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Pokemon X was the first game I played but didn't complete. I didn't even get to the third gym, I think. There was just something about it that didn't awaken my sense of adventure and desire to explore. It seemed too urban, like you were never far from civilization. All the people who seemed to be following you around probably had something to do with that. And there was the way they handled berry growing, by having someone just pull you aside and give you a huge farm to use for no reason, and at no charge. That level of pandering put me right off instantly. I actually liked the small amount of effort it took in Gen 3 and 4 to run a berry harvesting operation, but apparently other people totally despised it. Now, I wouldn't have minded getting a berry farm, if it was later on and something you had to actually earn in some way. But not like they did it in Gen 6. That was just terrible.
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Apr 10, 2018 16:37
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The early berry growing mechanic was not fun because it required way too much time investment for very little reward. The useful berries required so much watering to get any kind of usable yield -- it felt like no matter how much I watered my lum berries, I'd only get 1 back. Not saying XY handled it well, it was a bit silly and I never actually bothered trying to grow anything there because I didn't have Fly yet. I liked how Sun/Moon handled it though, though I'll admit it really lowered the effort required.
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Apr 10, 2018 16:56
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Montegoraon posted:Pokemon X was the first game I played but didn't complete. I didn't even get to the third gym, I think. There was just something about it that didn't awaken my sense of adventure and desire to explore. It seemed too urban, like you were never far from civilization. That's because literally most of the cities are separated by one route.
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Apr 10, 2018 17:36
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Is there even any lore for Xerneas and Yveltal beyond being glorified batteries for a WMD? Kinda! A single NPC in the 7th gym town will talk about Yveltal/Xerneas and their effects on the region. I don't see this referenced on bulbapedia, so I transcribed it here: Yveltal: "It happened around 800 years ago. The Pokemon known as Yveltal spread its ominous wings, engulfing the lands of Kalos in darkness. At that moment, people and Pokemon throughout the land began to fall one by one. Yveltal let out a piercing cry & took to the sky, vanishing to an unknown location. Stories say that when it nears the end of its thousand-year lifespan, Yveltal absorbs the life force of the living things around it in order to charge its own energy. Another tale talks of the appearance of such a terrifying Pokemon. Back 3,000 years ago, the Kalos region was engulfed in a terrible war. According to the stores, a Pokemon appeared and stole the life force of countless living beings. Some people suspect the Pokemon that appeared was Yveltal, but there's no way to know. Maybe they're just using a Legendary Pokemon as a metaphor for war & pestilence. In the tales, after Yveltal finished storing the energy it had absorbed, it transformed into a kind of cocoon, remaining in hiding deep in the mountains. According to old tales, as I say" Xerneas: "It happened around 800 years ago. The Pokemon known as Xerneas used its shining horns to illuminate the lands of Kalos. At that very moment, people and Pokemon throughout the land felt great energy and vitality surge through their bodies. At the same time, a vast forest sprang up, with Xerneas at its center. Legend has it that, when it nears the end of its thousand-year life span, Xerneas releases all of its remaining energy, sharing it with all living things near by. There's another story I know that talks of the appearance of such a fortuitous Pokemon. Back 3,000 years ago, the Kalso region was engulfed in a terrible war. So the tale goes, a Pokemon came to the rescue of all of the wounded Pokemon that had been caught up in the conflict. Some people suspect the Pokemon that appeared was Xerneas, but there's no way to know. Maybe they just wished a Legendary Pokemon had come to the rescue to brighten a tale of woe. Supposedly, after Xerneas released its remaining energy, it transformed into a dried-up tree. It remains hiding deep within the forest. According to old tales, as I say. Stories and tales." It's kind of assumed this would have been expanded on a would-be third version, and probably even go to the mountain range/forest (you can kind of see those areas on the map...). But, well, oops. Right now they're just sort of strong Pokemon that do something on a huge scale at the end of their life span. Surprisingly understated for the things representing life & death. I kind of like the idea of legendary pokemon being used as metaphors for other stories, though.
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Apr 10, 2018 17:49
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FRLG Part 2: Hot and Cold Vermillion City  It's more remake stuff! Using totally legit methods, we can go back to the SS Anne after getting Surf and...   The truck is still here! It still does nothing, but it's cool they kept this easter egg. Whatever the truck was for in the original games, now it's a cool piece of trivia.  There's even a hidden item here! Well that was fun.   With the Itemfinder we can also get some important poo poo. Don't forget it!  With that, we've beaten the game again. Now in the originals, all that was left was Unknown Dungeon, but as you'd expect, there's more to this game than that! Pallet Town   How much have you filled in your POKEDEX? May I see it? Let's see... you've caught... 67?! Now, this is impressive! There's something I wanted to ask of you, FUGURI. Come. Follow me. Oak's Laboratory  I'm talking about POKEMON that have never been seen in KANTO. I would love to go see things for myself, I'm too old. Since I can't do it, FUGURI, I'd like you to go in my place. Green Encounter   Gramps, what's with favoring FUGURI over me all the time? I went and collected more POKEMON, and faster, too. You should just let me handle everything. I know, I know. Of course I need your help, too. Now, I need to see both your POKEDEXES.    This time, you really must work towards filling your POKEDEXES. I urge you to make them the best and the most complete of all time! Truly, this is a monumentally great undertaking in POKEMON history! Gramps, calm down. Don't get so excited. I'll get the POKEDEX completed, don't you worry about a thing. I think I'll try looking around ONE ISLAND first... anyways, I'm outta here!  Alright, with 60 Pokemon in the Kanto Dex, we've got the National Dex and are ready to explore all that's changed in Kanto now that we're in the postgame. ...what do you mean nothing's changed? Seriously? Ugh, fine, we'll go the Sevii, where all the cool poo poo happens. Did I mention this only happens when you catch over 60 Pokemon? That's right, the postgame is locked behind a task and it's pretty freakin bullshit if you want to casually play through this game.   Gimme the good stuff!  Ah there it is. Sure getting the best healing item in the game in the postgame kinda sucks, but at least we can buy as much as we want for so little money. I love it. One Island Town   Oh, is that right? You've caught more POKEMON. Do you know what? Maybe I can be useful to you. I'm modifying the Network Machine right now. I'm changing it so it can handle trades over long distances. When I get finished, you'll be trading exotic POKEMON from TRAINERS far away. But, there is a slight catch. For the link to work, the Machine needs a special gemstone. It's supposed to be on ONE ISLAND, but I haven't found one yet. Who knows where it could be.  "the hot spring pool." BRUNO, who's a senior ahead of me, visits the spa on occasion. He comes to rehab injuries, both his own and his POKEMON's.Okay, there's a few very small changes both in the first three Sevii islands and Kanto, more NPCs have appeared to talk about the Elite Four for the Fame Checker. Oh, the Fame Checker is a pointless item that records gossip on important characters. Like always, I'll go over it later. Mt. Ember   ...Oh, and what're the passwords? At the ROCKET WAREHOUSE, I mean. What, your forgot the password? There're actually two. The first one's "GOLDEEN need log." And the second on is... Hey! This snoop's been listening in! You've been eavesdropping on us, haven't you? Alright, some postgame trainer battles. I believe the original games had, uh, none of those, so let's see what we've got.   ...I'm starting to seriously dislike Team Rocket.     Alright that was... fun? Yeah, we'll go with that.   What a setback. We'll have to regroup. You! Don't even think about taking a step inside here! If you know what's good for you, don't even think about this!    K. Also man there's a lot of next frames hanging around, what an amateur I was, uh, two weeks ago when I got these screenshots.  Hmm, not much here so far.   Oh, something wild, something new?  Eyyyyyyyyy, it's ma boy Slu-   My boy Slugma! After a whole game of only being able to obtain Kanto Pokemon, to the detriment of Pokemon you couldn't evolve into Johto Pokemon, now the postgame is when some cool critters start showing up. No, seriously, Pokemon that evolve from happiness just suddenly stop evolving when you try and do it before the postgame, it's bullshit.  A lot of the new Pokemon will have pretty low levels compared to our team, so having something with False Swipe is a good idea. Hey doesn't Marowak learn False Swipe in Gen 3? You're right, if I only I remembered to keep it until after I'd recorded everything. I'm a loving idiot.   Oh yeah, Braille is in this game too. I'll translate it when it comes up, but this is just the alphabet.    EVERYTHING HAS MEANINGEXISTENCE HAS MEANING BEING ALIVE HAS MEANING HAVE DREAMS USE POWER.     And there we go, back to Celio. One Island Town  Thank you! FUGURI, you're simply amazing. ... Um... may I ask one more giant favor of you? It... it's not anything weird. Please, I need your help. While I was studying gemstones, I discovered something important. There is another gem that forms a pair with this RUBY. That other gemstone is supposed to be in the SEVII ISLANDS. FUGURI, please, I need you to go find the other gem. FUGURI, may I have your ferry PASS and the TOWN MAP?  This is my own ferry PASS. It will let you get to all the SEVII ISLANDS. FUGURI, please, I can't do it without your help. We now have all seven islands available to us. Let's just start by going to Four Island and working our way through them.   Just before that though, we'll head to Three Island to see that... something has changed in the postgame??? Woah.    You remembered that I was prospecting, didn't you? You can't begin to image just how happy I am. So, I'll show you! This is for you!  I can't give you any nuggets of wisdom, so that'll have to do! We've got a path carved to this secret area. And we're also really rich, but I think I hacked in max money earlier to buy all the Game Corner stuff. It's been a while since I played this with the intention of recording the endgame, so I don't remember everything I did.   All that's here is Dunsparce and that's a fantastic reward! That guy can keep his dumb gold. Right, on to Four Island. Green Encounter  What are you doing here in the SEVII ISLANDS? You should quit copying me, you know? Anyways, I already got my POKEMON EGG, so I'm done with this island. Heh, I bet you don't even know about POKEMON EGGS. You'll never fill your NATIONAL POKEDEX that way. By the way, I saw someone we both know on this island. Why don't you go look around if it makes you curious? Me, I don't have the time to waste. Be smelling ya! Four Island Town  Okay, now you should be clicking the music links. Mmm, that remix. There's not many, but at least it's something!   