Robert Stewart
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Posts posted by Robert Stewart
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Ordered Pokemon Legends Arceus this week, because I play games in an incredibly timely manner. but it seems I confused Amazon somehow.
See if you can spot the problem.
Spoiler
Not sure how that happened. :v
SpoilerThere's no region lock, but it's annoying that the spine isn't aligned with the rest of my games.
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Turns out I forgot to save after the Winona fight and had to re-fight her. Oops.
SpoilerWith that re-fight out of the way, it's off to Lilycove.
I thought it might be possible to get out to the sea ahead of story stuff, but there's Wailmer in the way. Ah well.
The rival's in the way of us shopping.
The fight goes remarkably well. I think the really challenging part of the run is well behind us.
While here, I use the move deleter to adjust Echidna's moveset. Surely this won't come back to bite me, right?
I forgot to adjust my inventory, so I find up not being able to pick up most of the items on Mt. Pyre.
Also, it's weird how you don't have to traverse the interior of the mountain at all? There's trainers and stuff there, but the only reward for visiting it is, like, Shadow Ball. Weird.
Opted to bring Dua along because I want to level her up to get Covet at least. That way I have someone who can steal heart scales without having to use the thief TM.
...that's probably not something I should worry about, but hey, I don't like wasting TMs if I don't have to.
Time to find the Magma hideout...after we train Dua some more.
Learning faint attack really helped, what with all the ghost types in Mt. Pyre.
We don't have anyone who can Fly, so we need to run all the way back to Rustboro and up to Mt Chimmney-
Oh, right.
I could have just taught someone rock smash and been done with this, but I was stubbornly against this for...some reason.
So...yeah. I ran all the way through Meteor Falls, Fallarbor, and the Desert, then up the Mt. Chimney cable car and down Jagged Pass.
In my defense it's a lot of walking anyway.
The Magma base is where we fought the Grunt in the pass before. ORAS kept Team Magma's base in Lilycove, so as far as i'm aware this remains an Emarald excludive dungeon.
The base is kinda annoying to get through, with wild Pokemon encounters. I also found a lot of the paths pretty narrow? Maybe just a side effect of the touch-screen dpad being hard to navigate with.
Anyway, at the end is another fight with Tabitha.
...come to think of it, do we even fight Courtney in Emerald?
The wiki says we don't. Pretty bizarre.
A pretty easy fight. Though it's been a few days, so I don't remember how I dealt with Mighteyena. Oops.
After this, Groudon wakes up and we fight Maxie.
...who has three Pokemon compared to Tabitha's four. What.
His Mighteyena loved to spam Swagger, which was a bit annoying. Though it did end up being its own undoing, with Doots being able to nearly oneshot it with a 4x attack booster Cut.
Camerupt went down in the expected way.
Finn just barely lived through two air cutters to finish without any KOs.
And with that, I walked all the way back to Lilycove. Again, without rock smash.
One benefit to all this walking is noticing some berries that I forgot about planting.
I didn't really remember what I was supposed to be doing at this point in the story. The guard wouldn't let me in to the Aqua base and said something about Slateport, so I assumed I had to go there. But I didn't see any even at the Museum or Shipyard(You may have noticed what I missed, but let me cook). A sign at the shipyard mentioned needing an experienced sailor, so I thought maybe I needed Capt. Stern to activate the event?
But he was nowhere to be found.
(And yes, I surfed all the way from Slateport to here.)
While I was in the area, I at least got the opportunity to get the Amulet Coin from our Mom in Littleroot.
...and back in Slateport, I realized I forgot that the dock is a separate place from the shipyard.
Ah well.
Oh, and while I was around, I finally conceded and taught Finn rock smash. Not to get north of Mauville, but because you need it for one of the Trick House challenges....even though said challenge has nothing to do with rock smash.
Huzzah, warp puzzles!
I did grab the master ball, for whatever it's worth.
At the end of everything is a fight with Matt.
...two Pokemon? Seriously?
Easy sweep for Pluses.
With this, the ocean is clear. I think we could go all the way to Pacifidlog, but we still need Waterfall before we can make our last trade.
I got Dots all the way to level 43 before evolving so that I could have Swagger. Not sure how useful it would be, but I wanted it anyway.
And now it's time for Tate and Liza.
I sure hope so!
I lead with Finn, which ended up being a bad call. none of my Pokemon were fast enough to outspeed Claydol, so I ended up dealing with a lot of chip (well, more than chip, I guess) from Earthquake.
