Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Dayni]

fuckin' relatable memes

1 minute ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

You know the one.

TMS came to mind.

I never played it.

28 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Progression is an art- a manmade effort that must be actively made.Devolution is a science- seemingly beyond control and inevitable. Both can be fascinating.🧐

  One thing I'd like to point out is that science is less that terrible collapse and the more the study of it's properties, for some with the inherent interest in averting at least some of the consequence. Would the science of a black hole be itself the black hole?

The regression of creative work can be very much it's own effort all in itself, I'd argue the intentionally bad works qualify for instance (though The Room would not count, a piece which some may try to label retrospectively as on purpose but which was made with the intent of being good but it's recorded issues marked it for it's results.).

2 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

 

RIP Issac's favourite top.

[Codename Shrimp]

7 hours ago, Lightcosmo said:

Play what you truly desire to rather than something you feel obligated to.

I don't feel obligated for the games i am playing atm since i am enjoying them 😄

[Sidereal Wraith]

3 hours ago, Dayni said:

TMS came to mind. I never played it.

You’re right about one thing Dayni, you don’t play that game, it plays you.

[Codename Shrimp]

35 minutes ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

You’re right about one thing Dayni, you don’t play that game, it plays you.

The game dominated you that much eh?

[Interdimensional Observer]

6 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

 

Eh,

 

not epic enough.😛

 

3 hours ago, Dayni said:

  One thing I'd like to point out is that science is less that terrible collapse and the more the study of it's properties, for some with the inherent interest in averting at least some of the consequence. Would the science of a black hole be itself the black hole?

...The supernova itself does last but what, seconds, minutes? The black hole is forever-ish? Understandable why the science would be focused more on the remnant of the collapse than the event of collapse itself.

4 hours ago, Dayni said:

The regression of creative work can be very much it's own effort all in itself, I'd argue the intentionally bad works qualify for instance (though The Room would not count, a piece which some may try to label retrospectively as on purpose but which was made with the intent of being good but it's recorded issues marked it for it's results.).

Perhaps? I guess it depends on the work in question. I'm not sure if I've played anything intentionally bad?😅 But if somebody took the wrong feedback and or made a wrong adjustment, then that would be part of a conscious regressive effort?

[Sidereal Wraith]

15 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

The game dominated you that much eh?

I swore a blood oath on sacred relics never to touch the damn thing Shrimp-kun. If I can borrow a phrase that you falsely accuse me of all the time I feel like you’re projecting here. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to pour bleach into my eyes to wash away the sin of what I just read.

Edited August 16 by Sidereal Wraith

[Codename Shrimp]

30 minutes ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

I swore a blood oath on sacred relics never to touch the damn thing Shrimp-kun

That

That makes alot of sense

[Sidereal Wraith]

16 minutes ago, Codename Shrimp said:

That

That makes alot of sense

It’s better to be broken in body then corrupted in spirit Shrimp-kun.

[Acacia Sgt]

Oh, shut up.

[Eltosian Kadath]

So I have been playing a bit more of the Pokemon Emerald Rogue 2.0+ rom hack, completing a few runs, and figured I would share a bit from an in progress attempt at the Chaos Novice challenge quest run. I decided to space this run out a bit, as full runs of this game are rather long, so I will show a little writeup of my progress so far in the spoiler bow below for those interested

Spoiler

The Chaos Novice challenge has a few little rules attached to it, and the first of those is

That you have to pick a random new starter option, instead of bringing a pokemon you have chose (and possibly even strengthened a bit with rogue-like progression stuff). I had the choice of Riolu, Nacli, and a very boring normal type that I have already forgotten about, and I chose Nacli, as while Riolu becomes great after it evolves, due to the nature of this run, I wasn't sure if I would have it long enough to see the evolution, and I figured Nacli would have the easiest time at the start. There were no real problems with the first early routes, but I did decide not to get any duplicate evolution lines, so when I reach my first rest stop (a battle prep stop) I have

This little army with me. You might realize I have been using Fire Emblem character names as a naming theme, but if I already have caught a pokemon before on any run, I don't bother nicknaming them again. Also I like how this game handles leveling, each gym leader has a level cap; 15 for gym 1, 25 for gym 2, 35 for gym 3, etc, till 85 for gym 8, then goes up by 3 for each elite 4 round, so 88, 91, 94, and 97, with the champion level cap at 100, with each won battle (technically just beating the first pokemon in each battle awards the exp) basically just giving all your pokemon 3 levels, then bringing all pokemon up to the level of your highest level 'mon, which for most purposes means grinding is trivial, but there are a few key exceptions where you might be underleveled (which I will bring up if they occur). Now I was kind of hoping the main gimmick of this run would appear here to show it off, but alas it may have to wait for next gym. Now this is basically the last opportunity to prepare for gym 1, so lets take a look at my pokes for now

My little random starter is doing just fine, defensive enough to take a few hit, and hits fairly hard with those STAB smack downs as well, which is tied for my strongest STAB move at the moment.