Oh yeah, if you were wondering why I wasn't surfing in some places: you can't. No surfing between these islands.  The last four islands are split two apiece, with this island seemingly a bit small. There's plenty to go over though!   I don't expect these items to change much now that we're in the postgame.   Man I'm jealous of this collection. Is that a lifesize Slowbro doll???     While the Day Care on Route 5 is just to raise a single Pokemon for exp, this Day Care is actually useful and lets you breed. Yes, breeding is postgame for some fuckin reason. This remake is weird, okay. Since we can catch a Ditto it's no problem, but this game does not have an easy route to go up and down and Flame Body isn't good yet so, uh, just breed in Emerald.    If you were to join us, you'd be squashed like a bug, though... How about I teach BODY SLAM to a POKEMON of yours instead?   That was weird but good, why not?    I wish I could show them off... Oh, excellent! You've come to the right place! Look, look! See? See? These are my STICKERS! Look how many I got! I bet you want some. I bet you do! I'll give a STICKER if you can tell me something awesome about yourself.    Hey, I hope I can peel these drat things off again!   There's a lot to talk about the Trainer Card in this game, like with Emerald, but the new addition are the stickers on the top left. When you reach certain milestones in beating the Elite Four, hatching Eggs or winning Multi Battles, you get the corresponding sticker and they're thankfully separate from trainer stars. If you have more than two of these stickers (the first Hall of Fame and Egg sticker), you're insane, since to get to the fourth level of the first sticker, you need to beat the Elite Four 400 times. Mate I don't think I've beaten the Elite Four that many times across my Pokemon career!   Hey there cutie, there's a lot of version differences in these games, with Marill being the LG exclusive.   Oh yeah, since Pokemon in this Pokedex can be grouped on area (completely pointless and never returns), Pokemon that aren't related can be on the same page, even if they don't really have anything in common with each other. Icefall Cave  Okay so only a few Gen 2 tracks have been ported over and remixed, so there's nothing too crazy going on.   Ooh, cracked ice is today's puzzle, pretty interesting.   Did I pick the wrong hole?     Lot of dead ends, so hopefully we're getting somewhere.   Pretty neat, what else?   Ah, finally. I dunno why Waterfall is really in this game. There's like, three waterfalls total (one of which is in Cape Brink) and none have been added to Kanto.   Well not like Aquamemnon was using his moveslots anyway.   I smell idiots ahead.   Aww, shut it, lady, and leave us be. Don't let your glasses get all steamed up!   No, we can catch up later. Right now, I need your help. Help me kick these poachers out before they do anything else. They've been catching POKEMON here, then selling them off! Are you ready? You take that one, please! W-what?! Who says we can't do what we want with the POKEMON we catch?  You! Tell me! Where have you taken the captured POKEMON? I'm smashing your ring once and for all! N-no way! I'm not telling you that! If you won't confess, we'll deep-freeze you. My LAPRAS is furious for what you've done to its friends. Go, LAPRAS! ICE BEAM... Wawaah! Okay! I'll talk! The POKEMON are in the ROCKET WAREHOUSE on FIVE ISLAND. There! I said it! We'll be going now! ...But I doubt you'll ever make it into the ROCKET WAREHOUSE! Heheheheh!  I was born and raised here and these islands. I had no idea that those horrible criminals were loose here... Meeting Lorelei again was cool and she's the only Elite Four member to do anything in this game, but we've got some new Pokemon to catch.   Good snuffle boy.   We can vaguely catch stuff with Quick Attack if we're lucky. Delibird is a version exclusive, along with Sneasel.   With one packed island done (the exception, not the norm), next time we're off to Five Island to see about these Rocket men.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:39
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I don't think I ever saw those stickers you can get. Much less knew you could upgrade them, that's so weird...400 times, honestly. Also, you mentioned that the gen 2 pokemon are all lowere leveled that your dudes, but something that doesn't get across is they're also lower level than everything around them by a pretty significant margin. For example, that swinub can between 23 & 31, but the gen 1 pokemon are level 40 minimum and reach into the mid 50s. And the level disparity raises as you go to later islands. I think they did it so you could still catch & evolve a full pokemon line but it's really jarring.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:41
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So, Lorelei just tortures that guy? Sure, why not.
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Apr 11, 2018 04:53
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Crosspeice posted:
I like how Kanto E4 being okay with possibly murdering Team Rocket with their Pokemon attacks is just a thing. Shame Bruno and Agatha never get in on the fun. Come to think of it, we never get whole lot of details on Agatha, do we? She's never even reappeared in the manga. 
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Apr 11, 2018 06:30
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:I like how Kanto E4 being okay with possibly murdering Team Rocket with their Pokemon attacks is just a thing. Shame Bruno and Agatha never get in on the fun. Only real thing we get about her is she was probably had a thing with Oak when they were younger and had a falling out because he gave up battling for the Pokedex research. Only thing the fame checker adds is she has a bad temper. Which is probably more than we can say with Bruno who is in the kanto and johto games and is just a blackhole of nothing. At least Koga got a daughter. Also she's probably related to Bertha but the only time that's commented on is one of Shauntal's random pre-battle lines quote:""The woman who uses Ghost types, and the woman who uses Ground types. I couldn't ask the reason why their names and appearances are so similar." That's part of a novel I wrote.
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Apr 11, 2018 07:01
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Part 23: Currently Eight Pokemon Gym   And, to get to JUAN, an icy floor will hamper your progress... Listen, I'm sorry, but that's all the advice that I have for you. The rest of the way, you have to go for it yourself!  Final Gym already? I didn't realise I was playing through Yellow again with how fast we were going through this game.   The first two ice puzzles aren't hard, but the last one can be a bit tricky. We want to fall through anyway.  There's a million trainers down here. I won't question it. While I didn't fall in place to start a double battle, we can do one of those with one pair as is. So let's get battling.     Closer and closer to the whole team being level 42.     You can see the double battle attempts I tried for, but this is the only one. At least it's something.     I think you have potential. Why don't you stay and train with us? I wish I could forget about lost causes before I can manage an "Oops!"    Nearly done down here.    You battled with more beauty than I could muster... The grace you bring to battle is fabulous. Oh... I'm so fortunate to have found POKEMON. Oh, there now! Did you have a good look at my POKEMON? I came to this GYM because JUAN praised me for my darling POKEMON. Oh, if only I'd met JUAN years ago when I was younger...   With this angry snowball, our team is complete. So hey, those are some pretty bad stats, right? Sure, they're not particularly awful, but they're just not high enough to really stand out. It's also a pure Ice type, so while it gets every Ice move imaginable, it's a bad defensive type, so hopefully you'll knock out that Dragon before it does the same. While you learned all the good moves as a Snorunt, there's still some coverage to be had, with Water Pulse, Earthquake and Shadow Ball. Otherwise, just focus on its Sp.Atk and try and hit things really hard.     Alright, now it's a straight shot to the leader. But first...   "to ignite my own EXPLOSION..." Maybe it's because deep down, I would rather stay here...Cold Gregg can make use of the tutor move in Pacifidlog, as we'll soon see.  Juan time.  "Ah, I should not be so coy." It was I who taught WALLACE everything there is to know about POKEMON. Once, I had given up my position as the GYM LEADER. In my place, I had entrusted WALLACE with the GYM. However, a compelling reason arose for me to make a comeback. Ah, but enough chatter. Let us begin our match, shall we? Please, you shall bear witness to our artistry. A grand illusion of water sculpted by POKEMON and myself! VS Gym Leader  VS Leader Juan    Juan/Adan: The Gym Leader with the beauty of pure water! From Don Juan, a Spanish womanizer. Thanks, Bulbapedia. And from nada (open sea) and adan (thatch screwpine).    There's a lot of Pokemon between us and victory and with Attract strats, this Luvdisc can be a PAIN for your male members.  But if Wargreymon breaks through twice, then Luvdisc is down. Good job.    By a whisker, this is just a bigger Spheal with more stats. Hey, that's not a problem, but it might be a bit of a struggle getting it to level 44 with just Body Slam and Aurora Beam. Surf, Earthquake and Iron Tail will be enough to keep you going, though there are other Water HMs to keep in mind. Otherwise, yeah, it's very similar to Spheal, which isn't too surprising, but don't expect it to change all that much as you evolve. You learn all the good moves already!   No, don't hit yourself!  Very nice, two down.    Alright, I think this is the final physical Dark type we'll be covering. Hot drat that is a high Attack, at the expense of HP, Sp.Def and Speed, but whatever. Crawdaunt will be making use of its Sp.Atk, which is thankfully quite nice, since it'll learn Crabhammer naturally, which is a great move. If you trade it to FRLG before level 51, it'll learn Crunch too! Cool! Just ignore that large Attack stat, that's what you wanna do, right? Still, at least you get... Vicegrip as a physical move to pair with Swords Dance, which is just grand. At least you get some good physical TMs, like Sludge Bomb, Brick Break and Aerial Ace. No Earthquake though, you are a lobster after all. If you want to stick to the special side, then at least there's Ice Beam. But you're slow and very weak to special attacks, so hopefully you deal some real damage before going down.   Nice and cooked under the shell.   And you can see, this Kingdra is a bit of a butt. But we have ways of dealing with it. It's just as bad as Wallace's Milotic in RS, but let's not talk about that.  IT'S OVER   Ah. Well. Nevertheless,     Okay now the game is fuckin with me.   This is a bit of a problem. Least he's out of healing items.  And since I'm at +2, he's not hitting me for much. Kingdra's biggest boon is only being weak to Dragon, but it can't do a huge amount of damage in return, especially to Water types.    Oh, now that's just nasty.   It's alright, we just need to keep it high enough to knock it out in two hits and so it doesn't Rest.  Well ain't this fun.   But hey, all we needed to do was hit two times in a row. It was that easy. No problem. Had it under control the whole time. Haha.    This catfish doesn't really make you quake in your boots with those stats, but its typing and high HP do make it an alright tank when you factor in Amnesia. Its balanced stats also let it make use of both of its STABs, especially since you get Earthquake pretty soon after evolving, to replace Mud Slap. With Surf, Ice Beam and Return, it's not a bad mixed attacker, if not having the stats to really make a mark. Still, if you boost up your Sp.Def enough, even Grass type moves won't one shot you. And that's all a Water/Ground type can ask for.   