This was supposed to be a review of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, which I was trying to work on for some time now (emphasis on trying).
Unfortunately, life is a very mean individual. I won't bore you with the details so let's just say things happened that took most of my time to deal with and in the end I played some Pokémon.
It's not that bad, I had more fun playing Pokémon that I did working on KOTOR 2 (Because KOTOR starts slowly).
So, this is a Nuzlocke run. Which means that, among other things, if one of my pocket creatures is defeated in battle it's counted as "dead" and must be taken out of my team for the rest of that run.
There's other rules to Nuzlocke runs and there's always more people making more rules to suffer enjoy these things more, but I only use the big three rules:
- When one of your Pokémon faints it counts as being dead and it must be put inside the PC.
- You can only catch the first Pokémon that pops up in every route or city you go to.
- When all of your team members die it's Game Over and you fail the challenge.
...Simple enough right? Let's pick up right where I left off last time.
I was trying to level up my team after the last gym fight, we lost one of our teammates there and I was trying to harden the team a little, to reduce casualties in the future.
...Which will probably do nothing because this is a Pokémon game and crits exist but still, having more levels doesn't hurt.
In the last town I caught a sentient ice cream that I named "VanillaIce" and have been training ever since. The next gym is a flying type one so an ice type Pokémon will definitely give me an advantage.
I don't really know if double battles are faster when it comes to Pokémon leveling... but it's the best I can do.
VanillaIce is a glass cannon right now, by that I mean that he deals enough damage and dies when the breeze blows too hard. This, because he's a Pokémon on its first "form", if I want him to be stronger i'll have to evolve him.
Because of his glass cannon status it's important to keep healing VanillaIce and to keep him away from any dangerous opponents (which at this moment is pretty much everyone) something that is difficult when you consider i'm grinding in the middle of a route.
However, there's a place where I can freeload heal my team for free whenever I need to right next to the patch of grass i'm using to grind.
I don't need to tell you how useful that is...
I know it's been like two minutes since the last time you healed my guys but I really need it.
The existence of this house, right next to the dark grass i'm grinding to, makes this whole process way easier.
Eventually I venture further into this route and enter Chargestone Cave, it's a weird cave that has a magnetic field which charges the rocks (get it? charge-stone) and turns them into weird rock magnets you have to push into bigger rock magnets in order to proceed.
There's two things of interest (to me at least) in this cave.
One is a guy with an Archen that can, and will, wipe out my entire team if he sees me.
And the other thing of interest is a second chance to obtain a Drillbur.
In one of the very first posts of this Nuzlocke I talked about how Baconator(Pignite) killed off a Drillbur I wanted to catch, because Drillbur evolves into Excadrill which is a very helpful killing machine.
But this time I came prepared. By that I mean that I have bought over ten thousand bottles of Repel to keep the wild Pokémon (that are not wild Drillburs) away from my and have also grounded Baconator and instead decided to use Lil'Doge(Herdier), so that he doesn't end up killing it by accident like Baconator.
Hopefully.
It takes 6 repels to find a Drillbur, and once I do I utter a quick prayer to the RNG gods and attack it.
It actually works! Now I'm the proud owner of a Drillbur I named "Drillbo"
Ignore the name that shows up here, he's actually named Drillbo.
Now it's back to the fields with this little fella.
Grinding takes less time now. I've been blessed with an item called "Lucky Egg" which doubles the Exp one Pokémon receives after a battle, so it doesn't matter if I switch Drillbo out of the battle, he's now getting the full (or at least almost full) amount of exp he would have got if I didn't change Pokémon.
Once I'm satisfied with Drillbo's growth I give the Lucky Egg to VanillaIce, she's really close to hitting level 35 so I'm using the egg to speed up the process.
Yes Drillbo, keep growing. kEeP gRoWinG.
Drillbo isn't like VanillaIce so he actually gets a couple of hits in (and can actually take a hit), it makes him all the more useful in Chargestone cave so I keep him in front of the team in order to deal with the Pokémon that show up.
Here we can see two Drillbur in their natural habitat, communicating through their claws.
Team Plasma was also in the cave and they proved to be very good sources of Exp. Not very good trainers, Drillbo dealt with more than half of them and he was of a lower level than their Pokémon.
There was also a doctor? I don't know what he's doing in the bottom of a magnetic cave but he's doing something.
