Crunch time for the squad. For Blue, I'm gonna try to bring everyone up to level 55, or at least 54.

To help Shuckie stall with Toxic, I taught Protect to Sheila, Alkali, and Narayan. This will also help them scout out dangerous moves, and it's just a cool move to have in general. I also replaced Sheila's Slash with Return.

Looking over some options in the box in case shit hits the fan. Kurama is still on deck should anything horrible happen, but I really hope it doesn't come to that, given how frail he is. If it does, I'll have to teach moves like Sunny Day and Fire Blast, as well as teach Agility to Rosalie, forgoing Substitute (which would suck major ass).

I haven't forgotten about December, Verbette, Mr. Green, or the others either. Just trying to carefully weigh the options.

Worst comes to worst, I have a Snorlax (strongest non-legendary in the game).

If I totally wipe to Blue or Red, though, that'll be curtains for the run. I wouldn't wanna continue after that.

Quote from: Vojtech Tuka on October 27, 2017, 12:54:39 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on October 26, 2017, 11:18:04 PM

Quote from: challengerX on October 26, 2017, 09:20:10 PM

Quote from: Aether on October 26, 2017, 09:17:09 PM

Would you ever smoke a blunt or rip a bong with me?

Sure why not. You grow your own?

Kill yourselves

Gotta agree with verb on this one.

What's wrong with weed? It doesn't hurt anybody.

and if it doesn't hurt anybody that means it's good

haha right on brother

That said, the less likely I am to use a Pokémon, the less creative I care to be.

I have a Goldeen that I named Monty for basically no reason.

The last Pokémon I caught, Staryu, is named Decarabia, after my favorite Shin Megami Tensei demon.

i really want it, but i have so many other things to play too

Quote from: Aether on October 26, 2017, 09:17:09 PM

Would you ever smoke a blunt or rip a bong with me?

Sure why not. You grow your own?

Kill yourselves

All right, I took out Brock, Blaine, and Sabrina.

Brock was pretty easy overall, but things got a little bit dicey with his Omastar. I tried having Narayan fight it with Steel Wing, intending to reduce its high Defense a little bit, but I forgot—Steel Wing doesn't lower their Defense. That's Iron Tail.

Still, the move did exactly 50%, so I thought it would be okay to just go for it aga—AND THEN IT FUCKING MISSES of course why do I never learn from these things jesus christ

The Omastar responded with Surf, and Narayan barely survived with 17 HP left. From then on, I switched to Madam and had her blast everything away with Psychic, because that's what she does.

Blaine should've been easy, too, but I lost yet another Pokémon due to bad RNG. I lead with Madam and just spammed Psychic throughout the whole fight, pretty much—but his last Pokémon was a level 50 Rapidash, and Madam was level 47 at the time. I assumed she would be able to take it on, because Rapidash's Special Attack is quite a bit lower than its Attack—so, even if it uses something crazy like Fire Blast, Madam should honestly be able to tank it.

And then it critical'd. A one-hit KO at full health. Can't tank that.

According to Showdown's calculator, Madam was guaranteed to have survived with about 30-40% had it not been a crit. I can't be upset at random bullshit—it happens, and it wasn't my fault at all. The only thing I could've done was to just NOT use Madam, but I'm not the kind of person who lives in fear that every attack is going to result in a crit. Just gotta go for it sometimes. The only upsetting thing is having lost a pretty solid teammate who has been here since the Lake of Rage.

Only a couple Pokémon left to use, now—Rosalie the Smeargle and Shuckie the Dragonslaying Shuckle. I decided it was time to bring back Rosalie. She knows Spore now, miraculously, so she'll actually be extremely useful in these upcoming fights.

When I fought Sabrina, I played it excruciatingly safe. Even though she only has three Pokémon, a STAB Psychic is going to hit like a freight train, so I made liberal use of Narayan's defenses and struck her down with Sheila.

There's only one gym left now, and this is gonna be the toughest one before Red.

I'm giving it some thought right now, and I'm considering retiring Kurama early. He'll never evolve, his stats are very, very low, and his overall usefulness has been tapering off. If I bring back Shuckie, that'll also reunite the five surviving champions—and, yeah, I think that's how it's gonna have to be. I'll teach Shuckie Toxic before the Red fight and see where that takes me.

Had to replace Quadcore with somebody, so I went with Madam, even though I need to start training Rosalie, too.

