Megiddo
08-20-2020, 02:21 AM
Hi guys,
Im going to be attempting to complete a game from every generation, right up to Sun and Moon in Nuzlocke form only using Ice types.
What is a Nuzlocke?
A Nuzlocke is player defined a challenge mode designed to make Pokémon games more challenging. Most Nuzlocke challenges have different rules based on how challenging the player wants to make the game. Most Nuzlocke challenges at least have the following rules;
- when your Pokémon feints, you must release it (or box it permanently in a death box).
- you can only catch the first Pokémon you encounter on each route/area.
- you must nickname all Pokémon you catch
These are the basic rules for any Nuzlocke challenge. They can be edited adding more rules but these are essentially what makes the runs fun.
What is a generations Nuzlocke?
A generations run is where your Pokémon that you finish the game with carry over to the next generation. For example if I complete Pokémon Red with Gyarados, Dragonite and Charizard, I would then start Pokémon Gold with Magikarp, Dratini and Charmander all at the lowest level available or in an egg if possible. Why is this fun? It just adds an extra element in falling in love with some of your party members. Taking a Pidgey family from the first route after Pallet Town in Pokemon Red all the way to Pokémon Black is very fun and rewarding
Why Ice type?
Ive wanted to do an ice type generations run for a while now. Ice has always been on my list of runs to do for fun factor. Ice is a very strong yet fragile type. It has a lot of strengths and hits a lot of different types for super effective damage. However it also has a lot of weaknesses and weaknesses to very common types of Fighting, Fire and Rock. Can you imagine taking on Whitneys Miltank when its throwing out super-effective rollouts? Yeah, its going to be rough.
My rules
- once a Pokémon has fainted it will be deemed dead and will be placed into a death box in the PC so I can look upon my failures at the end of each run.
- all pokemon must be nicknamed
- the highest level of my Pokémon cannot exceed that of the next gym leaders ace Pokémon. In Heartgold, the first gym leader, Falkners Ace is Pidgeotto at level 9. None of my Pokémon may level passed level 9 before facing Falkner (any Pokémon that exceeds this level before the fight must be boxed before fighting the leader. Levelling past this cap during the fight is allowed.)
- I have one attempt to catch each available ice type Pokémon in each generation. Given the low number of ice types available I will be limiting myself to one encounter of each ice type (or earlier family) in each game. If I make it faint during my attempted catching, I have missed my chance and that Pokémon cannot be used.
- only pokemon with ice as a main type or sub type can be used. The only exception to this rule is when a first evolution of an ice type family does not have ice as a sub type. Eg Dewgong is water/ice but Seel is pure water. Seel can still be used. The only other exception to this rule is when Ice type Pokémon can be obtained via in game trade. In which case, I have one attempt to catch the required Pokémon to perform the in game trade. If I faint it, I cannot trade for the ice type. This only has a couple of possibilities, two being in generation 1 and trading for Jynx in Cerulean and Dewgong on Cinnebar Island.
- in later generations, Eevee can be used but must be evolved into Glaceon at first available opportunity. Even if that requires trekking out of the way of the story. Eevee can not be used in generations before Glaceon is available.
- pokemon can be caught and taught HM moves in order to progress. Also, one flying type can be caught and taught fly. This is supposed to be a challenge mode not a walking simulator.
- in order to start in Generation 1, given that no ice types are available for a long time I will be hacking my first Pokémon into the game at level 5. What this Pokémon is will be decided by RNG but will be a first evolution. Eg Seel, Shellder, Jynx, Lapras
- duplicate Pokémon cannot be used in the same party. Eg if I have Dewgong in my party and encounter a wild Seel, I can catch the seal and box it but cannot use it until my current Dewgong faints.
I will be using this thread as a bit of a journal with updates as I journey through. Let me know what you think about my rules and if I should make any adjustments.
Part 1 - Fire Red
About to RNG my starter. If I roll 1-10 Ill use Jynx, 11-49 Ill use Seel, 50-89 Ill use Shellder, 90-100 Ill use Lapras. I adjusted the weighting as starting with a Lapras will probably be overkill.
AND MY NUMBER IS 73 - Shellder it is!
Run update 1 - Pallet Town to Pewter City
Welcome to my first run update!
It started off fairly well. I got Shellder and nicknamed him Rex. Together, me and Rex were destined for great things. I started off fairly worried when Rex was at level 7 and still only knew withdraw and Tackle, hoping, praying that he would learn Water Gun or similar before I took on Brock. At level 8 he learned Icicle Spear, which, before It got updated around Gen 5 or 6 was a very, very ordinary move. 10 base power with a chance to hit up to 5 times with an average of around 3.4 hits each time its used. With that average, its weaker than tackle!
Armed with 2 very week attacking moves Rex and I moved into Viridian Forest after some excessive grinding just below Viridian City. Viridian Forest started off about as normally as can be expected. Until Rex got poisoned, twice. Luckily I had prepared for that and ending up stocking up on Potions and Antidotes. After some running backwards and forwards to the Viridian Pokémon Center to heal up, we ended up making it through to Pewter City, with Rex reaching the ripe old level of 11.
I double check the max level of Onix online_ and find that I can grind to 14 so off we go. In the meantime, Rex reaches level 14 and learns Supersonic. We hit level 14 and go hit up Brock.
The battle was pure carnage for Rex. Poor Geodude had nothing to do to Rex. Rex just maximised his Defense using Withdraw and then hit Geodude with 2 Icicle Spears for the KO. Onix came out and Rex hits him straight off the bat with a 5 hit Icicle Spear. Leaving Onix at about 15% hp. Onix used Rock Tomb, doing about 3hp damage (withdraw OP) and Rex finishes him off with another Icicle Spear.
First badge acquired!
Run update 2!
Brock went down so easily I was really happy with the way Rex handled himself. Next stop is Mount Moon before heading onto Cerulean City and Misty. Before I head off out of Pewter, I load up with a few more potions, antidotes and a couple of escape ropes in case i need them for Mount Moon.
Heading off into Route 3 and my Antidotes come in handy against the very first trainer. His stupid Weedle poisoned Rex, twice. Rex hit level 16 after this battle and I had a quick look at what level Misty's Starmie is before I get to Cerulean. Level 21, so I can't level passed 21 before Misty. I start skipping as many trainers as I can to save xp. If I need it i'll smash some of the hikers up North of Cerulean towards Bill's House. I stop off in the last bit of grass before Mount Moon and catch a Spearow that I'll trade for Farfetch'd in Vermilion when I get there, Farfetch'd will be my Fly and Cut HM slave and won't ever see battle so as to keep with the Ice mono type.
I heal up Rex at the Pokemon Center and enter Mount Moon. Rex still isn't the strongest offensively, he still only knows Tackle, Withdraw, Icicle Spear and now Supersonic, which will come in extremely handy in the future ;) I head
East in Mount Moon and then South a bit and head towards a Rare Candy when I accidentally encounter Super Nerd Jovan. I wasn't too worried, about any encounters in here until he sent out his Magnemite. I'm not sure how much you know about Shellder but his defense is absolutely outstanding! His special defense however is absolutely abysmal! This Magnemite knows a super effective Thundershock that leaves me with 7hp and heart palpatations!
I heal up with a Super Potion and Magnemite goes for Thunder Wave. MISS! Luck is on my side! I hit Magnemite with another Tackle, Icicle Spear is a stronger option only if it gets 4 or 5 hits, not risking it in this battle so I'm just going for the standard Tackle. Magnemite uses Thundershock again and I heal up with another Super Potion. I've only got one left and any crit will kill me. I tackle once more, one more tackle will take out Magnemite. Magnemite uses Thunder Wave and unfortunately it doesn't miss this time so Rex is paralyzed, but luckily, has full hp. Here, I have to make a decision to try and tackle through Paralysis or to heal paralysis and hope he doesn't paralyze with Thundershock. I decide not to heal and leave my life in RNGesus' hands. RNGesus is kind today and Rex manages to land a Tackle through Paralysis and take down Magnemite, not before Magnemite lands a high roll and leaves Rex with 2hp from full health. My god, my butthole is clenched so tight right now.
I breathe a sigh of relief when i realise this guy still has another Pokemon. If it's another Magnemite my run is dead for sure. In my saving grace, Voltorb is sent out. Thankfully, he doesn't learn any Electric moves until 21 so I should be safe, except the 2hp thing. I heal up using my last Super Potion and Voltorb uses Charge, meh, he doesn't know any electric moves anyway. I cure paralysis, just in case, and start Tackling. After a short few Tackles, Voltorb goes down and my relief is immeasurable. I've decided I really hate Super Nerd Jovan. I run up grab another Escape Rope and the Rare Candy and then Escape Rope out to heal and regroup. I head back to Pewter to grab another couple of Potions with what money i do have and then head back to Mt. Moon. The rest of Mt.Moon goes fairly smoothly with only a small hiccup at the end with Koffing poisoning Rex but I was ready for that with an Antidote.
I leave Mt.Moon and head into Cerulean. Rex is at level 18 so i've got a bit of lee-way with xp. I'll hit up Nugget Bridge next to load up on Potions before Misty, which will quite possibly be one of the 2 most difficult fights in the whole run.
Till next time!
Update 3 Cerulean gym. We get a new member!
The first thing we do as we get to Cerulean is head to the Pokémon Center and heal Rex. Hell likely need it for the next battle, which will be my rival, AssHat at nugget bridge.
Before we head to the bridge, I grab the Rare Candy to add to my stash. I head on over to fight my rival, at this point, Im not actually sure what to expect from this fight.