Terrible nature for the little earth dragon, and I don't really have a sufficient supply of mints to really fix that, plus its the daycare rest stops which give you an opportunity to buy mints. Not great moves either, but that is one of the things you can fix at the battle prep stop, but I will get to that in a moment, as I don't want to commit to spending money too soon here

My first special attacker, although I wish it had a move that hit just a little harder than that, and the speed lowering nature makes it dangerously slow...

A better move pool than most so far, although its STAB move is the garbage one, which is a bit unfortunate, and while it has great neutral coverage, it does not hit many types super effectively.

People love to joke about Ledyba/Ledian being terrible pokemon, but getting screens this early is down right amazing.

That speed reducing nature sucks so much, but she is still one of my fastest mons, and Poison Fang is tied for my strongest STAB move on the team at the moment...

Now a battle prep stop gives me the option to buy some special items (which wont really apply to this run unless I get some rather rare legendary pokemon), evolution items (which wont help me right now as all these pokemon's first evolutions are by levelup), some held items (but I did start with two of those that I will show off in a moment), and most importantly, access to the move tutor, which is what I spend all my money on to buy

A move that will make Medius far more functional, and a far harder hitting move for my one special attacker.

I also pass out my two big hold items, lefties for Gilliam as she is already a bit tanky, so I hope that makes her even more so, and the eviolite on Medius to make him more tanky as well. Now I am trying to be very careful about these held items, so I am only really equipping them for major battles, like

The first Gym leader Raihan he-

Naga's tooth game, you are really starting this fight off with an enemy Tatsugiri...oof. This is starting out rough as a single stage pokemon it has way better stats than any of the pokemon on my team at the moment, most notably a brutal base 120 Special attack, and if it has STAB coverage than it hits half my team for super effective damage. Admittedly Tatsugiri has a really bad early levelup move set, but I don't like how this is starting, so I immediately switch to

Lowen to half enemy special damage for a few turns (and if there is one stat this bug line has, its special defense), but Ledyba weren't made for attacking, so I switch to

Leila here, as she is my hardest hitting mon that isn't weak to this thing, but as you can see, she just misses the kill before I have to switch out, and Light screen will run out real soon...

And I try to switch into my healthiest pokemon not weak to the thing, but the Zubat is too slow and defensviely weak to pull off the kill, so I have my first death of the run. Speaking of which, this game has Nuzlocke death rules on Normal difficulty, which is what I am playing on (also you can't recover the hold items of dead or released mons...). With Light Screen just running out, I am in a real pickle, but so far I have only seen it use water gun, so I make a bit of a gamble that it doesn't have any dragon attacks yet

And switch in my earth dragon, and thankfully it doesn't (and looking at that damage, if it was a move as weak as twister he would have survived it anyway...), so that monster of a first gym pokemon gets taken down. Hopefully the next one is easier...

...another Dragon type with brutal 120 special attack, which has even better overall stats than the Tatsugiri. Sigh, the thing about dragon types is if I were facing pokemon that evolve (well technically Duraludon can evolve now, but it was made as a single stage pokemon), they wouldn't be this bad, sure the final stage dragons are real monsters, but early game like this they tend to have BSTs worse than starters, which is far more manageable than all these high stated single stage mons the RNG is throwing at me

But the preperations I made saved the run here, thanks to the eviolite (and the Duraludon also not having any dragon coverage yet), Medius lived this hit too, and one shotted with the far more powerful STAB super effective Bulldoze I bought for him, which gets me to his last pokemon

And finally RNG is throwing me a bone with a pokemon that is around my power level, although there is no way I am living the mirror match, so I switch out to one of my healthiest mons left, my starter Nacli, but he doesn't fare particularly well here, only getting off one minor hit before thing start looking dire

My team is just running on fumes at this point, and while I don't like the look of the litwick matchup here, I think this thing's moveset might be just the really garbage levelup set you all saw above, so I go for it, but

It resists Litwicks hits, and then traps the little girl with sand tome, so she is definitely going down, but she does get a little damage off before dying...