Echidna was too slow to use surf after switching and got ganked by Solarbeam. Rip.
Dots managed to clear Solrock with Giga drain in the end. Claydol's Earthquake spam did turn out being useful, as it let Wendy take it out without having to guess between Mirror Coat or Counter.
Lunatone got Encore's to spam Calm mind, which let Dots whittle it down easily.
This feel like a good break point, so I'll see y'all next time.
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All the way to Winona with this one. And some pretty major team changes.
Spoiler
Somehow I missed ever fighting this guy. Whoops.
On the way to Mauville, our next team member hatched.
For the name, because Wobbuffet mainly attacks by countering, I thought an armor knight name would be appropriate? IDK.
Also, given that she starts with no attacking moves, training Wendy approaches her namesake a bit.
After crossing Route 118, w ehave another interview encounter, as well as a run in with Steven again.
Wendy also evolves. I thought her evolution was friendship-based, which was concerning to me, but luckily it's not. Or at least it seems to not be.
I opted to keep Encore and got with Counter/Mirror Coat/Destiny Bond for her.
On route 123, I get the opportunity to spread a very important message.
Between this and my interviews, you may be noticing a theme...
Well, at least it's not tackle. anymore. :v
🤨
Sure thing, but.
Fun fact: Mirror coat is affected by type immunities, despite not being affected by type effectiveness. Ask me how I know. 🥲
Trim's signal beam makes quick work of the numerous Carvanha's here. Sad this will be one of the last places we get to heavily use it.
Mighty kind of you!
Something something, magic-ish user and late(?) joiner = Nino?
Trim handling May's Grovyle in the next fight is more or lest his last hurrah, as he'll be traded away very shortly.
HA
HA
What're these guys doing over here 🤔
There's one in front of the gym too? I forgot. :v
Farewell, old friend. You served us surprisingly well during our time together, but rules are rules.
Echidna reaches her final form a bit further in route 120. Neat.
Bruh, it's just one Kecleon.
Wait, why does this one not activate a fight? 🤔
Ah well.
The mooks in Winona's gym give us some nice last-minute training for Nino, but also Pluses and Finn. The main thing i wanted was for Nino to get weather ball.
Time for Gym #6.
Her Swablu goes down easily to Pluses.
...I probably should have seen that coming. Ah well.
Surprisingly, Nino manages to live long enough to set up hail for that sweet 4x effective damage on weather ball.
But she doesn't live much past that. F.
I locked Skarmory into Spamming Sand Attack for a bit, so I had Dots chip with Faint attack since I didn't have anyone else who could ignore the accuracy drop.
Wendy manages to just barely survive a steel wing to KO with counter.
Next, Tropius.
Finn unfortunately just barely fails to 2HKO with Rock Tomb.
...in hindsight I should have anticipated this and blocked with Protect.
Finn misses a key Rock Tomb and goes down to Aerial Ace. F.
Tropius basically heals all the damage we did and KOs Dots. F.
Luckily, Finn lowered its speed enough that Wendy could set up destiny bond before dying.
First gym fight where Echidna didn't participate at all. Not sure what to make of that.
Se y'all next time.
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Two gym fights in this one!
SpoilerFlannery first. (Duh)
You might think this would be an easy sweep for Echidna. And it mostly was!
If not for the sunlight boosting fire attacks. And Mud Shot doesn't quite do enough damage to Torkoal.
This didn't help. :v
Welp :v
There was some hope the rest could clutch it out, but no dice.
The key to the second attempt turned out to be steroids.
The attack boost gave Echidna much more reliable damage in the sun, and managed to let her sweep as expected.
Not a moment too soon for this, since Dots was on the threshold of disobedience again.
oh no-
oh good there's no fight.
With the go-goggles, it's off to the desert to get our next team member.
...or so I thought.
...uh, where the heck is the mirage tower?
Info on its appearance is pretty confusing - bulbapedia just says it "appears and disappears" as you enter and leave route 111.
Eventually, I read somewhere you had to talk to the Ruin Maniac to make it appear. Which I swear I had done, but i guess not.
There it is, finally.
I also had to go back to Mauville to get the Mach bike for our first set of Mach Bike puzzles. Fun.
At least there's only one this time.
Our newest member turns out to be the fossil and not the egg.
I opted to name him "Finn" on account of him being a fish out of temporal water, so to speak.
Never mind that he's not a fish.