First up, AssHat sends out his Pidgeotto, which had absolutely nothing against Rex and his Icicle Spear, which hit 4 times and left Pidgeotto with enough
HP to be taken out the next turn with another 2 hits from Ice Spear.
After Pidgeotto went down, Rattata came out and tried to threaten Rex with Crit Hyper Fangs, which normally would have been scary, but Rex has better Defense than a catholic priest in a court room, so I wasnt worried. A few tackles later and a potion for safety, Rattata went down and out comes Charmander.
First turn, Charmander uses Ember, which, although was Not Very Effective, still did a surprising amount of damage given Rexs atrocity of a special Defense stat. Its at this point I realise that Misty and Starmie are going to be extremely difficult. Perhaps even a virtually impossible fight if Starmie has confusion and can OHKO. But I need to get through this battle first. Due to Rex still not having learned any water type attacks yet all he could do was tackle, but that was good enough to take Charmander down, again, using a Potion for safety. Abra was the last one to come out, which only knows teleport so that was the end of the battle. Not too much difficulty there which was nice. And Rex hits level 19, very close to 20.
I head back down to the Pokemon Center and heal up then head back up to Nugget Bridge for some more training. Rex took all the trainers down without too much fuss, except the double poison he suffered against the jerk with both Nidorans and Poison Point ability :( we reached the end of Nugget Bridge and grabbed the Nugget and Rex hit level 21 and about 2/3 exp bar to 22.
We make our way to the poke mart to stock up before our fight with Misty and Im fairly sure Im going to only have one method of winning this fight and its not going to be pretty.
After selling literally everything I have, TMs included I load up on as many Super Potions and Potions as I can and head on up to the gym. Thankfully, you can skip all extra trainers in this gym and go straight to the leader. I likely would have overlevelled Misty if I had to fight any of her other trainers so that was lucky.
I initiate the fight with Misty and out comes Staryu. Basically Staryu is the initiation for this fight. Whatever Staryu does, Starmie is going to do twice as hard. Im not expecting too much trouble from Staryu as it only has Tackle, which wont do much, harden and Water Pulse which shouldnt do much either because of resistance.
Rex starts off by confusing Staryu with supersonic but Staryu still manages to get Harden off twice and snap out of confusion on the 3rd turn. Hopefully this isnt a sign of bad RNG in this fight. Rex misses the supersonic and Staryu uses Harden again, which isnt exactly ideal. Now Staryu is at +3 Defense which means my Tackles wont be doing much either. I go for the supersonic again and land the confusion this time, and Staryu hits itself! Fantastic!
Rex hits Staryu with another tackle, which takes it down to half health, and drops even further when it hits itself in confusion the next turn. Rex tackles again, Staryu makes it through confusion and uses Water Pulse. I really wasnt expecting that due to resistance, but damn! That actually did a good chunk of damage to Rex! This doesnt exactly fill me with confidence when Starmie comes out. But then, Ive still got my secret weapons.
Misty ends up using a Super Potion on Staryu and I burn a couple of mine and a regular potion on Rex, keeping him topped up with health before Starmie comes out. My strategy for Staryu was basically just keep him confused and whittle him down with tackle. Misty ended up using 2 potions which means she shouldnt have any left to use on Starmie.
Eventually Staryu goes down, Rex levels up to 22, learns Auroroa Beam at the expense of Icicle Spear and Starmie makes its appearance. This is where the fight gets tediously boring so Ill skip to the chase.
Starmie uses Water Pulse and does serious damage. Even with resistance Starmie is chunking Rex from 68 Hp all the way down to 22. My secret weapon in this fight is.... Super Potions. The only strategy I could come up with to beat Starmie was to confuse it and keep using super potions until it either ran out of Water Pulse pp or killed itself through confusion. Its not my proudest fight, but Rexs special Defense is that bad that it was literally the only way i could win.
And win we did. After what felt like an eternity, Starmie did run out of Water Pulse PP, which was good timing as I had just run out of Super Potions and was about to start using regular Potions. Starmie stArting using tackle and it was all Rexs fight from there.
Starmie goes down and we get our 2nd badge!
To celebrate our 2nd badge, we use a couple of dubious measures to get a Poliwhirl and end up trading it for Hynx aka Jynx. The Psychic/ice type and quite literally the only way Im going to beat LT. Surge in Vermilion gym.
Which well be getting to in the next run update. Stay tuned, the next one will be up sooner than the rest. From this point Im writing from memory as I skipped ahead a bit and am currently sitting in Saffron City gym heading towards Sabrina so Ive got a bit to catch you guys up on. Including sad, sad deaths :(
Update 4: Cerulean City - S.S Anne & Vermillion City
Rex gets a well earned rest after the battle with Misty as Hynx takes the lead and we get some training done. The next gym battle is against Surge at level 24 so weve got a bit of training to do, luckily, weve got a lot of trainers north of Cerulean as well as the SS Anne. Hynx is only level 8 though so we start off murdering some Spearows, Ekans and Sandshrews in the grass just west of Cerulean and then move up to murdering Oddish, Kakuna and Pidgey. The levelling process is fairly smooth with Hynx as she knows Powder Snow and Lovely Kiss so we just put everything to sleep with Lovely Kiss and knock em out with Powder Snow.
Its not long before Hynx has taken down all the trainers north of Cerulean, weve gotten the SS Ticket from Bill and retrieved the Dig TM. Ive always found it weird how that dude was all like THEM ROCKETS STOLE MY DIG TM, WHAT YOU GOT IT BACK? Its ok you can keep it. Like dude, did you want it back or not?
Anyway, we soldier on with Hynx, Rex still chilling (haha get it? Its an ice run and I said chilling.... sorry, Ill stop now) in his Pokeball and Spearow ripe and ready to trade for Farfetchd in Vermilion.
As were making our way through Route 6 just north of Vermilion, Hynx just laughing at everything that gets in the way, we get into a battle with Camper Jeff. Who starts off with a Spearow, who is dead on arrival. Hynx Powder Snows his feathery ass. Useless fact: Spearow was the first shiny I ever caught back in Original gold, I nicknamed it Eggy. Jeff then sends out Raticate and I have a momentary heart attack.
Now before I go into what happens here, I just want to bring attention to my current 2 Pokémon. Jynx and Shellder. Ive already talked about Shellders abysmal Special Defense stats and monsterous Defense stats in previous updates but the important thing here is Jynxs stats. Theyre virtually complete mirror images of Shellders. Shellder has great Defense bad special Defense, Jynx has great special Defense and bad Defense. They compliment each other really, really well. Up until this Raticate decides to use Hyper Fang on Hynx. And it crits. Like it actually crits. A STAB (same type attack bonus) crit hyper fang from a Raticate against a low Defense Hynx. Up until this point, Ive been really lucky with crits. And by lucky I mean I didnt actually realise Rex is ammune to crits because of his ability, which turns out, was most likely a huge factor in not losing to Misty.
Luckily for my run, and Hynx, I healed Hynx up to full after a fight with a bug catchers Butterfree not long before this one. Had Hynx not had full hp, and Im talking if she had 3hp less than full, my run would be over. Yep, Hynx was left with 3hp.
3 goddam hp.
I promptly switch out and Rex comes out of hibernation and Raticate uses Hyper Fang again. Which does 16 damage, Rex laughs at another Hyper Fang miss and then kills Raticate with Water Pulse, learned from the TM Misty gave us.
The battle finishes and we head straight into the Pokémon Center in Vermilion. Still hardly believing how ridiculously close we came to wiping. If Hynx died we wouldnt have wiped that battle, Rex would have cleaned it up, but Surge is a completely impossible fight for Rex. Super Effective Shock Waves that cannot miss are all going to one shot Rex so its quite literally an impossible fight unless Shock Wave doesnt get used and Rex doesnt get paralysed from Thunder Wave, and Rex doesnt miss at all and yeah, like 99.99999% chance of losing with Rex solo.
We survive though and head on in to the SS Anne, making a quick stop at the Mart to restock on some potions and a couple of other things just in case. We make our way through the ship, picking up a couple of potions, a couple of berries and a Rare Candy for our trouble and we find AssHat again. Urgh, this guy.
AssHat is really not difficult at all now. Hynx takes down his Pidgeotto, Rex comes in and takes out Charmeleon, Hynx comes back in and takes out Kadabra and the rest follow suit. We give the Captain a questionable massage and he gives us the Cut HM. I dont know about you but a 10 year old kid getting an item for giving a sailor a massage just doesnt seem right to me.
We trudge on out of the ship, it departs and we head on into Digletts Cave to grind out the last little bit of Xp on Rex, he hits 24 and Hynx is 22. We head back to the Pokémon Center, heal up, trade our Spearow for Farfetchd, teach him cut and head into the gym. This gym always brings back bad memories from when I was a kid. I hated the trash cans. I hated them so much I would just leave Vermilion Gym till last. One of the very few times you can actually skip a gym, it only gives you fly access and not actually needed.
This time however, we head in and take out a few trainers with Hynx which bumps him up to 23. After about 10minutes of wandering around opening the first lock and resetting it we hit the jackpot and the door opens. We trek back to Digletts Cave and grind Hynx up to 24, close enough to 25 that shell level up after Surges first Pokémon, theres strategy involved there ;)
While grinding we encounter a Dugtrio. Now these Dugtrio are absolute pains in the ass. Theyre always level 28+, fast and hit like an absolute truck. Oh, and they can have Arena Trap ability meaning you cannot run away. They can single handedly end your runs if youre not prepared.
