but yeah, if you're the kind of person who hates fandoms, you have to be aware that YOU probably piss a lot of people off with your shit too

like, i'm sure some people are disturbed by my whole pokémon thing, even though i try to be lowkey about it and keep it to my own thread

but i still have the avatar, and avatars are tantamount to shoving your BS down people's throats, so even though i hate fans of anything, i still in a small way contribute to it

when is the last time i have ever posted about eating salad

or eating ever

It was Sheila's time to shine. Her Bug/Flying typing makes her perfect for tanking Fighting-type attacks, and Detect allows her to scout out any dangerous moves like Rock Slide or elemental punches. If he still has Counter, that's going to be very scary, but I trust her ability to one-shot anything that isn't Machamp or Onix.

He lead with Hitmontop, and thankfully, all it really did was use Quick Attack. Easy to take care of with one Wing Attack.

Naturally, though, the next thing he sends out is Onix. Since I already know Sheila can't do a thing against it, I was planning to one-shot it with Peckham's Surf anyway. It's not even necessary for me to set up Rain Dance.

Once Hitmonlee came out, I switched again, this time to Narayan. It's probably going to spam High Jump Kick, so I thought it would be cool if I just used Fly and cause it to kill itself with crash damage, or something—but unfortunately, it used Swagger instead. Narayan hit himself while in midair, and now I'm in a pretty bad position. I switched to Sheila again, who brushed off the HJK like it was nothing, and took it down effortlessly.

Next came Hitmonchan. This is the Pokémon I expect to have Counter the most, and if Sheila fails to one-shot it with Wing Attack, that's going to spell trouble if it doesn't use an elemental punch, on top of the fact that Hitmonchan is supposed to be more defensive than Hitmonlee. I take the risk—I used Wing Attack, and Sheila was able to one-shot it.

I later looked it up—none of his Pokémon actually have Counter. That's Gen 1 only, I guess.

He saved his strongest Pokémon for last: Machamp. Even though it's tempting to just Wing Attack right away, I instead used this opportunity to use Detect, just to confirm whether it has Rock Slide—and it does. Sheila would've been dead. I really have my doubts that she'd have one-shotted a level 46 Machamp.

I switched to Narayan, who took the next Rock Slide like a pro. Given how weak the move was, I decided that it might be a good idea to try using Swagger. The animation for the move is too good—Narayan huffs condescendingly at the Machamp, pissing it off, causing it to become confused while doubling its attack. Then I used Fly, leaving the Machamp only with a 50-50 chance to either do nothing or hit itself. And he DID hit himself—for 40% damage, before Narayan swooped down and finished him off.

Three down, still no casualties.

I'm delighted in that every single Pokémon on my team—even Shuckle—has had their own cool little moment during this Elite 4. The only one who hasn't seen any action yet is Alkali, and that's going to change in the next gym.

Koga threw me off guard—I was expecting to fight Bruno first.

Not a big deal, though. Spoiler alert: I soloed his entire team with Prithvi.

He leads with Ariados, but I was able to Body Slam it to death before it could do anything too nasty. Venomoth wasn't a big problem, either—I think I actually managed to one-shot it with another Body Slam.

Forretress is pretty scary, though, for one reason: Explosion.

Self-destruct is normally a death sentence for anything that doesn't resist it or have a fuckton of Defense, and Explosion is the same move, but much, much stronger. If I had a Fire-type, I'd be able to snuff this thing out in one hit, but I have to make do with what I have. Thankfully, I taught Earthquake to Prithvi, which does neutral damage to Forretress vs. Body Slam, which is resisted.

It never actually ended up exploding, though. It threw a layer of Spikes, trolled me a little bit with Protect, and used Swift a bunch of times before Prithvi snuffed it out with three or four Earthquakes.

