I haven't made a ton of progress lately; I've mostly just been training, but I still have some shit to talk about.
The original plan was to train at the Whirl Islands, but... oops. I forgot that I can't right now. Even though I have the HM for Whirlpool, I forgot that you need the Glacier Badge first in order to use it. Even though Lance was kind enough to remind me, it still went through one ear and out the other. That's okay, though—Pryce is exactly who I'm training for anyway, so it doesn't really matter where I train.
I think I discussed earlier how I wanted to give the best of my boxed Pokémon a "tryout" session. I'm woefully ill-prepared to fight Pryce with my current team. He runs an Ice-type gym, and his strongest Pokémon, Piloswine, is a level 31 Ice/Ground-type beast who probably knows some scary shit like Magnitude and Aurora Beam, which pretty much puts Sheila, Peckham, December, and Rocky totally out of commission.
As for Montague, he still needs to evolve, and though I thought Rosalie would be ready to fight by level 31, recent developments (which I'll go over later) have shown me that she unfortunately won't be battle-ready until she's level 41.
So, I looked over my box carefully, considering each of my options. I needed at least THREE usable Pokémon to feel safe.
- Alkali might actually have some use, since I recall seeing Jynx in that gym, and she doesn't get hit by anything too hard. That said, once the Jynx trainer is taken care of, she'll have limited use against Pryce himself.
- I love Tentacruel, but she'll probably get destroyed by Piloswine's Ground-type moves.
- Seaking is absolutely useless beyond its utility as an HM buddy.
- Shuckle is Shuckle.
- Madam Girafarig is interesting, and I might just use her later, but she won't help much for this gym.
- Verbette the Magikarp could evolve right away into Gyarados, who might actually be helpful. Trouble is, Gyarados is gonna be difficult to train without teaching it a bunch of shitty HMs like Strength and Surf, which I wanted to avoid.
Pretty much everyone else is too weak or won't help.
Well, except for one more option, and I can't believe I'm saying it:
Miltank.Miltank with Rollout might just be exactly what the doctor has ordered for this gym. Not only is she extremely bulky, she's fast and hits relatively hard. She's packing Defense Curl to give Rollout that extra punch it needs, and since it's a Rock-type move, it hits Pyrce's Ice-types super-effectively. Knowing that, I can let her borrow Rocky's Hard Stone to boost that move's power even further. Barring that, she also has a decent STAB move in Stomp that can induce flinching. And perhaps best of all, she can use Milk Drink for a solid recovery option (once she learns the move).
However, because of my scorn towards her species, I never even bothered to give her a nickname. I'm not forgetting the Whitney massacre. BUT, if she actually performs well in this fight, you know what? I'll have no qualms whatsoever with giving her a name. But she'll have to prove herself.
Funnily enough, she's already looking quite promising. I brought her from level 13 to level 22 before I decided to take a break. At level 19, she learned Milk Drink, completing her solid moveset.
I learned something really cool about Milk Drink that day—I discovered that it can actually be used outside of battle to help heal your team to a minor extent. In all my years of playing this game, I never knew this. It doesn't even cost any PP. But Miltank can't use it to heal herself outside of battle; she only serves as a cleric for others, and when she heals someone, it take a cut from her own HP in exchange. I actually really like this mechanic from a nuzlocking perspective, and it'll be fun to see how I'll be able to apply it during the rest of this challenge.
So not only is Miltank fun and easy to train, she's even teaching me new and interesting things about my favorite game. What the fuck, I love Miltank now.
I almost lost her, though.
As I've talked about, one of my favorite methods of training is to rematch the ones I have in my phone book. The more you fight them, the stronger their team gets. This is great for training, but it can lead to some pretty scary situations if you're not prepared.
Hiker Anthony called me up, asking for a battle. The last time I fought him, he had a relatively weak Geodude and Machop. I wouldn't be surprised if the Machop is a Machoke now; either way, even though Miltank is weak against Fighting-types, I still figured she'd be strong enough to take Anthony on. He sounds out his Geodude, and I don't even care. Miltank's Rollout is able to take it out in three turns, and now that Machop/Machoke is gonna eat a level 4 Rollout.
But what he sends out is neither Machop nor Machoke. Instead, he sends out a level 18 Machamp.
First of all, that's cheating on a number of levels. Second, FUCK. Is Miltank gonna be able to handle the strongest Fighting-type in the game? The scary thing about Rollout is that, while it doubles in power every turn, it locks you in to the move, and you literally can't do anything else. Not even use items or run (not that I'd be able to run from a trainer battle anyway, but yeah). Once you use the move, you have to make sure it's the right one so you can commit up to 5 turns to it. Machamp also resists Rock-type moves, so this could very well have been a huge mistake.
But it wasn't. Miltank flattened it with one well-placed level 4 Rollout for a one-hit KO. I couldn't believe it, but it happened, and I'm so happy for it. Miltank is gonna DESTROY Pryce when she's strong enough.
But you know what else I can't believe?
