Eltosian Kadath

I love Gen 2, it was made before they thought of Pokemon as a perpetual series, and they tried to make the greatest sequel they could, a sendoff for the series that let them add all the features the technical limitations of gen 1 (by Crystal especially) prevented, and gave fans of Gen 1 a chance to look at what became of Kanto, treating the gameplay decision, and story of gen 1 with more reality than you would expect.

Update on my Gen 2 Nuzlocke: The Legend of Zleda the Dunsparce, I have my first death, and get past Morty. Alas Poor Midna the Gastley was one-shot from full health by a critcal pursuit on the switch from one of the Kimono Girl's Umbreon (and the crit did matter, I ran calcs for curiosity after the fact, and she would have lived in the single digits otherwise...). Then I missed a Magnemite encounter thanks to it running away (if Midna were still around I could have trapped it with Mean Look...), and then accidentally kill a fished up poliwag due to it outspeeding and boosting rage more than I expected with double slap (to be fair I could have been more careful against the poliwag, and dragged my Onix out of the box and trained it more to wrap the Magnemite to trap it as well...). Losing my only Ghost type is going to make Chuck as fair bit harder, as Midna was immune to all of his Primape's attack...Alas poor Twilight Princess I miss you already. Next major encounter I have is against Rival 3, and I come better prepared than the last Rival battle by teaching Zelda Dig, which lets her kill his Haunter (although I do have to switch out and back in to clear a curse afterwards), and one shot his Magnemite, and she can rage past the Zubat as well (although I do another switch and switch back to clear a confusion), but after a Razor Leaf crit from the Bayleef, I need Mido the Skiploom to deal with him, as Mido can tank Bayleef for days, and poison it for residual damage. Finally there is Morty, which I end up pulling Marin the Spearow (well Fearow by the time I face him) out of retirement, and give Zelda a Mint Berry (the Gen 2 equivalent to Chesto Berry to heal sleep), to prepare. I start by having Zelda kill the first Gastley with Dig (and needing to switch afterwards to clear a curse). On the lower level Haunter I switch between Zelda and Marin to let it kill itself with curse, but unfortunately its HP is odd leaving it with 1 HP, which forces me to attack to deal with it, but at this point it starts spamming Hypnosis (as it is the only move it has that can do anything), which ends up putting Marin to sleep, and burn through my Mint Berry trying to deal that 1 damage. Next comes the Gengar, and with my Mint Berry already gone, my only option is to keep swicthing between the sleeping Marin, and awake Zelda to deal with it, as it only means of attacking normal types is to put it to sleep, and then dream eater a sleeping mon, so it tries to sleep Zelda, which can't put the already sleeping Marin even more to sleep, and tries to Dream Eater Marin, which doesn't effect the awake Zelda, so I can stall out the PP of Dreameater, after which I have Zelda kill it with dig, suffering through whatever naps the Gengar forces on her. The last Haunter can only effect a normal type after mimicing another attack, which it dies before doing, but even if it did mimic Zelda's Dig, I could switch to Marin, which is immune to dig as well. Oof...yeah that mon's gimmick is brutal, especially in the era with abilities...

Congrats !!!! That map is a toughie. If you go for both sides, picking who goes where is the most important part, which prompt many to use pairup to stick to one side for that one. Looks like things are going well so far... Oof... I guess I can add another excerpt from the same writeup as before, not sure if it will help, but it might give you some ideas One thing that comes to mind is that I am fairly certain you can trigger the four pairs early using a flier, it doesn't help now, but if you need to reset, triggering them early with all the time in the world to heal up after might help. This was a strat from @starburst for dealing with them without entrap, but it will cost you some rescue uses, which will make endgame harder... Yikes... that sounds awful... Shame you don't have the money for it, as that would give you and interesting edge, which you really need for parts of that map...