We were prepared though. I go into my bag and just toss out a Poke Doll. These handy things first show up in Vermilion Mart. Something I found extremely handy and Im positive they were put in there purely because Diglett can have Arena Trap. We finish grinding Digletts Cave, heal up and head on in to fight Surge.
For what would have been an impossible fight with Rex, Hynx actually makes this fight ridiculously easy. Not only does Hynx have a high special Defense stat, shes the ONLY Ice type in gen 1 to not be weak to electric.
Voltorb is Surges first Pokémon, who uses Screech as his first move. And doesnt get another chance as Hynx puts Voltorb to sleep and proceeds to take it out with a few Powder Snows and hits level 25 once Voltorb faints.
Heres where my extra strategy comes into play. The extra stats from level 24-25 are minuscule but Hynx learns a new move at level 25. Ice Punch. One major benefit to this generation is they havent gone through the Physical/Special attack split yet, so some moves, like Ice Punch that have been changed to physical moves in future generations are still Special attacks in gen 3 and lower. Meaning Ice Punch is a base power 75 ice type special attack and combined with Hynxs STAB, it actually turns into one of the strongest possible attacks this early in the game. The others all being normal types EG mega punch, mega kick from move tutors near Mt.Moon and Hyper Fang from Raticate.
Ice Punch one shots Surges Pikachu and a double tap on Raichu gives Hynx the W and I slot another badge onto the belt. Hynx, the Most Valuable Pokemon probably for the run so far. Only pipping Rex because Rex wouldnt have been able to do this gym.
We head on out of the gym and heal up at the Pokémon Center before heading off towards Rock Tunnel. Our next gym is Erika at level 29 so we dont have a huge amount of wiggle room with our Xp through Rock Tunnel to Celadon City so well try and avoid as much as we can.
So far weve got 3 badges, and no deaths. Unfortunately the no deaths thing doesnt last forever. But well get to that in the next couple of updates.
Next update will come soon!
Update 5: Vermilion City to Pokemon Tower
So far weve taken down Brock, Misty and Lt.Surge with Rex and Hynx. But weve still got a long, long way to go. Thi run has been going for close to 2 weeks already and Im a good few badges behind in the write up. Im going to skip some of the boring bits and just get through to where the action is i.e the gym battles and random difficult encounters.
Weve finished at Vermilion City and obtained our bicycle so we start making our way towards Rock Tunnel, picking up a couple of escape ropes in case we run into trouble. Now that the levels of trainers are starting to get a bit higher, rock type Pokémon will start throwing out Rock type attacks, which will be super-effective, so thats something to watch for in the Rock Tunnel, mainly for Hynx as Rex still isnt Ice type just yet. We work our way through the little maze of rocks, walls and trainers as we journey closer to Rock Tunnel. Eventually we make it there, heal up at the Pokémon Center and enter the cave, using cut to bypass the trainer at the bottom of the map ;).
Due to it being so dark, and not having access to flash, Rock Tunnel could easily turn into a bit of a nightmare if youre not properly prepared. However were pretty well stocked on potions and cures at the moment, with a couple of escape ropes and poke dolls in case things go south really quickly.
We spent a grand total of about 15minutes wandering around the darkness, randomly running into walls and using them to point us in the right direction. There was nearly no trouble with Rock Tunnel at all except for using 1 escape rope to head back and heal after a trainer had 2 Slowpokes, who resist all my attacking moves at the moment and both Rex and Hynx decided they were going to attack themselves instead of the Slowpoke. Losing a Pokémon in Rock Tunnel would be embarrassing. Lucky for us, after we heal up and head back into the cave, the rest of the tunnel goes as smoothly as you can ask for and we finally find the exit and enter Lavender Town.
This is probably the most exciting part of the run apart from the Elite 4. Once you get to Lavender and then Celadon City the whole game virtually opens up. Theres a lot of things to do, between the department store, game corner, saffron city, Pokémon Tower theres just so much stuff to do.
We quickly heal up at Lavender and Trek on to Celadon, managing your avoid most of the trainers along the way to conserve XP for Erika at the next gym. We enter Celadon, hit the Pokémon Center quickly and then survey our options. The first thing we do is head down to the gym and scope out how many trainers are in there and take out a couple with Hynx while were there. After we take a couple down we head back out of the gym and pick up the coin case. Before we head to the game corner Ive got some purchases to make at the department store.
First stop, floor 4. A Water stone for Rex hes earned it. Our very first evolution of our generations run. Rex is now a Cloyster!
While were at the mart, we teach Hynx Counter, not sure why, it was there and might come in handy, were stocked up on potions at the moment so we grab some X items instead, loading up on Defense, speed and special attack X boosters for now. Well get more as we get some more money.
After the department store we make our way to the game corner and start some gambling. Theres a couple of upgrades i can grab here. One of the majors being TM13 - Ice Beam and the other being Mystic Water, a hold item to boost the power of water attacks.
We run around the game corner, grabbing the free coins available, take out the Rocket Grunt guarding the poster for more money, then buy some more coins and start farming coins. We need about 15,000 coins to get everything we need and have a couple of TMs leftover. I like grabbing a couple of extra TMs so I can delete them and reteach them for specific fights or for extra PP if I get really desperate. Them big brain strats.
I jump on Amazon Prime, load up an episode of The Boys and start farming. Thank god for playing on an emulator and having speed increase! After a while were up to 3,500 so we go load up with 3x Mystic Waters. We got 3 so we can give one to each of our water/ice types once we get them and dont have to swap the items around. Back to the game corner, and Ive just found out that pressing R automatically restarts the reels with your last lines. FML. Ive been pressing down to get max lines for like the last 10 years. I max out on coins twice before the episode finishes so we load up on Ice Beam TMs and head on out.
Before heading to the gym, we head over to Celadon Mansion, grab the Tea, give it to the guards to get into Saffron. A quick heal at the Pokémon Center to open the fly route and then we head over a couple of houses for our secret weapon against Erika and head back to Celadon.
Before hitting the gym we go run through the Rocket Hideout in the game corner to max out Hynx and Rex at 29 for Erika. Nothing much happens there, neither Hynx nor Rex have any issues thanks to Ice Beam. We take out Giovanni for the first time, head out for a heal and then head to the gym.
We use Ice Beam with Hynx to destroy a couple of trainers on our way to Erika and start the battle with Erika. This fight was probably the most one sided gym fight so far. Hynx used Ice Beam once and the our secret weapon, Psychic against everything else. Grass/Poison against STAB Psychic from Hynx? Nothing survived. Vileplume was the only one to not get one shot but didnt provide any issues either. 2nd gym in a row where Rex got to watch from the sidelines.
4th badge acquired!
We duck over to the west of Celadon and pick up the Fly HM and teach it to Farfetchd, he doesnt get a nickname because hes technically not part of the run, and we fly back to Lavender Town and heal. Next up, Pokémon Tower and another battle with AssHat.
Not much to report on the battle with AssHat, we use Hynx to take out Pidgeotto first to force Charmeleon out, we switch to Rex and destroy Charmeleon with Water Pulse. Biggest issue here is Ember did a reasonable chunk to Rex. Nothing worth a potion, just something to consider in future battles. We switch back to Hynx to take out Exeggcute (interesting that he has Exeggcute only available from the Safari Zone which is in Fuchsia, currently blocked by Snorlax... I call hax) and then Gyarados and finally Kadabra. All of who go down quite easily with Psychic. A few extra levels above helps too.
Once AssHat finishes boasting about how many Pokémon hes caught (like dude Ive taken all yours out with 2 Pokémon so far) we make our way up through the tower just Psychicing everything. Pokémon Tower is a great spot for EV training your special attackers too with Gastly and Haunter both giving Sp.Attack EVs.
Its not long before we encounter Marowak, Rex puts it to rest and Hynx destroys the Rockets on the top floor to save Mr Pokémon. All in all, quite easy with Psychic and Ice Beam.
Next up Fuchsia City gym and Silph Co... after this next update well be caught up to where I am now. Remember when I said deaths? Yep, theyre coming [emoji24][emoji24][emoji24]
Update 6: Lavender Town to Fuchsia City Gym
Now that weve cleared the Pokémon Tower and received the Poke Flute from Mr. Pokémon (if that even is his real name) the rest of the game opens up to us. And theres so much we can do. First, we head south of Lavender and wake the Snorlax up and just run from it as theres really no benefit to fighting it. If it was holding Leftovers I would have used some sort of strategy to get them but nope, only a berry :(
After we get passed Snorlax we cruise on down through route 12, using Rex to take out a plethora of bird keepers and campers. Not much to write about here except I flew back to Lavender to heal up a couple of times just as a precaution. You can never be too careful in a Nuzlocke run.
Eventually we enter Fuchsia, heal at the Pokémon Center and head straight to the safari zone. Twisting and turning through the safari zone we catch a Nidorina to teach it Strength and make our way to the centre house for the hidden prize, and one of the most important items of our whole run, HM03 - Surf, we grab the Gold Teeth to give to the Warden and then head on out.
Rex learns Surf in place of Water Pulse and now his kit is looking much more dangerous. Surf, Ice Beam, Supersonic and Protect. Ive found Protect very helpful in previous Nuzlockes as it gives you a chance to scout potential attacks that may surprise you. Plus, it gave Rex the added bonus of ignoring Dig while grinding some XP in Digletts Cave.
Kogas Ace is a level 43 Weezing, and the gym immediately following is Sabrina also at level 43 so theres a bit of juggling of XP and levels required here. Im going to have to partially clear the Silph Co for XP, beat Koga, finish Silph Co and then beat Sabrina. AssHat shouldnt be an issue in Silph Co because his Charizard will only be level 40 and Rex now has Surf.