Well wasn't that fun? Juan might not be too strong against our team, but everyone got their chance to shine, even if it didn't end up working as planned. Well, that's just Pokemon, isn't it?   However, compared with me or even WALLACE, you are lacking in elegance. Perhaps I should make you a loan of my outfit? Hahaha, I merely jest! Rather than my clothes, I shall reward you with this, the RAIN BADGE! Pokemon Gym  "to your every command." The RAIN BADGE also allows the use of the HM move WATERFALL to scale walls of cascading water. And, so that you never forget the battle we shared, take this...    The TRAINERS who have gathered all the GYM BADGES of HOENN should make way to the ultimate destination. The POKEMON LEAGUE. Travel to the easternmost reaches of HOENN, to the island EVER GRANDE. There, you shall find the POKEMON LEAGUE. Okay! Check out your TRAINER CARD. If you've gotten all the BADGES, you're set for the POKEMON LEAGUE challenge! That's every badge! So are we going to the Pokemon League? Hell no! There's so much left to do in Hoenn, we won't be heading to Ever Grande for a little while yet. Surfing We have three water routes left and they're real easy ones to cover. Routes 132, 133 and 134 have powerful currents that make traversing the entire area pretty tricky, but I'm gonna do my best. Just take the current routes as one big area that we'll be going across multiple times, starting with the top and going down.   These areas are a lot trickier to go over in Emerald since they added more stuff to them, but we shall persevere!   There's also a bunch of trainers on these routes, but they're the usual uninteresting fare. None of them can be registered in the Pokenav! Well annoying.     Still staying at the top. We'll get to all the various items and trainers we're floating by.   With Kingdra actually being used by opponents, you might remember that the line is actually in the Hoenn Dex.   Alright, now that we're on this island, there's some tips and tricks to go over.   Most of the time the current will push you left, so if you can find rocks, or things that block the currents that push you that way, you can reach places you wouldn't normally.   Usually we'd have to just surf in to reach this trainer, but this way we can do more in one pass through.   Though by doing this, we won't do anything else worthwhile by continuing to head left.   In those cases, we'll fly back to Pacifidlog and we'll catch up on the path we just went on to instead head a slightly different way. So instead of going round the island to the Bird Keeper, we just keep heading left.     Don't worry if you don't exactly know where I am at all times, I had to keep all three routes images up so I can work out which bit leads to what area, it can be quite the headache.  Nothing for us if we keep heading left, so let's go down to this island.     ... It was I who challenged you, and yet I lost. I am deeply shamed... You're kidding! Explain how I lost! Haha! You won, all right! I'll work my way back up by taking on TRAINERS I happen to meet!  Alright, back to Pacifidlog!   We'll keep up top and then head towards the middle in order to reach this. That's it, we're done. Back to Pacifidlog.     Now we'll be heading around the middle of the various routes, with lots more items and trainers to find.  Hey now, welcome to trainer island.  "I wonder if I can win on my own."  Play nice you two.   Ah, I see that I couldn't manage to win on my own after all. My wife must be looking for me. I'd best go find her right away. Okay! I won't complain about other people being here. I suppose I can partner up with that old man and challenge that other team.  Goddammit! That is so frustrating!!!    I hope you've been enjoying hitting things with Pure Power, cause it just keeps going on. With good Speed and sky high Attack, all you need to do is click Hi Jump Kick and win. Well cya. Okay, aside from absolutely annihilating everything, you also have Shadow Ball and Return for coverage, but your Sp.Atk is just a bit low to really make use of Psychic STAB, as well as the elemental punches you can learn through Heart Scale. A bit of a shame, but it'll be good for next gen, I suppose. If anything, you can get Ice Punch. Otherwise, you've got Recover, Detect or Meditate for the final slot. Also if you don't knock out the opponent, you'll be in trouble since you're pretty drat fragile.      Wow! That's pretty strong, all right! I can't shake the feeling that someone's watching me. I can't concentrate! That young man over there looks just like my husband when he was young. He's making me blush!  Here's a cheeky path to take, you can just about reach these currents by jumping up here.   I, uh, do, actually. I think about this LP a lot...    I may have lost thousands of times, but a loss still stings. Keep at this, youngster. So you can become like my husband and me. You have a firm sense of purpose. Don't let others lead you astray. Don't lose direction as you grow older.  We'll head back to Pacifidlog, then back to trainer island to ride this current up.  And then we keep going. Until...     It's way more fun to do things the way I want than to be like everybody else. I mean, that's obvious! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. This beautiful combination of themes and objects will dance your heart away. I hope you didn't keep Lombre around until level 49 to learn Hydro Pump, since Surf will do you just fine. With Ice Beam, Giga Drain and, uh, Brick Break, you'll have a fine moveset. It's been a bit of a wait getting here, but Ludicolo is definitely worth it, good special options, good typing and a wonderful sombrero. What's not to love? Now let's head back to Pacifidlog and down from the bottom of trainer island, just barely missing out on the current that drags you up.     Quite a large area for just one item. Well, let's keep going along.     Hmm, was that a dive spot? Eh, probably wasn't important. Here's a water maze.      It's your regional dragon with high Attack. Yeah, that doesn't work too well with its special STAB. In fact, Bagon is just tricky to use, since it doesn't get a STAB move until well after its evolved. At least it gets Headbutt, but it also get Bite and Ember. Hmm. Still, you can teach it Return, Aerial Ace and Brick Break and it'll do alright. But it's gonna need some evolutions before it can make use of its stats. But don't expect to be using your best stats if you want STAB.   I haven't lost my passion for speed. I will try harder. We will return for more training at METEOR FALLS. If you'd like, you should go, too. It will definitely toughen you up! We're nearly done with all these currents! Just need to head off this way.     There we go, that's everything to obtain on these routes. But of course, there's one place left to explore, so let's prep our team.   We can forget Rock Smash for the moment. It'll be important.  Whoops, meant to give that to Wailmer instead. Oh well, Nobunaga can take a back seat for the moment.    That's a big girl. Wailord has a massive HP stat let down by its pathetic defensive stats. Still, it has pretty good attacking stats, so if you can keep all your HP, you can absolutely obliterate with Water Spout, which starts off at 150BP when you're at full health. Aside from that, though, there's Ice Beam, Earthquake and, uh, Rock Tomb? Nah, let's go with Return. Anyway, it'll do what it needs to, but waiting until level 40 is a bit rough and it kinda falls over pretty easily. Still, it's a perfectly fine Water type, so I dunno what else you were expecting.   With a Relicanth and Wailord in tow, it's time to dive into the depths.     Can you solve the puzzle? Get your manual out and translate some Braille! I mean, it's cool, but I dunno why they chose this as the puzzle language. Sealed Chamber  Yep, we can go up and arrive in this strange cave. Fret not, all the Braille shall be translated.  GO UP HERE. All these various rocks are just the alphabet. The real puzzles are just up ahead.  DIG HERE.  That one is a bit tricky, since you get no indication that Dig will open the way instead of just sending you out. The messages usually have a period to throw you off if you're trying to work it out just by the number of letters.   There's a lot of words in here, so strap in. IN THIS CAVE WE HAVE LIVED.WE OWE ALL TO THE POKEMON. BUT, WE SEALED THE POKEMON AWAY. WE FEARED IT. THOSE WITH COURAGE, THOSE WITH HOPE. OPEN A DOOR. AN ETERNAL POKEMON WAITS. FIRST COMES WAILORD.LAST COMES RELICANTH.  Slightly different to RS, with Wailord in your first slot and Relicanth in your sixth slot, we seem to have done... something? Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out.  How about we do something a bit crazy and... head back to Pacifidlog.   Oh wow, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES??? Turns out, Freesample had just the right PID to unveil Mirage Island for us. How lucky.   In all seriousness though, Mirage Island only appears when the two randomized bytes generated by the game match the last two bytes of a Pokemon's PID in the party. The numbers are generated when you go into the start menu and last until the start menu is accessed again past midnight of the next day. Getting the numbers to match is stupidly rare, a 1 in 65536 chance that a Pokemon in your party will have the right numbers, though obviously you can swap in as many Pokemon into your party to try your luck, so the chance can be much higher.   There's not much on the island. Wild Wynaut appear between level 5 and 50, though we already have one from the Egg in Lavaridge. It's not a huge deal if you never see this island, I had to use a neat little program sent to me by Explopyro that matched the PID of the first Pokemon in my party to the generated number of Mirage Island. I've never done this legit, this is my first time setting foot on this place.  The big reward is a single Liechi Berry. This is the best berry for making Pokeblocks, but you can receive them from other players, since it can be grown and obtained multiple times. But that's it for all the secrets around Pacifidlog. Next time, we could go round the region and finishing up all the little things left... or we could conquer Contests. I think we should do that first. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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Apr 12, 2018 23:50
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The Braille actually ISN'T in the manual unless you're in PAL regions, I believe. America doesn't have it, at least, and I suspect Japan didn't either. The sheer amount of leaps this entire sidequest requires is only outdone by the lost item sidequest in BW2 and the ORAS remakes, i love it. Every other thing like this in the series usually just has you go a little bit off the beaten path (backtrack to the power plant! go visit these very obvious islands you couldn't access earlier! check out this unlocked dungeon!) this requires navigating a maze, have dive, recognize & translate braille (& this assumes you realize the braille inside is the alphabet), realize you didn't bring relicanth & wailord (+make the assumption you need to bring it to the chamber and reexamine the text), fly out, catch/evolve them, renavigate the maze and then reexamine the text to do ~something mysterious~ that you may/may not even see later. and good luck growing those stupid berries! They're a 96 hour monstrosity that if you keep up with all the necessary watering will get you...2 berries. rannum fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Apr 13, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 01:12
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Man, a single berry, after all that luck. Well, and a bunch of nigh-indestructible little cuties. I suppose that's a good prize too.
