#in the battle tower‚ which is also the reason i remember thinking gyarados was a legendary as a kid

[front-facing-pokemon]

[nuzblog]

November 14th, 2017

After polling several personal friends I know to be Pokemon fans, as well as asking publicly on here, in Discord servers I'm in, in Facebook groups, etc., I got 17 votes. Of those votes:

Abra got ONE vote. Pinsir got TWO votes. Porygon got THREE votes. Eevee got FOUR votes. And Dratini got a resounding SEVEN votes.

Dratini makes the most sense to me as well, so I'm happy with that result. I cash in my tokens for it, name it Imugi, and head downstairs to start training it. It's only a couple of levels behind my team, and I quickly slapped on Body Slam so it has a harder hitting attack than Wrap, so it should be no problem to get it up to a high enough level to be viable and yeah it totally died.

That's a lot of hoopla for nothing. Whoops!

Well, that's okay. My team as is is pretty solid. Also, Dragonite can't even learn Fly in this gen for some perplexing reason. I send Imugi to hell and go back in to deal with these rockets.

Oh jesus these tiles go so goddamn slow. Whyyyyy. Who thought that was a smart idea. I swear half of my gameplay time was spent just, on the push tiles waiting for the animation to stop.

I emptied out the Rocket Hideout of everyone but Giovanni with no real issue. Like I said, now that anytime I'm hurting I can just fly home, the game becomes way super easy.

I then empty out Erika's gym of everyone but her, leaving me with three notable battle options to take: Giovanni, Erika, or Dingus?

After some quick searching I found that Dingus was the lowest leveled (since I was expected to fight him before even going to Celadon), so I definitely opt to go for him first. He has 5 Pokemon at this point - minus his Raticate, but plus Growlithe and Gyarados - so I box Penthes and head over to Lavender to battle my rival.

Pokemon Tower... the Pokemon Graveyard.

Pincho, the Rattata. Whaca, the Diglett. Maneki, the Meowth. Kitan, the Vulpix. Imugi, the Dratini. This is your final resting place.

Dingus has the nerve, in his grief over his departed Raticate, to jab me with the claims that my Pokemon are not dead, and yet... I too have lost. We could have bonded over our shared pain, but instead, he urges me to battle. And so I do.

Moschops takes down his Pidgeotto with no fear, since it still has no actual Flying type attacks - Rock Slide does it. He then gets off a rock slide on Gyarados, but Dragon Rage is scary as hell so I swap around. Gyardos also knows friggin' HYDRO PUMP, which is horrifying, but Xuth tanks that and kills the damn thing. Minos's part is mainly just to take down Growlithe, which is not hard at all, and Kadabra goes down to a Slash from Cingu. Lanius is left to pick off Ivysaur, which makes short work of Dingus. That's one down.

Inbetween battles, I did some research and realized that you CAN catch a Pokemon in Pewter City. It's Magikarp, by fishing with an Old Rod in the Statues. I do that, grabbing myself a nice fancy Level 5 Magikarp. Its name is Idelle. I get 4 levels on it while grinding it and my other dudes for Erika, and then it dies. That's okay. It is a Magikarp, after all. I have a delicious tuna salad, and move on to battle Erika.

Now, alongside Lanius and Xuth, whose flying and psychic attacks will be invaluable against her Poison and Grass types, I wanted to bring along Minos with Ice Beam against her three Pokemon... but then I remembered that I need Cut to actually get to her. So Penthes, who fortunately recently learned Acid and as such will actually be useful against Tangela at least, joins me instead. I head in to battle her, and... it's not hard. Grass types are kinda flimsy. I teach Penthes Mega Drain, and just like that it's now actually functional again! Only took me forever and a half to get Grass STAB back on it.

That Grass STAB, along with Minos' Water and Moschops' Fighting, makes Giovanni kind of a pushover too. Oh, and Moschops evolves! Which means that the next time I hang out with one of my friends who is also playing Virtual Console RBY, I can trade/trade back to get a Machamp on my team! Which is very cool.

Now it's time to return to Pokemon Tower with Silph Scope in hand. I catch a Gastly, whose name is Sogenbi, and box him up.

Ascending the Pokemon Tower isn't really hard, especially since there's a free non-Pokemon Center healing spot in there, that you KNOW I'm takin' advantage of. I rescue Mr. Fuji, get the PokeFlute, and... well, now I have a choice.

To the East is the Snorlax on Silence Bridge. If I catch that Snorlax, then that's my Pokemon encounter for that route. My other Pokemon options there are Venonat, another Magikarp, Poliwag, Goldeen, Tentacool and Krabby. However, the next route has Venonat and Ditto, and the next next route does too, so Venonat and Ditto I'm gonna get anyway - all it really robs me of is the opportunity to fish.

To the West is the Snorlax blocking the Cycling Road. If I catch that Snorlax, then that's my Pokemon encounter for that route. My other options there are Doduo, and the same exact list of fishy things. Cycling Road proper has similar encounters, and Route 18 has the same list but also an in game trade for a Lickitung if I were to get a Slowbro.