We head into the Silph Co and start clearing. Mainly using Hynx for now as she is going to be the most important member for the next couple of gyms. STAB Psychics against Koga and resistance against Sabrinas Psychic types will be important. Hynx is making very short work of all these Rocket Grunts considering most of them have some form of Ekans Zubat combination with a few Rattata and Raticates thrown in that Rex deals with, yes Ive learned from the incident near Vermilion. Hynx dings to level 40 and Rex is sitting at 37 at the moment, which should be plenty to take down Koga with Psychic. We clear everything up to AssHat but leave him till after Koga for strategic reasons.
Back to Fuchsia we go and head to the gym. Running into a trainer with a Drowzee and a Hypno we actually gave me a bit of trouble. After dealing with him, we heal and then make our way to Koga. Starting the battle Koga leads with Koffing, no real dramas here as long as we dont get poisoned. Thinking strategy here I go for an X Speed, making sure we out speed everything so we can just land Psychic straight up.
Disaster. Absolute carnage in my brain right now as I watch Koffing use Self Destruct.
Goddam Self Destruct and a god damn Crit. Self Destruct and Explosion crits should not be a thing. Koffing uses self destruct and I watch in horror as the words Critical Hit pop up on my screen. Only mere moments after watching Hynxs HP bar deplete. To zero.
Hynx is dead.
Gone.
Im shook. Hynx was such an important piece of this puzzle, of my strategy. She single handedly took down Surge and Erika and would have done the same if I used Psychic instead of an X Speed.
I send out Rex and Koga sends out Muk. Im still a bit shaken and cant actually believe what just happened. The rest of this fight just got a lot, lot harder. Rex is level 38, Muk is 39 and I know Kogas Weezing is 43. Were in trouble.
The only saving grace is this situation is that Rex has crazy Defense and All poison attacks are considered Physical in this generation, so while Muk and Weezing might be throwing out super powered Sludges, Rex SHOULD be able to tank them like a pro. Again, poison could be an issue.
Before we start looking at options for the rest of the battle. I take a quick mental break. I grab a coffee, contemplating just how in the actual crap I am supposed to finish this run now.
Enough of that, Ive got to focus on finishing this fight before getting too far ahead of myself.
Rex launches into Muk with Surf and it does a bit less than a quarter of Muks hp in damage. I was really hoping for more but I guess Muk has pretty decent Sp.Defense. Muk uses Acid Armor which is fine as I dont have any Physical moves, feel free to use that again a few more times Koga. Its at this point I wish I grabbed a couple of Guard Specs when I had the chance. I could have used them to avoid poison and wouldnt have to worry at all about Toxic. Which is exactly what happens next.
Rex uses Surf again and Muk poisons with Toxic. Toxic isnt too bad as long as you dont let it get out of hand. I decide to let Toxic run for another turn while hitting Muk with another Surf and Muk uses Minimise.
Great.
Koga has an absolute pain in the ass strategy of using toxic and then increasing evasion to burn turns for toxic, which i guess makes sense for a Ninja if you really think about it.
Next turn we heal our Poison and Muk uses Sludge. It actually chunks Rex fairly decently, meaning I have to use a potion next turn as Muk poisons with Toxic again.
I let toxic run another turn and hit with Surf again, Muk uses Minimise again. Next turn I heal poison and Koga uses a potion. FML I hate Koga. This fight is already annoying because Hynx died let alone the stupid Muk.
Muk is now at full health with +2 evasion, Rex is about 75%, no poison.
I take a minute to assess the situation. Chances are Im going to miss at some point soon, and Koga will likely use one more potion.
I check my items to see what Ive got in my bag I can use. 3 antidotes left, which isnt great, X speed, X Special, X Defend, and a couple of Full Restores.
Ok new strategy, Use X Special, healing poison and hp and try and nuke down Muk and Weezing when they come out. Muk uses toxic again, which this time Rex avoids it like he new it was time for revenge and I start pumping him full of the glorious X special boosts. Muk uses Sludge this time and I load up X special again. Muk uses sludge once more, poisons and I use another x special followed by a full restore. Muk lands toxic and I load up on another 2 x specials in the following 2 turns and then heal poison.
So now were at Muk at 100% health +2 evasion and Rex at about 80% HP, poisoned and with +4 Special Attack. I figure I may as well go for the last 2 x items so I heal poison, use another X special, heal hp and use the 6th x special. Rex now has capped Special Attack at +6 and after my last full restore hes at 100% health and no poison. Time for revenge.
Rex goes for Surf and as expected, missed. Wow. That was an anti climax. Muk poisons again with toxic and Im starting to wonder exactly how much PP toxic has. Its seriously never ending. Rex goes for Surf again and again, it misses. Muk uses sludge and at this point Im second guessing my strategy. I heal up the poison, leaving my with 1 antidote and 1 full heal left to cure poison. Muk uses sludge again, I heal up to full hp, still got 11 hyper potions so thats not an issue and Muk uses toxic. Again. Surely thats got to be the last one.
Rex goes for Surf... and....
Lands it! Muks hp starts to go down. Slowly but surely it goes down further and further. And Muk faints! Success! 2 down 2 to go!
Out comes Weezing. Odd I thought hed send that out last. Anyways, now I dont have to worry about the evasion from Muk. But Weezing will most likely be faster. Which proves true as Weezing goes first and uses Smokescreen.
*sigh* these damn evasion tactics again.
Rex still manages to land surf though and Weezing goes down! Were one Pokémon away from the Soul Badge. Koga sends out another Koffing and Rex is seriously seeing red at this point. Another Koffing. The brother of the one that killed Hynx.
I give Rex an inspirational speech about how killing this Koffing will make Hynx proud. About now destroying Kogas last pokemon will bring shame on Koga and his family.
Rex launches a Surf, which Donald Trump would only be able to describe as the worlds best Surf, so good in fact, that other countries dont have Surf as good as Rexs.
Koffing dies.
Koga gives us the Soul Badge and the toxic TM which Im tempted to sell straight away.
We turn off the increased speed weve been using on the emulator to show exactly how sad we are as we walk very slowly back to the Pokémon Center. And then to the pc.
Bills PC
Deposit.
Hynx.
Hynx is deposited into the box of death.
Rex and I heal up and then exit the Pokémon Center. We go give the warden his teeth, teach nidorino strength and grab the rare candy. It was an extremely sad sigh when we go to teach Nidorino Strength and not seeing Hynx. But unfortunately, them the breaks of a Nuzlocke run.
Were going to need more party members for the next few fights so I open the map, Rex points to spot and we both nod.
Were headed to the Seafoam Islands.
Update 7: Fuchsia City - Silph Co
Still reeling from the death of Hynx, Rex and I jump on Farfetchd and Fly back home to Pallet Town. We stop in to say a quick hello to Mom. Shes still sitting at the table, her back must be killing her by now and her posture must be absolutely atrocious. Anywho, before we head off we spend a bit of time fishing just below Pallet Town where we catch Charlotte! Charlotte is a Shellder that will stay in storage until the very slim chance that Rex doesnt make it through a fight. Sticking with my rules, Im allowed one encounter of each Pokémon and seeing as though technically I didnt actually encounter Rex he doesnt count as the one encounter for Shellder. Yes Im pulling at straws but Im sticking with it. Stupid Koffing and stupid self-destruct.
Rex uses surf and we swim down to Cinnebar Island. Weve got a couple of options here, we can do some training at the Mansion, catch a Ponyta and trade it for Seel or go to Seafoam Islands and catch a Seel. We decide to head to Seafoam Islands and catch our Seel first. Given Ive only got a maximum of about 4 or 5 possible Pokémon I can use from now until the Pokémon league I dont think the extra XP boost from using the traded Seel isnt really necessary.
We depart Cinnebar and head for Seafoam, taking out a few trainers along the way as well as a few tentacool and a Tentacruel. We arrive to the Seafoam Islands and after a bit of walking around we find our Target, Seel. A couple of Surfs and 2 great balls later, Steve joins our party!
So now weve got Rex and Steve in our party, and Charlotte chilling on the bench. While I was tempted to include Articuno in my runs given the low number of Ice types and its ability to use Fly I decided against using legendaries so we head out and leave Articuno in solitude.
We Fly to Vermilion, teach Steve Surf and he gets to work in Digletts Cave, dispatching the little moles left, right and center. Poor things had no chance. Chucking on another episode of The Boys on Amazon Prime while I grind Steve up, before the end of the first episode, Steve has already evolved into Dewgong!
We boost Steve a little bit more at Cinnebar Mansion and Fuchsia City and head back to Saffron. Weve got Steve at 40 and Rex is now 42. We climb back up the stairs of the Silph Co and find AssHat. I really should have called him An AssHat so when we fight it would say An AssHat wants to battle! Alas, you cannot fit that many characters in his naming page.
Rex leads out against AssHats Pidgeot, not caring at all about the Quick Attack it launches and takes it out with Ice Beam. Charizard comes out and we Rex gets excited and my cursor hovers over Surf. Beautiful, beautiful Surf.
So here we are again. Just trying to casually take out Charizard with Surf when Charizard uses Flamethrower.
Now for somebody thats been playing Pokémon games for literally over 20 years youd think Id be fairly knowledgeable by now about what attacks most Pokémon have and when they learn them etc. I started playing Pokémon on my game body pocket when I was like 7 years old, Ive sunk 10s of thousands of hours into different varieties of Pokémon games over the years. And yet, I was still surprised when this god damned Charizard killed Rex with a single flamethrower.