So far this thing has only been using special moves, so I go for the light screen to try and make a better last stand with what mons remaining, but I don't have enough hp on my remain pokemon to afford to switch, so after getting a little bit more damage off (as Lown can tank special attacks well to begin with), he

Has to go down for the safe switch, although if I am being perfectly honest he managed to get off more damage than I expected, to the point that

Leila manages to outspeed and assassinate the little thing. That was the toughest first gym fight this game has ever given me, usually this game doesn't start getting hard until a fair bit latter into the run, but we just barely managed to limp out of that fight, and I even managed to save both my hold items as well.

Now my plan was to play through two badges for each little session like this before updating, but I ended up extending the first play session to three badges for reasons I will explain later, and then on the other hand this first writeup has ended up longer than I initially planned as well, partially due to explaining the game a little, and due to the first gym fight being down right brutal, so I will end off the writeup for now, and maybe continue it a bit later

 

 

[Sidereal Wraith]

1 hour ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Oh, shut up.

 

[Dayni]

Is this a map of places to go prolystise?

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Perhaps? I guess it depends on the work in question. I'm not sure if I've played anything intentionally bad?😅 But if somebody took the wrong feedback and or made a wrong adjustment, then that would be part of a conscious regressive effort?

 I'm focused on intent, so those would be like The Room and not count for the example I was making.

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

So I have been playing a bit more of the Pokemon Emerald Rogue 2.0+ rom hack, completing a few runs, and figured I would share a bit from an in progress attempt at the Chaos Novice challenge quest run. I decided to space this run out a bit, as full runs of this game are rather long, so I will show a little writeup of my progress so far in the spoiler bow below for those interested

  Reveal hidden contents

The Chaos Novice challenge has a few little rules attached to it, and the first of those is

That you have to pick a random new starter option, instead of bringing a pokemon you have chose (and possibly even strengthened a bit with rogue-like progression stuff). I had the choice of Riolu, Nacli, and a very boring normal type that I have already forgotten about, and I chose Nacli, as while Riolu becomes great after it evolves, due to the nature of this run, I wasn't sure if I would have it long enough to see the evolution, and I figured Nacli would have the easiest time at the start. There were no real problems with the first early routes, but I did decide not to get any duplicate evolution lines, so when I reach my first rest stop (a battle prep stop) I have

This little army with me. You might realize I have been using Fire Emblem character names as a naming theme, but if I already have caught a pokemon before on any run, I don't bother nicknaming them again. Also I like how this game handles leveling, each gym leader has a level cap; 15 for gym 1, 25 for gym 2, 35 for gym 3, etc, till 85 for gym 8, then goes up by 3 for each elite 4 round, so 88, 91, 94, and 97, with the champion level cap at 100, with each won battle (technically just beating the first pokemon in each battle awards the exp) basically just giving all your pokemon 3 levels, then bringing all pokemon up to the level of your highest level 'mon, which for most purposes means grinding is trivial, but there are a few key exceptions where you might be underleveled (which I will bring up if they occur). Now I was kind of hoping the main gimmick of this run would appear here to show it off, but alas it may have to wait for next gym. Now this is basically the last opportunity to prepare for gym 1, so lets take a look at my pokes for now

My little random starter is doing just fine, defensive enough to take a few hit, and hits fairly hard with those STAB smack downs as well, which is tied for my strongest STAB move at the moment.

Terrible nature for the little earth dragon, and I don't really have a sufficient supply of mints to really fix that, plus its the daycare rest stops which give you an opportunity to buy mints. Not great moves either, but that is one of the things you can fix at the battle prep stop, but I will get to that in a moment, as I don't want to commit to spending money too soon here

My first special attacker, although I wish it had a move that hit just a little harder than that, and the speed lowering nature makes it dangerously slow...

A better move pool than most so far, although its STAB move is the garbage one, which is a bit unfortunate, and while it has great neutral coverage, it does not hit many types super effectively.

People love to joke about Ledyba/Ledian being terrible pokemon, but getting screens this early is down right amazing.

That speed reducing nature sucks so much, but she is still one of my fastest mons, and Poison Fang is tied for my strongest STAB move on the team at the moment...

