Betcha DORGUS is a 750+ BST ghost/dark type with huge power or something ridiculous like that
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Let's Play! Merritt learns about (Poorly Made Romhacks) in Dark Rising [COMPLETE]
- Thread starter Merritt
- Start date
Altissimo: This is Pokemon Dark Rising.
CTNC: vaguely? They're not the same as the Kyurem Sydney found 10 levels lower than B/W, separate entities and all that.
Scorpio: For some reason I find myself dubious that the rest of the hack will manage to change your mind back.
Karxrida: Yep, DANIELS took an active role there and directly possessed Amaris.
TheTankPlays: spoiler
CTNC: vaguely? They're not the same as the Kyurem Sydney found 10 levels lower than B/W, separate entities and all that.
Scorpio: For some reason I find myself dubious that the rest of the hack will manage to change your mind back.
Karxrida: Yep, DANIELS took an active role there and directly possessed Amaris.
TheTankPlays: spoiler
The cave in the city is actually the hot springs but also it's an underground city with no people.
Well, maybe a few people, they just happen to all be Dark Thugs, including one who is an item. If their after battle text said something about it being a disguise then I'd understand but instead it just doesn't get brought up at all.
After a dip in the hot spring that heals us, it's time to fight Kayo again. He mentions something about Pete and a ruby, I'm sure it's nothing important.
The question is, did Kayo hear from Sydney or the Kyurem twins about where the level curve is?
Definitely the Kyurem twins.
His team's actually not even good and his AI is a mess. mish mish takes out Weavile, Zoroark, and Hydregion without any issue at all while wincon takes out the Reuniclus and Ferrothorn.
Kayo runs off as usual after the battle and the gym leader's dad gives us Fly so that we can backtrack to do basically nothing. No, Fly did not get a buff to 90 BP like it did in canon.
That said, being able to Fly is kind of important at this point because otherwise we'd be marooned here.
Trying to go back through Kyurem's Den brings us to a spot that we can't get past without Surf. If we want to go back to things we've already seen we'll need either Surf or Fly. We actually will be using Fly to head back in a little bit, but first we've got to deal with the gym.
It's an Ice-type gym, and the trainers are incredibly weak, barely hitting level 50. Shadow Tag makes a triumphant return though.
Also this is clearly an Ice-type gym. Please ignore the trees and flowers proclaiming the glory of spring.
Let's quickly blow past the leader and get on with the game. Please ignore the plot coming out of his mouth.
Mamoswine @ Leftovers Lv68: Stealth Rock/Earthquake/Blizzard/Hail
Glaceon @ NeverMeltIce Lv69: Water Pulse/Hail/Blizzard/Mirror Coat
Abomasnow @ Leftovers Lv69: Hail/Blizzard/Frenzy Plant/Leech Seed
Cryogonal @ NeverMeltIce Lv70: Ice Beam/Recover/Night Slash/Confuse Ray
It's an ice gym what do you think is going to happen. We're not going to lead wincon and sweep though because I've actually forgotten whether or not Mamoswine has Thick Fat here. Cryogonal is the enemy exclusive for Kai.
there's like no blue on this sprite how am i supposed to make puns about the kai being blue
babylonia's going to lead here to at the very least weaken Mamoswine. Mamoswine actually outspeeds babylonia and sets up Hail, so Waterfall fails to 2HKO and Mamoswine 1v1s the 10 levels lower babylonia because I didn't want to use items.
Garth's fine to finish off the weakened Mamoswine and not learn Double Edge.
I'll admit I'm disappointed that wincon doesn't manage to OHKO with a sun boosted Flamethrower and hail goes up yet again. Still not a threat though.
With the sun gone though, speed is going to have to fight Cryogonal. Cryogonal has pre-buff physical defense and takes Sky Uppercut about as you'd expect.
This one does not survive a sun boosted Flamethrower.
gee thanks
there's a reason why none of the ingame trades are remotely worth using
These are both handy though. Saving Ice Beam for a future team member.
With that our business in this this icy hellscape is finished.
And so is mish mish's time on the team. The little mushroom just hasn't been cutting it honestly, with lackluster coverage and just not having a role on the team since speed handles Fighting stuff just fine. We're going to be replacing this slot with an HM slave for a while.
Because later we'll need to use Strength, I figure we might as well grab something that can learn both Strength and Fly in a single slot. So we grab a wild Skarmory, teach it fly, and it's back to Atlantic Cave to grab a Charmander since my collection of starters doesn't include one yet.
In Atlantic Cave, the Entei fight has reset and so, instead of just flying back, we're going to walk back and see how many of the trainer battles have reset.
Say hi to shrug the HM slave, who evolved from holding the exp share while we did a bunch of rematches.
Ivan and Zachary fight us again as expected, though Aroma Town's Pete fight didn't respawn. The Victini event did of course.
does this mean the ship is sinking again
Something I'm actually somewhat surprised to see is that the V fight in mystic cave didn't trigger again, that was one of the ones I was expecting so I could make a joke about fulfilling Bianca's promise to the Kyurem twins.
band aerodactyl is still absurd
Dark Rising in a nutshell. Light isn't as threatening when he doesn't have 10+ levels on our team.
Then the Kyurem twins don't fight us again and neither do Amaris or Sydney. All in all, slightly less than I was expecting but even one respawning major battle is too many.
That little adventure out of the way (and shrug evolved), it's time to move on to this route filled with far too many trainers using profoundly terrible teams.
When we turn the corner, Pete's staring at the side of a cliff. If we talk to him he starts going on about being under DORKUS' control and losing the Ruby and it's confusing in an entirely new way, like we somehow missed an event rather than the usual nonsense.
The sheer number of trainers and our full Lucky Egg team means we're getting a bunch of levels and new moves. Neither of these are learned, but I find the choice to make Iron Defense a level up move for Archeops an interesting one.
there are two petes on one route
Pete gives an actually reasonable speech about how our hometown has constantly been expecting DHR .-. and Bianca to be the ones to make them proud despite Pete befriending a Pokemon first and then how he's apparently not allowed to go anywhere without his father, but Pete's fed up with all of it because he's competent too dammit. It's hard to disagree that he's competent since he's had a pretty decent team the entire game.
Then it's ruined by DANGAMES being the one responsible for all this.
what kind of name is that
Because the game is entirely unwilling to let Pete have anything nice, he's a little behind the curve. Poor guy.
His team isn't even bad (though Hyper Beam Swellow is... questionable) but speed sets up to +2 on the Scrafty with Bulk Up and sweeps, OHKOing the Flygon with Sky Uppercut.
It's the same speech that he was giving down at the route edge because that wasn't bad plotting, it was just bad coding. Sure, whatever, we're nearly at the next town.
The gate has us step out of this man who blocks our way back. We could talk to him and fight him, but that'd cause us to fight him twice instead of just once.
Instead we'll grab Return from upstairs then try to leave out the north exit.
"Try" being the operative word there.
In this world where things like the JEWEL OF LIFE are constantly capitalized, it annoys me to no end to see that the master ball is exempt. Also, as the classic trope, Kai's Dad was apparently supposed to give us the master ball under orders from Ivan, but he wants to see if we're 'worthy' first.
What a twist.
He uses monoice, just like the gym leader, and most of his team is in that same level 68-70 range.
except for that. the level curve is now 80
Ice when there are no Ground types potentially with Thick Fat don't do so well vs Drought Ninetales. Vanilluxe gives me a bit of a heart attack when it survives a +2 Flamethrower, probably because of its 13 level advantage but it goes for Ice Beam instead of Mirror Coat.
oh so now you capitalize it
In theory Kai's dad leaves but he actually does not. We can never go back out through that door. Good thing we have Fly in case we ever wanted to go back and couldn't skip the gym that lets us use Fly.
This is mostly notable for meaning that we couldn't just grab Surf later and walk back to the Fly gym.
It's a moot point because we do have Fly, so we're free to head into definitely not Saffron City.
After all, Saffron City doesn't have park benches and trees without collision data.
A few interesting things to grab, like our second Psychic TM from this unfortunately named woman and a bike. Several points of interest here too.
Who remembers the original Kanto fan club?
The mart isn't in the usual building because this fairly small building here...
is actually a portal to Celadon City's department store.
no
yes
babylonia gets Brick Break to utilize her significantly higher Attack stat on the rare occasions she'll be allowed to battle.
stop
This is actually the gym because this is definitely not Saffron City, the normal gym building's just been taken over by some fighting nutjobs.
He does not give us a badge.
He does however have an awfully high level on his team of 5 mons, all of which are significantly more competent than a Vanilluxe.
These are our prizes for beating his level 74 Conkeldurr. We're allowed to take both, but one of them is significantly more useful than the other.
I have no clue why they're different levels. Both are holding a Black Belt.
It's time to deal with the actual gym though. The random trainers are actually somewhat mean here, having Pokemon around level 60, including a Snorlax and Slaking double battle.
After forgetting entirely the Saffron Gym puzzle solution for a while, we're finally here to fight the gym leader Nora. She's actually pretty nasty for teams without the many good fighting types available. Like the level 75 Sawk.
Ambipom @ Lum Berry Lv72: Attract/Brick Break/Hyper Beam/Aerial Ace
Lickilicky @ Leftovers Lv74: Attract/Brick Break/Body Slam/Earthquake
Miltank @ Leftovers Lv74: Attract/Earthquake/Body Slam/Milk Drink
Porygon-Z @ Lum Berry Lv74: Nasty Plot/Psychic/Ice Beam/Thunderbolt
Kangaskhan @ Leftovers Lv74: Attract/Drain Punch/Substitute/Earthquake
Meloetta-P @ Lum Berry Lv75: Hyper Voice/Drain Punch/Stone Edge/Substitute
Attract on ALL the things! This is actually a very unpleasant team to deal with, it hits hard with outstanding coverage and a legendary ace. Meloetta is the enemy exclusive here and its high stats, especially Speed, can be problematic since it's in the Pirouette form.
That's actually a mistake though since it means her entire team is weak to Fighting. Her real issue, however, is that she's been taking lessons from low ladder and decided that Ambipom would be an excellent addition to her team.
It's a costly decision.
Aerial Ace does just about 50%, and speed sets up Bulk Up, getting a second one in due to Speed Boost as Ambipom goes for Hyper Beam. A Hyper Potion later and it's time to begin. +2 Sky Uppercut takes out Ambipom cleanly.
Lickitung fares no better. Superpower would be counterintuitive to learn right now and I like Sky Uppercut's sweeping potential with Bulk Up.
Forgot to take a screenshot of Kang but it died to +2 Sky Uppercut like absolutely everything else did. The Meloetta, like the Heatmor from gym 1 oh so long ago, is not actually shiny.
mood
see previous image
This is vaguely better than the level 50 from the last gym, but not by much.
How is this even vaguely related to the normal type gym? You could have given us Hyper Beam or something. Calm Mind is better than Hyper Beam, sure, but it's completely unthematic.
With the gym finished, we're all set to head west for our next destination. The gate west has an odd sight though.
why are you 15 feet tall mr champion
Bianca internally monologues that Adrian is evil. Well, at least we won't have to be insulted as the game tries to pretend that he might not be evil.
The route west is surprisingly long for the route west of Saffron and has some trainers who have really stepped up their game, bring teams in the low 60s. They're still so far behind the major battles that they remain nonentities but at least they're trying. The grass contains an absurd number of Tauros as well as
this thing. But there's a few useful things in the grass.
Two to be exact. When we inevitably need to grind, at least we know where to go.
The trainers are a high enough level that we're set for now. Dragon Pulse is vaguely more useful than Iron Tail, so why not. Stone Edge, however, is something that Garth will hugely appreciate since she's been running with Aerial Ace for far too long. Swords Dance sweeping has never been more effective than when backed up by Earthquake and 100/85 Stone Edge.
Something that I failed to mention previously is that Stone Edge is actually a spread move in Dark Rising. Rock Slide is still a spread move too, so I don't know why exactly Stone Edge needed to be spread but it's fine by me.
also reminder that the stone edge tutor in atlantic cave rejected her earlier
Route cleared, we've finally hit our next destination. The town is on the whole pretty barren, but there's a couple points of interest.
This is useful because now we can get some really good stuff while fishing. Probably not going to use any of it though, so why bother?
Just when you thought it was safe to go outside again, the townsfolk attack.
im sure you're appropriately scary to the route trainers
On the other side of the cliff pathway is where all the good stuff is, like the Body Slam tutor we'll have to pass on.
This police officer who tells us that in order to move on we need to clear the lab right below us because that's where the Plot is.
