Now that I have enough badges, I can receive the SQUIRTBOTTLE from the flower shop lady. Since Sudowoodo has been moved from that three way intersection in Route 36 to Ilex Forest, the SQUIRTBOTTLE doesn't actually clear any roadblocks, but it'll let me catch Sudowoodo later if I want to. Sudowoodo kind of a mediocre Pokemon, but it's an event encounter, so I believe it'll scale up if I save it for when I need an appropriately level replacement for a fallen team member in the late game.
Alright, for the next step of my plan, I'm gonna need a Ghost-type. There's a place I can trade a Snubbull for a Misdreavus at, so I'm gonna shoot for a 30% chance to encounter a Snubbul at Route 34, which should effectively be a 60% encounter chance due to dupes clause.
Damn.
Well, might as well catch it anyway, if only for later dupes clause exploitation.
Lemme check my notes for the more consistent route for catching Snu- Wait, ah shit. The catching route I had come up with actually uses Route 34 as a component.
Specifically, Morning!Route 34 or Day!Route 34, because Night!Route 34 has a 0% encounter rate for Snubbull.
Okay, Jigglypuff's chance of being encountered doesn't vary based on the time of day (and I didn't need to invoke dupes clause), so rolling for an encounter at the wrong time of day technically wasn't the cause of me not rolling a Snubbull encounter. Still, that was sloppy of me.
As was losing Cleopatra to some random ass trainer with a Rock Throw Geodude. I don't recall the exact circumstances of their death, but I think I hard switched into them from Nuke, predicting a Ground-type move like Magnitude.
Fun fact: Slugma and Magcargo are actually Gen 2 Pokemon, not Gen 3 Pokemon. You could only catch Slugma (in an underleveled state) in Kanto in the vanilla games, though. It couldn't even be encountered near Cinnabar Island, a logical place for it- no, you could only catch it near
Cycling Road for some reason. And Magcargo could only be obtained by evolving Slugma, which could only be caught around 6-12-ish levels away from the level it evolved at. At least Blaine got one?
Ooh, on my way to Route 11 to try to fish for another Snubbull encounter, I found this fella lounging around in an area that technically counted as being a part of Vermillion City. I know where to find another, but this one is probably better due to not conflicting with any (non-water) encounters.
Anyway, time for my Route 11 encounter.
This Rattata was a dupe, but I forgot to give Bort a Smoke Ball, so I switched into Nuke for maximum safety while running away. I'm very concerned by how much damage Nuke took from this crit. Yeah, crits do 2x damage instead of 1.5x damage in this generation, but this is a
Rattata, and Nuke is a
god.
Fortunately, I manage to run away. If I had lost Nuke to a
wild Rattata, I'd have been unimaginably tilted.
After healing and returning, I encounter a Girafarig. It's a mediocre Pokemon, but at least it's of a relevant level. And later on, it can Baton Pass speed boosts from Agility.
... A mediocre Pokemon who can almost one-shot Bort? with a non-crit Confusion.
And actually one-shot Snubbed, which means I can still encounter Jigglypuff again at a later date. Damnit.
[I forgot to take a screenshot here, but the Girafarig also deals over 1/3 of Nuke's health in damage with one move.]
I... have to pull out here. I can't risk Legacy getting one-shot before he gets a chance to evolve, and if Nuke dies from a crit, it's all over. The possibility of catching this Girafarig isn't worth potentially losing the entire run.
... I've been forced to retreat by a WILD GODDAMN GIRAFARIG. Something needs to change, because this is
unacceptable.
I have only 4 'mons in my party, and the only one with solid stats is Nuke. I have some more in my box, but they're all trash and/or important for dupes clause manipulation. There are some killer 'mons I'd like to catch, but I need to hold out for a bit longer to get the tools to catch them with.
I see only one option here: Pump power into Nuke and Legacy to make them strong enough to carry me where I need to go. And to do that, I'm gonna need to turn that mindset...
... into a grindset.
The keyboard you can see on the screen there is there because BGB's speed up function is hard bound to numpad plus for some reason, which my laptop doesn't have. I have to hold down left click on the numpad plus button on that on-screen keyboard in order to speed up the game. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a toggle, I have to actually hold it down.
I'd also like to issue an apology:
I was incorrect when I claimed in a previous update that Crystal Clear gives you no warning that Frank is a miniboss. If you talk to your follower Pokemon in the Underground Tunnel, a warning that the guy in the blue shirt is dangerous is in the pool of possible responses. Thank you, Crystal Clear, very cool.