Now a battle prep stop gives me the option to buy some special items (which wont really apply to this run unless I get some rather rare legendary pokemon), evolution items (which wont help me right now as all these pokemon's first evolutions are by levelup), some held items (but I did start with two of those that I will show off in a moment), and most importantly, access to the move tutor, which is what I spend all my money on to buy

A move that will make Medius far more functional, and a far harder hitting move for my one special attacker.

I also pass out my two big hold items, lefties for Gilliam as she is already a bit tanky, so I hope that makes her even more so, and the eviolite on Medius to make him more tanky as well. Now I am trying to be very careful about these held items, so I am only really equipping them for major battles, like

The first Gym leader Raihan he-

Naga's tooth game, you are really starting this fight off with an enemy Tatsugiri...oof. This is starting out rough as a single stage pokemon it has way better stats than any of the pokemon on my team at the moment, most notably a brutal base 120 Special attack, and if it has STAB coverage than it hits half my team for super effective damage. Admittedly Tatsugiri has a really bad early levelup move set, but I don't like how this is starting, so I immediately switch to

Lowen to half enemy special damage for a few turns (and if there is one stat this bug line has, its special defense), but Ledyba weren't made for attacking, so I switch to

Leila here, as she is my hardest hitting mon that isn't weak to this thing, but as you can see, she just misses the kill before I have to switch out, and Light screen will run out real soon...

And I try to switch into my healthiest pokemon not weak to the thing, but the Zubat is too slow and defensviely weak to pull off the kill, so I have my first death of the run. Speaking of which, this game has Nuzlocke death rules on Normal difficulty, which is what I am playing on (also you can't recover the hold items of dead or released mons...). With Light Screen just running out, I am in a real pickle, but so far I have only seen it use water gun, so I make a bit of a gamble that it doesn't have any dragon attacks yet

And switch in my earth dragon, and thankfully it doesn't (and looking at that damage, if it was a move as weak as twister he would have survived it anyway...), so that monster of a first gym pokemon gets taken down. Hopefully the next one is easier...

...another Dragon type with brutal 120 special attack, which has even better overall stats than the Tatsugiri. Sigh, the thing about dragon types is if I were facing pokemon that evolve (well technically Duraludon can evolve now, but it was made as a single stage pokemon), they wouldn't be this bad, sure the final stage dragons are real monsters, but early game like this they tend to have BSTs worse than starters, which is far more manageable than all these high stated single stage mons the RNG is throwing at me

But the preperations I made saved the run here, thanks to the eviolite (and the Duraludon also not having any dragon coverage yet), Medius lived this hit too, and one shotted with the far more powerful STAB super effective Bulldoze I bought for him, which gets me to his last pokemon

And finally RNG is throwing me a bone with a pokemon that is around my power level, although there is no way I am living the mirror match, so I switch out to one of my healthiest mons left, my starter Nacli, but he doesn't fare particularly well here, only getting off one minor hit before thing start looking dire

My team is just running on fumes at this point, and while I don't like the look of the litwick matchup here, I think this thing's moveset might be just the really garbage levelup set you all saw above, so I go for it, but

It resists Litwicks hits, and then traps the little girl with sand tome, so she is definitely going down, but she does get a little damage off before dying...

So far this thing has only been using special moves, so I go for the light screen to try and make a better last stand with what mons remaining, but I don't have enough hp on my remain pokemon to afford to switch, so after getting a little bit more damage off (as Lown can tank special attacks well to begin with), he

Has to go down for the safe switch, although if I am being perfectly honest he managed to get off more damage than I expected, to the point that

Leila manages to outspeed and assassinate the little thing. That was the toughest first gym fight this game has ever given me, usually this game doesn't start getting hard until a fair bit latter into the run, but we just barely managed to limp out of that fight, and I even managed to save both my hold items as well.

Now my plan was to play through two badges for each little session like this before updating, but I ended up extending the first play session to three badges for reasons I will explain later, and then on the other hand this first writeup has ended up longer than I initially planned as well, partially due to explaining the game a little, and due to the first gym fight being down right brutal, so I will end off the writeup for now, and maybe continue it a bit later

 

 

RIP Zubat, Litwick and especially Lowen.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Dayni said:

Is this a map of places to go prolystise?

>Venezuela

>Only country in South America to not have an Irish pub

[Acacia Sgt]

What, is Guyana chopped liver now?