Misty was simple enough to take out—Peckham ran a train over her with Rain Dance + Thunder. Quagsire may have been immune, but it still couldn't handle a rain-boosted Surf.

Just four more badges.

the worst thing about the game is just the concept

like, what place do zombies have in this franchise

but it's whatever

YouTube

Y'all know about this?

never seen this before

given that the scenic route to zora's domain is one of the cooler parts of the game, i'd hate for someone to experience this first

it'll come out and everyone's gonna love it

i'd file it under so-bad-it's-good personally

Libra

means absolutely nothing

sometimes i read horoscopes for the fuck of it, and i laugh at how silly and inaccurate they are, despite the fact that they're all written in such a way where the average boring person could vaguely relate to them

this seems like a lot of work

with the amount of writing i'm doing in college at the moment, i'm getting pretty used to typing a whole lot

this is nothing tbh

Quote from: Verbatim on October 24, 2017, 09:00:35 PM

Oh, I also toasted Erika. One-shotted her entire team with Kurama's Flamethrower.

I can't believe she only had four Pokémon.

Wouldn't it be one-shot?

technically yes, even though that sounds really off

I'm gonna talk about Quadcore and Rosalie for a moment.



So, I thought about going the traditional route with my Porygon—a simple "bulky" mixed attacker with things like Recover, Ice Beam, Return, etc. and maybe playing around with Lock-On + Zap Cannon as well.

Trouble is, I can't evolve it. It's not even a case where I could technically cheese it by finding a shiny Pokémon to show to Bill's grandfather—he needs to be traded while holding an Upgrade item. Therefore, he'll be stuck as a Porygon for the rest of the game, unfortunately, and his mediocre stats are gonna stay that way.

So, I'm gonna try to make the absolute best of it by using a little bit of creativity.

His current set involves the following moves:
- Iron Tail
- Curse
- Conversion
- Recover

Conversion works differently than it did in Gen I. In those games, Porygon would change its type to match whatever its opponent's type was (so, fighting a Pikachu would turn Porygon into an Electric-type).

Now, it changes its type to match one of its own moves instead (unless it's Normal-type or ???-type, like Curse). So, if my Porygon knew both Zap Cannon and Iron Tail, it would randomly select between Electric and Steel. But since mine only knows Iron Tail, it will always change into a Steel-type—giving him eleven resistances and one immunity.

It also boosts Iron Tail's power from 100 to 150, despite its terrible 75% accuracy. I'd use something different, but of the three Steel-type moves introduced in this generation, Porygon only learns one of them—so, I'll make due.

Curse and Recover are there, of course, to turn the little duck into a hard-hitting metal tank that can shrug off its injuries—though Curse will progressively make it slower and slower.

There are several downsides to this set. Iron Tail's accuracy is godawful, and having to rely on it as the sole attacking move is kind of shitty—but it's integral if I want to keep having a Steel Porygon, and I do. Curse is also necessary to make Quadcore as tough and formidable as possible, and since the entire set revolves around Conversion, the fact that I have to spend the first turn applying the metal coating is also an issue, especially since I have to reapply it every time I switch out.

If I want an extra attack move, it's gonna have to be Return—both because of its power, the fact that it gets STAB (pre-Conversion), and the fact that it doesn't fuck with Conversion in any way. I can't use any attacks that aren't Normal-typed, and if I absolutely had to replace any move, it would have to be Recover.

I think this is a pretty fun and interesting set, though, and we'll see how it goes.

---

Oh, Rosalie.

It's about time I bring her back from the box. I've been waiting to give her a viable moveset for a long time after all those Transform experiments failed—and since I've caught a Paras and Mr. Mime, I can finally start inching towards giving her a viable moveset for her stats.

Her current moves consist of the following:
False Swipe
Fly
Spore

That's right—Spore. In Generation II, before double battles, it's possible to have Smeargle Sketch the move Spore.

How the fuck did I manage that? With great difficulty—but with the help of my new Paras (named Peach), I was able to do it after a couple of tongue-tying and asinine experiments—the first of which involved once again hunting for wild Ditto.

Step one, of course, was to slap that Exp. Share onto Peach and feed her enough experience for her to learn Spore—a move that she learns at level 25 as a Paras, but since she evolves into Parasect at level 24, I had to momentarily cancel that. She's a Parasect now, though.

