So, after an extremely arduous training process, I went ahead and trained not just everyone on my team to level 38, but every Pokémon that I believe is worth using at all in my entire collection.
This includes Sheila, Peckham, December, Rocky, Montague, Narayan, Prithvi, Verbette, Alkali, Capulet, and even Shuckie, Madam, and—perhaps most surprisingly—Mr. Green, my Poliwag who is now a Poliwhirl. A lot of things happened during this long session, so I'll try to take note of all the biggest things.
The purpose of training all these Pokémon up was simple—I'm not sure what to do against Clair, so I wanted to explore all of my options. Not only does this give me a chance to use a bunch of Pokémon I've never cared to use before, it lets me know what'll actually help me during this gym fight, and if another big tragedy happens, I'll have a huge safety net, because now I have a box full of trained-up Pokémon ready to fight, right out of the box.
In terms of catching new Pokémon, I've burned pretty much all the areas in Johto at this point. Here are the remaining areas:
- Cherrygrove City, which I'm still saving until I get the Super Rod
- Tin Tower, which requires me to find a Rainbow Wing
- Mt. Mortar, which I'm still saving for Tyrogue, and requires me to beat Clair
- Dragon's Den, which I can't access until I beat Clair, and I'm also saving it for the Super Rod
Not a lot I can do. So, all I can really do is train the Pokémon that I do have.
A small tragedy did occur early on, however. While I was training Cthulha, my Tentacruel, I made a lapse of judgment that resulted in her death, and it's another embarrassing one.
That day, someone's car alarm was going off for hours on end. I was playing Pokémon to distract myself, getting myself into a rematch battle with Juggler Irwin (who only uses Voltorb and Electrode, so I didn't think there would be a problem). But because the noise was so incessant and loud, I had to stop playing for a moment and take the issue into my own hands. While I stopped playing, I was in the middle of an imminently dangerous situation that I wasn't fully cognizant of.
Irwin sent out his Electrode and used Rollout. I'm not scared at all—Electrode is no Miltank, so I'm not thinking it's gonna be doing too much damage. However, Electrode is also the fastest Pokémon in the game, and Cthulha's most powerful move—Surf—isn't doing enough damage to KO it in less than three hits. By the time the Electrode will be in KO range, Cthulha will already be getting smacked by a level 4 Rollout, and that's not something that she can take. If I try to heal, Cthulha will tank the move, but then she's just going to get outsped by the next Rollout, a level 5, which will certainly ensure her death.
I decided to heal, banking on the Electrode missing. It didn't. Cthulha is at 20% now, and now I have to think about whether to heal and bank on a miss yet again, or if I should just switch out. At this point, the car alarm that's going on outside is starting to drive me nutty, and in order to think this stressful situation through, I would've liked to have peace and quiet. So I put the game down, leaving it on the "select which Pokémon to heal" screen, and waited for the alarm to stop—but it continued for another two hours.
Fed up with waiting, I thought to myself "fuck it" and picked the game up again. Trying to recall exactly where I left off, I see a screen telling me to choose a Pokémon—ah, I must have been trying to switch out to a more physically defensive Pokémon, because I'm about to tank a full-power Rollout from an Electrode. But before I do that, I should compare Cthulha's Defense with that of the rest of her team.
I selected Cthlulha, but no option to check her stats appeared. Instead, she was healed up.
Of course, she was then one-shotted.
Salty beyond belief, and against my best judgment, I send out Capulet, my new Weepinbell and the weakest member of my team, against the Electrode. Rollout's counter is reset by now, I know that much, so there's not much it should be able to do now.
And then it self-destructed.
I watched Capulet's health bar drop all the way down...
...until he hung on with just 3 HP left.
With all the experience points Cthulha gained during that fight, they were all gone to waste, but at least Capulet—who has given me nothing but grief since I caught him—has shown me he's able to tank the second most dangerous move in the game.