[Armagon]

33 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

What, is Guyana chopped liver now?

Honestly i was gonna make a joke that Venezuela took Guyana but then i realized that Guyana would still exist even if Venezuela had it's way.

[Acacia Sgt]

12 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Honestly i was gonna make a joke that Venezuela took Guyana but then i realized that Guyana would still exist even if Venezuela had it's way.

The headaches that would be avoided today if only the Spanish and Dutch had actually defined the border 400 years ago...

[Armagon]

JD Vance actually the most racist guy in the Republican party, which says a lot. Bro is so racist, he's going after other white people. 

Also he definitely doesn't know what the movie is about because if he did, he'd know that the bad guy was an American nationalist.

16 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

The headaches that would be avoided today if only the Spanish and Dutch had actually defined the border 400 years ago...

Or if Venezuela had actually bothered to settle the region. That's the reason their claims hold no water, because they never even tried.

[Acacia Sgt]

3 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Or if Venezuela had actually bothered to settle the region. That's the reason their claims hold no water, because they never even tried.

Maybe, but it was no guarantee. Treaties and settlements sadly fell secondary to power. If you didn't have the strength to defend the area from invasion... well, that was that.

[Armagon]

3 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Maybe, but it was no guarantee. Treaties and settlements sadly fell secondary to power. If you didn't have the strength to defend the area from invasion... well, that was that.

To be fair, i do think Venezuela was always strong enough to take the Essequibo by force.....in a single conflict. The problem is that there is a little country to the north called The United States and they would absolutely not let a war slide in their own backyard.

Maybe they could've gotten away with it in the 1800s when America was only a regional power.

[Acacia Sgt]

7 hours ago, Armagon said:

To be fair, i do think Venezuela was always strong enough to take the Essequibo by force.....in a single conflict. The problem is that there is a little country to the north called The United States and they would absolutely not let a war slide in their own backyard.

Maybe they could've gotten away with it in the 1800s when America was only a regional power.

I doubt it. Since it'd mean waging war directly with Great Britain (Guyana didn't got independence until 1966), so I doubt they was a point they could take it and hold it.

[Eltosian Kadath]

8 hours ago, Dayni said:

RIP Zubat, Litwick and especially Lowen.

Little Lowen was the low key MVP of that first Gym thanks to light screen. RIP little guy, you were too precious for this world.

Now for a little more Emerald Rogue action as I will continue on to the third Gym

Spoiler

We are still to the point where catching a bunch of replacements isn't that hard, so by the end of the next route

We have filled out the ranks a bit, and even have a fully evolved mon in that Pawmot, although we do also run into a major trainer that isn't a Gym leader this time

With a rival blocking the exit here. Also the particularly astute (with too much pokemon knowledge) might recognize this route as rather reminiscent of Hoenn's route 110, as when you play through a route it is a modified version of a route from one of the first 4 generations, changed so that no HM is required (but could be used for extra loot or a shortcut) and with on side used as a starting point you are teleported to when you entered, and the other side as some sort of an exit like this. Now the rival fights get very tough latter into the game, but this first one or two usually isn't that bad

Although our leads have a rather bad type match up. Carnivine isn't a great pokemon, which is a bit reassuring as the rival tends to keep most of his team around only replacing them late into the game.

Admittedly I don't really have any coverage for a pure grass type like that so I end up brute forcing it with my Pawmot causing paralysis, and hitting some lucky rolls on the arm trust multihits

...That is OK for now, but really worrying to see, as that means my rival will likely be sporting a nasty Metagross in latter fights.

But for now Medius can smash it with super effective hits

I was going to be just as dismissive about his last pokemon Golbat, but Brave Bird is a really powerful move, and like too many enemy pokemon in this game the damnable thing is holding a life orb for more extra damage, and it hits hard enough that I switch to a more defensive pokemon

In our little starter, and while it revealing the healing move roost looks like it will make this a very drawn out battle, at this point I have the Nacli/Naclstack/Garganacl line's signature move Salt Cure, and with that move's passive damage, plus super effective STAB damage (when it isn't roosting anyway)

It goes down before too long. I have one more route, and end up making one pokemon change on the next route. I will note there is no box in this game, so when you catch another pokemon with a full party you either have to release a party member to make space or play catch and release.