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Apr 13, 2018 03:45
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Is the manga discussion still going on? Because the final battle in the R/S manga is really something.
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Apr 13, 2018 11:30
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Hey, don't give me too much credit, I didn't have anything to do with the creation of the program or anything! I just found it online when I was trying to figure out how to see this content myself a while back. And Mirage Island is... really rather underwhelming, isn't it? I mean, I'd read descriptions beforehand so I knew it was nothing special (outside of the Liechi Berry) but it's one thing to know what it is, and it's another to actually go there, walk around in the grass and encounter nothing but Wynaut. I remember thinking it felt very lifeless the first time I went there (also using the program, I've never seen it legit either). Bulbapedia really likes to claim the Liechi Berry is the best one for pokeblocks and... I guess if you squint that's mostly true? It's true if you're talking about what you can theoretically get on a single cartridge, or with only GBA cartridges. If you have one of the Gamecube games (Colosseum or XD), there are four other counterparts to this berry (Ganlon, Salac, Petaya and Apicot) that have similar in-battle functions (if you compare the Liechi to an X Attack, the other four work similarly for the other stats) and similar performance in pokeblocks but for different combinations of contest attributes. Except due to a quirk in the formula, the Liechi tends to produce slightly lower-levelled pokeblocks than the other four in most situations. It's still a drat good berry. The only other way to get it in this generation was through events, though I think it was one of the more commonly distributed things - at least, the shiny Zigzagoon that was distributed to many R/S players with the "berry glitch fix" came holding one. On a slightly different note... Juan's name comes from Don Juan? really? That puts a bit of a disturbing spin on all of the gym trainers being women, doesn't it.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:37
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Mirage Island sucks. 
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Apr 13, 2018 21:02
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Part 24: To Be A Master Contest Lobby   I saw a giant green POKEMON flying high in the sky. I... I've never seen anything like it. I wonder what it was. Is this maybe a major discovery? It's Contest time! That rival call is only indication there's something to find near Pacifidlog, but it's not much. Anyway, that explains where that call was, so let's see what Pokemon we'll be using for each category!  First up is our random shiny! With a nickname suggested by Radio Free Kobold and a moveset suggested by Explopyro, our green pelican is gonna be the cutest thing you ever saw! While these are absolutely not the perfect contest movesets, it's not a big deal, I prefer audience freedom in most cases, so long as we have one combination and mostly the same category.  Next up is our cool cat, uh, babboon thing, Sunny the Vigoroth by Haifisch, focusing on tripping the opponents up and striking from the back with Reversal.  Our smarty pants pig is Pigger the Spoink by Level Seven that protects himself from opponents, draws attention and copies the success of other smart pokes.  Our rough and tough wrestler is Crusher the Hariyama by Jade Rider, with the classic Endure Reversal combo, with a couple of other tough moves to jam the enemy.  Finally, our extravagant sun is Gali the Solrock by dungeon cousin, that of course brings the sun, in all kinds of ways, from shining brightly, to exploding incredibly.   As you'd expect, our contestants are as good in their stat as they can be. However, that's not the most optimal way of getting points in a contest, as I found out after doing all the Normal Rank Contests.  If you have points in the other categories directly adjacent to the main one you'll be going for, you'll get more points. Though this is obviously very tricky to max out three stats before you run out of Feel. Hmm, I suppose I should properly go over Pokeblocks.     When you create a Pokeblock by blending, the berries you used and how strong they were in a particular flavour determines what colour it'll be and what contest stats it'll boost. What berries used and how many people blended will determine the feel of the Pokeblock and the level is derived from the berries' strongest flavour and how fast the blender went. I'll go into much more detail in the Side Notes, cause going through 20 contests takes a bit of time!  If you don't care about contests, but do about your Pokedex, then you'll still have to feed Feebas a load of blue Pokeblocks in order to evolve it.    After the hassle of not only finding a drat Feebas but then shoving enough Pokeblocks down it to evolve it... the results are worth it, hot drat those stats. Milotic is a great special wall despite its only weaknesses being special, since it has some real high stats and Recover for easy healing. It also has pretty high Sp.Atk to deal some damage, especially with a relatively early Hydro Pump to abuse. However, it doesn't have a lot of moves to abuse, with only Ice Beam and, uh, Dragonbreath from breeding. So it doesn't really do much against Water types but it can Toxic stall them easily enough. Against most special attackers, it'll do really well and can hit back pretty hard, but it does make it pretty vulnerable to strong physical attacks.  Evolving Feebas is a bit of pain, requiring its Beauty stat to be above 170. It shouldn't be too difficult, but if you don't use good Pokeblocks, you'll hit the Feel cap of 255 if you don't watch out and then you'll have to get another Feebas. So long as it has over 170, it can be transferred or traded as much as you want.      Your POKEMON is Entry No. 4. The CONTEST will begin shortly. Please come in through here. Good luck!Alright, it's finally Contest time. Thankfully all the contest ranks are in one place in Emerald, since the Battle Tents replaced the Contest Halls in those places. So all we need to do is go over every single contest is immaculate detail and make this update 300,000 words long. Eh, I'm alright, we'll do one contest and then jump around the ranks before going over the cool stuff that happens in the Master Rank. Contest Time! "CUTENESS CONTEST!"      Before we get into the meat of contests, we have the appeal round! Depending on your Pokemon's condition in the contest's stat, you'll get a higher rating from the audience, which you can determine from the number of hearts that pop up, with eight being the maximum. This is determined by adding together the full value of the Contest's condition stat, half of the value of the Contest's secondary condition stat (the ones adjacent to the main stat, so Smart and Beauty for Cute contests) and half the value of the Pokemon's Feel. You want all this to be as high as possible, as it will become very important in the later ranks.  We've just seen the four POKEMON contestants. Now it's time for primary judging! The audience will vote on their favorite POKEMON contestants. Without any further ado, let the voting begin!  While the votes are being tallied, let's move on to the secondary judging! The second stage of judging is the much anticipated appeal time! May the contestants amaze us with superb appeals of dazzling moves! Let's see a little enthusiasm! Let's appeal!  Here we go, over five rounds, we need to appeal towards the audience and judge to get the most hearts, while not being distracted or attacked by our opponents. Order is determined by how well the Appeal Round went, but for 2-5, it's determined by how many hearts you've accrued over the current round. So since we're starting, let's try and be, well, cute.   Every single move in the game (aside from Struggle) has an effect in Contests, from simply getting hearts, to reducing opponents hearts, to distracting the audience, to changing turn order. There is a lot of strategy involved in Contests and since we're facing the AI we'll see very little of that. Still, let's try and unnerve some Pokemon with Attract.     Well it did something. You can only make those that are still waiting to appeal nervous and it makes them skip a turn, which can be pretty brutal in later rounds. When you use a move matching the Contest, you excite the audience and fill the meter by one bar, as well as getting a bonus heart. Stats adjacent to the Contest stat don't affect the audience meter, whereas the last two stats (so Cool and Tough for Cute contests) will reduce the audience meter by one. Did I mention Contests are pretty random and crazy? Cause hoo boy they are, we'll go over various effects and wacky combinations as they come up, so excuse me if explanations jump around a bit.   Certain moves, usually stat boosting ones, will give a Pokemon bonus condition. For the rest of the contest, all moves will give one extra heart and the Pokemon is less likely to become nervous from other appeals. Multiple stars can be obtained in a single contest for multiple bonus hearts from appeals.   Some moves will also copy the amount of hearts gained by the previous Pokemon, with some variance. So don't expect to copy 14 hearts or something crazy, it only takes the move's appeal into account, as well as combos. No other bonuses are factored in.   First round went alright, but we can do so much more. Each heart kept until the end of the round is worth 10 points towards the final score.  The move you used previously will be greyed out and it's usually not a good idea to immediately repeat moves, as you get penalized. You're fine to alternate moves though.   Certain protective moves will give the user protection from being jammed by future appeals, though whether it's just the once or up to three times depends on the move used.   A lot of moves have the potential to be used in combination with other moves next round to double the appeal hearts of that move. Usually it doesn't matter the order the moves were used in and plenty can be combined with moves of another contest stat. There is a ridiculous amount of these and they're most pretty cool, letting you rack up a lot of points.   Awwwwwwwww yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. Maxing out the crowd's excitement by being very lucky and performing at just the right opportunity nets you six bonus hearts, a big difference. It's essentially random if you get it, since the AI will just do whatever the gently caress it likes and often refuse to cooperate in giving you crowd excitement, the pricks.   Unfortunately, Slokth does not get nervous again.   Alright, our first look at jamming. While every move has Appeal, a fair few also have Jam, which attempts to reduce the hearts of those already appealed, or those that were nervous.  Since Musille used Rest, it was unaffected by Strength.   