In return for killing his Pokémon team in cold blood the doctor would heal my team whenever I wanted, no questions asked. The best kind of doctor in my opinion...
Drillbo got to evolve in this cave! Thanks to team plasma's sacrifice influence he reached the level necessary for him to become an Excadrill. I'm very happy about this and also surprised that it didn't take long...
...I suppose he's now an Excadrillbo?
Soon after it was Baconator's turn, I also happy about this one but this time it's because I can see her growth.
With the Team Plasma members destroyed defeated and my two biggest children evolving I decided to leave the cave.
But then N shows up...
You know, the guy who's the leader- I mean King -of Team Plasma. The creepy 20 year old dude that wants to be best friends with my character who is like... 15 or something?
He wants to have a Pokémon fight too, I accept and kill his team with ease, because Excadrillbo, he is understandably angry and rants about how humans only use Pokémon to make them harm one another which in retrospective is true I mean right now I'm doing the same thing.
Then the Pokemon professor (Professor Juniper), shows up, N tells her what she does is dumb, she tells N that he can think whatever he wants to because it's a free world, N tells her that she's dumb and then leaves.
A great interaction between two characters.
I WILL FREE ALL OF POKÉMON-KIND REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE -N, Probably.
The next stop after Chargestone Cave is Mistralton City, home of the bird type Pokémon gym leader Skyla, who tells me to go to a tower because she's busy right now and needs to go to said tower to do some stuff.
The routes next to Mistralton city have a lot of tall grass. It reminds me of my home, tall grass wherever you go and weird/dangerous creatures lurking within.
Really good memories.
Can you see where I am? I meant it, I don't know where I'm standing right now. Please help me.
I found a bird in this route, not the best catch but it's good, now have a guy that can use Fly and can get me to any place I've been to before so... cool I guess.
I shall dub thee... Berd.
Not many things happen in this route, a couple of wild Pokémon fights and a couple of fights with some trainers. One of them holds me and forces me to fight with these weird Pokémon rules.
I think it's called a triple battle, you throw the first three Pokemon from your team and the only one who can attack (and be attacked) at any moment is the one in front. You can rotate once per turn and you have to if you want to use the moves of a different Pokémon.
It was easy, but weird.
Lil'Doge evolved from this fight so that's a bonus.
She isn't really Lil'Doge anymore...
It's going to be a pain to clean the dog hairs from the couch now...
I make it to the tower. Turns out it's a Pokémon Cemetery.
...Isn't it weird to put a graveyard in a tower? You always have to make holes to put the dead Pokemon in, so you have to build with that in mind, doesn't that cause issues with the structure or something?
Moving on.
I catch a living candle here but instead of leveling it I decide to keep my team as it is right now and keep increasing the levels of what I have.
Berd evolves. Not surprising, because she was almost at the level where her species evolve.
A little conflicted on this one. She became stronger... but her design isn't one of my favorites.
I find Skyla at the top of the tower and she says that she's done doing some stuff and then goes back to the gym.
Basically, I just ran in circles.
Instead of going down all the way I came from use my new Poké-mobile and fly all the way back to the town and head into the gym.
Oh, forgot to mention. VanillaIce evolved while I wasn't looking.
This gym's theme is cannons- I mean flying - they use these big cannons that use humans as ammunition.
Difficulty wise this gym is easy, if you have the right Pokémon that is. Every trainer here uses one or two of a total of three different flying type Pokémon with Skyla using all three.
She herself isn't a difficult gym leader, the only "difficulty" came from her Swanna, who is a danger to Excadrillbo because of her water typing, I changed to Lil'Doge and she wiped the floor with her.
I should also mention that VanillaIce was single handedly capable of defeating everyone in the gym without much difficulty (with the exception of Skyla who only fought against Excadrillbo and Lil'Doge).
Things are good so far! No one has died yet and we totally kicked ass in this gym.
I decide to leave the gym but I'm stopped again by N, who acts all creepy and then talks to Excadrillbo.
Stay away from me sir. I'm calling the Poké-Police.
This is as far as I go today... It was somewhat exhausting for me, since I was busy with other stuff and had to find the time to squeeze in some Pokemon.
I think it was worth the struggle though, I had a lot of fun this time and was really happy that most of my team evolved, even if they end up dying later on i'm still happy they got this far.
Thanks for reading everyone. Remember to stay safe!
The team:
The dead guys:
