelling the initial ideas we had in the game about Crescent essentially being all powerful. When you run into her early game, she seems unbelievably OP, like not within the confines of a pokemon game levels of OP. Hearing that she essentially used one of the Interceptor's full revives after losing to Clear, and seeing that she was motivated to kind of create us by her feelings for her classmates using the same type of Garufian magic we've grown accustomed to? That makes her feel kind of accessible. Especially now that some protagonist characters are magical, and we know who we are as the Interceptor. Crescent used to seem like this omnipotent, time traveling magician. I guess sane Karen and Melia's siblings are probably as powerful, though.

Nice catch, I forgot all about this. One of many reasons to replay the game from the beginning, for those who just played new content.

I am on many topics about boss fights spreading the gospel of pyukumuku. It literally helps with so many gyms and bosses, especially now that you can toxic shields! Purify + recover + toxic with loads of defense and an item to help with whatever the boss at hand does well. A lot of time, pyukumuku isn't dense enough to take hits from the overpowered bosses we fight, but it's so nice when it can.

He's certainly intimidating, but I don't think he's the worst solely because you can match his advantages with your own hyper offense team. Even if not using flyers, having an elemental seed (or w/e seed he's using if that's not the right one) gives you the tailwind boost, too. He doesn't set up another tailwind, so if you have a way to do it or a second seed, you can have the speed advantage all battle. Not taking hits from his glass cannons makes him doable even for a team that isn't specifically designed to beat him. The sick strategy you cooked up looks like it'd demolish him for anyone who copies, especially with a seed on boltund. I myself used magnezone there for about the same job and swoobat for the other half of the work.

Looks like I seriously underestimated the power of brining a wonder room user!

You'll need every type, yes, but saying it's dumb to pick a best/fav is silly. I voted with the majority: speed natures. There are so many instances where having maximum speed helps you avoid a lot of trouble. You can just obliterate a pokemon that covers the team you have on hand pretty well if you can make sure you're faster than it with a hard hitting pokemon. I love doing that with Cinderace or Staraptor.

This is the first gym that I didn't win "the right way" to me. I needed a bit of luck here and there, and I try to not do things that require luck or revives. I used pyukumuku with toxic on the two ??? type pokemon she used. That, hilariously, takes away their immunity to poison. Of course, Aggron hits like a meteor and pyukumuku can't toxic + take another hit to recover. Therefore, I needed to use ultra pots to stay alive there. The other ??? type pokemon, Brozong, couldn't beat Pyukumuku head to head, so that was fine. I used an adamant staraptor to break her *one* pokemon with low defense. I believe that was Duraludon? It spent most of the match switching out from staraptor, so I pretty much used staraptor to hit everything that'd switch in pretty hard. My pyukumuku got to recover against metagross for some reason, who wanted to use cosmic power? It chose to set up, letting pyuk get its health high enough to work it over with Innards Out. That left it low enough to pick off. Corviknight, as initmidating as it is, is still a flying type. So, I used my magnezone. Since Corviknight switched in to a couple of staraptor hits, magnezone could put it away with one hit when they were finally against each other. Bastiodon was ridiculous. I couldn't really beat Bastiodon without luck, because all of my resources were devoted to beating the Aggron, Metagross, Corviknight trio. Legit took nearly the whole team for that effort. I ended up reviving Pyukumuku and re-using Innards Out to get it low enough. It made me reset so many times because there was no way to harm it hard enough with my remaining pokemon by the time I saw it. This pokemon does not need its crest on a glitch field with wonder room activated! So, maybe a pyukumuku for you? If you follow what I post on other topics, I'm pretty much telling everyone to get a pyukumuku!

It's available only after badge 12 now. A dramatic move, right?

Yikes, kinda feels like this quest has to be unaccomplishable if you do certain events before completing it. It reminds me of how you can (could?) access the secret area in Venam's gym and get greeted by Venam there even if she's not on the island (or, is stone).

It's amazing that this game has three game modes where the AI performs differently and every major battle has different teams entirely. That's so much more than a main story game gives us. I played 340 hours on a new playthrough of V13 (though probably 40-80 were just me sitting at the start menu as I looked something up on the pokedex lol), loving every minute. I get that rejuvenation's story is so interesting that some people who aren't into difficult pokemon games might want to play too. I think the dev team does plenty to accommodate, though. I guess levels could be lower, or bosses could all use 4 pokemon? I'm watching some people's casual playthrough to think more on this point and it appears that casual gets tough near the end of the game. I guess with several years between the initial conception of casual mode and the release of v13, maybe making a solid casual experience is tough. I feel that it's kinda lame to make a status about quitting the game over difficulty (as opposed to just deleting it and going on about life), but the conversations had about it could be valuable to the dev team, I suppose.