cutebird and Gulin aren't so lucky, but it's only one heart, so it's not a huge deal. There's some variance in how many hearts you lose, usually when you have more hearts to lose, and you can go below 0 to negative hearts, thus reducing the points you get for a round. That's never fun.   Hmm, why does Slokth have a Tough move in this contest anyway? Well, there's a set number of Pokemon that can appear as contest AI and they're not constrained to a certain stat, so you might see the same Pokemon over multiple contests. Because of this, they have a wide variety of Contest moves to try and cover their bases, though some, especially towards the higher ranks, are more specialized. A good chunk of new contestant Pokemon from Kanto and Johto are added in the postgame in Emerald, but I'd rather just do this now, the postgame will be packed enough as it is...  We're free to use Attract again, but now Water Gun is red. Moves that complete a combination will be highlighted, so you don't have to remember what you've got.     Not bad for one turn, nearly up to the same level as getting the crowd going. The best strategy in contests is to spam a high appeal combo for 4 out of the 5 rounds and then just doing whatever in the last one and hoping you don't get screwed over by jams and whatnot.   Hey, stop that!  Now Gulin gets two extra hearts per appeal. Scary!     ...nice going AI. The more you repeat an appeal, the harsher the penalty is, starting at two hearts lost. Variety is the spice of life!     Pretty standard fourth round. The AI does like to alternate between two moves, especially if it's a combination, so at least they get that bit right.   Bit annoying, but I think we've got this in the bag. I mean, we already won before we started the second round, but we'll get to that later.   And closing out with a combo. As easy as that.   Uh, right. Good thing it rose its condition to ignore the penalty of repeat appeals.   Good to note that piggybacking moves take the most successful appeal thus far as a base.   As expected for the first contest on the easiest difficulty, we absolutely crushed it.  Thank you for a most wonderful display of quality appeals! This concludes all judging! Thank you for your fine efforts! Now, all that remains is the pulse-pounding proclamation of the winner. The JUDGE looks ready to make the announcement! We will now declare the winner! Contest Results  Now everything gets tallied up! First the Condition Round, then the Appeal Round. The one with the highest combined score wins from the points gained in the first round and double the value of the points gained in the second round. It's that easy.   I am shocked! Shocked! Well, we did get loads of points on both rounds, so we left everyone in the dust. I didn't have max Condition points, but I will do in every other contest, so that row will be full. It gives me a lot more leeway when it comes to the crazy Appeal Round. Every 63 points obtained in the first round (rounded up to the nearest star) contribute to a star, while 40 points (4 appeal hearts) contribute towards a heart. Contest Victory  YUKI and cutebirb, congratulations! Here you are! Please accept this prize! We confer on you this RIBBON as your prize!  Alright, one down, nineteen to go! Yeah, you can probably see why I won't be going over every contest we enter. We would be here for quite a while.   Now that we've obtained our first ribbon, we can view them from the Pokenav. Oh yeah, ribbons, that's something that'll slowly be covered more and more, though a good chunk of them are late game.   cutebirb also got his portrait done and we can even be interviewed. There's also one more thing we can do now that we've won our first contest. Slateport City  Please! Allow me to examine how you have raised your POKEMON. It delights me no end to see POKEMON raised by other TRAINERS. The happy expressions of POKEMON raised with proper care... the kindly eyes of the TRAINER that nurtured and raised the POKEMON... The very thought fills my heart to overwhelming with joy. Oh! I do beg your pardon! Forgive me for prattling on so! Please! Allow me to examine how much your POKEMON has grown! Your PELIPPER, it is growing in a most impressive manner! It is one fine specimen! But! If you were to give it this, it would grow even better! Indeed! Let a POKEMON hold that PINK SCARF. It will draw out the cuteness of the POKEMON some more! Scarves! A Pokemon holding this when entered into a contest will gain 20 bonus points in the voting round if it matches the contest stat, or 10 if it's the adjacent stat. You can only get the scarves by entering one contest and showing this gentleman a Pokemon with a maxed out Contest stat.     It's not a lot of points, but hey, might as well. Contest Lobby  That's all the Normal Ranks done, so let's go over two Super and two Hyper Ranks.  "SMARTNESS CONTEST!"First up is Pigger. Let's see if we can logic our way to victory.     These nicknames man.   Our combination isn't as powerful as cutebirb's, but it offers us some one-time protection.   Certain moves do better when the crowd is more excited, getting 1-5 bonus hearts depending on the meter. Combining it with max excitement and you'll have a really solid appeal.     Oof, dodged a bullet there. Moves with low appeal have high jam, with really strong moves having high appeal and jam, while also having a debilitating effect.     Get a good combo going and for the rest of the round the crowd will focus on us and not get any more or less excited.     Like so. Relia also can't be jammed for the rest of the round since it has infinite (really 3) immunity to other appeals.   Confusion related moves scramble the turn order, so it doesn't matter how well your previous appeal went.  The various weather moves are good to combo with, since they pair with most of the moves of the same type, as we'll see later.   I wonder if the AI knows stuff like this will happen beforehand. The extra condition plus the steal variance gives quite the performance.    Then the AI does poo poo like that and I realise it's all just a fluke.   Bah. Obviously this isn't happening as often since not everyone is always using Smart moves.   Don't push your luck pal.   Unfortunately Thief is a Tough move so Psych Up didn't work out. If it had been another Smart move, we would've gotten double hearts.   Haha, won't be getting me.   Combinations usually go both ways, but some moves you have to use first, like Rain Dance, so don't think you can be cheeky and use it second to get double hearts.   I dunno how I keep doing it. We've got this no problem.   I could use less of this though.     Powerful moves with high appeal and high jam are best used right at the end, since you'd have to skip an appeal turn otherwise.   Slowly getting through them. Who's next?  "COOLNESS CONTEST!"Ah, the cool dudes contest *flicks cigarette at u*     Shoot, Chamcham is a pretty rough opponent, as it has high appeal moves and easy combinations.   Our combo isn't too amazing, but if we end up at the back then it'll work out very well.     Well darn. As we'll see in a moment, some moves work a lot better when they're used first or last. So if you combo that with moves that put you in a certain spot for the next round, you'll get a very consistent setup.   That's just rude. If everyone gets the crowd excited on the first round, then the one that did the best will immediately get the crowd going, which seems a little unfair.   On the plus side, going first means three opportunities to get jammed. Certain attacks only affect the Pokemon with the judge's attention. I believe this is the one with the most hearts at the time, but I'm not sure, it could be the last Pokemon to make the judge react to them. I thought it was the symbol that flashes in the bottom left corner, but I don't know what that's for.   Oh dear, some moves do better the worse the previous contestant did in their appeal, so since Golden got a combo, Shrand is out of luck.  Least we can pull off a Reversal.   Bah.    That's pretty nice though.   And there it all goes. Annoyingly Chamcham lost 1 heart from that, whereas Golden and I lost 5. But hey, such is life and random jam.   Remember that combos double your hearts so if you, uh, only get one heart, at least you'll get another one. Sure, not the best combo, but it's better to lower the hearts of others every now and then.   I think we've closed this up easily enough. A few lucky crowd goings, a nice combo and, well, the points from the Condition Round carrying us regardless.   Though going first has its problems...   Alright, we're halfway through the contests! Now onto the Hyper Rank.  "BEAUTY CONTEST!"Let's give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle!     Gen 7 confirmed.     Not the best first move, but it's the only way I'll use the move, since the rest of the set is so good. Some moves try to shift the judge's attention away from the others.   Yeah, like that. It doesn't jam them or anything, so I'm not sure what the point of it is.   Already the moon is being antagonistic towards me, like always.   Praise it! It would've been better if Lunone wasn't ruining everything by being Smart.  Prick.   Oh wow, even with increased condition.   ...huh? That's bold. Explosion, Selfdestruct and Destiny Bond give you a load of hearts... but then you can't appeal again. It's a sure-fire strategy to combo for four rounds, then explode on the last one to secure your victory. But, uh, this is only the third round. The AI does this a lot and it's pretty funny.   See, we can do as well as Lunone by just pulling off a nice combo.   Okay this is getting a bit silly.   Poor Shifty. Sure Lunone is ahead, but that'll be its final appeal points, so well done to it.     Haha, wow, Shifty is not having a good day. Pretty short round, so onto the final one!  The perfect way to end. I think we've got this.   Though SOMEONE nearly came from behind to take it. You can go over 16 hearts both ways, it just won't show it.  Not too surprising, onto the final participant.  "TOUGHNESS CONTEST!"Are you ready for some sweating bulging muscles? Phwoar.     You might think one of these is misplaced, but we'll see how well it does.   Always good to be conservative when you're up front.     Pretty standard first round. Lairn should be watched out for.   Hey give it a break, it only has three moves.    Pretty risky, but it can pay off big. Some moves make you much more susceptible to jamming, so you can lose 6 hearts at a time. Best to do it when you're at the back.   Our combo wasn't the best, but when you get the same number of hearts in a round as another Pokemon, your place is decided on a coin flip and, well, we didn't get fourth annoyingly.   Brutal.   Well poo poo, this might be a problem.   My plan of reducing its hearts didn't work out too well. Some moves don't divert the judge's attention, but will jam those that have it, so beware.   Everyone's looking like a threat here.   Lairn in particular is just dominating.   At least it getting a load of hearts is putting it in front loads.   