I am guessing people are thinking about Elise with that suggestion, as her heart seal class is wyvern, and she has great magic (although getting her the ranks to use it is a bit of a chore). Technically it was without the prepromoted Royals, so no Xander, Camilla, or Leo. The support abilities on Elise, the dancing ability of Azura, and the general usefulness of Corrin were all part of the run. I will try, but I always find this map to be a struggle. I doubt it will help much, but here is an excerpt of a write-up I did for that run of how I completed this chapter... That is rough...is that including a magic tonic and a magic boosting meal (so +4 magic) on Niles? Do you have someone that can become (or is) a Sorcerer you can make into a backpack for +5 (possibly more with Support bonuses) magic on him? What about setting up lightning hit with a effective/magic attack stance, can that pull off the one round on them? Do you have enfeeble uses available to make some of the Stoneborn kills easier? Do you have a beastly Berserker like Charlotte who can shoot for the crit kill on their attack, and have a second roll of the dice with attack stances? You really want to be killing about 2 or 3 per dragon vein use, which it sounds like will be hard for your group to pull off. If you have someone working towards shuriken breaker, you might want to pull out one of the Entrap staff to help out here. Also you might want to bring Camilla just to have a flying DV user that you aren't planning on using for much combat.

Another update on my Gen 2 Nuzlocke: The Legend of Zelda the Dunsparce, things don't quite go as planned against Whitney. For those curious I ended up playing it safe and using my Goldenrod encounter to get the Abra to trade for a Machop, but despite things going a little off the rails, not enough to need her (yeah I ended getting an unusually high number of female mons on this Nuzlocke). My plan was to pull the same trick my rival tried, lead with my Gastley and after her Clefaairy uses Metronome put it to sleep with Hypnosis and spite all the PP out of that move. As it turns out, despite Spite seeming like a status move that normally ignore typing, it seems its Ghost typing is still being applied, so the Clefairy as a Normal type is immune to Spite...well I decide to move onto plan B, put it to sleep again (as I wasted something like three turns testing Spite just in case), which backfire a little when it missed enough for the Clefairy to mimic Hypnosis, but I get it back to sleep eventually, and switch to Zelda the Dunsparce and get three Defense curls setup before the Clefairy wakes up. I manage to get the rest of the Defense curls setup just before Clefairy manages to hit with its mimiced Hypnosis to sleep me, and Whitney proceeds to have a frustrating amount of luck, getting two 5 hit double slaps, and a three turn one with a crit, and both Metronomes she uses managed to be super-effective moves (mach punch and vital throw), fortunately with +6 defense stages Zelda can tank those rather well.When Zelda finally wakes up, she starts her rage, which makes the Clefairy's double slap a double edges sword that boosts the power of rage faster. By the time Miltank comes out Zelda is a bit below half health, and she starts using roll out immediately, but the way things are going Zedla is going to win this exchange by a turn...I probably shouldn't have, but I risked it despite how disastrous a crit could have been, and wasn't punished. Admittedly switching could have been even more dangerous thanks to rollout's power doubling... Edit: On second thought, my Spearow is also part normal, so I think what was making Spite fail was something specific to Metronome (like it was trying to reduce the PP of the move Metronome became...)

Getting close to my fourth year, although I wasn't very active for that first year, so it feels shorter...

Lol. Unfortunately I am playing with a species clause and already got Marin the Spearow. Also fun fact, but Kenya is key to the Gen 2 minimum battle run.

Minor update on my gen 2 Nuzlocke: The Legend of Zelda the Dunsparce, got to Goldenrod and prepping for Whitney. Had a few close encounters that are revealing that Ruto the Totodile is not as good at dealing with fire types than I expect. First was the overleveled Growlithe from a copper that crit Ruto with a Bite before she was close to beating it, and I had to find an alternative to keep her safe. Fortunately Zelda was tanky enough to finish things off. Second was the trainer with two Magmar, Ruto beat the first, but the second higher level one whittled Ruto's health low enough that a fire punch crit would kill, so I tried the same tactic as before, let Zelda handle it...but after she took the fire punch crit that would have killed Ruto, she was too slow to go first and didn't have enough health to take a fire punch, and with most of my party damaged from other battles I had to resort to a dangerous switch to get out of that. I should have done an actual damage calc, but judging by the damage Zelda the Dubsparce took on a crit, and comparing the special defenses of her and Link the Heracross, it looked like he would just barely take a fire punch hit despite the weakness (and his much higher speed letting him get the kill after), so I made the switch, which proved unnecessary as it went for the much weaker smog instead. Also I am a bit torn on whether I should play it safe and use my Goldenrod encounter to buy an Abra from the Gamecorner to immediately in-game trade for a Machop (thus giving me a pokemon with a super effective attack for Whitney in case Zelda can't sweep her) or wait to get the Eevee encounter later...