Anyway, uh, I've gotten a bit bored of spamming A on Legacy until he indicate that he's picked up an item, removing it from him, and then repeating the process, so I'm gonna go do a different form of grinding now.
Welcome back to the Ruins of Alph, which is filled with level 5 Unown, which have decent-ish base stats for stat experience grinding.
For those of you who don't know what stat experience is, it's basically Gen 2's equivalent of EVs. Bulbapedia gives a good explanation of them:
Since Legacy will be holding an experience share, half of the stat exp. that Legacy gains will be sent to Legacy instead, so they'll both get stronger.
Let the slaughter commence.
okay I killed 50 unown with all of nuke's pp and I'm only like 1/65th of the way there fuck this shit lmao
After giving up on stat experience grinding and bothering Legacy some more, I finally have a silver leaf.
And now I don't have to wait until level 37 to get a Baton Pass Umbreon (unless there's a tutor for teaching moves from a previous evolution, in which case that's a bit of egg on my face).
Minor problem, though: Eevee -> Umbreon is a friendship evolution, the happiness threshold required for a Pokemon to perform a friendship evolution is 220, and Legacy's happiness value is currently 142.
It's time to take a long walk. Er, jog.
And after a LOT of running around, Legacy likes us enough to become an Umbreon.
He's very close to leveling up, so we might as well add another Unown corpse to the pile.
Hell yeah.
For reference, these are Legacy's stats from before he evolved.
And here are his post-evolution stats. He CHONKY.
I've also come up with a near-guaranteed strategy to get a Misdreavus (for the other plan I mentioned earlier in this update), but I'll need a level 15 Pokemon for it.
After beating up a trainer in Sabrina's gym and another in Lt. Surge's, Nuke levels from level 14 to level 15. It's time to execute the plan.
It turns out that the only level 15+ Pokemon that can appear on Route 5 are Pidgeotto and Misdreavus. Since I have a Pidgey in my PC, I can ignore Pidgeottoes due to the dupes clause, so by using a repel with Nuke as my lead Pokemon, I can ensure that my next valid encounter on this route will be a level 15 Misdreavus. It won't receive the traded EXP boost like the one I planned to get by trading a Snubbull would, but you know how the saying goes: A caught Misdreavus in the hand is better than a traded Misdreavus in the bush.
I apparently didn't take a screenshot of my nicknaming of Misdreavus, but I nicknamed him
Stone.
I'd like to take a moment here to go on a tangent about how Misdreavus was given an unbelievably raw deal in Gen 2. You thought Magcargo had it rough? Misdreavus somehow had it
worse.
There are only four Ghost-types in Gen 2: the members of the Gastly line and Misdreavus (Mismagius didn't exist yet). The Ghost-type was physical before the physical/special split, presumably because Lick was the only Ghost-type move in Gen 1 that actually cared about your attacking stats. Gen 2 added one new "normal" Ghost-type move: Shadow Ball, a BP 80 move, which unfortunately couldn't be used very effectively by the Gastly line, as the Gastly line's base stats greatly prefer Special Attack over Attack. Game Freak, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make Misdreavus be ANOTHER Special Attacking Ghost-type Pokemon, meaning that in Gen 2, Ghost-type moves were used better by non-Ghosts than by any of the generation's actual Ghost-type Pokemon.
It's like GF forgot that the Ghost type was Physical instead of Special. Further evidence to support this theory is the fact that Shadow Ball has a chance to reduce your opponent's Sp. Defense stat, not their Defense stat.
Being a special attacking ghost also made Misdreavus's niche overlap pretty heavily with that of the Gastly line's niche. Compare their stat totals:
Misdreavus is basically an inferior Gengar, barring its 10 additional points in base Sp. Def and its lack of a secondary typing. Admittedly, that lack of a weakness to Ground-type moves and Psychic-type moves does go a long way, but not far enough to make up for Misdreavus's other shortcomings in comparison to the Gastly line, IMO. I guess it gives Misdreavus a more defensive role than Gengar, even though its defensive stats are mediocre at best (although that's counteracted by stat EXP making every Pokemon in competitive GSC pretty chonky)?
So right out of the gate, things are already pretty rough for Misdreavus. But it gets worse.