My way of dealing with Flora was to change the field. I use my trusty Pyukumuku with Purify for that. Of course, the field then changes to Forest if you do that, and that's still to her advantage, but it changes how seeds work and makes steel more useful. Cuts down on a lot of the nonsense she does. If you had a weather setter like A-Ninetales, you could stop the super speed Ludicolo. It's only a problem because of the rain. A steel type resists its moves normally, but not on this field. I preferred using my Magnezone, which required me to purify the field. Unfortunately if you don't have a way to purify the field or deal with the rain, I'm not sure you have a lot of options since you're trapped here. I can only recommend not using fire types, as the field and weather combo makes them extreme liabilities. Other than Cinderace and its ability to not be a fire type, of course. Flying types are useful here if you don't change the field. I think the best way to go if you don't have the aformentioned strategies available to you is to use the field to your advantage. The nearby pokemon almost all can do that. Offensive teams are better to use IMO. Defensive things just lets her get ready to abuse you.

You can get a Luck Incense, the equivalent of an amulet coin, in Grand Dream City from the same person who sells the Nightmare Medallion. There's no earlier one AFAIK.

It seems that between V12 and V13, her personality was taken back a bit so that her growth could be more dramatic. I appreciate it. It's only a little jarring if you don't replay the previous chapters.

I finally finished my replay, 340 total hours! V13 did some absolutely amazing stuff with changes to early chapters, and the story resolutions we got in the newest content were A1. I can now finally read some spoilery things here and push out some opinions about some characters and their fates. I want to ask what others think of Madame X. There are so many mysteries around her.

The nature changer is in the underground, exactly where it was last episode. And IIRC, Pokestar studios doesn't open until after badge 14. It's certainly closed until the city reopens after the explosion.

I feel rather silly for not getting this, but how do I download the 13.0.3 patch? I only see the link for the whole game. I might be mis-remembering how patch downloading goes.

I always wait until you get your mom's Sylveon, as it always has perfect IVs. It's in the very expansive field group, so I breed it with things that have more than one egg group whenever I need to spread IVs. Before that point in the game, I just do the old fashion way and accept IVs that are 25+. It's not so crucial at the beginning of the game.

There are a few good strategies. Mine was to not let her set up screens at all. On normal, the only aurora veil users are the first two pokemon. The only thing that makes the AI not use aurora veil is threatening offense, and that Jynx has fake-out so both leading pokemon need to threaten Jynx and Arctovish. I used a Pangoro with bullet punch to really scare her - Pangoro beat 3 of her pokemon by the time it fainted. I also had a Pyukumuku to toxic stall Rotom-F and Walrein. I finally needed something to counter the heavy-handed physical mons in the middle of her lineup. I used Ostagoon for that. Obstagoon's obstruct + attack combo is nasty. Its not actually hard to get rid of the dimensional aspect of the field with pyukumuku's purify, but I found it took too many turns to really change the field around. If you stall your offensive pressure against her first two pokemon, you'll see screens. If you aren't applying pressure for the beartic and crabominable, then you're getting punched out. That's most of the fight where you probably can't risk getting rid of the field, unless you're a brick break user or heavy defense team. If I had to offer just one single piece of advice, I'd say consider a pangoro or someone with similar utility.

For me, dreadnaw was a monster in that gym. Since there's always rain, swift swim is active. I just made sure not to let the sticky web barbed wire combo happen. I also used a Swoobat, since they can boost very quickly with simple. I'm sure some other swift swimmer can do dreadnaw's job (though fast+rock works amazing there) and some other pokemon that can boost stats quickly can handle Crawli. Just can't be a fire type, and some flying moves get kinda neutered there as well.

I recently finished chapter 12 and wow. This was beautiful before, but the changes really made this a great chapter. A lot of the gunk was removed, like how annoying the ship was. More on Melia and her Emma persona was detailed. There are slight changes here and there to the lore. This was just a great experience and is worthy to be praised.

I'll try my best to describe it. There's a beach to the east that you surf to. I think the path there was to walk a bit south from the entrance, then east through some trees, going up a bit as you reach a "dead end" in the trees, back east some more, and surf over. I think that's it. You can catch magnemite and magneton there (along with pikachu - I got a shiny one). I can't go check and offer pictures or anything since I'm presently locked in my current location.

Yeah Pyuk gets purify at 21, so the wild ones in Teramuja probably have it already. It's useful even beyond Angie. Purify turns her dimensional cold field into a regular ice field, and she can't cold truth it back to dimensional cold. Of course, a regular ice field is still in her favor, but if you really really couldn't stand the field, you could do something about that one while you can't do much about the OP original field. I just used that same Pyukumuku for the electric and grass gyms too (despite type disadvantage). I'm grateful for the advice I saw on here about it.

I found Pangoro to be very helpful here. Since you're on the easiest difficulty, I think you fight against an A-Ninetales? Some others commenting implied that. I'd not use it there, but it seems like you'll need to expand your team and if you got the pancham, I'd definitely raise it up. Pyukumuku is useful here and in general, since it's so bulky and can even get rid of her field. I think magneton from the safari zone can be useful, too.

I also used Pangoro here, and it was amazing. Took 3 of her pokemon out. I made sure to get Bullet Punch and iron fists for it, and had it power through pokemon that were paying attention to my other pokemon out. I think whatever you get, you'll need something to deal with the slush rush bros (Arctovish, Beartic), something to stop aurora veil (I just didn't let her set it up), and something to tank the special users at the end (Rotom-F, Walrein). I used Pyukumuku for the latter, myself, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. You might even try to use pyuk to purify the dimension, if you're more clever than I. I couldn't take advantage of that.