Ok, things are much more interesting here in Emerald. My own rules:
(1) Set style
(2) No pokemon numbered in the original 150.
(3) No online resources whatsoever (unless I am stuck somewhere by the story).
I have already lost a number of pokemon (four, perhaps?), so that is good. Currently, I am working with my starter (grass again), some sort of moth, and a recently captured fire/ground turtley fellow. I just found my way to a town surrounded by ash.
What generation/game are we currently on? I don't want to play RBY/GSC, I've done those way more than enough. Also, gieb links to GBA/DS emulators and whatnot. I refuse to Nuzlocke my actual games.
We're on Emerald. PM sent. Or not, as someone has a full inbox! Who might that be? *shifty eyes*
I'll be starting tonight/tomorrow, as I'll be working away overnight and have no internet access/anything to do.
We're on Emerald. PM sent. Or not, as someone has a full inbox! Who might that be? *shifty eyes*
I'll be starting tonight/tomorrow, as I'll be working away overnight and have no internet access/anything to do.
Well I've reached the elite four in emerald.
I'm already pissing my pants because my team isn't very balanced, especially since I lost my only physical wall weezing vs the double psychic lady (along with azumarill), and I have offensive holes aswell with no ice or fire attackers. I was leveling my sandslash in that fire mountain to get some defense EVs but I'd forgotten magnitude could hit and did double damage during dig so he fainted aswell..
I'm currently running a lanturn (got the bad ability >_<) with thunder, surf, confuse ray and thunder wave, and he's the only one of my pokemon that can learn blizzard which is all ive got as TM. Don't want to give up his STAB moves and the CC is good aswell..
Then I've got an altaria as a physical attacker with dragon dance, fly, earthquake and sing. Sing is kinda unreliable but don't know how else I'm gonna set up dragon dance.
Grumpig has got psychic, confuse ray, rest and psybeam. Might swap psybeam for calm mind but 10 attacking pp isnt a lot for 4 fights and I cant seem to find a vendor for pp replenishing.
My last usable pokemon is my starter sceptile with leaf blade giga drain pursuit and detect. Not really sure what to do with this guy, great speed and SPA and leaf blade is good but resisted by a lot of things and he seems pretty fragile.
Anyways I've been playing out a fight in my head vs drake after looking at his team and I think I'd be ****ed up the ***. Doubt I could set up altaria when all the opposing pokemon have STAB dragon moves, grumpig would probably be outspeeded and pummeled with physical moves, lanturn wouldn't be able to hurt flygon, and sceptile would be resisted by everything and raped by ground, flying and fire STABs (almost earth wind and fire). My PC doesnt hold any treasures either, but relicanth, tentacool and linoone do deserve to be mentioned, although I lack the TMs to really make any of them shine. Maybe Ill just overlevel everyone and go for a suicide run, I guess the game is over after the elite four whether I win or not.
Heres a rundown of my battle vs the elite four. Before attempting this I leveled up my linoone to get belly drum but unfortunately I couldnt teach him flail so his main move was strength.
The first dark boss was pretty simple, used sing with altaria and set up dragon dance and then swept the opposing team in 1 or 2 hits each.
I had a bit more trouble with the 2nd ghost boss, because I was dumb enough to be under the impression that ghost types were weak to psychic and not the other way around xD 1 super effective STAB shadow ball on my grumpig from Banette whos major stat is attack... Let's just say little piggy didnt get to go to the market. In hindsight what I should've then done was switch in linoone since he's immune to ghost and was carrying shadow ball, but instead I switched in sceptile because it had a dark move pursuit, but with the pathetic power of the move it took a while and I had to blow through some potions. Dusclops was carrying ice beam so I switched to lanturn to finish him off
Lanturn had the honor of soloing the next ice boss also, since 3/5 of the pokemon had water subtypes that I could conveniently kill with thunder. I was down to under 10 hp during a hailstorm after taking an explosion, but the little ****er managed to stay alive luckily!
I had been worrying a lot about drake, and it wasnt exactly the prettiest start either. I set up belly drum with linoone while his shelgon just used protect, but then he was hit by rock tomb and got a speed decrease. Cant sweep if I dont get first strike! So I swapped him out with lanturn and then back to linoone again to repeat the process and luckily the enemy was pretty docile using protect a lot. After I was set up again I just used strength (best normal attack I had available >_< and 1-shotted all his dragon pokemon.