Now I end up at a Daycare rest stop before the Gym this time, and it gives me a few option here, first off it has the daycare, which acts as a way of storing a pokemon to be grabbed in the future, but doing so now comes with the consequence of meaning I would then be taking on the next Gym with less pokemon. I am still tempted to store Medius so I can bring him back out as a future replacement after becoming a fully evolved Garchomp, but after how rough Gym 1 was I decide not to risk facing Gym 2 with only 5 mons. There is also an option to buy berries, but I rarely end up using most of them, also unlike most hold items in this game you need to buy in bulk as berried aren't reusable, I consider buying a few Yahce berries to cover my only 4x weakness, but it is early game so shop supplies are rather limited and I don't see one available. There is also an odd option of the shop resupplier, who will have the entire endgame inventor of a random shop available, but you aren't buying from him you are ordering an item from him that you will have to pick up the next time you see him. Again the shop RNG really hates me so he has the useless special item shop items only. That shop would be far more useful if I were playing with any of the gimmicks, Mega Evolution, Z-moves, Terrastalization, etc., but I don't feel like I have unlocked enough of those options to really be using them at this point. Finally there is the shop that sells Mints and Pokeblocks (which can manipulate encounter a little, and are vital to type challenge runs, or the shiny only challenge run), although my shop luck being terrible she is only selling attack reducing nature mints, which is not what I want right now. My luck at this rest stop has been utterly garbage, and I don't see the main gimmick of this challenge run again, which is why I decided to continue playing until next Gym to finally show that off, but I guess its time to look at my team again before Gym 2

These two veterans of the team have both gotten an evolution for a great stat jump, and Gilliam even got her excellent signature move, so a great improvement on this pair, although otherwise not a huge improvement in their move set.

Although Leila hasn't changed all that much, she is still a solid little member of the team.

This was the one change I made since the rival fight was changing the Flaaffy for this Carbink, which is a bit of a special pokemon. I just recently unlocked an option for pokemon like this, with very unusual move sets and abilities like this to appear, and I liked the options it has. Tidy Up is Moushold's signiture move, a boosting move that raises attack and speed while clearing entry hazards from both sides of the field; Lunar Blessing is a Legends Arceus signature move of Cresselia, a healing move that recovers status as well, although it is better in doubles, but a boosting move and healing move together are too nice a combo to pass up. Mortal Spin is Glimmora's signature move and its a poison type Rapid Spin that poisons opponents instead of raising speed, with Hyper Drill being a 100 pow signature move of the Dunsparce line, which ignores protecting moves.

Now for the only real special attacker of the team right now in little Lissa here, although here lack of anything even resembling coverage moves is not great...

And finally we get to see the power of a fully evolved pokemon with Panne the Pawmot here

But it is time to to face Sabrina as Gym Leader 2

And I manage to pull off the Salt Cure as Kadabra sets up Reflect to survive physical attacks, and with the passive damage of salt cure gotten off for free, I decide to switch to

Lissa, who should be able to stall the thing out with that passive damage, with Confuse Ray to further stall it out, and still able to throw out a little damage with Psybeam as well,

Altough Kadabra puts a little of a wrinkle in this plan by using recover to try out stalling me

And while I end up pulling it off, I have a lot of bad luck for Lissa to get this injured. In spite of a lot of turns of confusion, the Kadabra never hit itself in confusion once (which could have ended things MUCH sooner), and it even got a critical hit in there as well, so while I take it down, Lissa is in no condition to face the next foe, so I immediately switch to

Leila on the Meowstic, and it immediately procs the 10% chance of confusion on Psybeam on the switch, so I am risking self hit death if I want to attack now, so  I switch again to Carbink, and while I try to setup

I run into a bit of a wrinkle, as Lunar Blessing is not as good a healing move as I expected. Most healing moves recover 50% health, but Lunar Blessing only recovers 25% (perhaps to balance the status recovery), and while I am still able to outheal its attacks, I don't have the time to boost up as much as I want because of that, and only get off one buff and hit before it procs the 10% confusion chance into hitting myself on a healing turn, and now it is not safe for Carbink to stay in...

And she immediately crits on the switch to make it not safe to go for the hit with Medius, so I

Make the shameful move of healing off the crit damage, so I can at least get the hit off I expected

And then it avoids death by proccing the 10% Psybeam confusion chance again and into Medius hitting himself. My luck this time is beyond awful, made even more insulting by every turn of confusion I have had resulting in a self hit, and the 6 turns of confusion her Kadabra had never hitting itself once. I need to make the switch again, and make a bit of a desperate move

Which pays off big time, as the goof went for priority Sucker Punch for the kill, which fails as I didn't attack, which then lets the Pawmot outspeed and kill the thing.