Morty is Johto's Ghost-type gym leader. He has four Pokemon: a Gastly, a Haunter, a Gengar... and ANOTHER HAUNTER. The man was so determined to not use the ONLY PURE GHOST-TYPE IN GEN 2 that he decided to just use a duplicate Pokemon instead of a Misdreavus. All of his gym leaders also only use the Gastly line, presumably because a Misdreavus killed Morty's dog or something.
Agatha, the Ghost-type E4 member, has been replaced in Gen 2, which conveniently robs the player of another opportunity to see Misdreavus.
Okay, so no major opponents use Misdreavus, but maybe the player will want to use a Misdreavus on their team. Where can they catch one?
I want you to guess where (or when) the earliest-accessible location you can catch Misdreavus in vanilla GSC is. Go on, guess.
MOUNT. FUCKING. SILVER.
AND EVEN THERE, IT CAN ONLY BE ENCOUNTERED AT NIGHT.
If you haven't played Gen 2 yet and don't know what Mt. Silver is, Mt. Silver is the dungeon that houses Red, the game's true final boss. It is only accessible after you defeat every gym leader in both Johto and Kanto (which in turn requires defeating the E4 as well). Gastly, meanwhile, can be caught before you fight the first gym leader.
Gen 2!Game Freak treated Misdreavus like the Dursleys treated Harry Potter, and for that, Stone gets my sympathy.
Okay, tangent over. In 4 levels, Stone will gain access to Dream Look, which will make catching Pokemon who can run away SO much easier and less stressful.
Crystal Clear also gives Misdreavus access to Baton Pass and Growth, which could potentially let Stone fill in Legacy's planned roll if they, uh, kick the bucket.
Ooh, and Lovely Kiss. That'll be helpful shortly.
Mighty archdemon of sloth, I command thee to rise, for I hath performed thine ritual of awakening!
Behold, Snorlax in its prime. It DEFINES the GSC OU metagame. Its win rate in GSC OU is close to 50%, not because it's average, but because it's on every non-joke team, and if two teams that both have a Snorlax face each other and don't end up in a draw, one has to win and one has to lose.
And this wild Snorlax doesn't have any moves that can hit Ghost-type Pokemon, which lets me catch it without worrying about it sweeping my entire team. Which is a good thing, because after a few turns, Stone literally cannot hurt Snorlax faster than its leftovers heal it (without a crit). I forgot that Gen 2!Night Shade doesn't affect Normal-types like it did in Gen 1, so we're gonna have to just put Snorlax to sleep and try to catch it while its health bar is full. Fortunately, I brought around a dozen heavy balls and almost 20 great balls to this fight, so we SHOULD be fine.
[imagine there's a screenshot of Lovely Kiss's PP being low here]
[imagine there's a screenshot of my Heavy Ball count being low here]
Uh, I
said, we
should be fine.
Thank god, that was actually getting stressful.
I, uh, couldn't come up with an actual good nickname for a female Snorlax (I was gonna name 'em WALLy if they were male), so I just went with Amanda WALLer. I'm open for suggestions for a replacement nickname.
Awwwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
And hey, I can tutor Magnitude onto Amanda for Ground-type coverage until I get an Earthquake TM. Fun fact: Normal+Ground coverage is almost perfect in Gen 2- the only two Pokemon that aren't hit at least neutrally by it are Skarmory and Aerodactyl. Levitate doesn't exist yet, y'see. It also helps that 3 out of the 4 Ghost-types in the game are part Poison-type and thus weak to Ground-type moves.
I explore around Vermillion City a bit more and come across a docks area that's behind a zone transition. This guy here is selling S.S. Aqua tickets for 10,000 Poke each. Eh, not yet, I dunno if the trainers on that ship are scaled to my level.
Wait, this docks area still counts as being a part of Vermillion City? Shit, I might've just screwed myself out of getting Mew. Ah well, I'm sure there are some teammates we can pick up who'll be around as strong as a Mew, if not stronger.
Let's get some revenge, shall we, Stone?
Legacy naturally has a field day here, although there are some concerningly close shaves. Morty's gym is tricksy, despite only using one evolutionary line. I actually go back and teach Metal Claw over Tri-Attack so that he won't be left unable to harm his opponent once Thief's 10 PP get Spite'd away.
Hello, Morty. I've got a Misdreavus here who'd like to have a word with you. And by "word", I mean "bloodcurdling scream".
Author
Topic: Let's Nuzlocke Pokemon Crystal Clear - Part 7: The Dead Rise (Read 13973 times)