Now I'm thinking, "Yey im done!", run through the door and... ****... some dude talks to be and wants to fight, wallace? Oh yeah that *******.. Haven't even healed my pokemon but sure whatever. Hes got some big *** whale so I switch in lanturn and just thunder the **** out of that followed by gyarados (what a stupid switch with double lightning weakness) but then the **** hits the fan when he switches in ludicolo. I thunder wave him but then he just proceeds to spam double team while I waste a turn confusing him and then try to thunder him but his STAB super effective giga drain hurts like hell and forces me to switch. Now I've got a +6 evasion defensive pokemon with leech seed on my hands and I'm about ready to give up after trying to switching in altaria and linoone but having them pummelled. At last I switch in sceptile which makes more sense since hes immune to leech seed and resistant to absorb. Killing him still prooves impossible until hes run out of PP for surf, giga drain and leech seed (thanks potions) and after a few tries a couple attacks go through and kill him. His milotic and tentacruel are both ****ing up sceptile with super effective sludge bomb and ice beam respectively but I switch in lanturn who gets to dlean up the remains. Sucess!
I'm in, started Emerald yesterday. Right now I'm about to enter my first gym challenge, someone on streets gave me info about what can I expect in gym. My starter is Torchic, now evolved to Combusken. Right now I have 4 pokemons, but only starter and some pink rabbit look kind of useful to me (other two are some kind of walking potato named Seedot and fragile butterfly Dustox). Now I'm gonna try to level up a bit before entering gym since my pokemon is fire, and I'm facing rock type there.
Also I decided to play without internet info on pokemons to explore things myself. I have no idea about any of these pokemons, never saw any of them, so it's kind of refreshing. Ah yes, I don't give nicknames to pokemons because I want to learn their names faster.
I like Emerald. AI is 10 times better than in older generations, opponents actually have a strategy, not only spamming powerful moves like there is no tomorrow. I'm surprised that AI knows for moves like Mist and they know how to use it, they use sunny day move on rock type just to nullify water attacks. I mean, that is great, didn't expect that. And most importantly, it's challenging to win battles. AI is not that predictable like before. Imagine that, I fought with my fire type against Kingdra, and her first two moves were Double Team, not some water attack like someone might expect.
Downside is, from all pokemons I caught at start (6 or 7 of them), starter was the only one who can learn Cut HM, and I didn't have a single pokemon who can learn Fly among 10-15 of them later. Annoying, I obviously broke a rule to catch one bird to be able to use fly. Now I have 25 pokemons and that bird is the only one that can learn Fly. So I decided to have flexible HM slave pokemons. Playing the game without Fly... give me a break, not a chance.
Congrats Panda but too fast. We've just started.
I restarted a couple times due to random deaths, and overall clumsiness, but soon got the hang of it. Until I reached the second gym, and thought my flying type moves would win against fighting types. And the Gym Leaders final Pokemon swept away my whole team.
Oh well, I'll be abusing emulator speed to do some grinding, and keep as many as I can around a solid fighting level. I am completely new to this generation, and have not seen many of the pokemon encountered so far, so have no idea what I'll be up against.
You must abuse speed cause otherwise things last for too long. Definitely use speed because you WILL train a lot to be able to handle a challenge. Beware of tagteam battles, I find them much more dangerous than 1v1 against anyone in particular because for 1v1 you need to have only 1 strong pokemon, and in tagteam if your second is weak, you will most likely lose him. You can avoid tagteam battles, but will leave that to you.
Also I think this game is perhaps better if you throw out Nuzlocke rule that says fainted pokemon = dead pokemon and you mustn't use him. You will most likely lose pokemons and lose opportunity to know them better (which is big problem for me cause I play this to learn something about new pokemons I never saw). That rule of fainted=dead is more suited for someone who has some clue about pokemons he is facing and using. Now I lost few pokemons I know nothing about and won't know anything about unless I restart and luckily catch them as first pokemon seen in grass.
If you like 2v2, they introduced 3v3 later. :badteeth: AI doesn't really focus fire, so it's not that terrible for Nuzlocke.
AI in third generation wasn't that great, but yeah. It has gotten at least a little better over time.
Nuzlocke "experience" is a bit better with playing blind and not grinding too much, but if you don't care for that and just want to clear the challenge, then definitely all those things apply.
Kind of gotten bored of White 2 after doing the same stuff 1251204912 times, so dropped it. Emerald involves Dive HM, if I remember correctly. That was just horrible. Likely joining you soon regardless though.
Dive is just another HM, I hate HMs in general because I feel like they ruin my builds, but I didnt think dive was any worse than most of the others.
I've now started on platinum (sorry but for some reason pokemon is crack for me). 3d takes some getting used to and not being able to accelerate the game as much on the DS emulator compared to the GBA emulator sucks ***. The first rock gym seemed easy but then the gym leader suddenly 1 shot my lvl 15 water starter.. I continued on with 2 pokemon, some lightning and some psychic type with whom I wiped on the second grass gym.