I think... it isn't actually worth overthinking, cause it looks like I'm gonna either way add Snorlax, Venonat, Ditto, Doduo, and probably Poliwag, Goldeen and maybe Tentacool or Krabby to my repertoire?

Almost the whole world is open to me now - all that's left is getting Surf so the water routes to the South open up, and getting all the gym badges so I can go to Victory Road. Exciting! Expect tomorrow to mostly be catching Pokemon and battling trainers! (And by tomorrow I mean, today when I'm writing this because you know I'm playing as soon as I'm done updating the blog.)

[son-of-skarmory]

oursavior-ourlord replied to your post “((Anyone want to place bets on whether or not I can solo Morty with a...”

//Dew it, kick his spectral ass

((Well aren’t you in for a story now?

So, as reference, I took down all the Gym Trainers without a problem with just Nightwing (Golbat). I feel like Nightwing has been one of the best choices I’ve made this entire game.

Honestly I’m trying to think of a good premise as to why (trainer) Falkner would take on Morty with a Golbat, for the sake of story. Not thinking of much, but I should probably also talk about everything leading up to the Gym Battle today.

Got to Ecruteak. Immediately ran into Bill as I was getting everyone healed up, which of course means it was now time to go back to Goldenrod to get Eevee from him. Fuse is now part of the team, and I might just be transferring a Thunder Stone up from a Gen 1 game so I don’t have to wait until Kanto to get Jolteon because some of my team plans (Murkrow) have already been ruined by that. I’m not sold on the name just yet, but I don’t want the common ones like Spark, Surge, Thunder, ect., and I normally use either Thunders or Ion for my Jolteon, but this is Falk.

If anyone has suggestions I’d love to hear them.

Back in Ecruteak...I immediately forgot what I was supposed to do. I took down the Kimono Girls first, just because, but it felt too early to face Morty, especially so soon after Whitney. Ultimately I decided to go to Burned Tower, because I knew there was a rival battle waiting there.

The only one of Volkner’s Pokémon that gave me trouble was, amusingly, Magnemite. Bayleef took four Gusts to take down (with a Reflect up), so I think I’m due for a stronger flying-type move soon. I didn’t let Hiroto (Pidgeotto) learn Whirlwind, just in case Sand Attack becomes important again. With him out of the way...I remembered you can’t lose the Legendary Beasts without Rock Smash.

Which left me with little choice but to fight Morty, since I’m not heading to Route 38 without a Psyduck to train, and for that I need to be able to use Surf out of battle.

Like I said, Nightwing solo’ed all of the Gym Trainers with just Bite. Then it was time to take down Morty.

Ghastly? One-shot.

First Haunter? Piece of cake.

Gengar, of course, was the problem. Because I for some reason forgot Dream Eater is a psychic-type move, which, you know, Golbat are weak to. So my attempt to wait out Sleep was nearly a disaster, with Gengar almost immediately taking Nightwing into the red and healing all of its damage. Thankfully Nightwing woke up that turn, but it wasn’t worth losing my trump card for this match.

So I switched Nightwing out for Sage (Scyther), who took some attacks while Golbat got healed up. Sage did end up eventually falling to a Shadow Ball, but he did his job.

This time I didn’t take any chances, and went with Confuse Ray to reduce the risk of falling asleep again. Apparently Morty wasn’t going to let me make sacrifices again, because his Gengar used Mean Look. Then it was a series of lucky Hypnosis misses as Nightwing whittled down Gengar with Bite...and the one time Gengar hit itself was the hit that took it out.

All that was left was the second Haunter. This one used Mean Look to make sure Golbat was extra stuck in battle (I know Mean Look fades when the user leaves the battlefield, but STILL), and fell to a couple more Bites.

Nightwing is now significantly higher leveled than the rest of the team, so he’s taking a back seat for a bit.

With Fog Badge in hand, I went back to Ilex Forest and successfully caught a Psyduck. Mizu (my brain is not doing creative names tonight, sorry) will make a welcome addition to the team, especially since it will be used in place of a Gyarados and so we won’t have a 4x electric weakness on top of all the 2x ones.

Theodore (Croconaw) has now been returned to Rose.

Coming up...well, Chuck shouldn’t be much of a problem. I have a feeling I’ll be relying on Mizu when I eventually get to Jasmine, but that’s a little ways away because plot.

Can’t believe we’ve already gotten four badges. I know many people have beaten the game, but considering life right now I’m pretty impressed. Hopefully tomorrow will bring more victory.

Also I could now technially got catch a Natu at the Ruins of Alph, and I might just for the sake of doing it, but I don’t think I’ll actually be using it. Because, again, Lugia.

Team is: Sage (Scyther) lvl 21, Hiroto (Pidgeotto) lvl 23, Cherub (Togepi) lvl 21, Fuse (Eevee) lvl 21, Nightwing (Golbat) lvl 26, Mizu (Psyduck) lvl 19.))