Which lead to Sabrina bringing in a pokemon that resists every single one of Panne's attacks, so I go for the guaranteed paralysis with Nuzzle as it Leech Seeds, so I switch out to

Full health Gilliam, but with it hitting such a brutal Psychic on the switch, that things aren't looking great. It looks like a roll to die, but I risk it to get off the Salt Cure to set the thing on a timer, and it goes for the seeds instead. With that tiny bit of chip in Gilliam is definitely dead to another attack, so I make another risky play

And my highest health poke dies on the switch. To be fair, if Panne didn't have a special defense reducing nature she would have lived the super effective hit, and dependin on the exeggcute's IVs and nature this still might have been a damage roll to die, but if she lived she could dig to stall out multiple turns for passive damage and hopefully kill, but at least now I get a safe switch

And that lets Leila finish things off. The RNG was really against me there making that battle a lot rougher than it should have been.

And the path to the third Gym opens with a rather difficult choice here: should I attack the evil team base in spite of being one pokemon down, or take the far safer option of the route to immediately replace my loss. Although I guess this is the first time I have shown the path screen like this so I should probably explain it. The strength boulders, rock smash rocks and cut trees (not shown here) represents routes, with the color telling you the most common type you can catch on the route (when you decide it will tell you a descriptor so distinguishing colors isn't vital), with strength boulders having more trainers and items available, but fewer different pokemon available to catch, cut trees has fewer trainers and items but more pokemon available to catch, and rock smash rocks being a middling amount of both. Immediately before the gym there is usually some type of rest stop; you can see those in the third column there, with a battle prep stop on top, and a general shop stop in the middle, those have healing items, pokeballs, and TM/TR shops in them, and I usually save those for latter in the game where you start finding hard to catch evolved pokemon that might deplete your balls, and when things get hard enough to need to buy a supply of good healing items. There are also some less common options that can replace routes or stops, which I will go over when/if I end up visiting one of them, although I do have a somewhat rare nothing option in the third column there, and of course the evil team base, although that one is a bit more certain to show up at some point.

Now I should probably mention why this is a bit of a tough choice. Evil team bases have no pokemon to catch, but a LOT of trainers (and thus useful money available which is very useful to get and stockpile), and items available, with a particularly nice prize at the end of it. It is also key to two quest I have not completed yet, but want to, first there is one for beating the leader of each evil team, and I haven't completed the quest for beating Archie, and while I wont face him at the end of this evil base, I need to clear this evil base to see the second one where you face the enemy leader. Second it is the only place I have ever seen Escape Ropes spawn, and that item is key to a second quest I haven't completed yet. It is a bit of a risk but I decide to take it on in spite of having to face the base with only 5 pokemon available. It is also one of the rare situations where I will be facing the danger of trainer pokemon before reaching the level cap, as I can't safely "grind" up on wild pokemon and instead have to do so on trainers

And I am immediately punished for my hubris by being utterly blindsided by the first enemy trainer's first pokemon having coverage like Ice Punch on a Marshtomp, which one shots Medius due to quad effective damage. If I were past Gym 4 I feel like coverage like that would be a bit more expected, but this early it was shocking. I guess I am taking on the enemy base with only 4 pokemon now...

And some of these battle get a bit rough, but we manage to clear the place without any more losses, and get the big prize at the end of this place

A stack of 10 rare candies that can be used to break the level cap and give us a real edge in battles. I usually like to save them for the difficult spike the elite 4 bring to super charge my best mon, but the nature of this challenge makes that a bit of a risk. Now I manage to catch two more pokemon on the next route, before finally meeting the big twist of this challenge

Mr WAHEY here, who has a random chance of showing up at any rest stop (like this battle prep stop here), and gives the player two options before disappearing, spend 1000 to trade one pokemon for a random one,

or trade your entire team for random pokemon for free, and the Chaos Novice quest requires I randomize my team every time I run into him...