I thought he could learn Strength for some reason, but apparently I remembered wrong. I also taught him Rock Tomb, because training him with just scratch and water gun would have been painful.
I ran the circuit from Mauville, to Fallarbor, and then Rustboro to train him on all the trainers I skipped previously. I mainly wanted him to learn Metal Claw, just so that he had a second okay physical damage attack.
Along the way, Dots also finally got a STAB move.
Now it's on to Petalburg.
Not much to say about the mooks along the way. I opted to go Accuracy > Healing > OHKO which actually means crits....).
Healing was a bit annoying, but once Finn procced the Attack boost from Metal Claw, it became manageable.
The OHKO room kinda turned into a joke since Finn is immune to crits. 😄
Time for the dad fight.
I forgot to get any screenshots of it, but his Spinda was kind of a pain, inflicting confusion on anyone I sent against it. I managed to take it out with a combination of Trim, Dots, and Echidna.
Next, Vigoroth.
Finn managed to weaken and slow it enough with a few rock tombs that Doots could finish with fake out and faint attack.
I though I could have some help with Slaking, but...
...yeah, no.
This wound up being an Echidna affair, and went easier than expected. Slaking opted to use counter on it's non-Truant turns. It was easy enough to negate that by just using water gun. So the strategy was to use water gun on non-truant turns, and then Rock Smash(!) on the truant turns in the hopes of lowering Slaking's defense.
After three procs, that left him weak enough for mud shot to finish the job.
Next, Linoone. He lead with belly drum, which I though might make it an easy clear. Unfortunately, mud shot didn't quite finish the job, which lead to Norman re-healing.
F
At this point, only Dua was left, so I was thinking things were pretty much over...
Only for her to get a lucky sing hit and finish with tackle. 😮
Goes to show that we still need all the help we can get.
Oh, and Wally's dad gave us surf. Cool.
See y'all next time.
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Another fairly big update, or at least it feels like it should be.
Spoiler
I mean....I think they do? :thonk:
We get an HM for this diversion. Strength would be a nice move on Echidna, but I don't want to give her another HM since she's already on Rock Smash duty. So, Strength will have to wait.
Onward to the north of Mauville.
Sure, why not.
The fights don't turn out to be that challenging...most of my crew besides Trim are too high level, I think.
Dots' fake out does a surprising amount of damage...though maybe it's not so surprising given the level differential.
Along the way, he learns Torment. Not sure how useful it'll be, but probably more valuable than Growth at least.
She challenged me tho :v
Lol
We get the macho brace fr our trouble, which is probably not useful for me?
A but further north, we get our first interview battle. Not too challenging.
I tried to pick something deep and meaningful for my first interview.
😄
Nothing shady going on here, no sirree.
🤨
Along the way, we also get the secret power TM, getting inducted into the secret base club.
Hey it's me!
>_>
Also wtf they're ignoring my nicknames >:[
So true!
This cooltrainer later on wound up being a bit of a close call. >_>
On the way, Trim gets a new move.
...which didn't seem that useful, given that bug type was all physical until gen IV. >_>
This is an odd set of fights. You fight a double battle and then this pokemaniac, just to grab an item.
...I think it was a good item at least, but I forgot what it was. >_>
After this, I made an effort to avoid most trainer fights where possible, mainly because I didn't want Echidna to get overlevelled.
Not much to do in Fallarbor, so on to Meteor Falls we go.
Well, nto before stopping to see the fossil maniac.
We get a TM and not much else.
There's a few unavoidable fights on the way to Meteor Falls.
WTF that's my trick! >:[
At Meteor Falls, there's a story scene. but no fight, surprisingly. Odd.
We can't get to the room that Bagons are in yet, so there's nothing else for us here. So, I run through Rustboro, Verdanturf, and Mauville to get to the cable car.
The double battle with the grunts here isn't that eventful.
Tabitha went a bit sideways though.
Dua and Dots fainted to unlucky crits and rock slide misses. 😕
I forgot to stock up on revives before this, so I didn't have any left after healing for the Maxie fight.
First round of the fight didn't go so well. I tried alternating between Echidna and Dots to fight Mightyena, which left them with too little HP to prepare for Camerupt.
Round two goes better. I treid to have Trim deal with Mightyena with Double Team and Confuse Ray cheese, but Roar put the kibosh on that plan. So Echidna dealt with him.
