| This is old Data. |
|---|
This was an in-progress version of the Battle Pike that never launched. It's being shown for interest's sake. |
The Battle Pike
The Battle Pike is, as in the source games, the ultimate blend of luck and skill. It presents the player with a gauntlet of difficult decisions between wellness and power, forcing the player to balance the need to pass to the next room with the need to preserve Pokemon for the showdown with the Pike Queen, Lucy.
The Pike is, by far, BBP's most complex progression facility. It is intended to put veteran battlers in unique and unprecedented battle situations.
***
For Entry
- Challenging the Battle Pike costs 10 JC.
- Silver Rank challenges additionally require one or more (1+) Maid Tokens.
- Gold Rank challenges additionally require two or more (2+) Maid Tokens.
- These Maid Tokens will modify your challenge further, providing extra benefits and dangers.
- The challenger must unlock Silver Rank or Gold Rank before challenging those ranks.
A challenger brings three of their Pokemon to brave the Battle Pike. The Pike consists of multiple floors, each one being a gauntlet of rooms containing battles and rewards. Each floor culminates with a Boss battle with one of the Pike's formidable Head Maids, and the final floor ends with a climactic confrontation Pike Queen Lucy. Each of the rooms in the gauntlet are generated by the referee at random. The challenger selects one gauntlet room after another, enduring hardship to gain the power they need to stand a chance against the Pike Queen.
Pike Queen Lucy is the Floor Boss of the fourth floor of the Pike. For each of the first three floors, three Head Maids are selected at random to preside as the Floor Bosses. When generating a floor of the Battle Pike, three rooms will be generated for each Floor Boss, from that Boss's set of encounter and reward tables.
This results in a gauntlet of nine random rooms for the first three floors, or three random rooms for the final floor, with a variety of rewards for the challenger to obtain. The challenger must defeat one of the Floor Bosses to complete the floor. Floor Bosses can only be challenged if all three of their rooms are defeated, so the challenger can defeat as few as 3 gauntlet rooms before attempting to challenge a boss.
However... Each Boss has multiple exclusive powerful effects, enhancing their Pokemon vastly beyond the capabilities of the challenger's team. The challenger has to clear rooms to obtain special boons called Pike Powers, that offer power at a price. Without their own boons, the challenger will not stand any chance of victory against these Bosses.
By carefully weighing risk against reward, the challenger must chart a winning course through the Pike's gauntlet, Bosses, and Queen to claim their highest prize: The chance to do it again, with greater difficulty!
Contents
{ Placeholder for Contents }
Rulings / Hotfixes
- 2023-06-20: Overhauled the Pike to v9.0, for Generation 9.
A Pike Challenge occurs in the loop of Battle and Reward phases.
To elaborate:
1. Challenge Signup
When signing up for the Pike, you will choose your challenge's Rank out of your available Ranks, post a team of three Pokemon, select a Starting Pike Power, and decide whether you will opt to bring any Maid Tokens.
The Battle Pike offers three distinct difficulty levels; being Bronze Rank, Silver Rank, and Gold Rank in order of strength. You may unlock Silver Rank and Gold Rank by defeating Pike Queen Lucy in the previous Rank. You may also challenge any Rank that you have previously beaten, if you find the rewards desirable.
Your chosen starting gift and any Maid Tokens will be added to your challenge inventory in the first post of your challenge. Your referee will take the information from your signup post and generate your Gauntlet for that challenge.
By default, gauntlets for the first three floors have one known boss (whose rooms are generated in advance, revealing their contents), and two unknown bosses (whose rooms aren't generated until you enter them). You'll still known who the bosses themselves are, so you can check their tables in the {Pike Data Thread} to see what could lurk within.
The Gauntlet refers to the Pike's array of Battle Rooms, three per Head Maid in the Pike, that will be your primary obstacle in your challenge. Each room in the Gauntlet contains a random opponent, wielding a random Pike Power, guarding a random reward. When you defeat a non-boss opponent, you'll be offered your choice of three Pike Powers, including that of the opponent you just defeated and two others, chosen at random.