I know I could use Reversal, but I can do it next turn with a bigger combo, since I'll still be in last.   Though since I just used a Tough move... this is my fault.    Thankfully combos work off the base appeal amount, or that would be pretty bad.    Unfortunately combos work off the base appeal amount, so oh well.   Despite not doing amazingly in the Appeal Round, by getting the most points possible in the Condition Round, we can easily coast to victory every time. Sure, it's a bit cheap, as it's very difficult to max out one stat within the Feel limit, let alone three, but when have easy rides ever been a problem for me, the garbage cheating LP man?  Now onto the final rank and the various highlights of those contests, cause this update is getting long enough already.  First up, it's cutebirb. Even with the massive advantage we already have from the first round, how do we do?   Nothing too crazy in the first two rounds, but that's before the combos kick in.   Oh that's just beautiful. I think we've got this.   And there we go. We absolutely crush the hardest contest rank. Mainly cause the AI is braindead and we start off with a lot more points than them, but details!    I did a painting of your POKEMON to commemorate its victory... Well, your POKEMON's appeals were so fantastic, it spurred me into painting better than I usually do. Look, see?  A work of this caliber, it wouldn't look out of place in an art museum. Huh? An art museum really is looking for paintings? Do you think I should take this there? What, really? Then, sure, I will take this painting there right now. I'll give it a proper title, too. I hope they'll like it and consider exhibiting this. Please check if they did accept this. Thank you! Oh, that's right! As a memento of me painting your POKEMON, please take this.    Not only did we get the last Cuteness ribbon, we also got a ribbon for having a painting put in the museum. Let's go have a look.  I've heard it depicts your POKEMON. Truly magnificent! Thank you so very, very much! Now we can finally get working on getting this place filled. When you finish a contest with over 800 points, you'll get a painting of your Pokemon done. Considering we finish the Condition Round with a max of 652 points, all we need are 8 hearts from the Appeal Round to get our painting (since the second round is double points). As easy as that.  "COOLNESS CONTEST!"Sunny's turn at the Master rank.   That makes things a lot easier, considering it's only the SECOND ROUND.  Things have gotten a lot quicker, which is nice, since these contests take about 15 minutes apiece.   Ah we finally see these moves. Priority moves usually cause a Pokemon to shift to either the 1st or 4th position to prepare for the next appeal. Going to 4th position and then using Reversal is a pretty good way of getting hearts without having to do bad.     We came just short of getting the crowd going, but hey, we did pretty well overall.   There are three titles that can be chosen. Onto the next one!  "SMARTNESS CONTEST!"Let's win this clever clogs.   Pretty good first couple rounds. Blossom seems to be the one to watch out for.  ...at least it was the 3rd round this time.   I think we've got a good chance of a painting.   Might as well use all the moves I'm given, eh?   Should have a good painting for us.  Ah. Hmm. It's different, I'll give it that.  "TOUGHNESS CONTEST!"Welcome to the Salty Spitoon.   While we're not blowing anyone away, neither is anyone else. That's a problem.   That doesn't help.   So even though we got barely any hearts at all, we still won because of the Condition Round. Nice.  But because we never got the chance to get into last and pull off a Reversal combo, we also didn't get enough points for the painting. Yeah, even though we did pretty badly, because we did better than one other Pokemon, we did even worse. Funny that.   Easy enough to win again. This is where we can finally obtain a Luxury Ball, by winning a Master Rank Contest with a Pokemon that already has the ribbon. Otherwise, you'd get the one we'll find next update and that's it. Could be useful to fast-track a Golbat to evolution.   There's only one painting left to get!  "BEAUTY CONTEST!"Shine, Gali, Shine.   We're not off to the best start with a Hyper Beam and then missing out on the crowd.   But by doing a skilful jump from last to first, we can explode in excellent fashion. Sure, it's only the fourth round, but we won't need a fifth appeal.   If there was a sixth round then only Taria could've done something. At least Wobet lasted to the very end for once.   And there we go, 20 contests, 5 paintings and 5 ribbons. Contests have a weirdly deep metagame to them and it's pretty drat fun to do something that isn't battling for a change. Cheers to everyone with their suggestions, I knew the first round would carry your starlights to victory no matter what you picked, but there was some good variety in moves!  Isn't this marvellous? This collection of paintings! Each one of them flawless! None better than another! These paintings have attracted more guests to our ART MUSEUM. Sincerely, I thank you, YUKI. This is my dream come true! This is merely a token of my gratitude.  It's an honor to have you visit us on your busy journeys. Please, relax and do enjoy your visit with us.  We got a pretty neat decoration for getting all the paintings, as well as a Trainer Card star! Only four more to go... I hope you enjoyed this foray into a pretty crazy side mode. Next time, we've got some cleanup to do around the region before heading to the Pokemon League. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Apr 18, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 18:46
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Side Notes 10: Pokeblocked Before you can put your amazing Pokemon onto the front stage, you gotta feed them tasty treats to make them excel in the category you want to put them in. What does that involve? Blending berries together and making some great Pokeblocks with delicious science. Let's go over them. First, you need to pick which berries you're going to use. All the berries have a flavour, ranging from +4 to -4, with rarer berries having higher numbers, as well as smoothness, which varies from 5-85, though only the e-Reader berries have those specific numbers. The Liechi Berry that we got last update, for instance, gives +4 to Spicy and Sweet, but has -4 Dry, -3 Sour and -1 Bitter, as well as 80 smoothness. These numbers matter when you're mixing them with other berries to create your Pokeblock and the more negatives you end up when blending, the lower the overall level of the Pokeblock. So we're clear, a Pokeblock's level will boost the stat of that block's flavour by that amount, though other flavours can be present in the block, and the smoothness of the berries results in the Pokeblock's Feel, which will cumulate towards 255, after which the Pokemon can no longer eat anymore Pokeblocks. So when you throw your berry into the blender, depending on which one you used and how many people you're blending with will result in the AI using different berries. They usually match the main flavour you're going for and avoid duplicating berries, since if you have two of the same berry when blending, you get a low level black Pokeblock with a random flavour. All the various NPCs use pretty common, low flavour, low smoothness berries. But there's also the Blend Master, an NPC who appears occasionally in the postgame who uses rare berries and is near perfect in the blending minigame. Using berries with NPCs gives you a Pokeblock of around level 12, if you get the RPM to 100, but the Blend Master gets up to level 51 under the same circumstances, so it's a big difference. If you use the super rare berries he uses, then he'll use slightly less rare berries to compensate, giving you Pokeblocks up level 88. How is all this level and feel stuff calculated? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let's have a simple example that totally isn't the Bulbapedia example so I don't have to calculate stuff. First, add the sum of all the berry flavours used, so if you blended a Bluk, Nanab and Wepear berry together, you'd result in -1 Spicy, -1 Dry, 0 Sweet, +1 Bitter and +1 Sour. Next, multiple each value by 10 and then subtract 1 for each flavour that is negative, so 2 from every number in this case. This results in -12 Spicy, -12 Dry, -2 Sweet, +8 Bitter and +8 Sour. Any new negatives that are created from the subtraction do not then count towards the subtraction. Finally, set all negative values to 0 and then multiply by ((MaxRPM/333)+1), rounded to two decimal places. So if the max RP was 110, then the value would be multiplied by 1.33, resulting in +11 Bitter and +11 Sour. Since the strongest flavour is 11, that's the Pokeblock's level. Though that won't always be the amount the stat is boosted by, since abilities have a factor into this. They work the same way as the regular stat boosting works, so Pokemon that have an Attack boosting nature prefer Spicy food and any Red Pokeblocks eaten will have their amount boosted by 1.1, whereas the flavour that's disliked is boosted by 0.9, so if the Pokemon had a Lax nature, the Pokeblock would instead be +12 Sour and +10 Bitter. Only the specific flavours of that nature are boosted, regardless of if they're in the same Pokeblock, or in separate ones. Also, each nature gives the Pokemon a unique animation when you're feeding it the Pokeblock, it's the cute little details that make me love video games. You can tell the various flavours and how strong they are by the colour of the Pokeblock. If there's one flavour in the Pokeblock and it's lower than 50 (so its level is lower than 50), then it's the colour matches the flavour colour. If there's two flavours under 50, then it's a mix of colours and the result is what's highest. If it's a tie, then the priority goes Purple > Indigo > Brown > LiteBlue > Olive, so you'll never see an equal flavour Olive Pokeblock. If any flavour is above 50, then the Pokeblock is Gold and if there are 3 or 4 flavours in a single Pokeblock, then it will be Grey or White, respectively. Feel is calculated from ((Smoothness1 + ... + Smoothness n)/n)-n, where n is the number of people who blended. The result is rounded down and cannot be higher than 99. For each 29 points of Feel added to a Pokemon, another star is added to its Condition view, up to a max of 9 extra stars. And that's everything to do with making Pokeblocks. If you've got a large stash of berries, then great, enjoying blending them lots and lots to make Pokeblocks! It'd be best to wait until the postgame so you can get really high level ones, as well as new and interesting contestant Pokemon from other Kanto and Johto, but I preferred to do all this stuff now. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 18, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 18:48
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quote:If you have points in the other categories directly adjacent to the main one you'll be going for, you'll get more points. WHAT!? 