Muk was a joke—all it did was use Minimize twice, but Prithvi didn't give a shit. Two Body Slams was enough to take it out. I didn't use Earthquake, because I seem to recall this very obscure mechanic involving Minimize. Basically, if you use the move Stomp (which my Miltank used to know), it supposedly bypasses the evasion boost and does double the damage it normally does. Which makes sense, and is hilarious, but I also thought the rule applied to Body Slam, too. It doesn't, but it was still worth a shot, and Prithvi didn't miss a single time anyway.

His final Pokémon, Crobat, was an even bigger joke. It did one move, Double Team, before becoming incapacitated under Prithvi's weight.

One Pokémon—that's all I needed. Miltank has really proven herself to me.

Despite the fact that the type preferences of each Elite 4 member have been firmly imprinted in my mind, I seem to recall some of them using Pokémon that don't belong to that preference—and since I'm going off my memory alone, I had to take this into account when recalling their teams.

I knew that Will used Xatu, Jynx, and Exeggutor. I thought he'd maybe have a Cloyster, which wouldn't make any sense, but it's one of those wild card options I was trying to think about. He has a Slowbro, which is part-Water, and a Jynx, which is part-Ice. Cloyster is Water AND Ice. Not to mention, his entire gym is covered in ice (maybe from when this used to be Lorelei's chamber or something).

Needless to say, I wound up being wrong, but it didn't matter a whole lot anyway. I kinda curbstomped this guy.

He led with his lower-leveled Xatu. I lead with Shuckie and set up Safeguard, to prevent him from confusing or putting anything to sleep, as well as a Sandstorm. This would be dangerous, but the next Pokémon I'm gonna be switching to is Narayan, who, as a part-Steel type, doesn't take any damage from Sandstorm at all.

Between these two moves, Shuckie did tank a Psychic—it did 30%, which is a pretty decent chunk, but as soon as I switched to Narayan, he was naturally able to shrug off those hits much better. The Sandstorm put that Xatu in the perfect range to be smacked with Fly, and I did just that.

Next, he sent out his Slowbro—a perfect switch, because it managed to scare Narayan away. It could have some nasty Water-type moves, and Water is one of the few types that Narayan can't resist. I looked it up later, though, and it turns out that Will's Slowbro doesn't know any Water-type moves at all. It was a bluff.

I switched to Peckham, though, expecting to tank a Surf or Hydro Pump or something—but instead, it began to set up Curse. Not a problem; that move only boosts physical Attack & Defense. I chose to set up Rain Dance—which was a little bold, because it also would've powered up any of Slowbro's Water-type moves, assuming it had any—but if it's gonna start boosting its Defense, then I need to start hitting it hard with some specially-based moves like Thunder.

Then it used Amnesia—now it's Special Defense is boosted, too. Still, I have to use Thunder—it's my best option.

As Peckham used it, it resulted in a critical hit, one-shotting the poor thing.

Next, Will bluffed once again. He scared Peckham away with Exeggutor, a Grass-type that didn't actually happen to have any Grass-type moves (other than Leech Seed); I just didn't realize it at the time. Nonetheless, I switched back to Narayan, and it smartly set up Reflect to halve the damage it's about to take from Fly. Unfortunately for it, though, the Exeggutor only delayed its inevitable demise by a single turn.

At this point, I can't actually remember if he sent out Jynx or his second Xatu first.

When the second Xatu came out, I thought Narayan would be able to handle it, even though it's a little bit stronger than the last. But it used Confuse Ray, and I wasn't really in the mood to gamble, so I switched back to Peckham to shoot it out of the sky with Thunder.

I think I used Peckham for Jynx, too. I knew it had Ice Punch, and I didn't really wanna deal with that, so I just sent out someone who would resist it. But instead, it insisted in using Double Slap instead. All righty, then. Probably the easiest Pokémon to deal with on his team.

That's one down, no casualties.

All right, I'm finally done training. Everyone's level 48. Here's what we're dealing with:



This is probably the saddest bunch of Pokémon I've ever took to the endgame, but this is pretty much it right here.