So meet the new team everybody 😛 Now this is playing by Legends Arceus rules for evolutions and moves, so I can evolve the Galarian Meowth and Chimchar

And I even burn one of my rare candies so I can have an Infernape for this gym. Now I get a bit unlucky again, as the evolution items shop at the battle prep stop doesn't have a shiny stone available to get a Togekiss, but at least I can use the move tutor to make some of these pokemon a LOT better

Most notably getting Body Press on Bastiodon, which lets it use its very high to defense to attack with, and making his Iron Defense into a power 2 stage buff of both offense and defense.

And a better special move for Togetic, which also can pass off more burns with Serene Grace. I also buy a few hold items, which you will see shortly as I show off the team I created

First off we have one of the luckiest rerolls we could, as Aegislash is a fantastic pokemon that can setup while in defense stance and crush things in its offense stance, with the protective King's Shield to switch things up. I also bought a muscle band for a little extra damage from the hold item shop.

This poor little guy really needs that evolution, a few more levels for some key levelup moves, and a better nature, but I did what I could to help him out and take as much advantage of Serene Grace as I can.

Seems like a rather workable pokemon, with some nice stally moves to work with.

Terrible natures continue to plague me, and its move-pool leaves a lot to be desired, but Fake Out and Pay Day have a fair bit of interesting utility to them, and steel typing is great defensively, so I think I can work with this.

Great looking poke, and buying the Assualt vest to cover the weakness of its nature seemed like a great buy on the hard hitting monkey.

Honestly, Iron Defense and Body Press are such a powerful combo that I think this pokemon would be great even into the endgame, and while a normal healing move would be better, Protect and Lefties gives it some respectable healing along the way.

And we finally get to Gym leader 3 with Kofu, and things don't go as well as I would like with him leading with a Drizzle Pelipper,

And while I was able to Swords dance and kill the Pelipper, its rain boosted surfs hit so hard that I couldn't afford to leave it in on the next mon

And as I bring in my Vileplume on an easily resisted hit, it then crits a STAB Stone Edge to kill my Vileplume before she could kill with a quad effective Giga Drain that would have healed her up for the next pokemon. That was some down right disastrous luck, but

The thing has shown it to be a purely physical attacker, so I can setup with Bastidon's iron defense

And sweep through his team with body press easily...

~ You again ~

And that easily gets me through the third Gym, and where I took my first break in playing.

Although in true rogue-like fashion, the save is made to be temporary to prevent casual save scumming.

 

[Venger_06]

YES

[Interdimensional Observer]

*Tries resuming RF5 this morning, after playing absolutely nothing yesterday b/c hesitant and indecisive.*

*Gets incredibly overwhelmed by a "what was I doing again?" feeling immediately upon loading the file.*

😅 ...Absolutely no surprise whatsoever, but I wanted to try.😆 I know I took too long with this game, I know in retrospect I should've looked up the proposal mechanics in advance, but part of me doesn't want to write off doing the marriage aspect of RF5. Particularly since Project Dragon certainly won't be until sometime next year.

-Writing this out here in hopes it somehow gets me to actually push on.😅

[Acacia Sgt]

Okay, did not see this coming.

 

[Dayni]

Me looking at the title:

7 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

This was the one change I made since the rival fight was changing the Flaaffy for this Carbink, which is a bit of a special pokemon. I just recently unlocked an option for pokemon like this, with very unusual move sets and abilities like this to appear, and I liked the options it has. Tidy Up is Moushold's signiture move, a boosting move that raises attack and speed while clearing entry hazards from both sides of the field; Lunar Blessing is a Legends Arceus signature move of Cresselia, a healing move that recovers status as well, although it is better in doubles, but a boosting move and healing move together are too nice a combo to pass up. Mortal Spin is Glimmora's signature move and its a poison type Rapid Spin that poisons opponents instead of raising speed, with Hyper Drill being a 100 pow signature move of the Dunsparce line, which ignores protecting moves.

Wild seeing this happen.

Pretty decent moveset too.

7 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

So meet the new team everybody 😛 Now this is playing by Legends Arceus rules for evolutions and moves, so I can evolve the Galarian Meowth and Chimchar

And I even burn one of my rare candies so I can have an Infernape for this gym. Now I get a bit unlucky again, as the evolution items shop at the battle prep stop doesn't have a shiny stone available to get a Togekiss, but at least I can use the move tutor to make some of these pokemon a LOT better

What a gimmick to be working around. Forcing constant trading in the achievement, meaning this team is itself guaranteed to be switched out later on and you can't know how it'll end up.... Ooof if you're unlucky.

Farewell Panne, Medius and Vileplume for this time.