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Apr 16, 2018 19:02
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Pokemon Contests are so weirdly intricate relative to how little they (contests in general, but also the specific backend) matter, I can't blame them for simplifying things in Sinnoh & ORAS. true facts: I messed up a Feebas once because I didn't maximize the beauty of the pokeblock with a pro-beauty nature. Boy was that an annoying waste of time. Dr. Fetus posted:WHAT!? nor did i know you got luxury balls if you did master contests again, or that emerald actually had post-game contestants. Also something cute is that Jasmine & Pryce can be seen during the appeal rounds. Pryce is in the far right corner, Jasmine seems front & center holding a pichu. I think there's a Male Pokefan next to pryce, as well.
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Apr 16, 2018 20:06
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Jasmine is mentioned to do Contests in Gen IV as well. I think she even competes in some?rannum posted:Pryce is in the far right corner, Jasmine seems front & center holding a pichu. I think there's a Male Pokefan next to pryce, as well. Whitney is also on the left. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Apr 16, 2018 |
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Apr 16, 2018 20:14
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It amuses me that all of the NPC pokemon just drop syllables and do bizarre anagram-ish things as nicknames. Some of them definitely work better than others. I'm glad to see all our movesets worked out for you, anyway  I don't know how it determines the NPC pokemon's scores in primary judging, but even on Master rank they don't come anywhere close to perfect stats, so the player definitely has an advantage there. I don't know if the strategy would end up being different in a multiplayer contest where everyone's stats are good (I've never played one), but in single player I've found the best approach is just to focus on high-point combos and hope the RNG is nice about not getting jammed/nervous too much; there are too many different things the opponents' movesets could do and none of them really have a plan, so there's no good way to strategise in response. Best to just focus on your own score and hope they don't mess you up too badly (the more points you earn, the less it hurts losing them). From what I understand, "jams the Pokemon with the Judge's attention" refers to being in the setup phase of a combo. At least, I've read that somewhere, I don't think I've seen one of those moves work successfully ingame so I can't be 100% sure. It would make a certain amount of sense, combos are quite good so putting in a strategy to punish them would be good game design. "The Judge looked away" sounds like it might be a similar one, maybe interrupting the combo. A lot of the contest messages are pretty cryptic, I think less effort may have gone into the translation here. Since you didn't quite cover it, let's talk about Destiny Bond. I didn't suggest it for any of your movesets because I thought you wanted all of the moves to be the same type as the contest, but it's probably the best combo. You can combo into it with either Mean Look or Curse, and since combos in this gen double the base hearts, Destiny Bond ends up giving you 16 hearts. And like you already mentioned, as long as you do it on the final turn there's no drawback whatsoever. A couple of mechanical things that might be of interest: About scarves. AFAIK you only need 220 in the stat to be awarded them from the Fan Club guy, not perfect. They also apply their bonus before the cap of 255, so they only benefit you if your stats are below maximum; you may actually be better off using a scarf in a complementary stat if you maxed one and not the other (and if you've got perfect stats in all three relevant categories, scarves offer no benefit). As a result, the maximum score from the Preliminary Round should be 636, not 656. About Pokeblocks... there are a lot of things I could say, but I'll try to restrain myself. When feeding a Pokemon, the final block still gives its full value even if the Pokemon doesn't have enough "room" left for the entire thing. So you can strategise a bit, try to maximise the gain/feel ratio for most of the blocks and then ignore feel for the last one to get a big bonus at the end. Most of the best feeding regimens end up doing this. I really enjoy theorycrafting this stuff and coming up with different approaches to use, as it can be surprisingly tricky to optimise (I even built myself a Pokeblock calculator in Excel, though admittedly it wasn't that tough to do). If you have a two-flavour block with a tie in level, what colour it gets assigned is actually not random. There's a priority order used to break the tie: Purple > Indigo > Brown > LiteBlue > Olive. This means you will never get Olive and certain colours end up being more common than others. The Blend Master is pretty interesting. In most feeding regimens I've come up with he ends up being superfluous, or only good for the final pokeblock fed, because mixing two high-feel berries yields blocks with too high feel to be practical; those berries work better if you have more players/NPCs to compensate for them and bring down the average. He's also perfect at the minigame as long as you (the player) don't make mistakes to throw him off - I like to nail the first three button presses when it's slow and then let him do the rest, and always end up getting 155-160 RPM with that strategy. For contrast, with other NPCs (or myself in link mode) I tend to get 90-105 RPM at best. If anyone's interested in feeding regimens, a person known as peterpansexuell on Reddit has shared some pretty good ones: Single cartridge, NPC blending only, no rare berries: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonribbons/comments/11t9vo/pok%C3%A9block_recipes_for_good_conditions_for/ (That said, I've found you can improve them slightly if you have access to the Blend Master, replace the final block with e.g. Tamato/Master or Spelon/Master for Cool, and so on and so forth) Single cartrige, NPC blending only, with rare berries (Liechi, Colosseum/XD berries): https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonribbons/comments/11xz7w/pok%C3%A9block_recipes_for_very_good_conditions_for/ With 4 cartridges, you can max every contest stat at once. He has two posts with recipes for these: This has one set using e-Reader and Liechi berries, and one which needs neither (but depending on performance may only yield 254 in one of the five stats): https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonribbons/comments/11su8j/pok%C3%A9block_recipes_to_give_a_pok%C3%A9mon_perfect/ (If you have access to e-Reader berries but not Liechi, I've determined you can replace the final one in the first set with Belue/Salac/Drash/Chilan instead.) This post has a few other sets that don't use e-Reader berries but may only work properly for Pokemon of certain natures. I think the previous post is probably more useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemonribbons/comments/4gz0j2/pok%C3%A9block_recipes_for_a_perfect_condition_no/ There's also a hilarious option available using 4 Ruby/Sapphire games, and the e-Reader berry Nutpea. If you use 4 of that berry, you get a Black Pokeblock that has 3 random flavours of level 2, and a Feel stat of... 1. So you can just keep making these and feed them until you've got everything at maximum, the odds are on your side in the long run (or if you pay attention). Then there's a set I came up with that uses all of the e-Reader berries, and results in 255 everything but completes in 7 or 8 pokeblocks fed (depending on the pokemon's nature). As far as I know, that's the minimum possible. I can share this here if anyone is interested, I've never posted it before.
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Apr 16, 2018 20:32
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It really annoyed me how much Gen 3 and 4 rely on you having four friends to do things with. Thankfully gen 5+ started making steps towards "not everyone lives in downtown tokyo".Explopyro posted:It amuses me that all of the NPC pokemon just drop syllables and do bizarre anagram-ish things as nicknames. Some of them definitely work better than others. What do you mean? there's absolutely nothing wrong with Chokem and Pedo.
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Apr 16, 2018 20:42
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Great update as always. Noticed you had a tough screencap mixed with the cool contest. And yes those nicknames are terrible
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Apr 17, 2018 07:43
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I loved contests on this game. I'm pretty sure I filled the art gallery in multiple play throughs. The AI really is annoying to play against though.
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Apr 17, 2018 15:55
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Kurieg posted:It really annoyed me how much Gen 3 and 4 rely on you having four friends to do things with. Thankfully gen 5+ started making steps towards "not everyone lives in downtown tokyo". At least Platinum let you buy good quality Poffins, even if it was $6,400 a pop.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:15
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I loved Gen 3 contests (even though I sucked at them) and had mixed feelings when they came back in Gen 4. It wasn't the same without any jamming moves...
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Apr 17, 2018 21:18
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Glad I finally caught up, I love these LPs. The braille thing was the hottest thing in middle school once someone figured it out. I remember the day I caught Regirock like it was yesterday. Took me a whole lot of ultra balls and I'm pretty sure I legitimately prayed at some point. Catch rates are awful sometimes.
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Apr 18, 2018 01:41
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I figured there were going to be some things about Contests I missed, I completely forgot to mention how abilities interacted with Pokeblocks, so I'll be adding that in. Whoops! But yeah, I'm not too sure on all the intricacies of what move does what and all that. One of which were moves that can jam, but if they don't, the move backfires on the Pokemon, causing it to jam instead. Brutal. Also, wait, DESTINY BOND CAN BE COMBOED? That's just ridiculous, I'm gonna pretend I never read that. I also think I've never seen an Olive Pokeblock, so I think you're right. I would also have had no idea that scarves weren't a flat +20 points, so that seems pretty silly. I'll add all that stuff in. It's also good to know that you can max out multiple contest stats, so I feel slightly less bad for cheating, you know, if I ever did feel bad for cheating. Which I don't! Sjs00 posted:Great update as always. Noticed you had a tough screencap mixed with the cool contest. Cheers, I got suspicious when I read through my draft and didn't see any screenshots to fix. There's always one!