After the Great Whitney Massacre of September 26, I've meteorically risen from the ashes with a brand new team of weirdos and misfits: three Bug-types (including a motherfucking Shuckle), Cow & Chicken, and a derpy fish.

I technically have a couple better options in my PC box, like Verbette and December, but like I've already said—I've already took both a Gyarados and a Fearow to the Hall of Fame in my Blue nuzlocke, so I don't really wanna use them again. They've both been extremely useful during this challenge, though, and I'm not against using them again when I reach Kanto.

Speaking of Kanto, I came up with an interesting idea in the shower about how to deal with it. It involves the Time Capsule, but before I even talk too much about it here, I gotta make sure I take out the Elite 4 first. So, I'll go over everyone on the team one by one.

The Elite 4 consists of the following trainers:

Will (Psychic-types)
Bruno (Fighting-types)
Koga (Poison-types)
Karen (Dark-types)

...and then, of course, the champion Lance (Dragon-types). I'm fighting all of these guys entirely from memory, and I haven't looked up any of their teams—in fact, the only things I've ever looked up in this entire playthrough are 1.) Pokémon learnsets, 2.) what Pokémon can be found in each area, and 3.) the locations for some rare key items.

So it's gonna be tough, but I'll go over my strategy below before I take them on.

---

Every single time I ever thought to myself, "Oh, Alkali's too weak at this point. I'm gonna retire her," she has consistently proved to me that she still has a place on my team. Whether it be fighting or cutting down bushes, she's a real trooper, having been on the squad since I caught her in Azalea Town (as a Weedle), just barely after picking up my second badge. That was even before the Whitney massacre, so she's among the longest-lasting members of the team.

In fact, I previously thought that she WAS the oldest member—but I checked, and that distinction actually belongs to Balcome, my level 6 female Zubat who hasn't left the box since I caught her. Zubat's hard to train, and when Bram died, it felt distasteful to just replace him with another Zubat, so I just never bothered.

Anyway, back to Alkali. Impressively, her stats aren't actually that terrible. When the Special stat split happened between Gens I and II, Beedrill was given a minor boon in that its Special Attack remained very low, but its Special Defense stat was made quite high—and, as you can see, it's actually her most formidable stat, exceeding even her Attack. This is great, because tanking some specially-based moves will likely prove to be critical for her during this final challenge.

True to her name, I went ahead and taught her Sludge Bomb, the strongest Poison-type move in the game. That was a pretty hard decision, because I was thinking about saving that TM for Weepinbell once I was able to evolve him, but since Alkali's fighting power is just so low, I knew I needed to give her a strong move. She's tough, but she's still just a Beedrill, and needs all the power she can get. Sludge Bomb doesn't really hit anything super effectively, since Grass-types that aren't also Poison-types are kind of rare, but it still provides decent neutral coverage. And it hits hard.

I also went ahead and taught her Hidden Power, too, as a desperate hail mary thing. In Generation II, there's no way to know what type your Pokémon's Hidden Power will be, unless you test it in the field yourself. Its power also ranges from 40 to 70, rather than staying at a clean 60, like in later generations.

Can you tell what type Alkali's Hidden Power is just by looking at the coloration?

I'll tell you—apparently, within Alkali's soul lies the heart of a motherfucking DRAGON.

That's really cool and all, but I honestly doubt I'll be able to take much advantage of it. Alkali's Special Attack is pretty dismal, and knowing my luck, the power of the move is probably on the lower end. I'm still keeping it on, though—who knows? It might actually just come in handy. It'll be sick to see her kill one of Lance's dragons with it.

Her held item is her trusty Poison Barb. This thing has traded hands with several Pokémon—it belonged to G once, the poor Nidoqueen who died at the hands of Chuck (and my stupidity). Then Capulet had it for awhile. Now it's Alkali's.