I didn't want to risk having Echidna get KO'd to another high-power magnitude, so I swapped in Dua. Who proceeded to die in one hit to a regular Ember.
This tuned out to be okay though, as it gave me a safe turn to switch in Dots. Not exactly the most obvious choice, but I thought he could deal at least a bit of damage with fake out and "Rock Slide."
And he then proceeded to 3-hit Camerupt thanks to a Rock Slide flinch. :v
As i had no revives, Dua was out for the Mt. Chimeny descent. So I made an effort to again avoid most fights.
Except for this guy, who's definitely not suspicious at all.
With no further incidents, we make it to Lavaridge Town.
And here, we sort of meet our next team member? It'll be a bit before we can use them, though.
Maybe over-correcting a bit, but I didn't want to be in the situation of not being able to revive my full team again. :v
Flannery will have to wait for the next update. Se y'all then.
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One update with Slateport and most of Mauville.
Spoiler
So you literally need a "secret power" to get in this secret club, huh?
Though it's not so secret if you tell people about it...
I like how the museum is still charging admission despite the flood of suspicious individuals who have flooded their premises. Maybe they think Tema Aqua is jsut a bunch of cosplayers?
The TM in question is Thief. Rude.
Upstairs, we fight two Aqua grunts with Carvahnas and a Zubat. I tried to use Dua for this fight but she, uh, didn't do so well. One Bite from a Carvahna took off like 60% of her health. Yikes.
Echidna and dots were able to handle the rest though. Archie shows up to warn us not to interfere, and we deliver the goods.
Outside, we're accosted by a suspicious individual. Even the game thinks he's suspect.
I will not be doing the battle tents. This one I think is the rental team one, so I wouldn't even be keeping to the challenge by doing it.
Fighting some trainers north of Slateport. Nature power defaulting to swift is coming in handy, as it's my best way to avoid effect spore or poison point contact damage.
We also take care of the trick house. Cutting down all these trees sure is tedious....
I opted not to learn this - I'm happy to inflict RNG on my foes, but I don't need more of it on my side.
And now for what I thought might be one of the hardest fights in the run.
The slayer of speedruns - the route 110 rival fight.
This came down to RNG, but it didn't take nearly as many attempts as the Brawly fight. It all came down to ordering. I couldn't have Echidna out against her Wingull, because then she'd send out Grovyle. Grovyle would pretty much always KO Echidna, which left me without anyone to deal with her Slugma. But doots couldn't be out against her Wingull because of Wingull. So...it was all up to Dua.
With enough Attract RNG luck and being able to inflict sleep, Dua was able to take out Wingull. Then Echidna comes in to take out Slugma. Then, it's on to Grovyle. Mud shot actually deals an OK amount of damage (about 1/4 of its health), and also has the nice effect of lowering speed. But it has a nasty habit of missing, so Echidna got KO'd.
Then, Dua came back for more annoyance. She wasn't able to damage Grovyle much on her own, but was able to use Flash to nerf Grovyle's accuracy quite a bit thanks to Attact and Sleep stalling. Then it came down to Dots. Thanks (I think) to the accuracy nerf, dots was able to spam Nature Power (Swift) to whittle down Grovyle's HP without taking any damage. And with that, the battle is over - a good team effort, I'd say.
On to Mauville.
Our next HM is given to us very enthusiastically.
This guy has a point, actually!
I also grabbed the Acro Bike from the bike shop, which will enable us to return to Slateport more easily. Which is actually useful, as the Poke Mart here doesn't sell any Repels? Very strange.
Before taking on the Gym, it's time to grab our next substitute to the east o the town.
It appeared surprisingly quick given its low encounter rate. Guess I should count my blessings.
Trim comes with confuse ray and double team - more tools to annoy my enemies into submission.
Trim is able to handle the Wally fight outside the Gym on his own, surprisingly. Quite a good first impression.
In the gym, there's quite a few opportunities for double battles, which gives Trim a chance to grow with support.
It also gives him the ability to team up with Dua for maximum RNG annoyance. The only thing missing is a way to inflict paralysis...
Using Trim is a bit risky since even the non-electric types have electric moves. Bit of a an odd quirk of this gym.
Watson is mostly an easy fight with Echidna. I say "mostly" because unlucky mud shot misses leave her vulnerable to more damage than she should have taken. It's enough that she wasn't actually able to take out Manectric.
I got Manectric down to Super Potion range. Echidna was vulnerable to a quick attack, so I swapped her out to see if others could finish the job.