And not quite last or least, the Sevii Island - wait my what.
what
but you didn't give me anything
oh
oh no
Loading state and avoiding the daycare like the plague. I have no intention of messing around with bad eggs, thanks.
(On a related note, I took a look through the PC and found a dozen more of the invisible bad eggs scattered around the various boxes, including one in Box 1. I have no clue how it happened, nor do I want to know.)
Let's get out of this awful town.
oh it's the kyurem twins
and shut up Bianca
Kyurem twin #1 doesn't take kindly to learning our V sympathizing ways and decides to correct that with her Kyurem-W.
That's a much lower level than I expected.
Rock Slide and Stone Edge KO Magmortar and nearly take out Kyurem-W, who goofs and uses Psychic on flamberge before being taken out the following turn.
i swear to god bianca
Kyurem Twin 2: Electric Boogaloo.
flamberge crits Kyu-B with Rock Slide so Garth is able to finish off both on turn 1 with Earthquake. We're not going to be learning Endeavor.
Talking to the twins shows that they've fallen into a deep depression. They're happy to tell us about the fact that V's been replaced by a fellow named Vladimir or something who stole the Ruby from Pete, is planning to use it to wake up Groudon, and is attacking the lab in order to get the second Master Ball, the first being in our pocket.
But this is an awfully familiar looking lab.
oh god it's silph co
We're going to go grind for a bit because not-Silph features one of the ruder ambushes in the game in terms of level spike and because we've already taken on two gyms in this update. Maybe the frequency of gyms is going to accelerate?
Next time: 40 years in a desert
Bad EGGs. Bad EGGs everywhere.
Mega-Pokebattlerz: I was incorrect in my count of invisible Bad Eggs in the box system earlier. It's hard to be sure I found them all, but I'm currently at 29. I don't know how they screwed up that badly.
We're going to have to clear out not-Silph Co. This means upward of a half hour of cleaving through dark thugs. First, though, we're going to head back to the previous route and genocide the local Audino and Chansey for what is hopefully the last dedicated grinding session in this playthrough.
Everybody's going to end up in the 78-79 range by the end of this session, though there's not much in the way of new moves. Outrage is flat out worse than Dragon Pulse due to not receiving its canonical buff.
Grinding done, we're ready to head back to Silph Co. Might as well work our way down from the top, so we jump in the elevator on the ground floor.
and are immediately ambushed of course
Kayo will ambush the player no matter which floor they get into the elevator. For somebody doing this blind, this means it's usually when their team's been weakened by the thugs over time.
So of course he can't be that bad, right? It'd be incredibly punishing for no reason to have him be something silly like
a six level spike on his lead over the kyurem-alt ambush mons
This would be why we did that training session, rather than just going through the grunts and leveling up naturally that way.
It's very rude to have an 8 level jump with no content in between when we're talking about levels like this.
His AI is incredibly stupid though, so Garth sets up Swords Dance on Reuniclus and then sweeps.
At least in theory, we don't need to fight him every time we want to use the elevator, just the once. I didn't have any troubles when clearing out the building, but I wouldn't be surprised if the fight can reactivate.
The enemy comes in two varieties, Goons who have small, fully evolved teams in the low 70s like shown here and Thugs who have unevolved teams in the low to mid 60s. They're all a gigantic waste of time after Kayo.
Even the moves we could learn from beating them aren't worth learning. It's just all very grueling. I never really liked Silph Co to be honest.
And this really is just Silph Co with minor changes at most. The people here aren't referring to Team Rocket at least, since the creator clearly did a find and replace to change all instances of "Team Rocket" to "these thugs".
Even when it doesn't make grammatical sense. This is just one example of many.
that's not a move garchomps are supposed to get
After a good 30 minutes of cleaning out the building and picking up trash, we're finally at the end of this whole thing. It feels like we haven't fought DHR .-. in a while, guess we might as well.
I don't get why we have to fight. The fight against Blue, sure I get it because Blue was just kind of a jerk but this doesn't make sense. Well, whatever.
DHR .-. has stepped up his game. This is yet another step above Kayo's team paired with some high BST Pokemon. He's only got the two musketeers, not all four.
Salamence is actually a big threat. It's very fast (outspeeds flamberge) and has weird moves like Hydro Pump to OHKO since mence came out second, before the sun came up. Garth manages the 1v1 with Stone Edge after barely surviving Dragon Pulse.
The Lapras has been replaced by a Speed Boost Ditto. The second image has actually been a constant, whenever something has been sent to the PC it's always a Throh, but this is a good place to show that text weirdness off.
hello v2
i like your single toned suit it's very flat
For reasons unknown he's a complete pushover, being lower leveled than Kayo for the most part, let alone DHR .-.
thats also not how to spell drifblim's name
This is his ace. Vladimir is not a threat in any way. Also, despite what you might be thinking, Zen Mode is both not the normal Darumaka evolution in Dark Rising, nor is it enemy exclusive.
im sure
Reminder that there are supposed to only be two of these things in the world for Dark Rising and now both are in Bianca's pockets. Also take note of the PC in the corner here, as well as the weird exit on the right.
This is because the exit on the right on the 11th floor of not-Silph connects directly to the ground floor of the gatehouse.
The PC, meanwhile, is our best way to heal since going back to the center means we'll need to hike to the top of not-Silph again because the guard has not moved and never will.
Also we know that the exit on the 11th floor connects directly to the ground because the second level of the gatehouse is right here. This odd man seems to be under the impression we've ever heard of Oak since the time he spoke to us telepathically in the tutorial battle ages ago.
We not only do not have 40 Pokemon registered, we also have more money than we know what to deal with.
Welcome toCycling Road the desert. It's a custom tileset that I think looks damn unpleasant, with grass scattered throughout the whole thing, and a constant sandstorm. On a route that's as long as cycling road. I hate this route with a passion for a reason I'll explain in a bit.
The grass has some mildly interesting things like Krookodile, Gliscor, and another return of Shadow Tag wilds. There's also a bunch of dark thugs and other trainers hanging around the desert.
Including Pete's Dad just kind of hanging around near the end and offering us a fossil. We probably won't even bother to revive it.
At the far end of the desert is Light and Landorus. He mentions that his fakemon is getting upgraded elsewhere, so he's going to use Landorus to fight us. Landorus Is Devastated To Be Forced To Fight Us.
This fight is more notable for what it represents than for actual difficulty.
Light's using the same team as last time, minus the fakemon and plus Lando-T. The normal Pokemon on his team are level 84-85.
The Landorus-T is level 90.
Reminder that we still, at this point, have only 5 badges. That means that we have 3 more badges, the entire elite four, and the champion to go through and only 10 levels left for the poor, abused level curve.
I like to think that this was the moment the creator realized they had trapped themselves.
After the fight we have to talk to Light ourselves if we want plot. We don't, but we'll do it anyways. Landorus reveals it can talk and asks us to catch it.
This is easier said than done. Aside from the interesting decision to give Landorus-I Intimidate, it's packing both Rock Slide and Earthquake while holding Soft Sand, so taking sustained hits is tricky at best. Paired with the low catch rate and it's a chore to catch. We do manage, though, through the power of saving before the battle.
But after we do that, Landorus's overworld sprite is still there, blocking the way into the cave.
And we can fight it again. And catch it again if we want. But it'll still be there even after we catch it twice.
nice going
We're not actually stuck, we just need to murder Landorus.
Keep this in mind, in order to proceed we must kill Landorus, not catch it. Once we do so we're free to head into the cave.
This is an excellent bridge to explain why I hate this desert route so much. It's because, if you used a lot of PP on the road here and so want to heal after the fight with Light, we need to walk back to town. After we heal we will then need to walk back across the desert, meaning that if we want to heal it's a total of 3 trips through the cycling road length desert.
Flying back is kind of tricky too, since Novella Town is actually in the Sevii Islands, not the uneditted Kanto map proper.
Moaning about crossing the desert aside, it's time to deal with the cave. It's basically Mt. Ember interior.
There's some interesting wilds like Aggron and Golem as well as what I think is the last starter in Tepig.
The Explosion tutor's hanging around inside, but nobody on the team can learn it unfortunately.
There's also a bunch of thugs hanging around inside. flamberge learns Stone Edge over Roost since that's outclassed by Hyper Potions now.
The other interesting thing in the cave is this exit which is blocked off by some strength boulders. We can use Strength out of battle, we just need the HM before we can come back and check this out.
The bottom of the cave has a blueish rock which is confused about what it actually is. Checking the bag reveals that it is indeed a Ruby.
Also the Darmanitan statues can be spoken to from the front, giving us an opportunity to catch our very own Zen Mode. Which isn't worth it.
Vladimir was just hanging around down here when we arrived, he didn't show up after we grabbed the Ruby (no clue where the Sapphire he's on about is). In other words, the only thing that prevented him from winning was his own sloth.
Bianca makes a stupid, stupid deal with him, saying that if he wins then she'll give him both of the master balls, but if she wins then he has to give her the Ruby because apparently what we picked up was actually the sapphire despite being the ruby in our bag and either way it's a dumb idea.
Vlad is using the exact same team as last time, just higher leveled. He's still a pushover.
If we talk to him after winning, he tries to renege on the deal and attack us directly. Landorus (who had to die for us to get here) either rises from the dead or teleports from the PC because he's not in our party and deals with Vladimir, who allegedly gives us the Ruby.
We've still only got the one stone though. We're free to head on to the next city after beating Vladimir, leaving the cave immediately through the south exit.
into more goddamn desert are you kidding me
it's mercifully short this time at least
The gate at the far end of the desert holds an ambush. What a shock.
Monobug at least 8 levels behind the curve is not very scary.
It's maybe worth noting that aside from Shedinja, his entire team is Steel/Bug.
I'd be less unhappy with the ambushes if they all gave nice rewards like this. We'll go back to the rocks in Inferno Mountain after we check out town.
Also this trade is at the top of the gatehouse for some reason. His text is bugged so I don't know what he wants, whether it's an Abra like last time or not.
The city's a pretty strange place, not least because all the signs throw up images of Pokemonbecause it's Fuchsia City
The mart sells the at this point usual Ultra Balls and Hyper Potions, along with Soft Sand. We've also hit the money cap and have Big Pearls in our bag.
Along with the Pewter Museum where we got Aerodactyl, the Celadon Mansion is in this town too. As far as I can tell there's no way to get to the second entrance of either place, so we can't see what replaced Eevee (if anything) or get the Old Amber.
in exchange we get this
your victini event keeps resetting you should look at that
Sometimes I feel a little bad for ragging on this romhack, since it's an early project by the developer. Then stuff like this happens and the feeling fades.
FINALLY
i
what
Kayo's standing in front of the entrance to the gym and I don't really want to do the gym just yet. Instead, we're going to head back to the path blocked by boulders earlier with our shiny new HM.
hello mr groudon
why is there a sandstorm in your cave
An awfully high level and Stone Edge/Earthquake coverage make Groudon just as much of a pain to catch as Landorus was. Plus side, it doesn't have a contact move so Garth can sit in front of Groudon with a couple X Defends and tank while we chuck Ultra Balls until it's caught one reset due to Struggle later.
you didn't think it was just landorus who had to be killed to proceed did you?
The exit behind Groudon leads to Flamen City, the place with the first gym from so long ago. If we had skipped the gym that lets us use Fly, this would be our only way to correct that issue. By walking from the city with the first gym all the way through not-Mt. Moon, then through Atlantic Cave, then through not-Diglett's Cave. Fighting Ivan again naturally.
Next time: we're only just getting started on this legendary train
Everybody's going to end up in the 78-79 range by the end of this session, though there's not much in the way of new moves. Outrage is flat out worse than Dragon Pulse due to not receiving its canonical buff.
Grinding done, we're ready to head back to Silph Co. Might as well work our way down from the top, so we jump in the elevator on the ground floor.
and are immediately ambushed of course
Kayo will ambush the player no matter which floor they get into the elevator. For somebody doing this blind, this means it's usually when their team's been weakened by the thugs over time.
So of course he can't be that bad, right? It'd be incredibly punishing for no reason to have him be something silly like
a six level spike on his lead over the kyurem-alt ambush mons
This would be why we did that training session, rather than just going through the grunts and leveling up naturally that way.
It's very rude to have an 8 level jump with no content in between when we're talking about levels like this.
His AI is incredibly stupid though, so Garth sets up Swords Dance on Reuniclus and then sweeps.