I honestly would rather her have Silver Powder, though. Poison Barb only powers up Sludge Bomb, which kinda hits hard enough as it is. Silver Powder would help strengthen her old bread-n-butter attack, Twineedle, which has kind of lost its appeal since I taught her Sludge Bomb. It's good at killing the random Psychic or Dark-type, sure, but even then, it doesn't always do the job as cleanly as it used to. Silver Powder boosts Bug-type moves, so that would help to fix that issue.

Trouble is, Silver Powder can only be found in these hyper-specific circumstances: Wild Butterfree have a 2% chance of carrying one, but in Pokémon Silver, Butterfree can only be found one single way—by entering the Bug-Catching Contest (which can only be entered once every Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday and lasts for 20 minutes) and hunting them there. But since I've already been fortunate enough to have captured Sheila there, I only have one option: teach the move Thief to one of my Pokémon and try to steal the Silver Powder from one of the Butterfree.

I'm kind of autistic when it comes to doing shit like that, but that's a little bit beyond me. I'm not that desperate to make Alkali more powerful.

Alkali learns nothing else at this point, and I don't have any other useful TMs, so this is about as good as she'll get for now. I might try to replace Focus Energy with something, though, like Endure. Just about anything would be marginally better, but I don't wanna make any decisions I'll regret later.

I expect her to perform well against Will, Bruno, Koga, Karen... Lance? Maybe. She's honestly pretty solid all-around.

---

If I had to pick a favorite across my entire collection, Sheila would probably be the one. I know that's dangerous to say, but honestly, it hasn't been that big of a secret. But it seems uncanny. Every single time I specify a particular Pokémon as a "favorite," they always seem to die shortly thereafter. But Sheila has always been my #1, and yet she's still alive after all this time—and I very much plan to keep it that way.

As I mentioned, she's been on the team since I caught her in the Bug-Catching Contest. She was one of the last Pokémon I was able to catch before the Whitney massacre, and she was the one who led the remnants of my team out of that terrible situation. She has the highest stat average out of anyone in the squad, and has always been extremely reliable (despite not being able to Fly).

Her main bread-n-butter moves are Wing Attack and Slash—maybe not the best moves in the game, but with her massive Attack stat, they still get the job done. She also learned Swords Dance so that she can hit even harder, though I had to choose that over both Agility and Double Team.

Detect is here to ensure that she survives. She can scout moves with it so that she doesn't get hit by any random Rock Slides or something crazy. She's honestly the last member of the team that I want to die, so I'm giving her extra special attention in that regard, and I think it compliments her fighting style well. Mindless offense isn't her style—Detect gives her a moment to breath and consider her situation. That said, I honestly probably should've taught this move to Alkali, but I just like Sheila too much.

She holds the Rattaboy's old Pink Bow to help power up Slash.

I expect her to perform very well against Bruno, but I really have to watch out for Rock-type moves.

---

Peckham has been on the team since I caught him as a Chinchou in the harbor of Olivine City, and objectively speaking, I think he's actually the most powerful Pokémon on my team, just in terms of raw strength.

Rain Dance was an amazing move to teach him, because it makes Surf hit harder than a mortar shell. There's very few things I haven't been able to one-shot with a Rain-powered Surf, and now that he's holding Verbette's Mystic Water (in lieu of the Magnet), I think he's a pretty unstoppable force.

I also replaced Spark with Thunder, because Thunder has 100% accuracy when it's raining, and that's way too fucking awesome for me to pass up. When I played Pokémon competitively, I used a Drizzle Politoed team, so this kinda takes me back to those days. This is also why I replaced the Magnet with Mystic Water—because Thunder is now hitting harder than Surf.

How was I able to get Thunder? Well, there's only one way to obtain it in this generation: Gambling.

You can either waste a lot of money on 5500 coins to purchase the TM, or you can nut up and try your luck at the slots—and try my luck at the slots I did. I think I must have found the rigged machine, or something, because I've never gotten so many jackpots before. I was able to accrue enough coins in less than two hours. I've never had that much luck as a kid while gambling, and since my favorite Pokémon is Porygon, I gambled a LOT.

Needless to say, Peckham definitely appreciates the move.