Each room you enter increases the floor's Pike Peril by one, so you'll have to pick your battles wisely. As Pike Peril increases, so too does the strength of non-boss opponents: They gain more HP, their Level increases, and they eventually gain additional Pike Powers.
| Pike Peril | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Max HP | x0.4 | x0.4 | x0.8 | x0.8 | x1.2 | x1.2 | x1.6 |
Level | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
Pike Powers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
2. Battle Selection
Your referee posts your team's profiles, status, and your current challenge inventory. In addition, the state of the current gauntlet of rooms will be posted.
Each door leads to a Battle Room, in one of the three Pike arenas, wherein you will battle the specified opponent Pokemon. Depending on the randomized gauntlet that awaits you, different opponents and arenas could be advantageous or disadvantageous for you.
You play out the chosen battle with the referee playing as your opponent. You will always order first against the Pike. You will be allowed switching, as will Bosses; non-Boss Pike trainers are disallowed switching.
Any damage, Energy loss, status changes, and so on that your Pokemon suffer during battle will persist between rooms, weakening your ability to fight Pike Queen Lucy at the end. If you lose any battle in the Pike, your challenge immediately ends.
In order to earn the ability to challenge the Pike Queen, you'll have to battle through three previous floor. Each floor of the Pike is its own challenge. Once you complete a floor, your challenge ends in victory and you are paid your rewards for the floor. Your ascent will resume with your next challenge, which you will sign up for separately. You can even prepare a different team, to take advantage of Pike Powers or items you've earned in previous floors!
3. Reward Selection
After you finish a Gauntlet room, you earn your choice of one of three Pike Powers to enhance your team with. Your options are the opponent's Pike Powers, plus additional random Pike Powers chosen from the appropriate tables as needed in order to provide three choices. Each Pike Power you obtain has an upside and a downside, such as the following examples:
- Mind over Matter: Your Pokemon have their Special Attack rank increased by their original Defense rank. The Defense rank of your Pokemon is at most zero (0).
- Immaculacy: If your Pokemon would gain Protection; instead, they gain Grace until the end of the round.
- Fighting Form: Your Pokemon with the most remaining HP on your team is unaffected by conditions and by markers (All of them).
Power at a price, such as the above, will be required to match the strength of the Pike's Bosses. Many of these Boons grant one of the Pike's special status conditions.
In addition to Pike Powers, gauntlet rooms in the first three floors will offer you a second reward called a "Temptation", from three options drawn from the Pike Rank's reward tables. You will choose between:
- An immediate reward, such as held items or medicine for you to use in the current floor, or
- A floor reward, such as EXP, TC, RC, or other currencies, which are paid to you only if you complete the floor (and lost if you fail), or
- A completion reward, such as EXP records, Technique access, or special Pokemon, which are paid to you only if you defeat the Pike Queen (and lost if you fail).
To repeat, each time you complete a non-Boss room, you will select a Pike Power, and if you're not in the final floor, you will also select a Temptation.
4. Repeat
You and your referee will repeat steps 2 and 3 until you've either been defeated, or until you've defeated the Floor Boss.
In any post where you are not in battle, such as when selecting rooms and when allocating rewards, you may manage your inventory and use Medicine on your Pokemon.
Starting a Challenge
A player may start a Pike challenge by posting here, in the Pike challenge thread.
- Players indicate a Pike Rank they intend to challenge out of the Ranks available to them. Players may challenge Silver Rank and Gold Rank only if they have defeated Lucy in a previous rank.
- Players post three Pokemon they intend to challenge the Battle Pike with.
- Players post the Maid Token or Tokens they'd like to spend on their challenge, out of the Maid Tokens they own. These can apply additional modifiers to their challenge.