At least in theory, we don't need to fight him every time we want to use the elevator, just the once. I didn't have any troubles when clearing out the building, but I wouldn't be surprised if the fight can reactivate.
The enemy comes in two varieties, Goons who have small, fully evolved teams in the low 70s like shown here and Thugs who have unevolved teams in the low to mid 60s. They're all a gigantic waste of time after Kayo.
Even the moves we could learn from beating them aren't worth learning. It's just all very grueling. I never really liked Silph Co to be honest.
And this really is just Silph Co with minor changes at most. The people here aren't referring to Team Rocket at least, since the creator clearly did a find and replace to change all instances of "Team Rocket" to "these thugs".
Even when it doesn't make grammatical sense. This is just one example of many.
that's not a move garchomps are supposed to get
After a good 30 minutes of cleaning out the building and picking up trash, we're finally at the end of this whole thing. It feels like we haven't fought DHR .-. in a while, guess we might as well.
I don't get why we have to fight. The fight against Blue, sure I get it because Blue was just kind of a jerk but this doesn't make sense. Well, whatever.
DHR .-. has stepped up his game. This is yet another step above Kayo's team paired with some high BST Pokemon. He's only got the two musketeers, not all four.
Salamence is actually a big threat. It's very fast (outspeeds flamberge) and has weird moves like Hydro Pump to OHKO since mence came out second, before the sun came up. Garth manages the 1v1 with Stone Edge after barely surviving Dragon Pulse.
The Lapras has been replaced by a Speed Boost Ditto. The second image has actually been a constant, whenever something has been sent to the PC it's always a Throh, but this is a good place to show that text weirdness off.
hello v2
i like your single toned suit it's very flat
For reasons unknown he's a complete pushover, being lower leveled than Kayo for the most part, let alone DHR .-.
thats also not how to spell drifblim's name
This is his ace. Vladimir is not a threat in any way. Also, despite what you might be thinking, Zen Mode is both not the normal Darumaka evolution in Dark Rising, nor is it enemy exclusive.
im sure
Reminder that there are supposed to only be two of these things in the world for Dark Rising and now both are in Bianca's pockets. Also take note of the PC in the corner here, as well as the weird exit on the right.
This is because the exit on the right on the 11th floor of not-Silph connects directly to the ground floor of the gatehouse.
The PC, meanwhile, is our best way to heal since going back to the center means we'll need to hike to the top of not-Silph again because the guard has not moved and never will.
Also we know that the exit on the 11th floor connects directly to the ground because the second level of the gatehouse is right here. This odd man seems to be under the impression we've ever heard of Oak since the time he spoke to us telepathically in the tutorial battle ages ago.
We not only do not have 40 Pokemon registered, we also have more money than we know what to deal with.
Welcome to
The grass has some mildly interesting things like Krookodile, Gliscor, and another return of Shadow Tag wilds. There's also a bunch of dark thugs and other trainers hanging around the desert.
Including Pete's Dad just kind of hanging around near the end and offering us a fossil. We probably won't even bother to revive it.
At the far end of the desert is Light and Landorus. He mentions that his fakemon is getting upgraded elsewhere, so he's going to use Landorus to fight us. Landorus Is Devastated To Be Forced To Fight Us.
This fight is more notable for what it represents than for actual difficulty.
Light's using the same team as last time, minus the fakemon and plus Lando-T. The normal Pokemon on his team are level 84-85.
The Landorus-T is level 90.
Reminder that we still, at this point, have only 5 badges. That means that we have 3 more badges, the entire elite four, and the champion to go through and only 10 levels left for the poor, abused level curve.
I like to think that this was the moment the creator realized they had trapped themselves.
After the fight we have to talk to Light ourselves if we want plot. We don't, but we'll do it anyways. Landorus reveals it can talk and asks us to catch it.
This is easier said than done. Aside from the interesting decision to give Landorus-I Intimidate, it's packing both Rock Slide and Earthquake while holding Soft Sand, so taking sustained hits is tricky at best. Paired with the low catch rate and it's a chore to catch. We do manage, though, through the power of saving before the battle.
But after we do that, Landorus's overworld sprite is still there, blocking the way into the cave.
And we can fight it again. And catch it again if we want. But it'll still be there even after we catch it twice.
nice going
We're not actually stuck, we just need to murder Landorus.
Keep this in mind, in order to proceed we must kill Landorus, not catch it. Once we do so we're free to head into the cave.
This is an excellent bridge to explain why I hate this desert route so much. It's because, if you used a lot of PP on the road here and so want to heal after the fight with Light, we need to walk back to town. After we heal we will then need to walk back across the desert, meaning that if we want to heal it's a total of 3 trips through the cycling road length desert.
Flying back is kind of tricky too, since Novella Town is actually in the Sevii Islands, not the uneditted Kanto map proper.
Moaning about crossing the desert aside, it's time to deal with the cave. It's basically Mt. Ember interior.
There's some interesting wilds like Aggron and Golem as well as what I think is the last starter in Tepig.
The Explosion tutor's hanging around inside, but nobody on the team can learn it unfortunately.
There's also a bunch of thugs hanging around inside. flamberge learns Stone Edge over Roost since that's outclassed by Hyper Potions now.
The other interesting thing in the cave is this exit which is blocked off by some strength boulders. We can use Strength out of battle, we just need the HM before we can come back and check this out.
The bottom of the cave has a blueish rock which is confused about what it actually is. Checking the bag reveals that it is indeed a Ruby.
Also the Darmanitan statues can be spoken to from the front, giving us an opportunity to catch our very own Zen Mode. Which isn't worth it.
Vladimir was just hanging around down here when we arrived, he didn't show up after we grabbed the Ruby (no clue where the Sapphire he's on about is). In other words, the only thing that prevented him from winning was his own sloth.
Bianca makes a stupid, stupid deal with him, saying that if he wins then she'll give him both of the master balls, but if she wins then he has to give her the Ruby because apparently what we picked up was actually the sapphire despite being the ruby in our bag and either way it's a dumb idea.
Vlad is using the exact same team as last time, just higher leveled. He's still a pushover.
If we talk to him after winning, he tries to renege on the deal and attack us directly. Landorus (who had to die for us to get here) either rises from the dead or teleports from the PC because he's not in our party and deals with Vladimir, who allegedly gives us the Ruby.
We've still only got the one stone though. We're free to head on to the next city after beating Vladimir, leaving the cave immediately through the south exit.
into more goddamn desert are you kidding me
it's mercifully short this time at least
The gate at the far end of the desert holds an ambush. What a shock.
Monobug at least 8 levels behind the curve is not very scary.
It's maybe worth noting that aside from Shedinja, his entire team is Steel/Bug.
I'd be less unhappy with the ambushes if they all gave nice rewards like this. We'll go back to the rocks in Inferno Mountain after we check out town.
Also this trade is at the top of the gatehouse for some reason. His text is bugged so I don't know what he wants, whether it's an Abra like last time or not.
The city's a pretty strange place, not least because all the signs throw up images of Pokemon
The mart sells the at this point usual Ultra Balls and Hyper Potions, along with Soft Sand. We've also hit the money cap and have Big Pearls in our bag.
Along with the Pewter Museum where we got Aerodactyl, the Celadon Mansion is in this town too. As far as I can tell there's no way to get to the second entrance of either place, so we can't see what replaced Eevee (if anything) or get the Old Amber.
in exchange we get this
your victini event keeps resetting you should look at that
Sometimes I feel a little bad for ragging on this romhack, since it's an early project by the developer. Then stuff like this happens and the feeling fades.
FINALLY
i
what
Kayo's standing in front of the entrance to the gym and I don't really want to do the gym just yet. Instead, we're going to head back to the path blocked by boulders earlier with our shiny new HM.
hello mr groudon
why is there a sandstorm in your cave
An awfully high level and Stone Edge/Earthquake coverage make Groudon just as much of a pain to catch as Landorus was. Plus side, it doesn't have a contact move so Garth can sit in front of Groudon with a couple X Defends and tank while we chuck Ultra Balls until it's caught one reset due to Struggle later.
you didn't think it was just landorus who had to be killed to proceed did you?
The exit behind Groudon leads to Flamen City, the place with the first gym from so long ago. If we had skipped the gym that lets us use Fly, this would be our only way to correct that issue. By walking from the city with the first gym all the way through not-Mt. Moon, then through Atlantic Cave, then through not-Diglett's Cave. Fighting Ivan again naturally.
Next time: we're only just getting started on this legendary train
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This...this ROM hack.... Why does it need to exist? Why must it be so bad?
Speaking of bad design choices, audino in this hack takes up mewtwo`s slot...including it`s catch rate of 3. Which when combined with it`s heal bell and wish makes it nigh impossible to catch without using a master ball. Not that it really matters anyway, why would you want to even catch, nevermind use, an audino anyway? Speaking of which, the real reason why zen mode is also not worth catching is, in addition to it`s typical low speed and meh defensive typing, it also takes up moltres` slot, along with it`s catch rate of 3. Yeah have fun with that one, and with all of them for that matter. Also in the desert wild encounters iirc there is also durant....which takes zapdos` slot. Yeah...I forgot what takes up articuno`s slot tho rip. Also is it time for some MORE anime references yet? :D
On the bright side, this may very well be the only game that lets you use a team of 6 Groudon without trading.
Emerald cloning glitch /s
This hack alone shows that just putting high level trainers/gym leaders on pokemon game does not make the game very difficult
In order to achieve great difficulty edited movepools/properly placed wild mons/edited items and most importantly improving ai and moves that can ai use should be considered.That's why I think kaizo pokemon series is very great at achieving difficulty without breaking level curve.(also grats on merit I am enjoying his let's play threat even though I don t like dark rising very much)
In order to achieve great difficulty edited movepools/properly placed wild mons/edited items and most importantly improving ai and moves that can ai use should be considered.That's why I think kaizo pokemon series is very great at achieving difficulty without breaking level curve.(also grats on merit I am enjoying his let's play threat even though I don t like dark rising very much)
An amazing example of good game design:
Merritt: Walks through door
Random NPC:
Merritt: Wins battle, goes back to the nearest center to heal, and comes back
Ghost NPC:
Merritt: Walks through door
Random NPC:
Merritt: Wins battle, goes back to the nearest center to heal, and comes back
Ghost NPC:
King Feraligatr: At least it's the amusing kind of bad and not the overly painful to play bad. The latter are far worse. It's also not boring.
sg pokemon: Those are things I did not know and yet make a lot of sense. I'm glad I didn't bother trying to catch a Zen Mode then. Also, to your last question, yes.
Mega-Pokebattlerz, Zowayix: Not just Groudon but (almost) every legendary Pokemon, including the ones from gen 4 on.
Sacrificed: take a wild guess how the game is going to become 'challenging' now that it's run out of room to level cliff us
TheTankPlays: see below
sg pokemon: Those are things I did not know and yet make a lot of sense. I'm glad I didn't bother trying to catch a Zen Mode then. Also, to your last question, yes.
Mega-Pokebattlerz, Zowayix: Not just Groudon but (almost) every legendary Pokemon, including the ones from gen 4 on.
Sacrificed: take a wild guess how the game is going to become 'challenging' now that it's run out of room to level cliff us
TheTankPlays: see below
This one's got a lot of images.
Our buddy Groudon caught, it's time to head back to not-Fuchsia and check out the thing that's most memorable about Fuchsia.
The Safari Zone! Or rather, what's replaced the Safari Zone. There's no step counter, no safari balls, and each of the four zones have very clearly set level limits. This ranges from the low leveled 55ish mons in the starting area, including ones like Cinccino, Staraptor, and Kangaskhan.
To some interesting options to the east including most of the weather setters (Poliwrath can be found surfing and Hippowdon not shown), poor Abomasnow, and yet another Shadow Tag Pokemon. The northern area has a bunch of Bug types in the low 70s, but the western area (with the Safari House) is something else entirely.
The wilds have really stepped up their game to the west, this just being a few of the high leveled options in this area. Shedinja being here gives me an opportunity for my favorite piece of trivia.
If you've ever played Dark Rising you might have noticed that you never found Nincada or Ninjask. This is because they don't exist. The question is, why is Shedinja here then when it could be replaced with something more exciting? That's because Shedinja's slot in the national dex, 292, is what the 1 HP hardcoding is tied to. Unless you do some shenanigans you'd best be replacing Shedinja with another 1 HP fakemon or keep it in there. I mentioned this in my Vega playthrough as well, but it's still fun knowledge.
So we got Surf from Misty south of not-Fuchsia, so what's in the Safari House now?
not you too (it's not actually an ambush)
This better not be yet another recurring rival.