Dua got oneshot by Shock Wave, so...that plan was a no go.
In the end, Dots finished things off for us with Nature Power.
There's some miscellaneous errands to run back in slateport (I need to restock on repels and pick up some berries I planted), but that's all for this update.
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A short update this time.
SpoilerSomehow, I made it through Dewford. Brawly essentially came down to RNG with how much I was able to (ab)use sleep/attract to keep Dua alive.
Surprisingly, at level 15 she was able to take a karate chop or low kick, but not more than one.
His Meditite was actually trivial because it kept spamming focus punch.
Makuhita came down to attrition vs Echidna. Dealing with that Sitrus Berry was no fun at all. Alas, Dua will not learn covet til level 31, so we didn't really have a better way to deal with it.
But now it's done, and Dots is actually a real team member again.
Now to explore Dewford.
...I completely forgot this was here. Would've been nice for the Gym fight.
Our visit to Dewford cave is unremarkable. I opted to teach Dua Flash, which I'm sure I'll regret. I forgot how simple the cave was, so I'm actually regretting it already...
I accidentally let Dots get KO'd by fighting some wild mons. Guess I got cocky after the gym fight...
After we delivered the letter to Steven it's on to Slateport. The trainers on the beach are no trouble...especially as Nature Power turns into EARTHQUAKE here.
Extremely goofy. Sad that it doesn't do anything interesting inside buildings, including all Gyms. Oh well.
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Time to actually start this.
Spoiler
I call it "not appearing in this run."
As explained before, our choice here is not actually a choice. Most toher games have at least one IGT or gift that can learn surf, but Emerald offers us no such luxury.
Remarkably, I lucked into a female starter. Though i don't actually know if that's considered lucky. I think it should make my team more resilient against attract shenanigans.
Mudkip being female threw my naming scheme for a loop - I went with pirates for my water types in my FR run, but I'm aware of no female pirates in FE, not even in the forbidden Saga games. I opted for Echidna since she's kinda the closest thing?
The initial rival battle goes smoothly. Echidna got to level 7 off of the demi fight and one wild mon. Nothing of note there.
Clearing the fight allowed us to search for our first sub. Searching for subs will probably be one of the most time consuming parts of the run - Ralts here has a 4% apeparance rate, which as about as good as we'll see for any of our candidates.
I actually encountered one, but had it die to a tackle crit. So I had to spend several more minutes looking for a second.
I used FE4 sub names in my FR run, so I opted for SD subs for here instead.
Unil's time is short, just learning Confusion in Petalburg woods, and then getting traded immediately on reaching Rustboro.
It's been a bit since I played Emerald, so it took me a while to find the trade house.
Had a bit of an "oh crap" moment on remembering that Seedot can't learn cut. But cut isn't technically required at this point, and Dots will be able to learn it after evolving.
Dots wound up getting into disobedience range during out Gym attempt, which makes it somewhat unreliable from here on out. This is much less forgiving than FR - you have an opportunity to clear two gyms before your first trade there.
I thought I'd be able to get it to evolution during the Gym, but Dots got trapped by Nosepass's block and died due to disobedience. So the evolution had to wait until Route 116.
Route 116 leads us to our next sub, though calling them a "sub" may be stretching things a bit given they'll stick around til postgame.
Skitty has a 2% encounter rate this time. Things are not looking good for my patience if the trend here continues. Thankfully, there was no unlucky crit kill this time.
Dua was also nice enough to bring us a Leppa berry.
Dots and Echidna both wind up evolving here. These feels a big excessive, but I'm not fighting any wild battles at all. Guess Emerald just has a more generous EXP curve.
Dua manages to solo the team Aqua grunt with help from Attract shenanigans. I seems less reliable than when it's used on me, but I suppose that's just how these things go.
Dua did not manage to get through the rival fight - despite using attract, Treecko never got immobilized.
Dots ended up finishing with a disobedient nature power. I guess it works in the end.
This seems like a good stopping point. Next time, a gym leader that a lot of people skip, but I can't if I want dots to be a reliable team member. And it will be a challenge with 2/3 of my team facing type disadvantage. We'll see how it goes.
Edit: I forgot to post everyone's levels.
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38 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:
With the starters Swampert would cover the water HM issues, but it's generally too good for balance good, though it's a bit less OP in Emerald. Sceptile would be the least boosted, but still useable(I had to grind mine to 40 in a monograss run and it barely survived Overheat from Torkoal). And Blaziken gets hut by the change in champion but will be good elsewhere.