- Players post a Starting Gift, out of the gifts available for their chosen Pike Rank. Maid Tokens can modify the Starting Gifts available to players.
- A referee takes players' challenges from the queue in this thread. Players challenging Bronze Rank for the first time are prioritized, then first-time Silver Rank challenges, then first-time Gold Rank challenges; then any challenges seeking a subref in posting order; then all other repeat challenges in post order.
- The referee generates the player's gauntlet for that challenge and posts it in the player's thread, after their profiles and their starting inventory.
Room Progression
Each Pike Challenge consists of three types of rooms:
Gauntlet Room
Each Floor Boss has three rooms generated associated with them.
The rooms generated for each Boss can be any combination of the following:
- Starter Rooms, containing an easy-to-defeat opponent. These rooms offer Boons that will help you in other Gauntlet rooms only. Their purpose is to help you farm Boons from other, stronger opponents.
- Core Rooms, containing a standard opponent. These rooms offer Boons that enhance your Pokemon in a straightforward way.
- Dangerous Rooms, containing a powerful opponent. These rooms offer powerful conditional Boons, that have dramatic effects, but also require the help of other Boons.
Head Maid Room
A room containing a Boss Battle against one of the Pike's Head Maids. The player doesn't get any Boons from a Boss Battle, but they do get a large amount of Pike Serpents, depending on the Maid they fight and the rank of their Challenge.
Depending on the rank of the Challenge, each Head Maid will wield a stronger team with stronger Boons.
Pike Queen's Room
A room containing a Final Boss Battle against the Pike Queen Lucy. The player doesn't earn anything in-challenge, obviously, since the run will end either with the defeat of the player or the defeat of the Pike Queen.
The Pike Queen has a powerful Boon enhancing her team for each Head Maid the player didn't defeat.
Depending on the rank of the Challenge, the Pike Queen will wield a stronger team with stronger Boons.
Ending a Challenge
A player's Battle Pike Challenge ends under the following conditions:
- If all three of the player's Pokemon, or if three or more of Lucy's Pokemon, are fainted at any given point, the player's Pike challenge ends immediately. The referee posts prizes for the player and for themselves. They earn profile rewards for each battle fought, including the door that defeated them if applicable.
- Fighting Lucy to a draw (somehow) counts as a loss for the player.
- If the player defeats the Pike Queen, they receive additional rewards specified below. If they defeated the Pike Queen on their current rank for the first time, the rank of their challenge thread increases accordingly.
- If the referee that originally posted your Battle Pike challenge thread is unavailable, message a forum moderator to have your thread's title updated.
- It is permissible for a player to forfeit a challenge between doors if they determine that their chances of defeating Lucy are too low. Most commonly, if one of their Pokemon is fainted in battle in a gauntlet room. In this case, the player is rewarded for any doors completed, and the referee is reward for any doors where at least one round was reffed.
With your team of three Pokemon, you must defeat a minimum of five Pokemon before facing Lucy: Two belonging to a Head Maid, and three Gauntlet opponents leading to them. To stand a chance of survival, consider some of the advice below.
- Carefully balance gaining additional power with opportunities to heal, to meet Lucy both strong enough and healthy enough to win.
- Use moves such as Refresh, Rest, and Psycho Shift to remove permanent harmful status effects such as Toxic.
- Use moves such as Haze to restore lost stat stages, especially Accuracy; or prevent stat stage reduction with Safeguard or Substitute.
- Use moves such as U-turn and Magic Coat in Gauntlet Battles to fight against disruptive temporary status such as Taunt.
- Use moves such as Frost Breath and Haze to beat opponents whose trainers use stat-boosting moves or items.
- Because the challenge ends with a 3v3 battle, trapping moves and entry hazards to help ease matchup control are advised.
- Bring a mix of physical and special attackers to take advantage of any item you may find.
- Bring a wide variety of weather, terrain, and non-attacking moves to ensure you can make use of any Boons you roll.