The worst thing about losing Cthluha is that she was my Whirlpool user, so now I have to teach the worst HM move in the entire game to another Pokémon—because before I fight Clair, I want to take on Lugia within the Whirl Islands. If I manage to take it out, maybe I'll get Ho-Oh's Rainbow Wing, and I'll be able to enter the Tin Tower, where I can try to catch another Gastly. I went ahead and taught it to Verbette, replacing Splash.
After that drama, I removed Irwin from my contacts, because he's a piece of shit who killed my Pokémon, and I relegated myself to training exclusively inside the Ice Path, hunting Golbat and Delibird (which give tons of exp for little effort). I trained all the aforementioned Pokémon, and here were the standouts:
Verbette may have taken a million years for me to train, but she now has the highest stat average out of anyone in the whole collection. She's fierce and loyal, but thinks very highly of herself and very lowly of her teammates. Relies on Strength and Surf to get damage in, and still holds Mystic Water. Very bad at hitting with Whirlpool, though to be fair, it's only 70% accurate in this generation, because it's a terrible terrible move.
Montague has FINALLY evolved into an Umbreon—at the exact level I wanted him, too, meaning he learned both Bite and Confuse Ray at the same time. He also still holds the Quick Claw, because Umbreon is kind of on the slow side. Even though his stat average now exceeds Sheila's, he had a very rough start just after evolving. He's meant to be a defensive Pokémon who can tank a lot of hits, but one time, he took 80% damage from Delibird's Present. I mean, it was a critical hit, but
goddamn, if he would've gotten killed by a Delibird, I probably would've ragequit the challenge, to be honest. He seems quiet in a resentful way, his hope and optimism as an Eevee gone.
Ever since Narayan's amazing performance against that Golem, he's been pretty lukewarm lately. He hasn't learned any cool moves whatsoever—not even Steel Wing, which was what I was hoping for. I'm still ecstatic to have him on the team, but training him up was actually kind of slow and boring. Even he seems bored, like he considers himself too good for me or something. I picked up the Sharp Beak from the final weekday sibling—I collected every type-enhancing item from them all now (the only types I'm missing are Bug, Psychic, Dragon, and Steel).
Madam the Girafarig is a pretty cool Pokémon, but she doesn't seem particularly outstanding other than the fact that she learns Baton Pass naturally. With Agility, I'll be able to pass over some massive speed boosts to my slower Pokémon, which is kind of intriguing, but she won't much help against Clair.
Shuckie the Shuckle is technically not my Pokémon. He was lent to me by an NPC who intended for me to give him back later, because I'm only protecting him from my rival (who stole that same kid's Sneasel). If you give Shuckie back, he'll just take it and give you Berry Juice as thanks. But if you raise the Shuckle's happiness to about 200, he'll actually let you keep him, and that's just what I did. If you don't let him have it back, he'll just call you the thief that you are. But yeah, he's officially mine now, and that's kinda neat I guess. I was only using him as a temporary Strength/Rock Smash user, but maybe I'll find some meme-y purpose for him later on down the line.
Capulet FOREVER disappoints me. I know for a fact that Clair uses a Kingdra—a dangerous Water/Dragon type that is weak only to Dragon and Grass. Capulet happens to be a Grass-type, but since I caught him as a level 22 Weepinbell, he doesn't happen to know Vine Whip. It got replaced by Wrap. That's okay, though—I thought I could just train him up until he learns the
next Grass-type move, which would normally be Razor Leaf.
Well, my level limit right now is 40, and as it turns out, Weepinbell doesn't learn Razor Leaf until level 42. Son of a goddamn bitch.
My only hope of hitting that Kingdra super effectively now is for it to use a Dragon-type move against December, who now knows Mirror Move. If that happens, Mirror Move will shoot the Dragon-type move right back at the Kingdra, who will take massive damage from its own redirected attack. That's providing that December will be able to take some degree of abuse, which I'm not so confident about. We'll have to see.