Swampert is required in Emerald because of needing Surf. It's actually not in R/S - the first IGT there is a Makuhita, and Hariyama can learn Surf.
39 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:As for Horsea. how will you handle that? Will it stay Seadra?
I would evolve it unless people think I should stick rigidly to the no-trading rule.
40 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:And what is your plan with the postgame, considering you mention those options?
I forget what's exactly in Emerald's postgame. :v
I'll probably try the Steven fight at least. But I'm definitely not attempting the battle frontier. I don't even usually do those in "normal" runs, and in this run my team composition would be too much of a mess to consider it.
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What the title says. i will be playing Pokemon Emerald, using only Pokemon available as gifts or in-game trades.
I did this recently for FireRed and found it to be an interesting twist there. I wanted to try Emerald next because it looks like it's the most restrictive game in the series in this regard.
SpoilerMainly this is because none* of the available gift or trade Pokemon can learn Surf or Fly, and there are much fewer trades or gifts than other games.
*Technically there is one who can learn Surf, but you don't get it until after you need to have Surf anyway.
The asterisk in the title is because I will allow Pokemon that are required to perform a trade to be used up until that trade is available. This is mainly just to prevent the early parts of the game from being a pure starter solo, which are boring. I'll refer to these mons as "substitutes" since they're "subbing in" for a future trade.
I will use subs under the following restrictions:
- Only one of each may be caught.
- They must be left in a state/evolution stage where they can be traded.
- They must be traded as soon as their corresponding trade is available.
Here is a list of the allowed Pokemon:
SpoilerGifts:
- Your starter
- Wynaut (Egg from Lavaridge Town)
- Fossil 1 (Mirage Tower/Rustboro City)
- Castform (Weather Institute)
- Beldum (Mossdeep City )*
- Fossil 2 (Desert Underpass/Rustboro City)*
- Johto Starter**
Trades:
- Seedot (Rustboro City)
- Plusle (Fortree City)
- Horsea (Pacifidlog Town)
- Meowth (Battle Frontier)*
Substitutes:
- Ralts (until Rustboro City)
- Skitty (until the Postgame)
- Volbeat (until Fortree City)
- Bagon (until Pacifidlog Town)
* Only accessible in the postgame
** Not accessible due to challenge restrictions.Other restrictions/notes:
- No breeding will be done.
- This will not be a nuzlocke, because I'm not that much of a masochist.
- I will try to avoid grinding as much as possible. Not sure about specific limit, but I'll probably try to stay in the range of +/- 5 levels of the next gym leader/whatever other major story event?
- Outside trading will generally not be allowed. There may or may not be one exception, but we'll get to that when it comes up.
So, yeah, Hopefully the restrictions are clear and this sounds interesting enough. Not sure if it will be challenging, but it will be at least a little tedious, so wish me luck.
The first update will come later. I wanted to draft the first post to get all the rules/etc out of the way ahead of time.
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Real disables the battle narration. I.e. the text that says X attacked, X dodged, etc.
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10 hours ago, Ⱥstra said:
Thanks, though I have trouble comprehending the jealousy mechanic. Seem quite complex and probably not necessary for my goals, though I may look into it more just for fun.
Because Jealousy works based on join time, I find it's not actually that useful for getting harder pairings.
One potential suggestion: if you want to prevent two characters from gaining points so that you can pair one of them with someone else (or get subs, maybe), you can kill one of them and then revive them with the Valkyrie staff later.
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On 2/25/2023 at 5:32 AM, lenticular said:
Have achievements automatically grant bond fragments when you achieve them, rather than requiring the extra step of going to the notice board to claim them.
I don't have much to add to the forum topic, but I wanted to thank you for this post. Without reading it, I wouldn't have realized achievements gave bond fragments at all.
I'm on chapter 15 and just got a dump of 10k bond fragments thanks to finally noticing this. I guess this would reinforce what an improvement this would be.
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Since there's some interest in news about it here, I want to post some information about the Ohio derailment.
tl;dr: It's bad, and was entirely preventable, but it's not apocalyptic like some people are claiming. There's a lot of hyperbole and misinformation being spread about its impacts.
Clarification about the "ECP Brakes Rule" you may have seen some mention of:
Clarifications about the chemical release/EPA response:
Clarification about the derailment in Houston:
Of course both of these incidents are bad, and both could/should have been prevented. But the prevention would have been in the form of more rigorous inspections and better arrangement of the cars in the consist. I suggest reading RWU's statement on the subject.