I have used that tactic on Lunatic before... Saving those arm scrolls for the S rank weapons at the end is the only real way too use them... Having to intentionally stall to see the goofy Berserkers (or capture the goofy Berserkers...) is fairly common with a good team. Makes sense, he is replacing a hexing rod wielding Hayato, and Conquest already set a precedent of giving enemies access to staves even in classes that shouldn't have them with Iago.

Small update on my Gen 2 Nuzlocke: The Legend of Zelda the Dunsparce, we managed to beat Bugsy. Had Midna the Gastley put the first metapod to sleep (safe in knowing she couldn't be damaged), then had Zelda the Dunsparce bulk up with Defense Curl, and then sweep through Bugsy's team with her Rage. I put a psncureberry on her just in case, but it ended up being unnecessary. As for the Second Rival fight, I came in under prepared, if I had given Zelda the mud-slap TM she could have beaten his gastley and setup on it, but instead both had no means to harm eachother. Marin the Spearow managed to crush the Gastley (although its clever use of sleep and spite left me a little worried it might actually run her out of the Peck she needed to do it), and then Zelda was able to power through the Zubat with rage, but thanks to confusion she was in no state to deal with the Bayleef after, so Mido the Hoppip poisoned it, and stalled it to death using his resistances and Synthesis (despite the Bayleef getting lucky enough to poison Mido first, this still worked flawlessly).

@Saint Rubenio Congrats, glad you enjoyed it. The Layton series is one I have been a fan of as well. To think you used to scoff at that game. Seeing you slowly realize the quality of Conquest's gameplay was entertaining to watch. It really is such a stark change in her, as soon as she gets the Flame Shuriken she goes from mostly useless in combat to a destructive force. @Ghost_06_ Have to disagree about the Cynthia comment (less so about the level curve), she has a solid team for an NPC, with both diversity and quality. Congrats !!! Personally I think the trend of with mixing animation/art with video gameplay seen in things like Jaiden Animations Nuzlocke videos and Alpharad's Nuzlocke make for the best Nuzlocke experiences. @Acacia Sgt Fixed that for you.

Its only the magic of Gen 1 jank that let me get away with being that under-leveled, and I doubt I will be that underleveled on the Gen 2 run. Good job playing around the crit! That sounds like a fun naming theme (although I do not know enough explorers to be able to keep up without google).

During my month away, I ended up doing my first Nuzlocke(s) on the original Pokemon Red, and had a lot of fun with it thanks to my massive knowledge about all of the Gen 1 jank, getting two clears without much grinding ( none of my team members got to level 50, even on the champion fight in both winning runs). Admittedly about half of my attempts ended in the first fight, one run ended in Mt. Moon as I underestimated the danger of this random rocket with a Raticate (Hyper Fang crits are scary early game, and thanks to Gen 1 jank crits are based on base speed, which gives Raticate a good crit rate), and my first run to get out of Mt. Moon ended due to my attempt to grind my team for the Elite Four, instead of just yoloing it like in the winning runs. I recently started a Gen 2 run, where I was using a Legend of Zelda naming scheme, and against all odds, my Dark Cave encounter ended up being the 1% Dunsparce encounter, and it was destiny. That run is going to be the Legend of Zelda, the Dunsparce, and I will make her the star of the team. So far I managed to get her to sweep Falkner by using a classic Ghost and Flying type pivot to run his first pokemon out of Mud-Slap, before switching to Dunsparce to setup enough defense curls to take a few hits, and then swept with Rage.

Small piece of advice, keep a bow as a side weapon just to control the aggro some enemies, activating those guys one at a time with the bow, and switching to your melee weapon to deal with them individually instead of taking them on all at once.

And having less strength (or equal depending on how you are rounding and which level) at the same level on average... I find this utility massively overshadowed by the starting maid/butler thanks to their use of the same weapon type and early access to tomebreaker. The only utility advantage he has over them is the locktouch (whereas they start with the massive advantage of staff use), and the extra movement Niles class gets over Kaze makes him worse than Niles for locktouch utility as well (not to mention the power of capture utility), which is an awkward position to be in given his combat stats are what people dislike in Niles, but moreso. Sure you might use your fist heart seal on Jakob, but if you use that on Mozu, or have Felicia, its hard not to look at him as a bit overshadowed in the utility department by units you get earlier. I guess I banned the prepromoted royals from my runs on my first Lunatic run, so I haven't really seen what it is like on Lunatic. Hinata's group is entirely optional to face (as long as you have a flyer), and if you do want to fight him, their linked AI makes them very vulnerable to Shelter-Dance strats. He will literally sit there waiting for you to kill him as long as you shelter-dance whoever attacked him (and the support needed for the shelter dances) far enough back afterwards. Depends on where you are using your entrap uses, as the last time I beat that chapter the long way I only used one freeze use, but I could imagine needing a full one on that map if you can't afford to use an entrap staff to break the lunge blender in Saizo's half. Ugh... that sounds believable, but not rescue skipping as much of that mess as you can feels like a mistake in planning.