Thats right. Rex is dead. Gone. Joining Hynx in the afterlife. Im just staring blankly at the screen at the writing Rex fainted. Just blinking I still can barely believe that just happened. Like, it wasnt a crit, it was just a normal Flamethrower. I know cloyster doesnt have great special Defense but shit that took me by absolute surprise.
I really wasnt expecting that. At all. I mean I feel bad for Rex, hes been with me from the start but geez, I just got gamed. Even when Flamethrower got used I thought yeah thatll hit hard but Ill just heal or something along those lines. Yeah it hit hard. Really hard. Im just stunned. Its at this point that I really regret not choosing Charmander as my starter. I could have avoided this just by thinking about battling Charizard or Venusaur. Battling Blastoise would have been so much better. I guess this was bound to happen given the mistake of choosing Bulbasaur because it was in the first pokeball at Oaks lab. Its been a long time coming but Charizard takes revenge on all the times Rex has taken him out.
Good thing I did catch Charlotte after All. I didnt expect her to actually see the light of day but as it turns out, she will. I send out Steve and have a quick check of stats. Steve is much more rounded. Reasonable Defense, Special Defense, speed. Its all just... adequate I guess youd say. Although one of the big benefits of Steve in this situation is Thick Fat ability. Reduces incoming fire damage. In hindsight I should have used Steve but I wanted to use Rex as he hadnt seen much action recently.
I used an X Special on Steve, mostly just to scout and see how much damage Flamethrower would do. It doesnt actually do much thanks to Steves bulk and ability. It would probably take 3 maybe 4 hits total to take Steve out with Flamethrower so I use a 2nd x special and then heal to full. Charizard uses another Flamethrower, nice Flamethrower spam AssHat, and Steve takes it out with a single Surf. Alakazam comes out and uses Future Sight, Steve uses Headbutt twice and takes it out. Gyarados and Exeggcute are formalities, neither of them can do anything against Steve, his +2 surf was too strong for Gyarados and Ice Beam destroyed Exeggcute in one. AssHat takes a victim but we get the win.
Fortunately for us, while the loss of Rex leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth, we claim our final member. Quade the Lapras. Quade is going to be one of my most important members now that Hynx is gone.
We head on upstairs and Steve makes short work of Giovanni and we get a useless Master Ball. Silph Co cleared but weve taken another hit. I feel like the loss of Rex is a perfect example of why I chose Ice as my type. Theyre strong but fragile at the same time. Cloyster is bulky but fragile, if youre not careful, they can die very easily.
We trudge back to the Pokémon Center at Saffron and deposit Rex into the death box next to Hynx. Hopefully we never have to put anything in there again. We withdraw Charlotte and teach her Surf and get to grinding. Once she learns protect at level 25 well evolve her.
Weve got a fair bit of grinding to do, weve got Quade and Charlotte to grind up before we face Sabrina. At this point our team is
Quade the Lapras
Charlotte the Shellder/Cloyster
Steve the Dewgong
This is all weve got left for the rest of the run. We have the chance to replace Steve with a traded Seel if he dies but if we lose Charlotte or Quade that slot is gone for good. Its going to be extremely difficult from here on out but fortunately for us, the addition of Quade to the team brings us an extremely strong Nuzlocke win condition. Perish Song. The perish song switch combo is extremely Efficient at taking out the last Pokémon of trainers. Couple that with Protect from Charlotte and weve got ourselves a pretty reasonable strategy.
As of this point, were now up to date with where I am. Still grinding away with Quade and Charlotte, Ive been focusing on catching up with the updates more so than grinding so now that were all caught up I can do a bit more. Ill try and keep the updates more recent so Im not writing from memory as I feel my writing suffers a bit.
2 updates, 2 deaths. Fingers crossed we can get through Sabrina without too much trouble. Its going to be tough without Hynx but well try our best.
Update 8: Saffron Gym
With a renewed vigour and confidence despite losing 2 Pokémon in very quick succession, we took a minute to catch out bearings and assess where we are and what we have left to do.
Weve only got 3 badges left, a few things over on the islands and the Pokémon league left. As long as we get through this next gym battle with Sabrina we should be able to make it the rest of the way to the Pokémon League without too much drama, considering we have type advantage against the last 2 gyms.
Before we take on Sabrina, I want to make sure were as ready for anything as we can be. Level cap here is 43 so were going for 43 with Quade, Steve and Charlotte before we head in. Before we start grinding, we spend about 4 hours catching Chanseys and hoping to get a lucky egg. After 4 hours, we managed to get 2 and we set the Chanseys free. We also grab the item finder from one of Prof Oaks Aides and grab 2 Leftovers that I never knew were buried underneath The 2 sleeping Snorlax.
Between the 2 lucky Eggs, 2 lots of leftovers and Mystic Water, weve got ourselves a good combination of items. Unfortunately we cant get Nevermeltice to boost our ice attack power until after the Elite 4, which is a shame because it would be extremely helpful for Lance. Anyway, armed with our Lucky Eggs we get to grinding again. We load up the lucky eggs and head to one of the best training locations in any Pokémon game. Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town.
What makes this place so good isnt the amount of xp but the fact that its loaded with Haunter and Gastly which give Special Attack EVs and comes with its own Pokémon healing location. Meaning if you managed to get paralysed by Lick or something, you only need a few short steps to full heal. Its not the greatest xp, but the lucky eggs help and its so mindlessly easy that I can do it without paying attention. Extra shoutout to Cubone which gives Defense EVs which also dont go to waste.
After a while were finished our grinding. Everybody is ready for Sabrina at level 43 so we fly back to Saffron and head to the gym. I already cleared out the trainers for XP so theres no issues there we just wander around aimlessly until we hit the right panel to get to Sabrina.
Im going with Quade lead for this battle. Steve has slightly higher special Defense but Quade has about 40hp more so I feel that is going to be more beneficial.
Sabrina leads with Kadabra, Im pretty sure these things have Calm Mind and I dont want Kadabra getting too many special attack boosts because it already hits like a truck so we just go straight for a mystic water boosted Surf which does around 75% damage. Sweet.
Kadabra uses Calm Mind and Im happy because I successfully predicted something for once. Quade goes for a 2nd surf but Sabrina uses a Hyper Potion and brings Kadabra back to full health. Quades surf hits and does slightly over 50% damage. Still good as Its over half. Quade goes for a 2nd surf and Kadabra uses calm mind again, meaning the 2nd surf doesnt kill and leaves Kadabra at about 20% hp.
I know another potion is going to come so I change up my strategy a little and go for the Ice Beam instead of Surf, hoping to get a lucky freeze and BOOM! Frozen Kadabra! Kadabra stays frozen while Quade takes it down with another 2 ice beams and weve got Sabrinas first Pokémon down without taking any damage.
Sabrina then sends out Mr.Mime. Fun fact, in original Gold, Silver and Crystal, Sabrina has a female MR.MIME! Female.
Anyway, we use Mr.Mime as our fodder for boosting and we start to load up on X Specials. Im not scared of Mr Mime at all compared to Kadabra and Alakazam. Mr Mime uses Barrier to boost his Defense as though he just wants to prove my point. We load up another 3 X specials to bring us to +4 special Attack and then 2x x speeds just because we can.
By this time, mr mime has used barrier 4 times, future Sight once and something else, maybe calm mind, I wasnt paying that much attention to Mr Mime to be honest.
Once we get out 2nd x speed away future sight hits and does like, 25ish% damage. Not enough to justify doing anything about it so Quade just launches a Surf and KOs Mr Mime. Sabrina sends out her 2nd Kadabra and Quade one shots it with Surf. Out comes Sabrinas last pokemon Alakazam.
Alakazam still outspeeds Quade and uses Calm Mind. Quade launches a Surf and Alakazam is left with what can only be described as a bees dick worth of HP. If you think about it, a bees dick must be very small hence the reference to Alakazams HP.
Alakazam uses Future Sight and Quade takes it out with Surf and we earn our 6th badge.
I have a quick look at my team after the fight with Sabrina. Im still scarred by the last couple of battles expecting something to have randomly died during the fight. Quade is at 75% hp and Steve and Charlotte are both full
HP. Happy days.
Our next stop is back at Cinnebar Island for our next badge. Blaine is capped at 47 and Giovanni after him at 50 so we have a bit of grinding to do. Ill make the next update consist of the next 2 gyms and the journey through victory road. Assuming we make it that far of course.
Update 9: Cinnabar and Beyond
Weve finished our grinding to 47. Quade, Charlotte and Steve are all level capped to face Blaine and according to me trying to use a Calcium and a Carbos on all of them, their special attack And speed EVs are all above the limit for the stat boosters. Weve trained our team pretty well, virtually speed and special attack capped. In hindsight, some special Defense effort values for Charlotte might have been a good idea to avoid special attack shenanigans but cant change that now.
For now though, we head to Cinnebar Island, the location of our next gym fight. The doors locked so we have to make our way through the Pokémon Mansion to find the secret key. This doesnt turn out to be too much trouble, besides the constant Quick Attacks from Raticates just whittling down our HP it was a piece of cake. Leaving with another Rare Candy and a few more healing items under our belt.
After a quick heal we head to the gym, unlock the door and head inside. Ive always enjoyed this gym thanks to the quiz questions instead of just pure battling. It always felt like it matched the anime so much better as opposed to the standard beat 5 trainers and then the leader, that the majority of gyms follow. I wouldnt mind seeing more of this, hell, even the trials in Sun and Moon were a nice change of pace, even if that game was insanely slow and drawn out.