She uses the three starters in their second stage all at level 80.
Also this. Bianca's Mom is just horrifically underleveled, I'd even call the wilds outside the house stronger.
After we trounce her, she starts going off about how DHR .-. is stronger than us and we only won last time because he didn't use all four of the musketeers, ignore that Salamence was the biggest threat there. She then says that DHR .-. right now has the best chance of beating DOORBELLS.
To make it so that Bianca can beat DARRELS first she gives us this.
I don't understand why it matters that we be the one to defeat Basically Satan. If DHR .-.'s capable then why not support him too? Saving the world shouldn't be a competition, if DHR .-. has a better shot then let him go for it and have Bianca be backup. This "Bianca you'd better hurry before DHR .-. beats DORGIS first!!!" is just kind of frustrating.
anyways yeah shaymin with serene grace physical air slash yay
In a pleasant change of pace, Kayo doesn't actually want to fight us despite being outside the gym but instead tells us that we'll have a showdown elsewhere. Whatever floats your boat dude. He leaves and we're free to head into the gym.
the gym which has a sandstorm going on inside
i just don't understand
Bruce here doesn't even use Rock types how is this sandstorm happening? Nobody's talking about it, it's just there. Anyways, Steel types, not exactly the most inspiring threat to our team in particular.
Metagross @ Leftovers Lv88: Meteor Mash/Earthquake/Signal Beam/DynamicPunch
Probopass @ Leftovers Lv88: Stone Edge/Thunderbolt/Earthquake/Flash Cannon
Bastiodon @ Leftovers Lv88: Earthquake/Iron Head/Body Slam/AncientPower
Magnezone @ Leftovers Lv88: Thunderbolt/Mirror Coat/Double Team/Flash Cannon
Bronzong @ Leftovers Lv88: Flash Cannon/Calm Mind/Psychic/Stealth Rock
Klinklang @ Leftovers Lv89: Autotomize/Flash Cannon/Hyper Beam/Signal Beam
Leftovers on all the things. Well, I can certainly see the vague synergy with the inexplicable sandstorm. Pity that it's not going to matter here, what with our 2 Fire types, Ground type, and even babylonia for Fighting backup. It's going to be a cakewalk. Klinklang is the enemy exclusive and is certainly a pretty steep downgrade from Meloetta-P.
Also notice that Bruce does not hit the level curve of 90. This isn't the first time a gym leader is behind the curve (level 80 Vanilluxe right before the 5th gym says hi) but it's still a little out of place.
I wonder where the whole gym leader name = pun on their type thing went. We had it pretty clear early on, maybe I'm just not getting Bruce.
Sandstorm neutralized. Flamethrower OHKOs.
I don't understand why he decided to send out three mons 4x weak to Earthquake in a row when he's got a Levitate Bronzong but sure whatever you say.
Nasty Plot on Stealth Rock means wincon has no issues OHKOing with +2 Flamethrower.
+2 flamethrower op
Yes thank you much appreciated. We'll go back and check out some previous surf spots to see if there's anything neat.
your entire team is immune to poison why are you giving me this
Anyways, with our newfound surfing prowess we can head back into the Training Grounds and pick up the item floating in the water. It was irrelevant.
Also we can surf on the single row of 'grass' directly below this pond, though there's no encounters in those spaces.
These are all found in the western area, while stuff like Poliwhirl, Crawdaunt, and Walrein are found in the other areas. One of these is found by fishing with the Good Rod, can you guess which one?
of course it's swanna what did you expect
We're actually going to catch the Milotic.
That's because, at long last, babylonia's entering retirement. She's had a good run, but her terrible Special Attack just holds her back from being particularly helpful. Say hello to tyranny the Milotic, who doesn't have too many levels to make up for.
Time to backtrack and check out new areas that we can Surf on.
Well first, this Thundurus event has respawned. It's not a fight but it's something that we didn't see previous times we visited the route.
What we're actually here for is this.
The level curve is at 90.
That means you and your team of 4 mons isn't scary anymore.
Hippowdon @ Soft Sand Lv90: Earthquake/Stealth Rock/Iron Head/Superpower
Golem @ Hard Stone Lv90: Earthquake/Rock Wrecker/Iron Head/Double Edge
Machamp @ Black Belt Lv92: Drain Punch/Stone Edge/Earthquake/Bulk Up
Rhyperior @ Hard Stone Lv94: Rock Wrecker/Earthquake/Megahorn/Iron Head
He's totally a gym leader, look at his battle title!
Anyways, this is actually something that can be handled way earlier with a good rain team but our semi-sun works fine too at these levels. It's still wildly inappropriate for the point in the game that it can be accessed.
It's also completely pointless.
The Thundurus event respawning made me curious though. What else has reset that we haven't seen yet?
this fight with level 16-18 grunts next to the first town did
yay
Pete has regressed.
So did Sydney, but astoundingly she isn't a ghost. This is a step up! Not much of one but still, points to Sydney for trying.
The first Light fight with his level 50 Tornadus doesn't respawn, even after we fight Sydney. There might be some way to cause it to activate, but for now we'll have to give up on revenge.
the starter event is active again
well not really we can't get another starter
We can do this though. Listen to Arceus, we cannot win simply by attacking, but right now flamberge only has attacking moves. We'd better switch to wincon.
flamberge get down from there where's wincon
that doesn't answer my question
Having more than one Pokemon breaks the tutorial battle in interesting ways. Don't let the player get extra Pokemon before the tutorial battle.
Moving on, another ghost Pete.
Even though he's a ghost, I'm gonna say this counts. The Kyurem twins should be happy, Bianca has fulfilled her promise and resurrected V.
please stop attacking people who walk into your lab
The flooded Mt Moon is very well constructed. The Brock fight and the others outside the water gym town didn't respawn, and the Entei fight happened again as usual. We're going to Fly ahead to not cover old ground at this point.
I said we wouldn't be reviving the fossil we got from Pete's Dad because we had no use for it, but the fact that the fossil man doesn't recognize it means we really won't be getting a Cranidos or Lileep whatever this is.
Actually, since we're here and the SS Titantic hasn't left, let's go see if we can find ourselves a Mew.
this might still count as a truck
Much further ahead, these guys have popped back into existence. The Kyurem twins don't ambush us or move or do anything even when we try to speak to them.
I'm sure they're just speechless that their dad's back.
oh this respawned
This is the last one, the other ambushes past here haven't reactivated, including elevator Kayo pleasantly. This entertaining diversion out of the way, it's time to move on with the plot.
We're setting out to the south of not-Fuchsia. No, I don't understand the need to edit the Surf prompt text.
After dodging the various swimmers and surfing behind this specimen, we finally arrive at the very small and flat Thunder Mountain.
Which is where Kayo, a bunch of giants, and Raikou are hanging out.
In the text before the battle the giants seemed pretty down on Kayoso i'm not sure why they granted him the rank of master
With the rain gone, wincon quickly OHKOs Ferrothorn, Garth sets up Swords Dance two times on Reuniclus as it tries Thunder and Water Pulse, and sweeps the lot. Despite the Hydregion level, Kayo isn't actually behind the curve.
He's right on it.
Sorry, what?
that doesn't actually clarify things
Talking to Kayo brings this up again, Raikou doesn't say anything interesting, while both the yellow giants refuse to acknowledge our existence.
The green and black-pink ones don't just sit there when we talk to them though.
instead the crash the game
Thankfully I save stated right before Kayo. The second go around Garth sets up Swords Dance four times on the lead Ferrothorn and just sweeps.
Surfing east of Thunder Mountain brings us to yet another tiny island. We cannot enter any of the houses here, the doors don't work.
The townsfolk are more than happy to attack us though.
All six of her Pokemon have Substitute.
look i'll give you a chance to take that back because you gave me surf
yes she makes anime references
no, she doesn't take it back
We can't lead wincon due to her Drizzle Politoed lead, so instead we'll switch to it. wincon sets up Nasty Plot three times, eats a Full Restore to heal the Body Slam paralysis and heal up, and sweeps. Zen Headbutt misses Gyarados once so wincon has to eat an Earthquake.
Aside from that, it's an uneventful sweep of the monowater Rain team with a Fire type.
Misty out of the way, we can surf to the final island in this chain and enter the Twilight Zone.
Also known as Navel Rock.
Fun fact, if you walk north after coming up the ladder you can skip this event. We're not going to pass it up though.
Time to fight the creator's self insert.
Leading with a Pokemon who has Dark Pulse/Moonlight/Toxic/Confuse Ray is a fatal flaw. speed sets up to +4 with Bulk Up.
Sky Uppercut makes this very dead, just like Umbreon.
oh look it's the mythicals
oh there they go
Tarea then tells us that we are Special because we can talk to legendary Pokemon and we should go catch the mythicals.
They're just hanging out in the remaining parts of Navel Rock.
Not at the same level we just fought them at of course, that would be absurd. Deoxys was kind of painful to catch honestly, taking a whole three resets due to it struggling to death. Having Superpower/Zap Cannon as its only attacking moves meant it wasn't hard to take hits from though.
In the other passageway, Jirachi is just hanging out on one of the landings.
Same deal for Celebi.
Mew gets its own level.
Something I didn't realize until here is that while the legendary Pokemon behave the same as that Landorus and Groudon did (that is, they stick around and can be fought/caught against after being caught), this state only lasts until you load a new area by climbing a ladder or entering a building or something like that, at which point they despawn. In other words, if we wanted a ton of Mews, we'd need to get them all at once. We don't, but that's how it works.
After our misadventures with mythicals, we're finally done withNavel RockThe Twilight Zone.
oh boy another ambush
This one isn't a battle though but instead we're being kidnapped and dragged onto a boat.
sevii island time
Long plot short, apparently DOGOUTS has assumed direct control of the police and now everybody's a wanted criminal. We can reverse this by putting gemstones in this machine. Unfortunately this is all predicated on us having the Sapphire and we kind of don't have that, just the Ruby.
We're still told that we need to go find the Emerald.
Anyways, yes it's the Sevii Islands plot, right down to the broken PCs. Thankfully we have our Fly user in our team already.
You might have noticed that Joy was replaced. This is the local shop. He sells mushrooms.
These are useful for the move tutor right next door.
Not so useful for us unfortunately, nobody on our team has moves we'd benefit from relearning. Garchomp has a very small level up movepool that does not contain the moves of its prevos because that'd be silly.
There's also these two places in town, both completely useless. Only the Kanto starters can learn the elemental hyper beams (no speed Blast Burns) and the cave doesn't actually let us enter.
oh
he states that he did some of the scripts for this game
i sure hope none of those were the ambush battle scripts
That out of the way, east of the town is a dozen police officers with level 70s to grind through along with grass containing level 60ish wilds.
Partway through the route is this cave. We'll check it out later.
Crossing the short ocean directly north of the cave brings us to even more legendaries.
They're all pretty underleveled. We catch Raikou and don't actually engage the other two because Raikou's the only one we could possibly consider using.
Soon after the legendary dogs is the rocket warehouse. In a pleasant surprise, the grunt right above the tiles at the entrance still turns one set upside down after being beaten.
There's a lot of grunts here and while they're all kind of terrible they do wear down our PP. Brave Bird's being taken over Rock Slide as a nuclear option - Stone Edge is a little better than Rock Slide in my opinion and we want to keep Aerial Ace for spamability over Brave Bird.
Also this is Intimidate Brave Bird Archeops, hear him roar.
We're going to not deal with Vladimir at the back of the warehouse just yet, instead going for a quick look through the cave after we heal at the center.
It's actually very straightforward, just a warp right back to the mainland. South of here is actually the island that we were kidnapped from, but we're going to head north.
There's a (very easy) current maze before an island with yet another cave on it.
Oh look we found Lost Cave. The path is the same as normal, nothing interesting here.
Sydney's in the back, apparently after a legendary Pokemon in the basement. Naturally we stake our claim to every legendary Pokemon and Sydney rejects that and reasonably says that we can fight for the right to catch the legendary.
This isn't an ambush or an unbearably stupid reason to fight. Progress!
Her team isn't bad and it's right up there with the level curve.
It's pushing the curve a little even. It's no match for speed though.
what
Alright, let's catch Kyogre and then go back to the Sevii Island plot.
oh
a lot of the dark rising shiny sprites are kind of screwed up
but that is a shiny kyogre
i don't care i'm gonna use it, both to show off the screwed up shiny palette and because it's a kyogre, sorry tyranny you had a short run
It vanished after we caught it what is this witchcraft.