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Does anyone know what the mechanics of TRS's staff crits are? I.e. what the activation rate is, and what the bonus healing is.
I've been in various Discords where the topic of odd healing mechanics came up, including this one. There was some disagreement on whether these even exist, and what the mechanics are. Hopefully I can get some clarification here.
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It's pretty clear to me that not being able to reposition units was intentional. The argument that it was due to technical limitations doesn't really make sense when FE2 and 3 both allowed unit repositioning. (FE4 technically doesn't, but every unit has effectively the same starting position there).
FE3 is the most relevant comparison. It uses basically the same system for unit selection as FE5, but allowed units to be repositioned by selecting them in a certain order and exiting the selection screen. They could have easily replicated the same system in FE5.
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On 2/10/2023 at 12:38 PM, Galap said:
I have no easy way of looking at or interpreting the actual ASM, let alone the original source code, but I can't think of a reason why they would write the code that way.
Here is the ASM in question.
addAdjacentBonus: phx phy stx $00 ldx #$008E -: lda $7E438B,X bit #$0080 beq .continue lda $7E477B,X bne .continue stx $02 ; subtracts ($7e441B + the current index) from ($7e441B + ($00)) ; and subtracts ($7e444B + the current index) from ($7e444B + ($00)) ; adds the absolute value of the two results together jsl calcDistance cmp #$0002 ; distance check bcs .continue ; "BCS" is equivalent to "branch if greater or equal" sta.w PointIncrease lda #$0006 sec sbc.w PointIncrease sta.w PointIncrease ldy.w UnitPointer lda $7E46EB,X sta.w UnitPointer jsl getUnitSupportID bcs .continue cmp #$0010 ; prevents two female units from getting points ; also causes jealousy because UnitPointer isn't reset bcs .continue sty.w UnitPointer jsl increasePoints .continue: dex dex bpl - ply plx rtsIt's pretty apparent to me that not resetting the UnitPointer address was an oversight and not intentional.
Edit: I guess in the end it comes down to individual interpretation. But to me, given how important gameplay/story integration was in FE4, jealousy's odd and inconsistent priority makes it hard to believe it was intentional.
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Glad the themes could be re-added. Great work!
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Finished the "main" story of the Toouhou Puppet Dance Extended mod. They, uh, really upped the difficulty of the fights in this game.
I recorded the "final boss," if anyone is interested.
Spoiler -
Everyone here getting ready for Engage. Meanwhile I'm over here playing touhoumon like it's 2016 or something.
Spoiler:^)
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Somehow I still had my FE Heroes ID in my profile despite not having played it in years. RIP.
Also I deleted the 3x3 favorite characters thing I made years ago on Imgur without noticing. Oops.
Lotta cleanup to do, it seems.
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One area where Tear of Vermillion's remake really improves over Prophecy of the moonlight Witch's is the music remixes.
Prophecy's battle music was really unfitting, and wasn't even a remake of the original, but Vermillion's been doing at least a passable job for all of them.
The initial themes:
SpoilerI'm more partial to the original, but the remix is a massive improvement over Prohpecy's.
The boss themes:
SpoilerMy feelings here are similar, though I think it's a bit closer between these versions.
And the "part 2" battle theme:
SpoilerI think I kind of like the PSP version more in context here. :v
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Oh, also, I've been playing Tear of Vermillion. The PSP remake, specifically.
The translation is...well, I've heard it's par for the course for Bandai.
But I've been really enjoying the story. I'm enjoying spotting the things that influenced Trails, but the story is really resonating with me in a way that Prophecy didn't. Not that I didn't like Prophecy, mind you.
The less said about the gameplay, the better, though. -
Just now, Shrimpy -Limited Edition- said:
Jo another one?
I've played it a few times already.
...somehow still haven't managed to get the last bonus level, because on my last playthrough I forgot getting all the masteries was a requirement for that until i was to far into it.
And for some reason I still decided to get the True Assassin mastery.
Pokemon Emerald: Gift/In-Game Trades Only*
in Let's Play/Streams
Posted
Another one, in which we finish the lats Gym and acquire our last party member for the main game.
Time to fight Team Magma one last time at the space center.
Well, I guess it's a nice thought?
There's a random grunt guarding the stairwell? with pretty underpowered Pokemon at that. Strange.