- You can move items around between each door. Put your strongest items on your healthiest Pokemon.
- When you have Revives in your inventory, use moves like Explosion to clear battles quickly, or use Healing Wish to get recovery for other Pokemon as well.
When signing up for the Battle Pike, copy or approximate the following template in your signup post.
Code:
[B]Name:[/B] (name)
[B]Thread:[/B] (thread)
[B]Rank:[/B] (rank)
[B]Pokemon 1 with Maid Token, if any.[/B]
(profile)
[B]Pokemon 2 with Maid Token, if any.[/B]
(profile)
[B]Pokemon 3 with Maid Token, if any.[/B]
(profile)Starting Gifts
If you choose to bring any Maid Tokens for your Pokemon in your challenge, you'll start that challenge with a randomized advantage for each.
Before you select your first Gauntlet Room, the referee will randomly generate the Boons associated with each Token. Then, for each Token, you'll decide if you want the Boon or the alternative option.
Maid Tokens and their benefits are described in the Rewards Post, below.
Approved Referees
Referees are expected to play, in short, vindictively. The goal of each battle room is not to defeat the challenger then and there, but to ensure that they cannot defeat the Floor Boss. To this end; littering the challenger's party with harmful status, worsening their Accuracy stage or other stat stages, abusing substitutions to waste their time and energy, using Protect to stall out powerful temporary buffs, sacrificing Pokemon to deny setup time, and more such petty maneuvers will be necessary.
The referee is permitted to play as aggressively or as defensively as they feel they need to. To defeat the challenger, every Pike trainer but the Floor Boss or Pike Queen may be considered expendable.
Referees can increase their standing by successfully defeating powerful challengers when refereeing the Pike, as well as by performing consistently well in other content such as the Battle Tree and in the League Circuit. Both a referee's performance in battle and the clarity of their reffings contribute to their standing.
The following Referees are whitelisted to referee Silver Pike and higher:
LouisCyphre
TMan87
epicdrill
TheEver
pratik2007
cityscapes
Mowtom
Gemini Taurus
S0L1D G0LD
If you wish to be added to this list, or to nominate a user for this list, PM a moderator for review. The general player base may be consulted to assess the nominated player.
When starting a player's challenge, use or approximate the following template:
Only the Pike Owner, the challenger, and their current referee should post in this thread.
@PlayerName is challenging the [ Rank ] Rank of the Battle Pike!
[b]Team[/b]
[ The challenger's Pokemon team ]
[b]Inventory[/b]
[ The challenger's inventory, including any Tokens ]
[IMG]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rasalhage/CAPBBP/master/BattleFacilities/Pike%20Maid.png[/IMG]
[ a greeting from the pike maid. have fun with it! ]
[b]Gauntlet[/b]
[ the player's 15 doors to choose from ]
@PlayerName is challenging the [ Rank ] Rank of the Battle Pike!
[b]Team[/b]
[ The challenger's Pokemon team ]
[b]Inventory[/b]
[ The challenger's inventory, including any Tokens ]
[IMG]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rasalhage/CAPBBP/master/BattleFacilities/Pike%20Maid.png[/IMG]
[ a greeting from the pike maid. have fun with it! ]
[b]Gauntlet[/b]
[ the player's 15 doors to choose from ]
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TC (by Team Size)
RC and 
JC (by Team Size)
Event Voucher Choice
Ruinous Pokemon
Harvest Event Voucher.
Festive Event Voucher.
Devoted Event Voucher.
Deviant Event Voucher.
Wo-Chien, 
Chien-Pao, 
Ting-Lu, or 
Chi-Yu.
Rayquaza, 
Eternatus, 
Giratina, 
Zygarde, 
Koraidon, or 
Miraidon.
Revive in your backpack.
Max Ether in your backpack.
Life Orb in your backpack.
Pike Serpents.
Leftovers in your backpack.