He also still has Thunder Wave, but honestly, he hits SO HARD that it's rarely ever necessary.

I expect him to fucking annihilate everybody, but especially Bruno (he'll take care of what Sheila cannot).

---

Oh, Miltank, I was so wrong about you. All of my 5% encounters have been so good to me.

I first caught her in Route 38, well after the Whitney massacre, but not before the scars healed. I was so resentful towards her species at the time, I didn't even give her a nickname—but then it occurred to me that she would actually help immensely for the fight against the Ice-type gym leader, Pryce. And help she did. She fucking annihilated him with Rollout, the same way Whitney did to me.

Using her that way feels like I'm engaging in the dark arts, but she's been such a great help that I don't even care. Her stats are pretty incredible for being a derpy cow, and she's actually pretty versatile, too. She's a hard-hitter, she's a cleric, and she's a relatively speedy tank. She even learns a fuckton of TMs, and I'm definitely gonna be taking advantage of that here.

Body Slam is temporary. I may replace it with Return, I'm not sure yet. Both are hard-hitting STAB moves on their own, but it ultimately doesn't matter, because I'm actually going to be replacing it with Defense Curl just before Lance.

Yes, Defense Curl is actually a TM in this game.

And yes, I'm actually going to be using it just before the final battle.

What the fuck is this nuzlocke.

The reason I'm doing that is because I'm going to be using Rollout against Lance, and Defense Curl doubles Rollout's power. Simple as that. It's a huge gamble, but Lance's Dragonite only have two weaknesses—Ice, which I have very limited access to, and Rock. Since Rock Slide is not a TM in this game, I can only rely on Rollout as my sole coverage.

So yeah, that's my ace-in-the-hole against Lance—a fucking rolling cow. It's actually pretty dicey, and perhaps not the best and most optimal thing for me to try, but just think about how satisfying it'll be for me if I actually manage to pull it off. Even if she misses or something, I still think she'll be tanky enough to withstand all of his Pokémon's attacks. She IS a Miltank, after all.

Hard Stone is there just to give Rollout more power, of course.

If there's ever a point she needs to heal, I'll use Milk Drink. Earthquake is there just for some extra coverage. Maybe she can kill some of Koga's Pokémon with it or something.

So yeah, I'm expecting some pretty big things from her. I really hope she doesn't disappoint—it's not like she has before.

---

Narayan is the newest member of the team—I caught him very recently on Route 45. He's another rare 5%er, so having him in general is really cool.

His exceedingly high Defense, coupled with his amazing defensive typing, are the best things about him for sure. But I'm not gonna lie—I'm honestly kinda disappointed with Narayan in terms of the moves he's learning (or not learning, in this case).

You may have noticed that his moves kind of suck. And you're right, they do. But that's seriously the best I can manage with him at this point in the game.

He learns Steel Wing at level 49, the very next level, so I'll be replacing Swift with that very soon. I can't do it right now, because my level cap is set to 48, meaning I'll only be able to try for it while I'm in the middle of fighting the Elite 4.

Swagger is there just for fun, honestly. Normally a high-risk, high-reward strategy (because it doubles your opponent's Attack before confusing them), it actually goes extremely well with not Fly, but also his high Defense. Even if I raise a wild Raticate's Attack up to +4, a Hyper Fang is only able to do ten fucking percent damage. And with Fly, he gains one turn of invulnerability anyway, while his opponent is stuck in a 50/50 chance of striking itself.

Agility is just kinda there, and he holds a Sharp Beak to power up Fly.

Now that I think about it, his moves aren't so bad after all. His natural moveset is definitely underwhelming, though. He doesn't even learn Spikes or Whirlwind until Generation III.

I don't expect him to do particularly well against anyone in particular—like Alkali, I think he serves as a good general purpose Pokémon who can help no matter the situation.

---

A very, very wise man once said, "I may have gone too far in a few places."

That's a pretty accurate description of how I feel right now.