Next, I had to head over to the Move Deleter and delete all the rest of her moves. Since the Ditto will be transforming into Peach, it would be most optimal for her to have Spore as her only move.

If you see where I'm going with this, you might be asking, "But Spore has 100% accuracy—how are you supposed to Sketch it if it's always going to put you to sleep?"

Recall how, once afflicted with a status condition, you can't be afflicted with another one. So, simply enough, I have to find a way to poison, burn, or paralyze poor Rosalie—this will prevent her from falling asleep against the Ditto!Parasect. Paralysis is obviously the safest and least suicidal option, so I found a wild Pokémon that can induce paralysis and had Rosalie paralyzed. I also have her holding a Mint Berry, just in case.

Unfortunately, the Ditto we'll be facing are all level 10, and Parasect is level 25. Even though Parasect is a very, very slow Pokémon, Ditto isn't exactly the fastest thing, either—so if I want the Ditto to swiftly transform into Peach without putting it to sleep first, I have to use a bunch of silly time-wasting items like Dire Hits, just to burn my turn and allow the Ditto to use Transform in peace.

Once the Ditto is transformed, I switch to Rosalie, who is still paralyzed and thus cannot fall asleep. Her speed has also been crippled greatly, which definitely helps me out, since Sketch needs to move last in order to work. As expected, the Ditto!Parasect's Spore failed, and—moment of truth—I used Sketch.

And it failed.

It would seem that Sketch is hard-coded to always fail when used against a Ditto, or something to that effect. That actually raises a couple of interesting questions and possibilities—like, if something other than a Ditto were to use Transform—like a Mew, or maybe a Clefairy after getting it with Metronome—could I THEN have Smeargle try to Sketch it? The speed tie experiment is still up in the air, as well.

Anyway, I still wasn't finished with Spore. There's still one thing I can try out—find a wild Smeargle and try to have it Sketch Spore from Peach, and then switch to Rosalie (still paralyzed) and have her re-Sketch the move from the wild Smeargle.

A couple problems still arose. This time, Peach's low speed was starting to bite her in the ass. She couldn't outspeed the wild Smeargle, so they would Sketch nothing—and since the move only has 1 PP, they would be using Struggle for the rest of the battle. And a low speed means she can't escape very well, either. I tried giving her a Smoke Ball to remedy this, but unless I wanted to grind 20 levels so that she can outspeed these things (which I don't), I needed to give her something else to use: the Quick Claw.

In this game, the Quick Claw actually has a pretty dang decent chance at getting your Pokémon to move first—it's somewhere between 20% and 25%. What I needed to happen was this—upon finding a Smeargle, she'll use Spore, and the Quick Claw activates, putting the Smeargle to sleep before it's able to Sketch anything.

Now it's asleep, sure. That's a problem, but there are no ways to reduce your own accuracy in this game—though, in retrospect, I could've tried switching to Peckham. He would use Thunder Wave to paralyze the Smeargle, preventing me from putting it to sleep, while still giving it a chance to Sketch Peach's Spore upon switching back to her.

Yeah, I'm just realizing that I could've done that, but I didn't. Whoops. It even would've solved the speed issue, because paralysis quarters your speed in this game. What an obvious solution that flew completely over my head.

The way I did it instead was to continually spam Spore until it woke up—but on the turn that the Smeargle would've woken up, the Quick Claw would have to activate a second time so that it can be Sketched.

Very unlikely thing to happen, but fortunately, it ended up happening a quick two attempts in. Awesome—I taught a wild Smeargle Spore. That means I'm halfway there.

Since I obviously cannot just catch this Smeargle, I have to switch to Rosalie, who—yes, she's still paralyzed—and then use Sketch on the Spore that the wild Smeargle just Sketched. Doesn't that just make your head spin.

But, wouldn't you know it—it actually fucking worked. I have a Smeargle that legimately knows Spore in Generation II, in a fucking nuzlocke challenge. What the fuck is this run?

It doesn't end there, though. Once Rosalie learns Sketch for the fourth and fifth times, I have even more moves I want to teach her, including Belly Drum (which Mr. Green learns naturally) and Baton Pass (which Madam already knows).

And since I caught a Mr. Mime (who I named Chaplin), I can even have her Sketch Substitute down the line, if I so please—but that means I'm gonna have to sacrifice her Flying abilities, and I may not want to do that.

By the time she's all ready, though, she'll be level 71—so I have that to look forward to, now.

Welcome back to the team, mascot.