Anyway, we breeze through the quiz, except for one question which I accidentally spammed B too quickly and answered wrong, but we end up facing Blaine without losing any HP.
Before I started this run, I highlighted Blaine as a potential threat to my run. The fire type Pokémon he has are extremely quick and hard hitting. Especially after so many issues I had with Rex and his lack of Special Defense I was just dreading the fight. High powered Flamethrowers, Fire Blast, I just thought I wasnt going to have a good time.
And then I caught Steve. Steve is a water/ice type. Steve has thick fat ability to reduce damage from fire type attacks. Steve is good. Be like Steve.
Blaine leads with his Growlithe with Intimidate lowering Steves attack. Lol. Steve uses Rain Dance, further reducing the damage of fire type attacks and boosting water damage and Growlithe uses Take Down, which does 19hp of damage.
Steve launches a surf and as expected, Growlithe dies miserably. Blaine sends out Ponyta, Steve destroys it with a surf. Blaine then sends out Rapidash which outspeeds Steve and uses Fire Spin. The original hit of
Fire Spin does 1hp of damage. 1 single hp. What an absolute beast Steve is. Steve then uses Surf and Rapidash dies too.
Out comes Arcanine, Blaines ace. Its at this point I look at Arcanines sprite and think to myself. Shit. He better not have Thunder Fang.
Rain Dance is still up for another turn so I know Surf is going to either kill it or leave it so close to dead a hefty sneeze would finish it off. The only thing to stop Steve would be Thunder Fang and most likely a critical one at that.
I tell Steve to use Surf...
Steve outspeeds and KOs Arcanine with a single surf!
We get the Volcano Badge!
Im not sure if Steve was supposed to outspeed or not. Maybe Arcanine was going to use Roar which has negative priority. But that doesnt matter, Steve won. Taking a grand total of 20hp of damage. Quite embarrassing for a 7th gym leader if you ask me.
We leave the gym and Bill shows up. Time for a quick detour to 1,2 and 3 island. We take down a few trainers, find Lostelle and do a bit of training. We stop off at Mount Ember. Me thinking we can do a bit of training with the higher levelled Pokémon there.
We encounter the standard Geodudes, Zubats and Machop before we run into a Machoke. This would have been an absolute disaster if we werent grinding levels on Charlotte at the time. Charlotte uses surf but doesnt get the KO and Machoke uses Revenge. A super-effective STAB fighting type move with 60 base power that gets doubled if the user has already taken damage, which he did with surf. It hit. Hard. But thankfully Charlotte has an absolute ridiculous amount of Defense. Like stupidly high. So high that youre not really going to be taking it down with physical attacks before Charlotte takes you down. Which, luckily for us, Charlotte won in the 2nd turn.
If that was Steve or Quade, they die from revenge every single time but Charlotte survives. Technically not a close call because Charlotte survived easily but either of my others would have died. Close enough to scare me out of Mount Ember anyway.
We walk back to the boat to take us back to Vermilion. Taking out some more wild pokemon for XP. The goal is level 50 for Virridian Gym and then a couple more levels for the AssHat fight and the trek through victory road afterwards. We pick a few different places to train, Pokémon Tower briefly, Digletts Cave and Two Island. By this stage all 3 of our Pokemon are extremely close or already maxed out on Effort Values so now were just going for xp. Playing on an emulator, Ive always found it easier to farm wild Pokémon for XP instead of the VS Seeker because of the increased speed but thats just personal preference. The vs seeker also gives you money which is extremely helpful.
After a little while weve got all 3 Pokémon at level 50 and weve cleared our path to Giovanni already so we just get to waltz straight in and take him on.
The fight with Giovanni ended up pretty similar to the fight with Blaine. Very one sided. It was Charlotte this time that destroyed everything.
Leading with Charlotte we pop a couple of X Speed just so we outspeed everything and use an X Special just because we can. Thankfully, none of his Pokémon know Horn Drill even though Im pretty sure most of them could have learned it by their current levels.
Charlotte tanks all the Earthquakes from Giovannis Rhyhorn like an absolute trooper. We potion back to full health and then Charlotte sweeps. Getting first turn against everything except Dugtrio, which does very little damage as well.
Giovanni gives us the Earth badge and we heal up ready to take on AssHat for the 2nd last time.
AssHat was another one sided battle. Using Steve to blitz them all down and switching in to Quade against Alakazam to drop Perish Song to take it down. We didnt have to use any X Boosts or potions at all in this battle so hopefully thats a good sign.
At this point, Steve, Quade and Charlotte are all 51, almost 52. We breeze through Victory Road, using are preloaded Nidorino to push the boulders around for us and just Surf/Ice Beaming everything that comes our way. I think the team is really hitting their straps now thanks to the amount of grinding we did in Pokémon Tower and Digletts Cave. Theyre all hitting like trucks.
We search most of Victory Road, grab as many items as we can and head for the exit to heal up.
Weve reached the Pokémon League. Its time to complete our last grind before hitting the Elite 4 with 3 ice type Pokémon. Man, Im so hyped right now.
Im contemplating recording the Elite 4 instead of a write up. Let me know if youd rather see a video, a write up, or both.
The end of generation 1 is so close now I can taste it!
Update 10: The Elite 4
Video available here: [Only registered and activated users can see links]
Were ready to face the Eite 4. Steve, Quade and Charlotte are all at level 60. Im stocked up on items in case I need them and Ive deposited Farfetchd and Nidorino.
Its down to ice types and strategy now.
We load up our save, were already healed up and ready to go in to face Lorelai.
We start our first match against Lorelai and first up is Dewgong. I lead with Steve, my own Dewgong and start my strategy. My plan here is to use Rain Dance and then swap to Quade to take everything down with Thunder. Steve uses Rain Dance and the Lorelai uses Surf, doing very little damage.
We swap Steve for Quade and Lorelai uses Hail. Which is nothing to worry about as all our 3 Pokémon are immune to the damage but that gets rid of our rain boosted thunder plan. A quick think and we come up with another plan. Instead of Rain boosted Thunder, we decide to go with the sole X Accuracy in our pack to boost the accuracy of Thunder. We use an X Accuracy and Dewgong uses Safeguard. Next turn we bump our special attack up with an X Special and we should be plenty strong enough to take everything down already with 100 accuracy Thunder.
Quade uses Thunder, Dewgong goes down. Out comes Cloyster, Quade takes it down with Thunder. Slowbro comes out, Quade destroys it with a single Thunder as well. Jynx comes out. Thanks for rubbing that in my face Lorelai. RIP Hynx :( Quade goes for Surf, but it doesnt quite kill as Jynx uses ice punch. Ice punch does so little damage that Quade heals to full with Leftovers at the end of the turn and then KOs Jynx with Surf the very next turn. Out comes Lapras, Lorelais last Pokemon and Quade uses Thunder again. Surprisingly, Lapras survives with about 5HP and uses Confuse Ray to confuse Quade.
Considering Quade is at 100% I decide to try and just attack through confusion and use Perish Song because I know Lorelai is going to use a potion, which she does.
So now weve got 3 turns before we win this fight by default. We decide to switch to Charlotte and eat up turns with Protect. Which turns out to be a masterful switch as Lapras uses Body Slam to do a total of 18 damage, but paralyses Charlotte. We go for the protect, which gets through paralysis (we almost accidentally used Explosion which would have been a disaster) and we protect ourselves against Confuse Ray. Last turn before Lapras faints and we switch to Steve just because I dont want to be surprised by a random Electric attack to KO Charlotte. Lapras uses Surf, Steve resists it and Lapras goes down from Perish Song. 1st E4 Member down.
Next up is Bruno. We heal the paralysis from Charlotte and lead with her for this fight due to her massive Defense and start the fight. Thankfully, Bruno leads with Onix which gives us some breathing room before the fighting types come out. Were going to use Onix as fodder for boosting Charlotte for a sweep. We start with a few X Speeds but Bruno counters with Rock Tomb, which is Super Effective and also lowers Charlottes speed, bringing it back to normal. We try a couple more times to get a speed boost but Onix sticks with Rock Tomb, dropping our speed but only doing 19Hp damage. Now is a good chance to note how important Charlottes ability is to block crits.
We swap from X Speed to X Defend now to further boost Charlottes Defense. I think shes going to need the Defense boosts to survive Hitmonlee and Machamp. We get a couple of X Defend away when Onix swaps to Earthquake which is great because it wont drop our Speed. We use another X Speed and Onix uses EQ again, no speed drop, sweet. We use another X Speed and Onix uses Rock Tomb. But it misses! +2 speed now, awesome. We start using X Special and get ready to sweep. But Onix has other plans.
Onix uses Roar. And out comes Steve. All those X Boosts are now pointless. I decide just to take Onix out and remove the threat of Roar. Steve uses Surf and OHKOs it.
Hitmonchan comes out and I contemplate whether I should risk taking it out with Steve or if I should just switch to Charlotte. I end up deciding to switch to Charlotte and Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut. I send Charlotte in but shes only got 78hp. Fingers crossed the Sky Uppercut doesnt do too much.
Sky uppercut lands and it does 64hp of damage. Leaving Charlotte with a whopping 14hp. That did a lot more than Id hoped. We heal up and Hitmonchan uses Mach Punch which would have killed Charlotte if wed tried to take it out. We pump an X Special on Charlotte, theres no chance of Hitmonchan one shotting because were immune to crits. Hitmonchan uses Rock Tomb to Lower our speed and we go for an X Defend as Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut again to chunk us for a good amount. I go to use another potion but decide to use another X Defend instead. Were immune to crits and X defend will further reduce the damage so theres still no threat of death here.
Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut again and it does 30 damage. Weve reduced it down to less than half of its original damage of 64. We heal up and Hitmonchan uses sky uppercut twice more as we decide to finally start attacking. 2 sky uppercuts take us down to just under half and 1 surf takes hitmonchan down to red bar. But no one shot. Bruno heals and we use an X Speed to recover from the Rock Tomb drop and then use Surf. Charlotte outspeeds now but still no one shot as Hitmonchan survives with what has to be just 1 or 2 hp. Im tempted to heal up but decide to just use Surf again as Im predicting another potion. Bruno doesnt heal and Charlotte kills Hitmonchan. Bruno sends out Hitmonlee. A very powerful dangerous Pokémon that could easily end our run.
Im predicting High Jump Kick so we go for a protect, hoping to to get some free damage from the crash but Hitmonlee uses Brick Break instead. Next turn we hyper potion and then hit with Surf, to scope out how bulky Hitmonlee is. Surf does roughly the same as Hitmonchan so 2 Surf will easily KO it. Hitmonlee uses Brick Break twice but only does about 22hp each time and we take it out.
Machamp comes out and we heal just for safety. Machamp starts off with Scary Face, which is good for us. No damage. We go for Ice Beam which does about 75% as Machamp uses Cross Chop. Which does a good chunk of about 40hp damage. Still, not enough to worry us.
Machamp uses Cross Chop again but MISSS! We go for another Ice Beam and Machamp goes down. Brunos last Onix comes out, does very little with Earthquake and then dies to a single surf. Brunos down.
2 down, 2 to go.
Before we face Agatha, we heal up and swap Quade to lead. We start first turn with an X Special as Gengar uses toxic. Great, more toxic shenanigans. We decide against healing for now and use another X Special and an X speed while Gengar uses double team, twice. Im over here getting Flashbacks to Koga. I use another X Speed and again, Gengar uses double team to take himself to +3 evasion.
We go for a full restore next turn to get rid of the poison and take us back to full hp. These things are way overpowered against poison users. Again, Gengar uses Double Team, +4 evasion now. Im not a big fan of taking on Gengar with any more evasion so I start heading for Surf. Miss. Balls.
Gengar uses Confuse Ray and now im definitely getting Koga flashbacks and Im not enjoying it one bit. We go for Surf trying to get through confusion but it doesnt work. Quade hurts himself and Gengar uses toxic again. Again, we try to surf through confusion but it fails again, we take damage from confusion and poison AND Gengar uses Double team again.
We use another Full Restore to fill our hp and remove poison and confusion, Gengar finishes his evasion stacking and uses Double Team to take himself to +6 evasion. Quade is at full hp and no status so I really need to start trying to take this Gengar down. Luckily, the X Speed we used first up gives us enough Speed to go first and Quade uses Surf...
It hits! Gengar dies!
From there, Quade goes on a rampage, One Shotting all the rest of Agathas Pokémon before they even get a chance to move. Agatha down!
3 down, 1 to go.
We head up to Lance, dont even need to heal as Quade still has full hp. We lead with Quade again and use Thunder against Gyarados, which hits first turn and OHKOs Gyarados. Aerodactyl comes out and uses Ancient Power, does some decent damage and gets the full stat boosts. Not good.
Quade uses Ice Beam, which is x4 super effectiveness so even with the ancient power boosts, it still kills Aerodactyl, it did crit so maybe that helped but it was a super powered Ice Beam so probably wouldnt have mattered. Lance then sends out Dragonair, it gets one shot from ice beam, 2nd Dragonair, same thing and finally, Dragonite comes out. Which always gave me grief back in the day. But this time, Quade takes it down with a single Ice Beam and weve beaten Lance.
Weve beaten the Elite 4! Weve just got AssHat to go. Note: theres also a little Easter egg in the AssHat fight coming up. Shoutout if you find it!
Before we start the fight with AssHat we heal up and swap Charlotte to lead. We started our game with a Shellder, were going to finish it with a Cloyster.
Pidgeot comes out first and Charlotte OHKOs with a first turn Ice Beam. Pidgeot must have been going to use Whirlwind with negative priority. AssHat sends out Rhydon, Charlotte KOs it with a single Surf. Exeggutor is next, but also dies to a single Ice Beam. The EV training at Pokémon Tower really coming into play now.
Alakazam is next and we use Protect with Charlotte to scout out what hes going to do. Charlotte Protects against Psychic. I have no intention of losing Charlotte now so we swap to Quade as Alakazam uses Reflect. Alakazam uses Psychic to do a good chunk of damage and Quade uses Ice Beam and lands a freeze!
The freeze actually does nothing though as Alakazam defrosts the very next turn and uses Psychic again. Leaving Quade at 100hp, enough to take out Alakazam with another Ice Beam.
AssHat sends out Gyarados but Quade knows exactly what to do and takes it down with a perfectly executed Thunder after we do a quick heal.
AssHat sends out his last Pokemon. Charizard. The bastard the killed Rex. And its time for my revenge to come full circle.
We swap Quade out and send out Steve as Charizard goes for Fire Blast which does a whole 43 damage, reduced to 32 after Steve recovers with Leftovers.
Steve uses Rain Dance to further reduce the power of Fire Blast and boost his water damage after Charizard goes for another fire blast.
Were sitting with Steve at 127/191hp, rain is up and Charizard is at full health. Its time.
Charizard decides Fire Blast isnt cutting it and goes for Aerial Ace which leaves Steve at 88. Steve uses Surf and does about 80% damage to Charizard. Steve recovers with leftovers and Charizard recovers with a Sitrus Berry.
Charizard uses Aerial Ace again, taking Steve down to 60hp. And Steve uses Surf...
And Charizard dies.
We are victorious!
AssHat has lost his mantle as Pokémon League Champion and we steal it from him using just 3 ice type Pokémon!
And with that the first leg of our generations run is complete! We can now move to generation 2 where we get access to another couple of ice type Pokémon!
Lets do a quick recap of our first leg.
Deaths: 2 - Hynx and Rex. Hynx to a crit Self Destruct against Koga and Rex to a Flamethrower from AssHats Charizard in the Silph co.
Pokémon used: Rex - Cloyster, Hynx - Jynx, Quade - Lapras, Steve - Dewgong and Charlotte - Cloyster.
Easiest gyms: Celadon, Cinnabar and Viridian were the easiest by far.
Hardest Gyms: Cerulean Misty and Fuchsia Koga. Saffron Sabrina would have been more difficult if I didnt use X Boosts and Vermilion Surge would have been impossible if i didnt have Hynx.
Saddest death: Hynx to the crit.
Biggest heart attack: the Raticate before Vermilion.
Happiest moment: Rex finally beating Misty.
MVP: Very hard to pick just one. Charlotte was MVP against Bruno, Quade against Lorelai and Lance and Steve made Charizard a walk in the park. If we can only pick one, its got to be Quade, Thunder and Perish Song just brought so much to the table. Landing consecutive Thunders against Lance and AssHats Gyarados were clutch.
Quade definitely deserves the MVP, taking our team from the brink of defeat after losing 2 members in quick succession.
Next up, Heart Gold and Generation 2. We get to start with Quade, Steve and Charlotte!
I hope you all enjoyed the first leg! Im planning on doing more and will continue to update this thread for as long as I can!
Im going to be attempting to complete a game from every generation, right up to Sun and Moon in Nuzlocke form only using Ice types.
What is a Nuzlocke?
A Nuzlocke is player defined a challenge mode designed to make Pokémon games more challenging. Most Nuzlocke challenges have different rules based on how challenging the player wants to make the game. Most Nuzlocke challenges at least have the following rules;
- when your Pokémon feints, you must release it (or box it permanently in a death box).
- you can only catch the first Pokémon you encounter on each route/area.
- you must nickname all Pokémon you catch
These are the basic rules for any Nuzlocke challenge. They can be edited adding more rules but these are essentially what makes the runs fun.
What is a generations Nuzlocke?
A generations run is where your Pokémon that you finish the game with carry over to the next generation. For example if I complete Pokémon Red with Gyarados, Dragonite and Charizard, I would then start Pokémon Gold with Magikarp, Dratini and Charmander all at the lowest level available or in an egg if possible. Why is this fun? It just adds an extra element in falling in love with some of your party members. Taking a Pidgey family from the first route after Pallet Town in Pokemon Red all the way to Pokémon Black is very fun and rewarding
Why Ice type?
Ive wanted to do an ice type generations run for a while now. Ice has always been on my list of runs to do for fun factor. Ice is a very strong yet fragile type. It has a lot of strengths and hits a lot of different types for super effective damage. However it also has a lot of weaknesses and weaknesses to very common types of Fighting, Fire and Rock. Can you imagine taking on Whitneys Miltank when its throwing out super-effective rollouts? Yeah, its going to be rough.
My rules
- once a Pokémon has fainted it will be deemed dead and will be placed into a death box in the PC so I can look upon my failures at the end of each run.
- all pokemon must be nicknamed
- the highest level of my Pokémon cannot exceed that of the next gym leaders ace Pokémon. In Heartgold, the first gym leader, Falkners Ace is Pidgeotto at level 9. None of my Pokémon may level passed level 9 before facing Falkner (any Pokémon that exceeds this level before the fight must be boxed before fighting the leader. Levelling past this cap during the fight is allowed.)
- I have one attempt to catch each available ice type Pokémon in each generation. Given the low number of ice types available I will be limiting myself to one encounter of each ice type (or earlier family) in each game. If I make it faint during my attempted catching, I have missed my chance and that Pokémon cannot be used.