Let's go add Kyogre to the team!
or not that's fine too
Next time: Even more of the Sevii Islands.
The Safari Zone! Or rather, what's replaced the Safari Zone. There's no step counter, no safari balls, and each of the four zones have very clearly set level limits. This ranges from the low leveled 55ish mons in the starting area, including ones like Cinccino, Staraptor, and Kangaskhan.
To some interesting options to the east including most of the weather setters (Poliwrath can be found surfing and Hippowdon not shown), poor Abomasnow, and yet another Shadow Tag Pokemon. The northern area has a bunch of Bug types in the low 70s, but the western area (with the Safari House) is something else entirely.
The wilds have really stepped up their game to the west, this just being a few of the high leveled options in this area. Shedinja being here gives me an opportunity for my favorite piece of trivia.
If you've ever played Dark Rising you might have noticed that you never found Nincada or Ninjask. This is because they don't exist. The question is, why is Shedinja here then when it could be replaced with something more exciting? That's because Shedinja's slot in the national dex, 292, is what the 1 HP hardcoding is tied to. Unless you do some shenanigans you'd best be replacing Shedinja with another 1 HP fakemon or keep it in there. I mentioned this in my Vega playthrough as well, but it's still fun knowledge.
So we got Surf from Misty south of not-Fuchsia, so what's in the Safari House now?
not you too (it's not actually an ambush)
This better not be yet another recurring rival.
She uses the three starters in their second stage all at level 80.
Also this. Bianca's Mom is just horrifically underleveled, I'd even call the wilds outside the house stronger.
After we trounce her, she starts going off about how DHR .-. is stronger than us and we only won last time because he didn't use all four of the musketeers, ignore that Salamence was the biggest threat there. She then says that DHR .-. right now has the best chance of beating DOORBELLS.
To make it so that Bianca can beat DARRELS first she gives us this.
I don't understand why it matters that we be the one to defeat Basically Satan. If DHR .-.'s capable then why not support him too? Saving the world shouldn't be a competition, if DHR .-. has a better shot then let him go for it and have Bianca be backup. This "Bianca you'd better hurry before DHR .-. beats DORGIS first!!!" is just kind of frustrating.
anyways yeah shaymin with serene grace physical air slash yay
In a pleasant change of pace, Kayo doesn't actually want to fight us despite being outside the gym but instead tells us that we'll have a showdown elsewhere. Whatever floats your boat dude. He leaves and we're free to head into the gym.
the gym which has a sandstorm going on inside
i just don't understand
Bruce here doesn't even use Rock types how is this sandstorm happening? Nobody's talking about it, it's just there. Anyways, Steel types, not exactly the most inspiring threat to our team in particular.
Metagross @ Leftovers Lv88: Meteor Mash/Earthquake/Signal Beam/DynamicPunch
Probopass @ Leftovers Lv88: Stone Edge/Thunderbolt/Earthquake/Flash Cannon
Bastiodon @ Leftovers Lv88: Earthquake/Iron Head/Body Slam/AncientPower
Magnezone @ Leftovers Lv88: Thunderbolt/Mirror Coat/Double Team/Flash Cannon
Bronzong @ Leftovers Lv88: Flash Cannon/Calm Mind/Psychic/Stealth Rock
Klinklang @ Leftovers Lv89: Autotomize/Flash Cannon/Hyper Beam/Signal Beam
Leftovers on all the things. Well, I can certainly see the vague synergy with the inexplicable sandstorm. Pity that it's not going to matter here, what with our 2 Fire types, Ground type, and even babylonia for Fighting backup. It's going to be a cakewalk. Klinklang is the enemy exclusive and is certainly a pretty steep downgrade from Meloetta-P.
Also notice that Bruce does not hit the level curve of 90. This isn't the first time a gym leader is behind the curve (level 80 Vanilluxe right before the 5th gym says hi) but it's still a little out of place.
I wonder where the whole gym leader name = pun on their type thing went. We had it pretty clear early on, maybe I'm just not getting Bruce.
Sandstorm neutralized. Flamethrower OHKOs.
I don't understand why he decided to send out three mons 4x weak to Earthquake in a row when he's got a Levitate Bronzong but sure whatever you say.
Nasty Plot on Stealth Rock means wincon has no issues OHKOing with +2 Flamethrower.
+2 flamethrower op
Yes thank you much appreciated. We'll go back and check out some previous surf spots to see if there's anything neat.
your entire team is immune to poison why are you giving me this
Anyways, with our newfound surfing prowess we can head back into the Training Grounds and pick up the item floating in the water. It was irrelevant.
Also we can surf on the single row of 'grass' directly below this pond, though there's no encounters in those spaces.
These are all found in the western area, while stuff like Poliwhirl, Crawdaunt, and Walrein are found in the other areas. One of these is found by fishing with the Good Rod, can you guess which one?
of course it's swanna what did you expect
We're actually going to catch the Milotic.
That's because, at long last, babylonia's entering retirement. She's had a good run, but her terrible Special Attack just holds her back from being particularly helpful. Say hello to tyranny the Milotic, who doesn't have too many levels to make up for.
Time to backtrack and check out new areas that we can Surf on.
Well first, this Thundurus event has respawned. It's not a fight but it's something that we didn't see previous times we visited the route.
What we're actually here for is this.
The level curve is at 90.
That means you and your team of 4 mons isn't scary anymore.
Hippowdon @ Soft Sand Lv90: Earthquake/Stealth Rock/Iron Head/Superpower
Golem @ Hard Stone Lv90: Earthquake/Rock Wrecker/Iron Head/Double Edge
Machamp @ Black Belt Lv92: Drain Punch/Stone Edge/Earthquake/Bulk Up
Rhyperior @ Hard Stone Lv94: Rock Wrecker/Earthquake/Megahorn/Iron Head
He's totally a gym leader, look at his battle title!
Anyways, this is actually something that can be handled way earlier with a good rain team but our semi-sun works fine too at these levels. It's still wildly inappropriate for the point in the game that it can be accessed.
It's also completely pointless.
The Thundurus event respawning made me curious though. What else has reset that we haven't seen yet?
this fight with level 16-18 grunts next to the first town did
yay
Pete has regressed.
So did Sydney, but astoundingly she isn't a ghost. This is a step up! Not much of one but still, points to Sydney for trying.
The first Light fight with his level 50 Tornadus doesn't respawn, even after we fight Sydney. There might be some way to cause it to activate, but for now we'll have to give up on revenge.
the starter event is active again
well not really we can't get another starter
We can do this though. Listen to Arceus, we cannot win simply by attacking, but right now flamberge only has attacking moves. We'd better switch to wincon.
flamberge get down from there where's wincon
that doesn't answer my question
Having more than one Pokemon breaks the tutorial battle in interesting ways. Don't let the player get extra Pokemon before the tutorial battle.
Moving on, another ghost Pete.
Even though he's a ghost, I'm gonna say this counts. The Kyurem twins should be happy, Bianca has fulfilled her promise and resurrected V.
please stop attacking people who walk into your lab
The flooded Mt Moon is very well constructed. The Brock fight and the others outside the water gym town didn't respawn, and the Entei fight happened again as usual. We're going to Fly ahead to not cover old ground at this point.
I said we wouldn't be reviving the fossil we got from Pete's Dad because we had no use for it, but the fact that the fossil man doesn't recognize it means we really won't be getting a Cranidos or Lileep whatever this is.
Actually, since we're here and the SS Titantic hasn't left, let's go see if we can find ourselves a Mew.
this might still count as a truck
Much further ahead, these guys have popped back into existence. The Kyurem twins don't ambush us or move or do anything even when we try to speak to them.
I'm sure they're just speechless that their dad's back.
oh this respawned
This is the last one, the other ambushes past here haven't reactivated, including elevator Kayo pleasantly. This entertaining diversion out of the way, it's time to move on with the plot.
We're setting out to the south of not-Fuchsia. No, I don't understand the need to edit the Surf prompt text.
After dodging the various swimmers and surfing behind this specimen, we finally arrive at the very small and flat Thunder Mountain.
Which is where Kayo, a bunch of giants, and Raikou are hanging out.
In the text before the battle the giants seemed pretty down on Kayo
With the rain gone, wincon quickly OHKOs Ferrothorn, Garth sets up Swords Dance two times on Reuniclus as it tries Thunder and Water Pulse, and sweeps the lot. Despite the Hydregion level, Kayo isn't actually behind the curve.
He's right on it.
Sorry, what?
that doesn't actually clarify things
Talking to Kayo brings this up again, Raikou doesn't say anything interesting, while both the yellow giants refuse to acknowledge our existence.
The green and black-pink ones don't just sit there when we talk to them though.
instead the crash the game
Thankfully I save stated right before Kayo. The second go around Garth sets up Swords Dance four times on the lead Ferrothorn and just sweeps.
Surfing east of Thunder Mountain brings us to yet another tiny island. We cannot enter any of the houses here, the doors don't work.
The townsfolk are more than happy to attack us though.
All six of her Pokemon have Substitute.
look i'll give you a chance to take that back because you gave me surf
yes she makes anime references
no, she doesn't take it back
We can't lead wincon due to her Drizzle Politoed lead, so instead we'll switch to it. wincon sets up Nasty Plot three times, eats a Full Restore to heal the Body Slam paralysis and heal up, and sweeps. Zen Headbutt misses Gyarados once so wincon has to eat an Earthquake.
Aside from that, it's an uneventful sweep of the monowater Rain team with a Fire type.
Misty out of the way, we can surf to the final island in this chain and enter the Twilight Zone.
Also known as Navel Rock.
Fun fact, if you walk north after coming up the ladder you can skip this event. We're not going to pass it up though.
Time to fight the creator's self insert.
Leading with a Pokemon who has Dark Pulse/Moonlight/Toxic/Confuse Ray is a fatal flaw. speed sets up to +4 with Bulk Up.
Sky Uppercut makes this very dead, just like Umbreon.
oh look it's the mythicals
oh there they go
Tarea then tells us that we are Special because we can talk to legendary Pokemon and we should go catch the mythicals.
They're just hanging out in the remaining parts of Navel Rock.
Not at the same level we just fought them at of course, that would be absurd. Deoxys was kind of painful to catch honestly, taking a whole three resets due to it struggling to death. Having Superpower/Zap Cannon as its only attacking moves meant it wasn't hard to take hits from though.
In the other passageway, Jirachi is just hanging out on one of the landings.
Same deal for Celebi.
Mew gets its own level.
Something I didn't realize until here is that while the legendary Pokemon behave the same as that Landorus and Groudon did (that is, they stick around and can be fought/caught against after being caught), this state only lasts until you load a new area by climbing a ladder or entering a building or something like that, at which point they despawn. In other words, if we wanted a ton of Mews, we'd need to get them all at once. We don't, but that's how it works.
After our misadventures with mythicals, we're finally done with
oh boy another ambush
This one isn't a battle though but instead we're being kidnapped and dragged onto a boat.
sevii island time
Long plot short, apparently DOGOUTS has assumed direct control of the police and now everybody's a wanted criminal. We can reverse this by putting gemstones in this machine. Unfortunately this is all predicated on us having the Sapphire and we kind of don't have that, just the Ruby.
We're still told that we need to go find the Emerald.
Anyways, yes it's the Sevii Islands plot, right down to the broken PCs. Thankfully we have our Fly user in our team already.
You might have noticed that Joy was replaced. This is the local shop. He sells mushrooms.
These are useful for the move tutor right next door.
Not so useful for us unfortunately, nobody on our team has moves we'd benefit from relearning. Garchomp has a very small level up movepool that does not contain the moves of its prevos because that'd be silly.
There's also these two places in town, both completely useless. Only the Kanto starters can learn the elemental hyper beams (no speed Blast Burns) and the cave doesn't actually let us enter.
oh
he states that he did some of the scripts for this game
i sure hope none of those were the ambush battle scripts
That out of the way, east of the town is a dozen police officers with level 70s to grind through along with grass containing level 60ish wilds.
Partway through the route is this cave. We'll check it out later.
Crossing the short ocean directly north of the cave brings us to even more legendaries.
They're all pretty underleveled. We catch Raikou and don't actually engage the other two because Raikou's the only one we could possibly consider using.
Soon after the legendary dogs is the rocket warehouse. In a pleasant surprise, the grunt right above the tiles at the entrance still turns one set upside down after being beaten.
There's a lot of grunts here and while they're all kind of terrible they do wear down our PP. Brave Bird's being taken over Rock Slide as a nuclear option - Stone Edge is a little better than Rock Slide in my opinion and we want to keep Aerial Ace for spamability over Brave Bird.