Currently I got the fire starter, caught the same lightning type and did the two first gyms fine. Caught cherubi a grass type from a honey tree and it looked to have a good movepool but was killed in 1 turn during a double battle recently >_< before that I met a gligar that I was really excited about, but it escaped from 3 pokeballs and leech seed from said grass pokemon killed it, ****ing stupid mistake of me! Ive seen some other cool wild pokemon, but not before seeing a zubat or a geodude, **** I hate those pokemon in this tourney!!! So still just using 2 damn pokemon, starter and luxray both ~lvl 30 with 2 badges under my belt.
Edit: Oh yeah, and Bibarel. Bibarel is a pita to find aswell.
Loaded up Emerald, died on second gym after just barely failing to kill his last guy, leading to Reversal of doom. >_>
Dive was just annoying since you actually needed it more than once or twice for little niche things, aka it had to be lugged around with you. Also, vaguely recall getting lost looking for the next area while diving a long time ago.
Will return to future versions now. Kind of want to make an entry hazard team, and only D/P+ have Stealth Rock. D;
The second gym leader got me too, again! I found out (too late,) that Dustox is relatively useful against that 3rd Pokemon. So, I restarted a few more times, and made some actual progress, no longer nicknaming. I agree that I need to ignore nicknames, so that I can actually get a feel for the moves/types in Emerald.
Currently in Mauville City, using:
I plan on using Poochyena, but just need to level him up. I have no idea where to head in Emerald, but as I've just entered a new city, it shouldn't be too hard to find new paths.
And, damnit Panda! I'd join you on Platinum, but I've been caught out a number of times early on in Emerald. I do like Platinum, but damn it is hard with all the super-effective counters! Good luck with it.
Edit: Three gyms down: The third being beaten pretty much solo by Marshstomp (Water/Ground.)
Also, upon looking up some information for HM slaves, I noticed Whismur had a fairly fun-looking final evolution form.
What appears to be solid hitpoints and normal attack, with Hyper Beam, Sleep Talk, Rest and a 100 damage, 100 accuracy Normal attack (can't recall the name of it, but it looked solid.)
Start attacking, after taking a few hits, use Rest and Sleep Talk to land two STAB 100+ damage moves.
Unfortunately, while training (of course,) I used Uproar, thinking it was a decent attack. RIP Whismur - I couldn't recall you in time.
Like in older generation, cheap way to beat the game Nuzlocke rules is to simply overlevel pokemons. I overleveled 3 of them, but Blaziken alone was total powerhouse.
Hall of Fame:
Blaziken (lvl 73)
Tentacruel (lvl 65)
Manectric (lvl 64)
Kecleon (lvl 57)
Exploud (lvl 57) - fainted during battle
Hariyama (lvl 51) - fainted during battle
Blaziken was a beast with that level, 1 shoting some targets. What he couldn't handle, Manectric came in with his powerfull lightning attacks. Tentacruel was not that useful, except in last match when he was brutal tank against water attacks, and while he took hit by hit, I fully healed all other pokemons, including Tentacruel.
4 elite members were not problem at all, last one gave me some challenge though. Champion was also rather easy, except for his last pokemon, who has Recover and was hard to take down. But 4v1 is too much to handle with a single pokemon.
After defeating elite 4 and becoming champion, I headed right to Battle Frontier hoping to see some challenge there. Entered Battle Dome with my casual trio with rather bad movesets and won the tournament without losing pokemon. I guess opponents improve as you win matches. After all, I fought with lvl 73, 65 and 64 against level 75 pokemons.
AI is a little better, actually trying to set up sweeps (or just spamming some combination of Double Team/Confuse Ray/Toxic to hell and back) once in a while, but they still do stupid stuff. Limited experience with the facilities, so can't say which of those is the best.
Perhaps then I'll try newer generations to see what AI can do.
Solved my saving problems with LeafGreen and restarted it. Rolled Bulbasaur as starting pokemon.
Playing with him is too easy, especially with my early caught Pikachu, they make fantastic team. Their movesets are great and cover each other in type. Bulbasaur is already Venusaur (speedy playing, right) and I must say that thing is insanely powerful, as sweeper, as supporter, you name it.
His moveset is great, starting with Leech Seed, sweeping duo of Razor Leaf and Growth, and Sleep Powder for awesomeness. Make sweeping machine out of him is easy. Pikachu has great moves also, Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave, Double Team and Quick Attack. My choices are to make sweeping machine out of Venusaur or to support with Leech Seed and Sleep Powder to make Pikachu nearly impossible to hit and sweep with him instead. I also have Primeape in team, must train my Spearow to higher level, and then I got myself a decent team! Of course I can catch Snorlax now, but I'm not sure do I want to use him. Definitely not if he is so overpowered as in earlier generations, basically 1-pokemon-team. Now soon I'm gonna catch some water pokemon to have complete team, hopefully something I can teach to have that cheap Ice Beam and to cover both ice and fire weakness of my Venusaur.