In terms of hitting any other Dragon-types super effectively, I have almost nothing else. I have an Icy Wind TM that I got from Pryce, but it's so low-power that I may as well just use my regular attacks. I also have Ice Punch, but out of my entire collection, there are only two things that can even learn it: Prithvi, and... Mr. Green, once he evolves into Poliwhirl.
Both of their special attack stats are woefully low, but once Mr. Green evolves, it'll be slightly higher. So, my hand has been forced—I'm yet again training a Pokémon I never thought I'd ever use in this challenge. He'll likely never become a Poliwrath, and he for sure won't become a Politoed, but for this one fight, I think he'll actually have some degree of use. Now, he also has Body Slam and Surf to help him out, and he's always had access to Hypnosis, which is kinda nice.
Once everyone was ready—and boy, that took a long-ass time—I flew over to Olivine City to take care of one more thing. I have this Krabby named Eugene that an NPC character wants to trade for a Voltorb. Originally, I wasn't going to do this, but 1.) I already have enough Water-types anyway, and 2.) it's not like I won't have hundreds of opportunities to catch Krabby in Kanto anyway. Trading for a Voltorb does two things—gives me a temporary Flash user (since I need to light up the Whirl Islands anyway, and I'm too annoyed at Capulet to use him), and also gives me a fourth ID number for the Lucky Number Show.
The Voltorb's name is Volty.
The Lucky Number for this week is 19666, by the way. I didn't win anything—I guess that means my Pokémon are pure.
Anyway, I made my way to Lugia's chamber in the Whirl Islands and took him on. The Pokémon I took along with me for this fight are Peckham, Rocky, Montague, Narayan, Verbette, and Volty—all of whom (except Verbette and Volty) have some kind of type advantage against Lugia, whether it be access to super effective moves or just being able to tank an Aeroblast.
I considered taking Mr. Green, but I decided against it. He's still a rookie, and his stats are a bit too low right now. He doesn't need to be fighitng against any Uber-tier legendaries just yet.
Still, I was kinda scared, to be honest—Lugia's stats are perhaps some of the best in the entire game, and it's level 40. I know that it knows the following attacks: Aeroblast, which is gonna be devastating, and Safeguard, which will prevent me from paralyzing it. If it knows Psychic, I'm probably gonna lose a Pokémon, but it'll be okay, because Montague (being a Dark-type now) is immune to Psychic-type attacks.
Speaking of that, I officially have both a Dark and Steel-type on my team. NOW I'm playing Generation II.
I decided to lead with Peckham, because he has Thunder Wave, and even though I just said that it has Safeguard, I'm banking on the idea that Peckham will be faster than it. He also resists Aeroblast and is rather bulky overall, so even if something goes wrong, he should be able to tank whatever Lugia throws at him.
Lugia wound up being faster—but instead of using Safeguard, it went straight for the Aeroblast.
It did 40%, which kinda scared me until the text said "critical hit." If that was a crit, this fight is gonna be a breeze.
I responded Thunder Wave followed by Spark, which did about 40% as well. Pretty decent, but the Lugia just shrugged it off by revealing its third move, Recover. This could take awhile, I thought to myself, but as long as it doesn't have anything nasty in its fourth moveslot, I should be okay.
Turns out, its fourth move is only Gust. Knowing this, I was able to go ham on the poor thing, switching between all of my teammates to give each of them a piece of the experience pie. Narayan lowered its accuracy with Sand Attack a few times, so even if it wasn't fully paralyzed, it was having some trouble landing any moves in the first place.
Montague landed the final blow with Bite, though in retrospect, it would've been cooler to use Shadow Ball. Ah well.
I didn't get anything out of the fight except for experience, not even the Rainbow Wing I was searching for. Kind of a bummer, but it's okay—I feel more than ready to take Clair on now.
Below is the team I plan on using against Clair, and I'll go over why in the next post once I beat her.
PARTY:
BOX:
TRADED AWAY:
RIP:
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