Also this is Intimidate Brave Bird Archeops, hear him roar.
We're going to not deal with Vladimir at the back of the warehouse just yet, instead going for a quick look through the cave after we heal at the center.
It's actually very straightforward, just a warp right back to the mainland. South of here is actually the island that we were kidnapped from, but we're going to head north.
There's a (very easy) current maze before an island with yet another cave on it.
Oh look we found Lost Cave. The path is the same as normal, nothing interesting here.
Sydney's in the back, apparently after a legendary Pokemon in the basement. Naturally we stake our claim to every legendary Pokemon and Sydney rejects that and reasonably says that we can fight for the right to catch the legendary.
This isn't an ambush or an unbearably stupid reason to fight. Progress!
Her team isn't bad and it's right up there with the level curve.
It's pushing the curve a little even. It's no match for speed though.
what
Alright, let's catch Kyogre and then go back to the Sevii Island plot.
oh
a lot of the dark rising shiny sprites are kind of screwed up
but that is a shiny kyogre
i don't care i'm gonna use it, both to show off the screwed up shiny palette and because it's a kyogre, sorry tyranny you had a short run
It vanished after we caught it what is this witchcraft.
Let's go add Kyogre to the team!
or not that's fine too
Next time: Even more of the Sevii Islands.
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That's the most fabulous Kyogre I've ever seen.
CTNC
Doesn't know how to attack
So, um... wow... Who else thought this couldn't get """better"""? The giants impressed me with how out of place they looked, even before they crashed the game, but Kyogre... Why'd I assume the Daycare and PC Bad Eggs were the only things they broke things from the base game?
If you're playing on an emulator, does that mean you can use gameshark cheats? If there's a cheat code for Shiny Pokemon, please use it.
As for the story, I'm just going to assume there's a ton of Legendary Pokemon because the hacker thought Legendary Pokemon are awesome. Whatever the "lore" is, I can guarantee my explanation is must less stupid.
If you're playing on an emulator, does that mean you can use gameshark cheats? If there's a cheat code for Shiny Pokemon, please use it.
As for the story, I'm just going to assume there's a ton of Legendary Pokemon because the hacker thought Legendary Pokemon are awesome. Whatever the "lore" is, I can guarantee my explanation is must less stupid.
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Awww you didn`t mention that those "giants" are in fact the elite four members :/ Well technically those are 4/7 of the 7 deadly sins (lust, pride, glutton, wrath-guess which one is which). I believe that this is only time we see them before the league though? What was quite interesting in the kaizo version of this game is that they have actual names there, and a much bigger role in the plot than they do here (other trainers are named after the 7 deadly sins there instead, and you end up fighting them somewhere around the area that you`re about to visit in the next update actually). Then again the plot in that game is much more expanded and sensical (while retaining most of the main points) than it is in here sooo. Also rip the milotic, a horribly colored shiny mon just had to steal the show :(
Edit: WARNING: I believe there is a trainer up ahead which will freeze the game if he sees you and starts walking to battle you. Thankfully he is skippable. You will probably find it out yourself depending on how far you make it in the next update.
Edit: WARNING: I believe there is a trainer up ahead which will freeze the game if he sees you and starts walking to battle you. Thankfully he is skippable. You will probably find it out yourself depending on how far you make it in the next update.
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Wow, just when I thought Kyogre's shiny couldn't get any worse... lol wtf
Can we just refer to this hack as Derp Rising from here on out? It deserves it and as the hack keeps going, the derp seems to keep rising,
And to compare to my own ROM hacking experience, I redid the whole main game level curve in my UM hack once I realized it was shit, didn't work, and bit off more than it can chew. And being in the low 90s by the first Championship bout with Hau, which didn't leave us with much wiggle room for the postgame. It's fixed now and works way better, but the point is that I went back and fixed the level curve that didn't work. This hacks' creators on the other hand..... It doesn't seem like they did,
And to compare to my own ROM hacking experience, I redid the whole main game level curve in my UM hack once I realized it was shit, didn't work, and bit off more than it can chew. And being in the low 90s by the first Championship bout with Hau, which didn't leave us with much wiggle room for the postgame. It's fixed now and works way better, but the point is that I went back and fixed the level curve that didn't work. This hacks' creators on the other hand..... It doesn't seem like they did,
Shinies in this game are actually just normal pokemon corrupted by DIALGAS's power.
Was the Kyogre set to be shiny? If so, why didn't the developer try to fix it, or at least try to cover it up by making the Kyogre not be a forced shiny?
Also, this may be a little late, but is Conarp catchable or is it just an enemy exclusive that gives players the false illusion that they can have a wonder guard pokemon that's actually decent?
Was the Kyogre set to be shiny? If so, why didn't the developer try to fix it, or at least try to cover it up by making the Kyogre not be a forced shiny?
Also, this may be a little late, but is Conarp catchable or is it just an enemy exclusive that gives players the false illusion that they can have a wonder guard pokemon that's actually decent?
ZettaiRyouiki, Altissimo, Scorpio, Mega-Pokebattlerz: i have to say that the green goes great with the neon pink
CTNC: I actually took a shot at this when um an 'event' occurred. I'll talk about it during the update. The codes didn't work, not sure if I'm just incompetent or if it's something to do with DR specifically. There's no real explanation given for the legendaries, they're just kind of there.
sg pokemon: Yeah, it's the Elite Four, 15ft tall glory and all. I'm aware of the game freezing trainer and will be saving state when I get to the area in question.
King Feraligatr: I prefer Dork Writing myself.
TheTankPlays: Kyogre was not set to be shiny. I found two legitimate shinies in a terrible romhack. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. No, Conarp isn't catchable, that would let you checkmate far too many of the final battles.
CTNC: I actually took a shot at this when um an 'event' occurred. I'll talk about it during the update. The codes didn't work, not sure if I'm just incompetent or if it's something to do with DR specifically. There's no real explanation given for the legendaries, they're just kind of there.
sg pokemon: Yeah, it's the Elite Four, 15ft tall glory and all. I'm aware of the game freezing trainer and will be saving state when I get to the area in question.
King Feraligatr: I prefer Dork Writing myself.
TheTankPlays: Kyogre was not set to be shiny. I found two legitimate shinies in a terrible romhack. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. No, Conarp isn't catchable, that would let you checkmate far too many of the final battles.
Disappointment over having to wait to use our new Kyogre aside, it's time to finish off the warehouse. Vladimir is waiting in the back and to intimidate him Bianca sends out the canonically murdered Landorus who has not-dead versions sitting in the broken PC and are definitely not in our team.
The real question is whether or not Vlad is going to put up a fight this time.
no, instead he'll use the same shitty team as always but in doubles this time
Oh yeah we were after that weren't we.
The elevator at the back is actually a set of doors that lead out to a cave.
This man does not address the fact that he lives right next to an evil warehouse.
Two Island, go go.
wow
maybe i'll go back and check the previous fishing spots to see what's available
probably not
There's no formal mart here but instead we have this lovely gentleman. The Macho Brace is an odd choice but the Max Potion is quite handy at these levels and he sells Ethers. Infinite PP obtained.
The way out of town is blocked and every single tile of this house can be walked through. The only place left to check out is the game corner building.
Which is actually the Celadon game corner.
ma'am you have an elderly gentleman on your shelf might want to check that out
also 10,000 coins please thanks
The prizes are completely unedited, so the Pokemon are worthless aside from this solidifying that Dratini is the worst starter if you can just come out here and buy one.
The TMs being unchanged is pretty nice though.
tyranny's going to be with us for a while longer, and I value the accuracy over the very small power increase and spread of Heat Wave for speed. Not like we're strapped for cash.
yep definitely the celadon game corner
He's pathetically weak.
Lampshading that you're ripping events straight from vanilla does not make it better.
Now we get to deal with the Team Rocket Hideout. Thrilling.
It's not actually that bad because the place is basically empty, there's maybe two grunts in the whole place.
One of which is standing next to the respawning Lift Key. Much like the second VS Seeker, extra copies of the Lift Key get devoured by the first.
Down on the B4F we find the Kyurem twins hanging around the locked door, providing a good opportunity to tell real versions of them that we resurrected their dad through the power of temporary flags.
while the same sentiment as always, that's less eloquent than usual
They've both really come a long way. Those are nearly full teams!
Which are still pretty much exactly at the level curve.
Even the Kyurem formes are the same.
We've been fighting high 80s teams with a level 90 legendary at the back ever since Light's Landorus-T fight. It's getting pretty old.
stoned is a poor word to describe being turned into rock
Hi V. Glad to see you're back and Juan now.
no it was by poor scripting
wait was the bad scripting actually DANGOS all along?
V-REBIRTH
He's using mostly the same team as always, just at levels very close to 90.
But he's done it ladies and gentlemen, V-REBIRTH has finally pushed the level curve to 95!
With his Color Change Genesect!
Reminder that we still have not fought the 7th gym.
After beating V-REBIRTH we're able to go north to a route with rain, grass that has absolutely terrible wilds, and nothing to delay us.
At the far end is the Lostelle event house, but with Dray instead of a worried father, Florina of the Choice Band Aerodactyl instead of a little girl, and Pete instead of a biker.
It's all rather pointless as we have only one way to go anyways.
Out the back exit to the captured city under the control of people who refuse to look at us when we talk to them.
yay three island
The grunts are terrible and the boss?
He's also awful but with high leveled mons at least.
this is not a good shop
Here is our first Cut tree. shrug learns a new HM to celebrate. The item was Zinc or something.
Poor Slowbro doesn't even know what town he's in.
This cave spits us out of that entrance on One Island, the one we couldn't enter. If we go through we still can't get back through, so hopefully you have a Fly user on your team if you do that since the PCs are broken.
Well that's what I'd normally say but the people on One Island had their text change, mentioning that Celio got trading with other regions working. Could that mean...?
aHA
Time to actually retire tyranny and grab our shiny new Kyogre.
um
that's what i named the kyogre but you're not kyogre and you're also 20 levels higher than kyogre was
Trying to look at the status screen crashed the game, but we're going right back in to see what happened to my shiny kyogre dammit
We're able to withdraw it (hereon dubbed Abomination) from the box and add it to our party, we just can't look at the status screen. With the benefit of having finished this whole thing I still have no clue what exactly causes the crash whenever we look at the summary screen. We can remove the item from Abomination though.
thank you description very clear
Let's go take Abomination into battle, see what it can do.
i see i see
Both the top and bottom move on the left say there's no PP left when trying to select them and the bottom right move doesn't exist (can't be highlighted), but picking the top right move does something!
Abomination causes the game to start screeching loudly and freeze! Nice job!
So, what's going on here? The short answer - I have no clue. I talked about this with the OI Discord as this was going down (good people in there btw) and while certainly amusing there were no answers to be found. Most of the bad eggs I isolated in box 3 previously so it's not that haiga the Kyogre was put in a slot that an invisible bad egg was occupying and no other Pokemon in the box were corrupted like this. Kyogre's also not in one of the limbo slots, it's in the usual place in the dex.
Bizarre as this may be, I was still kind of annoyed that the shiny Kyogre got replaced by an abomination, so I decided to use uh "invasive measures" to correct this.
I tried some gameshark and AR codes to manipulate wild Pokemon (both to make them shiny and to find a wild Kyogre) which was a complete failure, though running both at once did manage to cause wild Pokemon to have invisible names.
After giving up on trying to catch another one legitimately I said screw it, booted up a save editor, deleted the Abomination, found that the visible Bad Egg apparently contains a shiny Bulbasaur, some of the invisible bad eggs are apparently holding Master Balls and know Pound twice, and recreated haiga as best as I could. Since I never got a chance to see the stats I used a random number generator to choose a nature and IVs.
The wrong has been righted. Say hello to haiga the Serious shiny Kyogre with 1/31/5/15/28/19 IVs.
TMs given, Carbos and Calcium applied, haiga is ready to rock and roll. Being somewhat underleveled compared to the rest of the team means that haiga gets to lead for a while.
The route east of not-Three Island is marked by Florina's bag (which actually turns when inspected) and a massive thunderstorm.
The cause of that latter being these two fellas.
the generic wilds are in the low-mid 70s why are you so low leveled
Thundurus gets Volt Absorb which is honestly completely understandable since it's the Therian ability, much like Landorus got. Speed Boost is... less understandable.
I've mentioned it a bunch of times at this point but now you can feast your eyes on 120/100 physical Hurricane. Contrary to the description, it does not flinch but inflicts Confusion sometimes like it should.