Shuckle is Shuckle—and in Generation II, he is perhaps at his most Shuckliest.

The last move he EVER LEARNS is learned at level 37, and he never learns anything else.

This is the absolute best moveset that I can possibly give him, perhaps ever, with the exception of Toxic.

His only purpose, really, is to stall. Sandstorm is actually pretty brutal in this generation—we're all used to buffet damage being about one sixteenth of health. Barely a scratch. But in Gen II, the buffet damage is actually one eighth, and because of Shuckle's typing, he's actually immune to it. Whatever damage he ends up taking, I can easily just use Rest to clean it all up, and then wake up immediately with a Mint Berry.

I don't think I need to explain the potential memery that the move Encore can produce.

I don't know what I expect Shuckie to do, to be honest. I just feel like I HAVE to use him, for the memes. The run isn't complete without it. If you thought training him up was a bitch, you'd actually be wrong—I just used an Experience Share, and since he doesn't originally belong to me, he actually gains experience very fast.

The worst part of his training was the mere fact that I had to go Mint Berry picking, and I can only pick one Mint Berry per day. But I think I have a pretty decent stockpile of them now.

---

So yeah, I'll be challenging the Elite 4 very soon. I'll have a separate post for each battle.

Hopefully nothing totally disastrous happens. I'm not sure what I'll do if it does.

Quote from: Verbatim on October 14, 2017, 07:34:14 PM

Quote from: challengerX on October 14, 2017, 07:31:47 PM

Taking life is always bad.

nope

We've had this exact same conversation before, and we got nowhere. I really don't care dude. Good luck with being a sociopath lmao

i'm sociopathic because my entire life philosophy is basically rooted in purging all sociopathic thought

whereas you can't even put down a pork chop, because you're too fat and stupid

just shoot yourself or something

Killing a deer that's just chilling eating grass is absolutely bad.

yes

but that's no longer inherent

Says who? You're still taking life.

intelligent

killing isn't inherently bad, and you've been saying this yourself for literal years

Quote from: Verbatim on October 14, 2017, 06:46:10 PM

Quote from: challengerX on October 14, 2017, 06:45:00 PM

It might not be pain in the way you and I feel it

then it isn't pain

Some scientists say it is, some say it isn't. It's up for debate. But that was never really my point. My point was you're still killing a living being to prolong your own life.

What exactly is the point of being vegan?

to help minimize the suffering of sentient organisms that obviously feel pain without any debate

slow learner

It might not be pain in the way you and I feel it

then it isn't pain

Quote from: challengerX on October 14, 2017, 04:28:15 PM

Just like there's something wrong with you if you're homosexual, asexual, or even feminine at all.

You're not serious

he also thinks plants feel pain

challenger is not a person anyone should take seriously

Quote from: Verbatim on October 14, 2017, 04:03:04 PM

i saw that meme several weeks ago

i STILL don't get it

I     I I

I I   I_

This is origin. It`s a strip from CTRL+ALT+DEL webcomic.

Spoiler

It didn`t fit well, because CTRL+ALT+DEL is usually comedic comic, and it got a bad reception to the point where other webcomics started to parody this strip.

people still follow webcomics?

Why, is the french dub superior to the rest?

Yeah, but it's hard not to be superior to the Japanese when it comes to voice acting (or anything).

All Japanese people are actually born with a mutation that prevents them from being good voice actors, especially if they're speaking in their native language. You can look it up.

RIP Garcia, died to the rival. My sister came home and started making loud noises for ten straight minutes, making the dogs bark as loud as she could, and it started affecting my judgment. I used Rollout during and was locked into it, resulting in his death.

This run is an absolute joke.

Chinatown would've been a free ticket win against Karen. Dark's only other weakness is Bug.

Might have to take Alkali (Beedrill), then, and I might just end up taking Shuckle for the memes, replacing Gyarados.

If I can still get Heracross, Pineco, and Ledyba at some point in Kanto, I'll have a full Bug-type team.