As I made my way to the champion's room, I took a moment to reflect on my Elite 4 experience thus far.
Everyone had their moment:
Sheila destroyed Bruno.
Alkali smacked Karen.
Prithvi single-handedly dismantled Koga.
Narayan and Peckham has been useful in general.
Even Shuckie helped against Will.
Zero casualties. Not a single item used during battle.
Even if Lance ends up destroying me, I'll be okay with the result. I've assembled a great, if extremely unorthodox, team—but will it be enough to take on three Dragonite? Only one way to answer that.
Just as I planned, I replaced Body Slam with Defense Curl on Prithvi's moves.
For a moment, I considered replacing Earthquake with Return, but in the end, I decided against it. In fact, the very last thing I did before taking on the Elite 4 was check everyone's happiness levels. Return is a move that gets more powerful the more your Pokémon trusts you, and there's a lady in Goldenrod City who helps you evaluate that.
Max happiness, signified by the phrase, "It looks really happy! It must love you a lot," represents a happiness value between 250 and 255. At this stage, Return's power is about 95+, with 102 being as strong as it can be.
5 out of my 6 party members were at max happiness—Prithvi wasn't. For her, the lady said, "I get the feeling that it really trusts you," so her happiness could've been anywhere from 200 to 249. Grinding happiness in Gen II takes much longer than people are used to today, and I just wanted to fight the Elite 4 after the hours I spent training, so I just didn't bother with Return.
That's fine, though. The original plan was to lead with Prithvi for her Defense Curl + Rollout combo. Since Lance's entire team is weak to Rock-type moves, and—as has been thoroughly demonstrated throughout this run—Rollout gets progressively stronger each turn, it seemed like a pretty solid idea on paper, especially considering how bulky Miltank is.
However, pretty much nothing went how I expected—I wound up having to use every single Pokémon on the team.
Lance lead with his Gyarados. Of course—it was the ONE Pokémon that I forgot to account for on his team. Despite not being a Dragon-type, it's still basically a dragon, so I'm not sure what else I was expecting. But I tried not to led it bother me. Sticking with the plan, I had Prithvi use Defense Curl right away, but the Gyarados outsped her and proceeded to use Rain Dance.
That instant, I could no longer commit to using Rollout. Simply put, Rain Dance powers up Water-type moves, and Water-type moves are all specially-based in this game. While Miltank's Special Defense isn't terrible, but my plan thus far has only accounted for
physical attacks. If that Gyarados happens to be packing Hydro Pump, that could spell certain death for Prithvi.
So, out of fear, I switched to Peckham. The fortunate thing about Rain Dance is that it's a field effect—that is, both players receive all benefits from the rain; something Lance apparently failed to account for. Now, I can just use Thunder to take out his Gyarados in one clean shot. From there, I basically have to just improvise. The Rollout strat was honestly my only real "plan" for this fight—so now, I actually have to figure out how to dance around his dragons.
His first Dragonite wasn't so bad, but I made it more difficult than it needed to be. I paralyzed it with Thunder Wave and basically tried to Thunder it to death—though, Peckham did wind up getting paralyzed himself, on top of getting smacked by a Hyper Beam. Thankfully, he took the hit like a pro, only receiving about 30-40%.
Still, being paralyzed is bad news. I could've just used a Full Restore, but the idea of beating the entire Elite 4 + the champion without using a single healing item during battle was starting to tempt me into making some suboptimal decisions.
So, I switched to Narayan to finish it off instead. I figured, since he resists both Hyper Beam and Twister anyway, it wouldn't matter too much. And then the Dragonite used Blizzard.
So, he uses a stronger version of Clair's gimmick. One Dragonite has Blizzard. That means the other two will have Thunder and Fire Blast. Good to know—I wasn't sure if they all had the same moves or not.
Ice is one of the few types that Narayan doesn't resist—it's not super effective or anything, but it was still a nasty move for him to get hit by. He hung on by the red of his health, and then proceeded to get frozen. Great.
At this point, though, even if I do heal Narayan, he's just gonna get blasted by another Blizzard anyway, and I'm not about to healscum my way out of the final battle.
I switched back to Prithvi to commence the Rollout strat once more. With the Defense Curl boost and her Hard Stone, she was able to take the first Dragonite down. That was a lot more painful than it should've been, but it worked out. Now, Prithvi either has to keep hitting with Rollout, or miss before she gets herself into some deep shit.
He brings out his second Dragonite—it uses Thunder Wave, and Prithvi gets parahaxed instantly. This is actually
not the worst thing that could've happened, but I do need to use Milk Drink before her HP gets too low. When it comes to tanking Hyper Beams, I have full confidence in Prithvi, but I still can't trust a move that powerful.
After healing, Dragonite #2 used Thunder—so, that'll leave the Fire Blast Dragonite for later.
Thunder only did about 20%, which is fantastic—given that her Defense stat is even higher, I presumed that a Hyper Beam would only be able to do about 35% maximum, assuming there's no critical hit. If I want to stick with this Rollout strategy, though, I have to get rid of this paralysis.
For the first time, I used an item during battle—just a Full Heal, but only for Dragonite to re-paralyze her with Thunder.
Non-plussed, I used another Full Heal. The same exact thing happened.
I used
another Full Heal, realizing I might just have to break my soft item limit. Thunder misses.
Since the Dragonite just seemed so fixated on using Thunder, though, so I took a moment to use a Full Restore on Narayan, since he's not doing me any good in his frozen red-health state. Sure enough, the Dragonite used Thunder again—but thankfully, it didn't paralyze me this time. Now, Prithvi is at 40% health.