Past the two kami is the Haunted Forest.
Berry Scery.
SHADOW TAG WILDS 4: REVENGENCE
hi lostelle and how are you
See, that's how you do special wild encounters. Right next to the level curve and with a 50% chance of Shadow Tag.
We're told that our destination is the cave right behind Florina but that instead of going in there we're going to go all the way back to Dray.
Ok, points where it's due, this is good to be told so we don't need to guess the fakemon's typing. The points are immediately revoked because we weren't told before the first time we had to deal with the Dark/Fire Wonder Guard Pokemon with over 600 BST.
After a fairly long walk back, it's time for the power plant which doesn't actually have any Electric types, instead having a bunch of Dark and Rock types, as well as Pupitar and Metang if we decided that was something we wanted to use at this point.
also more shadow tag wilds
are you getting tired of this yet? because I've been tired of them since not-cerulean cave
Some decent stuff in here though. This would make a great addition to haiga's moveset.
As long as we ignore that Kyogre gets Thunder at level 85 naturally.
Can we get Zapdos instead?
Didn't think so.
Most of his team is the exact same 5 mons he's always used, only this time at level 90.
Conarp's got an upgrade though. With a fittingly unpleasant sprite.
What exactly makes this an upgrade? Well that's simple.
Blazard: Dark/Fire, Wonder Guard, 120/110/125/110/125/105
695 BST. To be fair it's technically a lower BST than the Kyurem formes we've been dealing with for a while now, but those don't have Wonder Guard.
High bulk, good Speed, and decent offensive stats make Blazard very annoying to deal with. Assuming you're not using something also broken like Kyogre. Blazard falls to haiga.
wait but we wanted the emerald
the bag confirms that it's the sapphire
Well, they're happy with it so whatever. Sydney takes us back to the mainland in the ship now that the Sevii Island plot is finished.
She drops us off in the middle of town and then screams from her post outside the cave to the Twilight Zone where she and Dray still are about DUNGUS still being a danger. If we want to go back to the Sevii Islands for some reason we can just go through the cave north of here, but we really don't have a reason to do so.
The shop has nothing new unfortunately and we can't get into the gym yet despite having already picked up the key way back before the 4th gym.
god i hate this town
The Rapidash costs $5000, is absolutely worthless, and does not cause this man to get out of the way. No, our actual destination is the Mansion replacement since we dealt with that before the 4th gym.
Pokemon Tower.
Complete with Rival battle!
You know, DHR .-. has absolutely no personality to speak of. Even V has a personality, it just happens that he's an unrepentant sociopath who Bianca, for some reason, wants to stay alive. Does this make DHR .-. the worst recurring character in Dark Rising?
He's using the same team as when we fought him in not-Silph, just in doubles and going up to 95 with his Keldeo and Salamence. Now that we have a bunch more levels under our belt the Salamence isn't nearly as dangerous.
"owned by a person close to them."
does this mean Bianca's dad owned a level 30 marowak (whose slot was taken by Darmanitan)
The tower itself is filled with two things for the most part - "evil ladies" which are just channelers with terrible dialogue
and so, so many Shadow Tag wilds.
Forced genocide of wilds grants levels. While an excellent move, Surf's too important to drop for overworld purposes so we'll be skipping this.
Also, look at how glorious that backsprite is.
That's not a Marowak.
Oh wow an appropriately leveled legendary.
We catch three.
Sufficiently Rayquazaed, the summit awaits.
.
we'll address the elephant in the room later
The gym leader requests that we help him catch Giratina. Not a problem.
Well, kind of a problem. When he says that he wants us to assist him in catching Giratina he means that we should kill it dead.
In order to make sure that we do that instead of catching Giratina ourselves, the dev gave Giratina a 0 catch rate, so we could chuck Ultra Balls for a week straight and get nowhere.
The funny thing is though.
The Master Ball skips the formula, so a 0 catch rate is useless.
Giratina is a limbo slot mon, we're not supposed to catch it. To resolve this, the pokedex shoves Blitzle at us and moves on.
Like the other legendaries, Giratina's still hanging around after being caught, but we're out of Master Balls. This time we kill it properly.
I can't deal with you right now.
As one of the limbo mons, captain here has no moves other than Shadow Claw and Dragon Claw, can't get anything via TM nor tutor. It's also got the stats of a normal Giratina-O.
The game doesn't want us to use this. So naturally we're definitely going to.
Say hello to the final six.
Oh, and before I forget. The level curve is now 98. We have yet to fight the 7th gym.
Next time: The penultimate.
Wow. Way to screw up your uncatchable legendary encounter lol.
Also MORE FREAKING BAD EGGS
Also MORE FREAKING BAD EGGS
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The level curve is now 98. There are 2 gyms and the E4 left.
Mega-Pokebattlerz: I mean Atem asked us to help catch Giratina what was I supposed to do.
Altissimo: I wish I could have done the same.
lucariomaster2: Plus side, in canon there's no content between Blaine and Giovanni. Minus side, there's still plenty of stuff before the league. Hope you're ready to squeeze as much as possible into two levels.
Altissimo: I wish I could have done the same.
lucariomaster2: Plus side, in canon there's no content between Blaine and Giovanni. Minus side, there's still plenty of stuff before the league. Hope you're ready to squeeze as much as possible into two levels.
captain added to the team, it's time for us to confront Atem.
A few of the quiz questions were edited. They were not edited well. Answering 'no' to the second question got us attacked and I assure you, even in Dark Rising, Darumaka does not have a Zen Mode.
Ok.
So Atem. I don't actually have much to say about the obvious reference. I'm not a fan, I wish it wasn't here, it makes this experience even less enjoyable. Let's move on. Atem uses ghosts.
Spiritomb @ Leftovers Lv94: Will-O-Wisp/Shadow Ball/Confuse Ray/Dark Pulse
Cofagrigus @ Lum Berry Lv95: Shadow Ball/Calm Mind/Psychic/Will-O-Wisp
Dusknoir @ Leftovers Lv94: Will-O-Wisp/Earthquake/Brick Break/Rock Slide
Sableye @ Leftovers Lv93: Shadow Claw/Recover/Ice Punch/Dark Pulse
Chandelure @ Charcoal Lv95: Fire Blast/Dark Pulse/Shadow Ball/Psychic
Giratina-O @ Leftovers Lv97: Rest/Calm Mind/Shadow Claw/Dragon Pulse
Giratina-O is a limbo slot mon obtained at level 98 and only able to know the moves Shadow Claw and Dragon Claw. Atem's a dirty cheater, basically.
It's a pretty annoying team honestly with a ton of bulky mons all capped off with a 680 BST legendary. That said, a lot of his team can be used as setup fodder for something with Calm Mind or Swords Dance or Bulk Up and some potion support. Bonus points to Sableye for running Shadow Claw instead of the flat out better Shadow Ball in this game without a physical/special split.
That certainly is a sprite.
Three Flamethrowers due to a Full Restore and Spiritomb is down.
Dusknoir lacks any way to damage captain outside of wisp or Rock Slide. That gives captain an opportunity to ingest an X Speed and two X Attacks while Dusknoir uses Earthquake once and Rock Slide twice before it gets OHKOed by +2 Shadow Claw.
Giratina is bulky as hell and survives the +2 Shadow Claw, retaliating with a Dragon Pulse that drops captain to the red. We use a Max Potion while Atem also heals, captain again fails to KO with Shadow Claw, eats one in return, and finishes Giratina off.
These go down without any issue to Shadow Claw.
ok so
you took the time to edit the text
but not to turn the tm into shadow ball or something else that makes sense?
We already did the Sevii Islands though? There's some new text here that wasn't present when we were shanghaied last time and we can say no.
It doesn't hurt anything to say yes though, aside from ghost Sydney.
The PCs aren't broken thankfully and we can find out that Florina is actually a crossdressing Celio.
A short walk to the cave that takes us to the mainland later, where do we go now? Surfing north of the city brings us to the cave where we found haiga earlier and no way to advance further while all other directions don't let us go far before being stopped by rocks.
Well that's easy. We just need to use Fly to head back to the start of the game.
Which is where the blocked off gym from ages ago is. In the middle of the forest with level 10 grass mons.
If we lacked Fly access then we'd have to head back to the Groudon cave in the desert because this is the first time the game requires that we backtrack. We still technically don't need Fly or to have beaten that gym yet, it's just saving us a lot of time.
what a twist
Wait, who's Kaz?
(Kaz is actually the 'canon' name for the rival, this text didn't check the rival name)
After quickly getting through the Viridian gym 'puzzle' it's finally time to finish off the gym leaders. There wasn't really any content between Atem and Blitz but that hasn't stopped the game from having the curve increase before, since we had a jump from 32 to 35 with literally two step between.
We know that Blitz deals in Dragon types, so haiga should hopefully be able to clean up without much issue.
So what does Blitz have for us?
Dragonite @ Lum Berry Lv96: Hurricane/ExtremeSpeed/Superpower/Dragon Dance
Salamence @ Lum Berry Lv96: Double Edge/Earthquake/Hydro Pump/Dragon Dance
Garchomp @ Lum Berry Lv96: Stone Edge/Brick Break/Earthquake/Swords Dance
That's not a joke. He's using 3 Pokemon all of which are 4x weak to Ice and is a lower level than the previous leader.
Well that's one way to not run into the level cap too quickly. Make it so later leaders drop in level compared to earlier ones.
Thanks Giovanni. At least one of Blitz' Pokemon uses Earthquake unlike the TMs for the last three gyms. We also can finally use traded mons at an appropriate level oh boy. Time to go grind up that Larvesta.
DONGERS has finally made its move. Again. Now it's assuming direct control of all the gym leaders.
good thing it didn't mind control the gym leader using level 96 dragons the first time we walked past this gym
Shut up Blitz and go be mind controlled elsewhere.
After Blitz vanishes we can finally advance through the hole in the wall.
We've got all 8 badges. There's still two levels for the curve to go.
Let's do this.
Or we would, but Dray and Florina are stopping us from heading to the not-league. We have to go do what the mind controlled gym leader said. What's an optional sidequest?
Shadow Lugia. I'm sure that'll be a blast.
Going out the eastern gate of Malice Path and walking past this guard who does not speak to us
brings us to the remaining bits of Viridian City. The Pokemon Center's been replaced by the Sevii Island Trainer Tower and there's only one other interesting building.
help i am inside the floor
Besides... this... there's also a bunch of mid 80s trainers just standing around waiting to fight us. However, it's worth carving through them, both for the exp and for the prize at the far end.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Swords Dance Brave Bird Intimidate Archeops. This is replacing Dragon Pulse.
Excellent prizes aside, our destination lies to the east and south. We've been to the rest of the Sevii Islands, now it's time for not-Six Island. It's broken into two bits, an oceanside path and a valley of sorts with a bunch of cliffs.
The separator between the two being this lovely fellow, who crashes the game. He does this if he spots us or if we talk to him. The only way past is sneaking through the very top tile of grass.
The first mandatory Strength usage so long as we didn't skip the Fly gym. We did bring shrug here, but if we had forgotten him it would have required that we walk all the way back to the center outside the forest that the 8th gym is in.
Anyways, this is Dragon Valley, named such because of the Dragon types everywhere we step.
Specifically, the dragons of all the secondary rivals in various stages. The fully evolved versions are somewhat appropriately leveled, the first stages not so much.
This isn't a Cut gate thankfully, it's a "puzzle" but it's not a puzzle, it's just don't take the left door because the left door warps us to a step away from the trainer who crashes the game.
Going through the left door brings us to the actual end of this segment.
hello N my you've grown
The things he say prior to this battle totally destroy N's characterization because apparently he caused it to snow in Dragon Valley to make it easier for him to cross due to it making the dragons vulnerable. Way to go on keeping the Pokemon lover's personality consistent.
well ok i guess
Reshiram launched that Earthquake.
Yep. Levitate Zekrom. Earthquake Reshiram (and Zekrom!). These are the most legitimate Unova dragons ever.
oh boy more limbo slot mons but this time we're supposed to catch em
And heading through the cave in the back of giant N's field brings us to the two dragons.
Well, it's certainly appropriately leveled. It still have Earthquake in case you were wondering. We're going to catch it for kicks.
um
where'd zekrom go
So for the first time since Kyogre, the legendary didn't stick around after being caught. While normally I'd applaud this, Reshiram took Zekrom with it. We don't actually get both, despite the whole reason N fought us being to prove that we could handle both.