Yeah, utility is difficult to compare to combat, and I kinda agree that his utility can be a lot more useful (although it really depends on play style, and willingness to use the capture mechanics), but she will massively outclass him as a combat unit (...eventually). Did you have some specific uses in mind later on, or is this just that you find them more useful later in a general sense? A use or two to recruit Haitaka sounds like a good trade to me given the number of freeze uses you get. The Kaze comparison always baffles me, as he deals significantly less damage than Niles does, for utility that is worse than Nile's (although Kaze has more immediate short term payoffs as opposed to Nile's large long-term payoffs I suppose), while Shura has the problem of missing out on those early Shura skin boots if you use him ...

A big part of that is the game was given an impossible deadline (1 year as opposed to the 4ish years that Ocarina of Time took) to get this out as part of a famous bet/challenge, and the reused assets were one of the ways they made that possible. I know I have posted this video here before, but the creation of MM is an interesting story

I think I know part of the issue then, DS2 is a lot more into setting up traps, where you need to pay a LOT more attention to avoid, or carefully arranged aggros, where you can really draw in a lot more enemies than you can easily deal with if you aren't careful, which feels a lot more antagonistic of the game...I guess it was also specifically advertised as difficult, which leads to that perception as well. As for hitboxes, they have always been a little wonky, even in DS1. I don't remember the Lost Sinner being any trouble at all...Did you light the oil beacons that light up the Lost Sinner's arena before the fight, or did you face her in the dark? I am fairly certain they scale (with Soul Memory as opposed to level, which is something to be a bit careful about...), so whenever you feel like tackling it is as good a time as any, although there are three DLC levels, that are unlocked with items you find in the game. I will also note that each of the DLC levels has a section designed with co-op in mind, which can be annoying to deal with solo (although I have done all of them solo before...). Modded Fates in particular it seems Give her some time, her growths beat out all of Niles (barring Magic and Resistance) so she will pass him eventually, plus the archer line's skills lead towards things more directly related to her combat, whereas the skills of the outlaw line give utility that people massively underappreciated, which helps her image even more... Its comments like these that make me wonder if the Niles haters really use him...

Yeah, he is one of the toughest boss for the time that you fight him... Personally I went with the Bone Scythe Boss weapon. Do you think its a gameplay, or story/setting thing? Interesting...neither of these was quiet what I was expecting. I think I will end up rambling about the story, and its themes once you reach Vendrick...

Heroes is kinda built around the FE multiverse idea, and explores the idea of alternate versions of characters very explicitly with alts.

Seems my return was well timed

Is this your first run through Fates? What difficulty? Are you going to use best mage, and the amazing loot from her paralogue?...sorry to overload on questions, but Conquest runs are interesting. That is a bit of a shame, as she becomes a combat monster in her own right, but I think a common thing to do. Fun fact, on my very first Conquest run I paired Xander with Charlotte, but I liked attack stance too much to glue her to the back of Xander, and by the end, she was a dramatically better combat unit than Xander it wasn't funny. She could kill anything she looked at, even with attack stance hits, while Xander just got doubled...

Much as I like DS2, it is considered the black sheep of the series for a reason. Hopefully it manages to grow on you (and the moment you meet Vendrick is one of my favorite moments in the series). Oddly enough this was where I started the series, and ended up working backwards, so when I finally got to DS1 I found it kinda underwhelming compared to DS3 (DS2 was a very different and interesting beast...) Ah yes, the one where I discovered over 90% of the map, and hit capped level before following the story to that radio bloke, and not for lack of trying, there was just always something more interesting just off the path to check out "along the way". I feel that statement captured what was good and bad about Fallout 3 nicely...

It has been a busy month since I was last around, but hopefully things are quieting down a little. Nice! I hope you wind up enjoying them! Which Fallout game?