How difficult it's gonna be for me to teach Smeargle Transform.
Don't get me wrong. I'm still gonna do it no matter what—because for whatever reason, I am DEAD SET on accomplishing this—but I've been reading about Sketch's mechanics, and it seems that there are several caveats that I had previously failed to account for that made me realize just how crazy this rabbit hole I leaped into was. You guys are gonna think I'm insane.
Basicaly, Sketching Transform is not as easy as it sounds. At least, not in this generation (and I'm gonna be saying that a lot, because it's a point that needs to be belabored). You may think that all you need to do is find a Ditto, let it Transform into your Smeargle, and then use Sketch, right? Nope. Not quite. That would be far too easy. Sketch will actually do nothing at all ("fail") if you try to do that.
Indeed, the only way for you to Sketch Transform is if Transform "fails."
In this generation, there are precisely TWO situations in which Transform will fail—1.) when you attempt to Transform into an already-Transformed Pokémon, and 2.) when you attempt to Transform during the semi-invulnerable turn of the moves Dig or Fly.
Both of these scenarios will result in Transform failing. Immediately after it fails, you'll be able to use Sketch, provided nothing tragic happens to the Ditto (like knocking it out with the two aforementioned moves).
Trust me, I've wracked my brain over this. In this game, these are the only ways. There are no other ways to do it.
You might be thinking about Substitute. "Doesn't Substitute block Transform?" Well, yeah, it does—but only since Generation V. Prior to that, Transform will work almost no matter what, regardless of whether you're behind a Substitute. It even bypasses all accuracy and evasion checks. There's very little you can do to stop it.
What this means for me is the following: Rosalie, my Smeargle, is now gonna have to learn an extra move if I want her to be able to use Transform. At level 31, her moves are False Swipe and Sketch. Once I Sketch either Dig or Fly, I have to relearn Sketch to use Transform, so she'll have to wait until level 41. It's rough, but that's my only option. Had I caught her at level 20 (which is possible), she would've been able to do all of this 10 levels early, since she learns her second Sketch at level 21. But alas, I caught her at level 22.
Still determined, I now had to make the decision to use Dig or Fly. I cannot accidentally knock out the Ditto, so the answer may seem obvious: I should choose Dig over Fly, since it's the weaker of the two. But Ditto can only be found in two areas of the game, and at level 10. Smeargle may be weak, but a level 41 Smeargle is practically guaranteed to one-shot every wild Ditto it comes across. There's absolutely no chance. So is this a lost cause?
Not exactly, which is why I'm choosing Fly over Dig.
Even though, sure, it's technically a stronger move than Dig in terms of raw damage, which wouldn't help matters if I were worried about Ditto being able to tank the hit. But I'm not. Here's the thing: Fly does have a VERY small distinction that makes
it more viable for this situation—it's not 100% accurate. It misses 5% of the time.
That means, 5% of the time, it doesn't matter if it's too strong of a move.
It will miss, the Ditto will survive, and then I'll be free to use Sketch right after.
But then, you might ask, how in the world am I going to Sketch Fly of all things? It's not a move that any Pokémon learns naturally (at least in this game), and no NPCs ever use the move in battle. So how do I plan on using it?
Well, it's actually pretty simple. All I have to do is take a weak Pokémon like River (my Pidgey) out from the box, teach him Fly, and then head back to the Ruins of Alph, where wild Smeargle can be found. I'll send River out, use Fly, and the wild Smeargle will Sketch the move. From there, I'll switch to Rosalie, who will then use re-Sketch the wild Smeargle's Fly that was sketched from River. This can be done with almost any other move, too, as long as someone on your team already knows it.
And yes, this does also mean I'll get to Fly around on a Smeargle. It even uses Smeargle's menu sprite (represented by a generic Rhydon-looking thing) instead of the generic bird.
River wound up being a little too weak, so I trained him up just a little bit so that he can outspeed those wild Smeargle. He wound up evolving into a Pidgeotto, and that was enough to do the trick. I now have a FLYING SMEARGLE. Fantastic. The way I picture it, she's using her tail as a propeller and carrying me with her feet or something.
With step 1 complete, step 2 is training her up to 41 so I can finally get this job done. Yes, at this point, there's absolutely no way a Ditto will survive a hit anymore. No getting around that. But the minor 5% chance of missing might actually be my ONE AND ONLY shot at getting to use a Transforming Smeargle in this nuzlocke run.
No—a Flying, Transforming Smeargle in a Generation II nuzlocke.
Truly a weapon to surpass Metal Gear.
That said, the odds of me finding a Ditto and missing with Fly are 1 in 400, so this is gonna be something I'll be trying in the background. It may well never even happen, but I'm gonna try my best. It's for the memes.
Also, Miltank slaughtered Pryce. She landed all of her Rollouts, and Piloswine was smote with a critical hit when Rollout reached its fifth stage. She's earned her nickname: Prithvi (Hindu goddess of earth who takes the form of a cow).
PARTY:
BOX:
TRADED AWAY:
RIP:
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