Well, at least we got one. Yes, Reshiram has Levitate too because that's sensible.
Doing all that unblocks the way to the badge check gates, but we need to walk back there (dodging the game crashing trainer) since we're in the Sevii Islands and can't just fly back.
The badge check has been replaced by a bunch of goons in the pouring rain.
All of the rivals except DHR .-. are hanging around here too, fighting off the enemies who refuse to talk to us.
Even Kayo's helping out. He warns us that the Elite Four are cheating cheaters.
Thanks Captain Obvious, any other helpful advice?
Thank You Kayo Very Cool.
Ash isn't mind controlled, he just wants to fight us. To make sure we're 'ready'. Sure, whatever.
PIKACHU!!! @ Light Ball Lv99: Thunderbolt/Volt Tackle/Brick Break/Iron Tail
Ho-Oh @ Charcoal Lv100: Sacred Fire/Brave Bird/Earthquake/Recover
That's right, only two Pokemon. He's pushing the level curve all the way to the cap though.
No, I did not make any mistakes transcribing those sets.
wait i thought you turned your hat to the back
Told you I didn't make a mistake transcribing the name.
That would be Earthquake.
PIKACHU!!!: Electric, Static, 110/130/140/145/140/145
810 BST. It's not a real Pikachu so the Light Ball does nothing for it.
You'd think that Ho-Oh being a 680 BST legendary and at the level cap might be enough, right?
Ho-oh: Fire/Flying, Pressure, 120/150/160/150/180/120
you're funny. he's actually got 880 bst
Garth takes an X Speed and SDs on the PIKACHU!!! so +2 Stone Edge OHKOs the definitely not a Ho-Oh.
is the world not actually in danger
why are you telling me to go beat DANGERZONES use your 800+ BST monsters and do it yourself
With Ash taken out with minimal effort actually, it's time at last for Victory Road.
psyche it's actually the tanoby ruins since we haven't done those yet
There are seven of these rooms each with the Deoxys triangle giving us exposition about DARWIN. It's a lot of text and can be summed up as "DORKIUS used to be good but then he tried to overthrow Arceus and now he's baaaad."
After those rooms, now it's time for Victory Road.
The Strength boulders have all been removed, along with the normal trainers, instead replaced with the first 6 gym leaders, Vladimir, and V-REBIRTH using fully evolved versions of the teams we fought them using last that cap at 97 or 98.
Pete's also here but he doesn't fight us. Instead he's offering a terrible move.
But that's the end of Victory Road. We're at the league now, no more distractions.
Time to stock up, do the short remaining grind to 100 for our team, and then take on the league.
We're at the end now.
Next time: Dark Rising's death throes.
A few of the quiz questions were edited. They were not edited well. Answering 'no' to the second question got us attacked and I assure you, even in Dark Rising, Darumaka does not have a Zen Mode.
Ok.
So Atem. I don't actually have much to say about the obvious reference. I'm not a fan, I wish it wasn't here, it makes this experience even less enjoyable. Let's move on. Atem uses ghosts.
Spiritomb @ Leftovers Lv94: Will-O-Wisp/Shadow Ball/Confuse Ray/Dark Pulse
Cofagrigus @ Lum Berry Lv95: Shadow Ball/Calm Mind/Psychic/Will-O-Wisp
Dusknoir @ Leftovers Lv94: Will-O-Wisp/Earthquake/Brick Break/Rock Slide
Sableye @ Leftovers Lv93: Shadow Claw/Recover/Ice Punch/Dark Pulse
Chandelure @ Charcoal Lv95: Fire Blast/Dark Pulse/Shadow Ball/Psychic
Giratina-O @ Leftovers Lv97: Rest/Calm Mind/Shadow Claw/Dragon Pulse
Giratina-O is a limbo slot mon obtained at level 98 and only able to know the moves Shadow Claw and Dragon Claw. Atem's a dirty cheater, basically.
It's a pretty annoying team honestly with a ton of bulky mons all capped off with a 680 BST legendary. That said, a lot of his team can be used as setup fodder for something with Calm Mind or Swords Dance or Bulk Up and some potion support. Bonus points to Sableye for running Shadow Claw instead of the flat out better Shadow Ball in this game without a physical/special split.
That certainly is a sprite.
Three Flamethrowers due to a Full Restore and Spiritomb is down.
Dusknoir lacks any way to damage captain outside of wisp or Rock Slide. That gives captain an opportunity to ingest an X Speed and two X Attacks while Dusknoir uses Earthquake once and Rock Slide twice before it gets OHKOed by +2 Shadow Claw.
Giratina is bulky as hell and survives the +2 Shadow Claw, retaliating with a Dragon Pulse that drops captain to the red. We use a Max Potion while Atem also heals, captain again fails to KO with Shadow Claw, eats one in return, and finishes Giratina off.
These go down without any issue to Shadow Claw.
ok so
you took the time to edit the text
but not to turn the tm into shadow ball or something else that makes sense?
We already did the Sevii Islands though? There's some new text here that wasn't present when we were shanghaied last time and we can say no.
It doesn't hurt anything to say yes though, aside from ghost Sydney.
The PCs aren't broken thankfully and we can find out that Florina is actually a crossdressing Celio.
A short walk to the cave that takes us to the mainland later, where do we go now? Surfing north of the city brings us to the cave where we found haiga earlier and no way to advance further while all other directions don't let us go far before being stopped by rocks.
Well that's easy. We just need to use Fly to head back to the start of the game.
Which is where the blocked off gym from ages ago is. In the middle of the forest with level 10 grass mons.
If we lacked Fly access then we'd have to head back to the Groudon cave in the desert because this is the first time the game requires that we backtrack. We still technically don't need Fly or to have beaten that gym yet, it's just saving us a lot of time.
what a twist
Wait, who's Kaz?
(Kaz is actually the 'canon' name for the rival, this text didn't check the rival name)
After quickly getting through the Viridian gym 'puzzle' it's finally time to finish off the gym leaders. There wasn't really any content between Atem and Blitz but that hasn't stopped the game from having the curve increase before, since we had a jump from 32 to 35 with literally two step between.
We know that Blitz deals in Dragon types, so haiga should hopefully be able to clean up without much issue.
So what does Blitz have for us?
Dragonite @ Lum Berry Lv96: Hurricane/ExtremeSpeed/Superpower/Dragon Dance
Salamence @ Lum Berry Lv96: Double Edge/Earthquake/Hydro Pump/Dragon Dance
Garchomp @ Lum Berry Lv96: Stone Edge/Brick Break/Earthquake/Swords Dance
That's not a joke. He's using 3 Pokemon all of which are 4x weak to Ice and is a lower level than the previous leader.
Well that's one way to not run into the level cap too quickly. Make it so later leaders drop in level compared to earlier ones.
Thanks Giovanni. At least one of Blitz' Pokemon uses Earthquake unlike the TMs for the last three gyms. We also can finally use traded mons at an appropriate level oh boy. Time to go grind up that Larvesta.
DONGERS has finally made its move. Again. Now it's assuming direct control of all the gym leaders.
good thing it didn't mind control the gym leader using level 96 dragons the first time we walked past this gym
Shut up Blitz and go be mind controlled elsewhere.
After Blitz vanishes we can finally advance through the hole in the wall.
We've got all 8 badges. There's still two levels for the curve to go.
Let's do this.
Or we would, but Dray and Florina are stopping us from heading to the not-league. We have to go do what the mind controlled gym leader said. What's an optional sidequest?
Shadow Lugia. I'm sure that'll be a blast.
Going out the eastern gate of Malice Path and walking past this guard who does not speak to us
brings us to the remaining bits of Viridian City. The Pokemon Center's been replaced by the Sevii Island Trainer Tower and there's only one other interesting building.
help i am inside the floor
Besides... this... there's also a bunch of mid 80s trainers just standing around waiting to fight us. However, it's worth carving through them, both for the exp and for the prize at the far end.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Swords Dance Brave Bird Intimidate Archeops. This is replacing Dragon Pulse.
Excellent prizes aside, our destination lies to the east and south. We've been to the rest of the Sevii Islands, now it's time for not-Six Island. It's broken into two bits, an oceanside path and a valley of sorts with a bunch of cliffs.
The separator between the two being this lovely fellow, who crashes the game. He does this if he spots us or if we talk to him. The only way past is sneaking through the very top tile of grass.
The first mandatory Strength usage so long as we didn't skip the Fly gym. We did bring shrug here, but if we had forgotten him it would have required that we walk all the way back to the center outside the forest that the 8th gym is in.
Anyways, this is Dragon Valley, named such because of the Dragon types everywhere we step.
Specifically, the dragons of all the secondary rivals in various stages. The fully evolved versions are somewhat appropriately leveled, the first stages not so much.
This isn't a Cut gate thankfully, it's a "puzzle" but it's not a puzzle, it's just don't take the left door because the left door warps us to a step away from the trainer who crashes the game.
Going through the left door brings us to the actual end of this segment.
hello N my you've grown
The things he say prior to this battle totally destroy N's characterization because apparently he caused it to snow in Dragon Valley to make it easier for him to cross due to it making the dragons vulnerable. Way to go on keeping the Pokemon lover's personality consistent.
well ok i guess
Reshiram launched that Earthquake.
Yep. Levitate Zekrom. Earthquake Reshiram (and Zekrom!). These are the most legitimate Unova dragons ever.
oh boy more limbo slot mons but this time we're supposed to catch em
And heading through the cave in the back of giant N's field brings us to the two dragons.
Well, it's certainly appropriately leveled. It still have Earthquake in case you were wondering. We're going to catch it for kicks.
um
where'd zekrom go
So for the first time since Kyogre, the legendary didn't stick around after being caught. While normally I'd applaud this, Reshiram took Zekrom with it. We don't actually get both, despite the whole reason N fought us being to prove that we could handle both.
Well, at least we got one. Yes, Reshiram has Levitate too because that's sensible.
Doing all that unblocks the way to the badge check gates, but we need to walk back there (dodging the game crashing trainer) since we're in the Sevii Islands and can't just fly back.
The badge check has been replaced by a bunch of goons in the pouring rain.
All of the rivals except DHR .-. are hanging around here too, fighting off the enemies who refuse to talk to us.
Even Kayo's helping out. He warns us that the Elite Four are cheating cheaters.
Thanks Captain Obvious, any other helpful advice?
Thank You Kayo Very Cool.
Ash isn't mind controlled, he just wants to fight us. To make sure we're 'ready'. Sure, whatever.
PIKACHU!!! @ Light Ball Lv99: Thunderbolt/Volt Tackle/Brick Break/Iron Tail
Ho-Oh @ Charcoal Lv100: Sacred Fire/Brave Bird/Earthquake/Recover
That's right, only two Pokemon. He's pushing the level curve all the way to the cap though.
No, I did not make any mistakes transcribing those sets.
wait i thought you turned your hat to the back
Told you I didn't make a mistake transcribing the name.
That would be Earthquake.
PIKACHU!!!: Electric, Static, 110/130/140/145/140/145
810 BST. It's not a real Pikachu so the Light Ball does nothing for it.
You'd think that Ho-Oh being a 680 BST legendary and at the level cap might be enough, right?
Ho-oh: Fire/Flying, Pressure, 120/150/160/150/180/120
you're funny. he's actually got 880 bst
Garth takes an X Speed and SDs on the PIKACHU!!! so +2 Stone Edge OHKOs the definitely not a Ho-Oh.
is the world not actually in danger
why are you telling me to go beat DANGERZONES use your 800+ BST monsters and do it yourself
With Ash taken out with minimal effort actually, it's time at last for Victory Road.
psyche it's actually the tanoby ruins since we haven't done those yet
There are seven of these rooms each with the Deoxys triangle giving us exposition about DARWIN. It's a lot of text and can be summed up as "DORKIUS used to be good but then he tried to overthrow Arceus and now he's baaaad."
After those rooms, now it's time for Victory Road.
The Strength boulders have all been removed, along with the normal trainers, instead replaced with the first 6 gym leaders, Vladimir, and V-REBIRTH using fully evolved versions of the teams we fought them using last that cap at 97 or 98.
Pete's also here but he doesn't fight us. Instead he's offering a terrible move.
But that's the end of Victory Road. We're at the league now, no more distractions.
Time to stock up, do the short remaining grind to 100 for our team, and then take on the league.
We're at the end now.
Next time: Dark Rising's death throes.
What's even the point of trying to do this hack legit anymore? If the AI's going to be a cheating bastard you might as well do the same.
also inb4 more invisible bad eggs
also inb4 more invisible bad eggs