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Apr 18, 2018 16:08
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Crosspeice posted:I also think I've never seen an Olive Pokeblock, so I think you're right. I'm sorry if I wasn't quite clear before, but I wasn't trying to say that Olive Pokeblocks are impossible. They're not, you will get them if the block has two flavours and Sour is higher than the other (e.g. blend an Iapapa berry with 2 or 3 NPCs). It determines the colour by the higher flavour if there is one, it's just that if the flavours are equal, that priority order I mentioned is used to break the tie. I don't blame you missing things on Pokeblock and Contest mechanics, because there's a lot of weird nonsense going on :P I don't think I fully understand them, despite all the  . I'm sorry if I'm coming across as pedantic and always correcting you, once we're past Contests and Pokeblocks I doubt it'll happen again.Kurieg posted:It really annoyed me how much Gen 3 and 4 rely on you having four friends to do things with. Thankfully gen 5+ started making steps towards "not everyone lives in downtown tokyo". Interestingly, Emerald tried to fix this a little. If every player has an Emerald cartridge, you can actually do 2P or 3P link contests as well, and the remaining slots will be filled by AI competitors. I guess they couldn't make it backwards compatible with Ruby and Sapphire, though, those games can still only participate if there are four human competitors. Verant posted:At least Platinum let you buy good quality Poffins, even if it was $6,400 a pop. Even more amusingly, unless you were blending with 4 players, those work out to be better than any poffins you can make. They have 32 points in each of two stats, at 20 Feel/Smoothness, so if you use them right (4 of each minding the overlap, e.g. Spicy-Sour, Spicy-Dry, Dry-Sour, plus one of anything or to compensate the stat lowered by a detrimental nature) it works out just perfectly to max out the three stats you need for a given contest category. There's pretty much never any need to play the poffin-making minigame as long as you have Platinum, which is hilarious to me. -- There are a few other tidbits I forgot to mention that might be of interest. Depending on what kind of pokeblocks you have, it may be worth using Pokemon acquired in in-game trades. All of those pokemon, as well as those from trades in R/S and FR/LG, come with slightly boosted contest attributes: they have 30 in one stat, 5 in the other four, and 10 in Feel. This is a better ratio than most blocks we can make, although depending on what else is being fed and how narrowly-tuned the regimen is, that boosted Feel might interfere with it eating something else or necessitate slightly different choices. Berry flavours are zero-sum. Depending on what notation you use (different pages on Bulbapedia go back and forth, which confused me for a while), it's either a property of the berries or a property of the pokeblock formula, but the short version is that any increase in a flavour will be compensated by an equal decrease in the flavour to its left (so, e.g. +1 spicy is always compensated by -1 sour, +1 dry by -1 spicy and so on). If you see something that looks like it breaks this pattern (e.g. Razz is +1 dry and -1 sour), look at the "tag" and you may see what was intended (in this case, the tag says spicy and dry, so the -1 sour is compensating the +1 spicy, but then that spicy cancels out with the -1 spicy that resulted from the +1 dry). Amusingly, I think the developers may not all have known this - there are a couple of rare berries you can only get in the Emerald postgame which seem to have been intended to have all five flavours, except because it works this way they end up having no flavour at all and being useless for pokeblocks. This also means that (without hacking) it is impossible to make a pokeblock that raises every attribute. That's just how the maths work out. As a result, it tends to mean that for each individual pokeblock, it's best to focus on stacking similarly-flavoured berries rather than try to go wide. You can continue to get paintings even after filling up the museum, and it'll give you the option to replace the ones there each time you meet the criteria with a pokemon whose painting isn't currently in the museum for that category. Likewise, it doesn't care if the Pokemon being painted has the ribbon or not, you can fill the museum with all pictures of the same pokemon if its stats are good enough. It's weird that repeat contest victories was the only way to get more than one Luxury Ball in this gen, but then Luxury Balls are a ridiculously niche item. Golbat is literally the only pokemon with a friendship evolution that can be caught in the wild in this game. They'll fix that later, of course. -- I've been thinking a bit about the contest metagame, and I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks. The turn order system is interesting, because they kept messing with it in later gens (at least, in gen 4 Super Contests, it gets reversed from how it is here, the leading player goes last). Going first makes you more susceptible to jamming but less so to nervousness (I think on balance losing turns from nervousness tends to be more punishing, unless the other three players gang up to jam). Going later also benefits certain moves, like the copying ones, but then there are also other moves that work better if you go first. Plus there's the "get the crowd going" thing that benefits the leading player if everyone uses on-type moves, which I somehow hadn't noticed until you showed it. There are some win-more tendencies to going first here (especially in making it more likely to get your combos off), but it seems mild enough I'm surprised they changed it. And if enough players bring jamming moves, going first could be a liability. I'm curious, Crosspeice - did you tend to prefer going first or going last? I also wonder whether the crowd would ever "get going" in a 4P contest; I'd think it could end up being a bit Prisoner's Dilemma-ish, with many players bringing moves that deliberately go against the contest category to try to delay it and prevent other players getting it. (There's no hearts penalty for doing that, you just forego the 1-heart bonus for increasing the crowd meter.) And then using an on-type move would be more likely to help your opponents than yourself, even if you get a small benefit. If enough people involved thought like that, it'd probably never happen.
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Apr 18, 2018 17:31
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Crosspeice posted:I completely forgot to mention how abilities interacted with Pokeblocks, so I'll be adding that in. Whoops!
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Apr 18, 2018 19:21
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Explopyro posted:I'm sorry if I wasn't quite clear before, but I wasn't trying to say that Olive Pokeblocks are impossible. They're not, you will get them if the block has two flavours and Sour is higher than the other (e.g. blend an Iapapa berry with 2 or 3 NPCs). It determines the colour by the higher flavour if there is one, it's just that if the flavours are equal, that priority order I mentioned is used to break the tie. It's cool, relax, there's a lot of small details and interesting tidbits I wouldn't have known about if you hadn't mentioned them. I don't think I'll put them in the LP, otherwise I'll just be shoving in small trivia just for the sake of it and it would feel too disjointed. Feel free to chat about Pokemon as much as you want, it's cool, this is the Pokemon chat-o-rama place. OgretailFood posted:Excuse me, WHAT?! Ah, I was referring to how the boosts in regular stats from natures also transfer to flavours in condition stats, but I also forgot to mention that every nature has a unique animation the Pokemon does when you're about to feed it a Pokeblock, it's very cool.
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Apr 18, 2018 19:43
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They definitely wanted to make contests feel like as much of a thing as battles, but do you actually need to clear any contests to win the game?
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Apr 18, 2018 21:00
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Glazius posted:They definitely wanted to make contests feel like as much of a thing as battles, but do you actually need to clear any contests to win the game? Pretty sure contests are optional in every game. I know the replacement in Gen V isn't mandatory, because I never touched that with a fifty-foot pole. That said, I believe ORAS gates a Mega Stone for either Altaria or Lucario behind contests. Can't remember which.
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Apr 18, 2018 21:18
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Pretty sure contests are optional in every game. I know the replacement in Gen V isn't mandatory, because I never touched that with a fifty-foot pole. Lucarionite, you need to beat master rank in all 5 contests then keep doing contests till Lisia shows up as a random opponent, then beat her in that contest. Or just trade a Lucarionite forward from X/Y because you don't hate yourself.
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Apr 18, 2018 21:27
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Oh, that's right. Altaria's Mega Stone would've made more sense given that Lisia actually Mega Evolves her Altaria when you go up against her.  ORAS had a lot of weird gating in general, though.
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Apr 18, 2018 21:32
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:ORAS had a lot of weird gating in general, though. It's just how even gens work. Odd gens, sure, play with everything, but even gens? Hah. You think you can actually play with the new stuff? Don't be silly, that's in the postgame, if not locked behind annoying requirements. You want a Dark type in Gen 2? One of those Gen 2 evos in Gen 4 (pre-Platinum)? Mega Evolving most Pokemon that can in Gen 6? Too bad! Also I want to talk about my Contest-winning team in ORAS but I have completely forgotten about most of it, whoops. I got all Contests by using Megas that I wanted to use but hadn't used yet (and Blaziken, because my main Contest star even in Ruby was Blaziken) and it worked and it was fun. I know I had Houndoom, Slowbro and I think Lopunny, as well as the aforementioned Blaziken, but I can't remember who the fifth was or what any of them did. drat my weak memory.
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Apr 18, 2018 21:42
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Black and White gated all of the old 'mons behind the postgame, too, though I suppose that was to give incentive to use the newer stuff. Also, I just used the Contest Pikachu for everything. It has a very versatile moveset. And as bad as unlocking the Lucarionite is, it's not nearly as mind-numbingly tedious as getting the Garchompite.
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Apr 18, 2018 21:47
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Unlocking Lucarioite is annoying but it's helped by ORAS' contest generally being easier. They simplified combos, added new super appeal attacks you can do (which kind of seem like the precursor to z moves? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DJcg8xLPXQ )and removed feel, so you can max out all your stats on any pokemon. Also there's an entire contest subplot involving Lissia and some dork who uses a machoke, so you at least get some fluff out of it. Garchompite has no such thing to ease up on its grind. Also shout out to Lissia's super fan who gives you the tm for infestation
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Apr 18, 2018 22:00
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Crosspeice posted:Wailord has a massive HP stat let down by its pathetic defensive stats. I think Pokemon makes a really good case for not even having HP and just going off of defense, with a percentage lifebar or something. I mean what is even the point of this?
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Apr 18, 2018 22:09
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magikid posted:I think Pokemon makes a really good case for not even having HP and just going off of defense, with a percentage lifebar or something. I mean what is even the point of this? Variety, mostly. It's also their attempt at balance, you tend to get both sides. Really high HP stats offset by low to middling defenses, and really high defense stats with low hp. Shuckle is the big poster child of the latter. Honestly the real death kneel isn't even the defense disparity, its lack of recovery & typing. Blissey is amazing but if it didn't have Softboiled it would be worthless, and some differnet typings could be disasterous. Shuckle would probably see more use if it had something other than Rest and also wasn't weak to rock. Guzzlord is fun but its assorted common weaknesses dont help (fighting, ice, dragon, x4 fairy...)
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Apr 18, 2018 22:52
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