For some reason the grunts fight me one on one. You'd think they'd activate at least one double battle. :v
Multi battle time! That's neat.
Damn, Crobat got hands.
Finn managed to clear most of Tabitha's Pokemon at least. Or helped. He spent most of the fight confused. I should really be using those persim berries more. :v
Gee, I wonder. :v
Neat reward. Now we can get to Sootopolis.
...well, I guess that answers how this Cooltrainer go out to this island.
Along the way, Finn reaches his final form.
._.
Finn got the revenge KO at least.
At this stage, I remembered that the EXP Share was available....all the way back in Rustboro.
....sigh.
There's nothing to do in Sootopolis since the Gym is closed. I supposed they wanted to make sure you didn't get to the Elite Four before dealing with Team Aqua.
So, let's go do that.
Lotsa rock Smash and Strength puzzles.
The layout here is kinda weird? It's not really clear to me which direction you're supposed to be going in, since the north and south paths of the first room seem to eventually lead to the same place.
One last fight with Shelly, also with only two Pokemon. I guess Team Aqua is dealing with a shortage.
Nino managed to set up Rain for Pluses to use Thunder reliably, despite getting confused.
Neato.
With that, it's time for the bossman himself.
Surprisingly easy Finn sweep. I don't this any of Archie's Pokemon actually knew any water moves.
And now, story happens and the weather is all messed up. Weird that this didn't happen before since Groudon was already loose.
I guess him being the Champion is supposed to be a surprise?
gasp
who could have seen this coming
Wallace jets off to Sky Pillar and leaves us behind
...why are there wild Pokemon in the cave of origin? Seems kinda pointless since it's so short and there's no fight here.
The trainers outside seem pretty nonplussed by the whole "weather going insane" thing.
In battle weather alternates between rain and strong sunlight. That's neat. Shame it doesn't go on for longer.
The rain does boost the speed of most of the water Pokemon, but it also lets Pluses use Thunder without missing. 😎
The effect disappears at route 130 though. Kinda lame.
Sure you're not.
I'll have to finish the story, clear the last gym, then trek literally to the other side of Hoenn before I can get this trade. ;_;
I do appreciate the goofy wordplay of the move tutors in these games.
IGN reviewing ORAS be like:
....ahem.
Rude. >_>
Now the weather effects are spreading here.
And there's only one mach bike puzzle to get to the top of sky pillar? I remember there being more. Maybe it's in the postgame?
Anyway, we get to the top, wake up big green, and then rush back to Sootopolis. And the hole event is resolved in a cutscene.
Neat.
Time for the last gym.
Kinda weird that all the gym trainers are optional.
They are worth a lot of money to fight, though.
All of the Lady class trainers here have Pokemon holding nuggets. Weird.
Time for the last gym leader.
You'd think this would be an easy fight for Pluses and Dots, but...well, I guess we'll see.
Pluses can easily deal with Luvdisc, but Dots needs to switch in to deal with Whishcash.
Lucky confusion activation made Sealeo a safe kill for Finn. Though he's actually slower than Sealeo, so it's still kinda risky.
...wait, Armaldo has lower speed than Anorith? Wack.
Kingra messed up the first run though. He loves to spam double team,a nd the only guaranteed hit move I had was on Dots, which...yeah, did not work out.
Thunder does become a guaranteed hit in rain....but I dropped Nino from my team to bring dua to steal Nuggets. Oops.
...so after a quick trip back to the Pokemon center, we go with round 2.
Round 2 goes similarly for Dots.
But we get the Thunder setup, so it goes better overall.
Rude. >_>
With that, time to get out last part member.
A quick pit stop to get Echidna room to use Waterfall.
I switched to playing on my PC with a controller, whihc makes navigating on the mach bike much easier than trying to use the "dpad" on a touchscreen. And boy howdy does that make getting across Hoenn a lot quicker.
And we're here, finally.
Is this meant as foreshadowing that Steven is here in the postgame? :thonk:
And there's our gal. Here in our party for less than a minute.
And there's our final guy, for real. Not counting the postgame. :v
🤔
I mainly plan to use it just to free up move slots in Echidna's movepool, but we'll see if it's worth using to fight the elite four.
Anyway, hopefully that will be the next update. One complication due to the lack of fly is I'll have to traverse victory road if I want to use things like move tutors or the deleter during preparation, so I kind of need to get my team setup ahead f time. :v