Foolishly, I was banking on it missing or failing to paralyze me at LEAST once more. Even so, it wasn't even doing that much damage, and Prithvi still had a decent chunk of HP left. So, I thought to myself, I guess I could just sit here and take one or two more Thunders before I just get frustrated and try something else.
And then, for no reason, it decided to use Hyper Beam.
My previous calculations were off—Prithvi wasn't able to tank the hit at all. Lights out.
That
really sucks.
Without thinking, I sent out Sheila to avenge her during its recharging turn. Like a badass, she scored a critical hit with Wing Attack, taking it out. She must've been pissed about what just happened, too.
That's two dragons down, but Prithvi's sudden death has me pretty shook.
To deal with my bug, Lance sends out his Aerodactyl—a cursory glance at his remaining Pokémon makes my heart sink a little bit. On top of this silly Aerodactyl, I still have to face his strongest Dragonite and his Charizard.
It only made sense to use Peckham to Surf this Aerodactyl into oblivion, and I did just that—it's definitely one of the easier things to deal with, but I made the mistake of not setting up Rain Dance first.
Next up was the big boy level 50 Dragonite—not only does this one have Fire Blast, it also has Outrage. In this generation, however, Outrage is slightly less scary, given that it's specially-based. It's still quite threatening, though, so I had to be very careful.
First thing's first—I had Peckham use Thunder Wave to paralyze it, severely crippling its speed. Since Peckham wound up being faster than it anyway, that also shuts down one of its utility moves. Immediately after paralyzing it, it tried to use Safeguard. Had Peckham been slower, that would've blocked Thunder Wave. Too late for that now.
For whatever reason, I decided I wanted to fucking torment this Dragonite, so I switched for Narayan for some fun. I had him use Swagger for some parafusion, with the added risk of doubling its already gargantuan Attack stat—but knowing that it has to get through both paralysis AND confusion now in order to land a single hit is extremely comforting.
And then it backfired.
To my dismay, the Dragonite
did break through the parafusion—and retaliated with Fire Blast, one of Narayan's few true weaknesses.
He survived, but just barely.
Suddenly, my desire to gamble with parafusion completely vanished. I switched back to Peckham, the only member of the team who actually resists Fire-type attacks, and took a minute to think about what to do next. It's gonna use Outrage next—and once it does, it'll be locked into that move. It's also still parafused. But Peckham's moves aren't gonna be strong enough to safely knock it out in time. Sheila smashed the last Dragonite, sure, but she got lucky with a critical hit. I can't rely on that.
Then I remembered Alkali—I haven't used her yet. She has Hidden Power Dragon, and with her Special Defense, she'll be able to tank Outrage easily. Fire Blast will destroy her, sure, but Dragonite has no reason to use Fire Blast against a Lanturn, and Pokémon AI aren't exactly known for being able to predict switches. And since it's still paralyzed, I'm basically guaranteed to outspeed it no matter what.
So, in the ultimate "fuck it" moment, I decided to go for Alkali. Maybe, just maybe, the Dragonite will hit itself on the switch.
AND IT DID.
Oh my god, that damage. Thanks to the Swagger boost, it did about 35%, which is
just what I needed to see. That's so huge.
I used Hidden Power and prayed for big damage—and... she only did about 25% with it. I can't say I expected more, but now I'm beginning to see just how dicey of a situation I put myself in. The Dragonite has to hit itself again in order for me to win this matchup cleanly.
AND IT DOES. It only has 5% left.
I can't believe it—I'm seriously about to finish off a level 50 Dragonite with a fucking Beedri—
"Lance used a Full Restore!"
...Oh. Yeah. They can do that. I totally completely forgot. None of the other Elite 4 members used any items whatsoever during my battles against them, which lulled me into a false sense of security.
So, back to square one. Alkali was totally robbed of her moment there, but it's okay—I had another idea.
I sent out Shuckie.
Yeah, that's right—against this last Dragonite, I decided that using a Shuckle would be the best course of action.
His only means of attack is to kick up a Sandstorm, so I went ahead and did that first and foremost. Shuckle's high Defenses are proving to be rather helpful—Outrage hits neutrally, yet it's only hitting for about 33%. Whatever damage Shuckie takes, I can simply use Rest to wash it all away, and then he'll immediately wake himself up with that Mint Berry I gave him.
Three or four turns later, the sandstorm has whittled Dragonite's health down to about half, and Shuckie's still quite healthy. Feeling cheeky, I decide to use Encore—a move that forces the opponent to keep using the last move chosen for a randomly-selected amount of turns. In a stupid stroke of luck, I somehow managed to get an Encore on
Safeguard, of all things. This move does no damage, and Dragonite is stuck using it indefinitely.
Rendered absolutely helpless, the poor thing eventually succumbed to the Sandstorm after another four or five turns of jank. How do you like that?
His last Pokémon, Charizard, was easy pickin's. I allowed Peckham to have the final blow—one Rain Dance-boosted Surf should be sufficient to take this thing out, and it was.
And there we have it—I'm the Pokémon League Champion, but sadly, it wasn't quite the flawless victory I wanted.
HALL OF FAME:
RIP:
Before I prepared for the post-game, I had to check just one more thing before permaboxing the Miltank—I had to check back with the happiness lady again to see if Prithvi's trust levels had changed at all. Sure enough, at the time of her death, her happiness was at maximum.
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