- only pokemon with ice as a main type or sub type can be used. The only exception to this rule is when a first evolution of an ice type family does not have ice as a sub type. Eg Dewgong is water/ice but Seel is pure water. Seel can still be used. The only other exception to this rule is when Ice type Pokémon can be obtained via in game trade. In which case, I have one attempt to catch the required Pokémon to perform the in game trade. If I faint it, I cannot trade for the ice type. This only has a couple of possibilities, two being in generation 1 and trading for Jynx in Cerulean and Dewgong on Cinnebar Island.
- in later generations, Eevee can be used but must be evolved into Glaceon at first available opportunity. Even if that requires trekking out of the way of the story. Eevee can not be used in generations before Glaceon is available.
- pokemon can be caught and taught HM moves in order to progress. Also, one flying type can be caught and taught fly. This is supposed to be a challenge mode not a walking simulator.
- in order to start in Generation 1, given that no ice types are available for a long time I will be hacking my first Pokémon into the game at level 5. What this Pokémon is will be decided by RNG but will be a first evolution. Eg Seel, Shellder, Jynx, Lapras
- duplicate Pokémon cannot be used in the same party. Eg if I have Dewgong in my party and encounter a wild Seel, I can catch the seal and box it but cannot use it until my current Dewgong faints.
I will be using this thread as a bit of a journal with updates as I journey through. Let me know what you think about my rules and if I should make any adjustments.
Part 1 - Fire Red
About to RNG my starter. If I roll 1-10 Ill use Jynx, 11-49 Ill use Seel, 50-89 Ill use Shellder, 90-100 Ill use Lapras. I adjusted the weighting as starting with a Lapras will probably be overkill.
AND MY NUMBER IS 73 - Shellder it is!
Run update 1 - Pallet Town to Pewter City
Welcome to my first run update!
It started off fairly well. I got Shellder and nicknamed him Rex. Together, me and Rex were destined for great things. I started off fairly worried when Rex was at level 7 and still only knew withdraw and Tackle, hoping, praying that he would learn Water Gun or similar before I took on Brock. At level 8 he learned Icicle Spear, which, before It got updated around Gen 5 or 6 was a very, very ordinary move. 10 base power with a chance to hit up to 5 times with an average of around 3.4 hits each time its used. With that average, its weaker than tackle!
Armed with 2 very week attacking moves Rex and I moved into Viridian Forest after some excessive grinding just below Viridian City. Viridian Forest started off about as normally as can be expected. Until Rex got poisoned, twice. Luckily I had prepared for that and ending up stocking up on Potions and Antidotes. After some running backwards and forwards to the Viridian Pokémon Center to heal up, we ended up making it through to Pewter City, with Rex reaching the ripe old level of 11.
I double check the max level of Onix online_ and find that I can grind to 14 so off we go. In the meantime, Rex reaches level 14 and learns Supersonic. We hit level 14 and go hit up Brock.
The battle was pure carnage for Rex. Poor Geodude had nothing to do to Rex. Rex just maximised his Defense using Withdraw and then hit Geodude with 2 Icicle Spears for the KO. Onix came out and Rex hits him straight off the bat with a 5 hit Icicle Spear. Leaving Onix at about 15% hp. Onix used Rock Tomb, doing about 3hp damage (withdraw OP) and Rex finishes him off with another Icicle Spear.
First badge acquired!
Run update 2!
Brock went down so easily I was really happy with the way Rex handled himself. Next stop is Mount Moon before heading onto Cerulean City and Misty. Before I head off out of Pewter, I load up with a few more potions, antidotes and a couple of escape ropes in case i need them for Mount Moon.
Heading off into Route 3 and my Antidotes come in handy against the very first trainer. His stupid Weedle poisoned Rex, twice. Rex hit level 16 after this battle and I had a quick look at what level Misty's Starmie is before I get to Cerulean. Level 21, so I can't level passed 21 before Misty. I start skipping as many trainers as I can to save xp. If I need it i'll smash some of the hikers up North of Cerulean towards Bill's House. I stop off in the last bit of grass before Mount Moon and catch a Spearow that I'll trade for Farfetch'd in Vermilion when I get there, Farfetch'd will be my Fly and Cut HM slave and won't ever see battle so as to keep with the Ice mono type.
I heal up Rex at the Pokemon Center and enter Mount Moon. Rex still isn't the strongest offensively, he still only knows Tackle, Withdraw, Icicle Spear and now Supersonic, which will come in extremely handy in the future ;) I head
East in Mount Moon and then South a bit and head towards a Rare Candy when I accidentally encounter Super Nerd Jovan. I wasn't too worried, about any encounters in here until he sent out his Magnemite. I'm not sure how much you know about Shellder but his defense is absolutely outstanding! His special defense however is absolutely abysmal! This Magnemite knows a super effective Thundershock that leaves me with 7hp and heart palpatations!
I heal up with a Super Potion and Magnemite goes for Thunder Wave. MISS! Luck is on my side! I hit Magnemite with another Tackle, Icicle Spear is a stronger option only if it gets 4 or 5 hits, not risking it in this battle so I'm just going for the standard Tackle. Magnemite uses Thundershock again and I heal up with another Super Potion. I've only got one left and any crit will kill me. I tackle once more, one more tackle will take out Magnemite. Magnemite uses Thunder Wave and unfortunately it doesn't miss this time so Rex is paralyzed, but luckily, has full hp. Here, I have to make a decision to try and tackle through Paralysis or to heal paralysis and hope he doesn't paralyze with Thundershock. I decide not to heal and leave my life in RNGesus' hands. RNGesus is kind today and Rex manages to land a Tackle through Paralysis and take down Magnemite, not before Magnemite lands a high roll and leaves Rex with 2hp from full health. My god, my butthole is clenched so tight right now.
I breathe a sigh of relief when i realise this guy still has another Pokemon. If it's another Magnemite my run is dead for sure. In my saving grace, Voltorb is sent out. Thankfully, he doesn't learn any Electric moves until 21 so I should be safe, except the 2hp thing. I heal up using my last Super Potion and Voltorb uses Charge, meh, he doesn't know any electric moves anyway. I cure paralysis, just in case, and start Tackling. After a short few Tackles, Voltorb goes down and my relief is immeasurable. I've decided I really hate Super Nerd Jovan. I run up grab another Escape Rope and the Rare Candy and then Escape Rope out to heal and regroup. I head back to Pewter to grab another couple of Potions with what money i do have and then head back to Mt. Moon. The rest of Mt.Moon goes fairly smoothly with only a small hiccup at the end with Koffing poisoning Rex but I was ready for that with an Antidote.
I leave Mt.Moon and head into Cerulean. Rex is at level 18 so i've got a bit of lee-way with xp. I'll hit up Nugget Bridge next to load up on Potions before Misty, which will quite possibly be one of the 2 most difficult fights in the whole run.
Till next time!
Update 3 Cerulean gym. We get a new member!
The first thing we do as we get to Cerulean is head to the Pokémon Center and heal Rex. Hell likely need it for the next battle, which will be my rival, AssHat at nugget bridge.
Before we head to the bridge, I grab the Rare Candy to add to my stash. I head on over to fight my rival, at this point, Im not actually sure what to expect from this fight.
First up, AssHat sends out his Pidgeotto, which had absolutely nothing against Rex and his Icicle Spear, which hit 4 times and left Pidgeotto with enough
HP to be taken out the next turn with another 2 hits from Ice Spear.
After Pidgeotto went down, Rattata came out and tried to threaten Rex with Crit Hyper Fangs, which normally would have been scary, but Rex has better Defense than a catholic priest in a court room, so I wasnt worried. A few tackles later and a potion for safety, Rattata went down and out comes Charmander.
First turn, Charmander uses Ember, which, although was Not Very Effective, still did a surprising amount of damage given Rexs atrocity of a special Defense stat. Its at this point I realise that Misty and Starmie are going to be extremely difficult. Perhaps even a virtually impossible fight if Starmie has confusion and can OHKO. But I need to get through this battle first. Due to Rex still not having learned any water type attacks yet all he could do was tackle, but that was good enough to take Charmander down, again, using a Potion for safety. Abra was the last one to come out, which only knows teleport so that was the end of the battle. Not too much difficulty there which was nice. And Rex hits level 19, very close to 20.
I head back down to the Pokemon Center and heal up then head back up to Nugget Bridge for some more training. Rex took all the trainers down without too much fuss, except the double poison he suffered against the jerk with both Nidorans and Poison Point ability :( we reached the end of Nugget Bridge and grabbed the Nugget and Rex hit level 21 and about 2/3 exp bar to 22.
We make our way to the poke mart to stock up before our fight with Misty and Im fairly sure Im going to only have one method of winning this fight and its not going to be pretty.
After selling literally everything I have, TMs included I load up on as many Super Potions and Potions as I can and head on up to the gym. Thankfully, you can skip all extra trainers in this gym and go straight to the leader. I likely would have overlevelled Misty if I had to fight any of her other trainers so that was lucky.
I initiate the fight with Misty and out comes Staryu. Basically Staryu is the initiation for this fight. Whatever Staryu does, Starmie is going to do twice as hard. Im not expecting too much trouble from Staryu as it only has Tackle, which wont do much, harden and Water Pulse which shouldnt do much either because of resistance.
Rex starts off by confusing Staryu with supersonic but Staryu still manages to get Harden off twice and snap out of confusion on the 3rd turn. Hopefully this isnt a sign of bad RNG in this fight. Rex misses the supersonic and Staryu uses Harden again, which isnt exactly ideal. Now Staryu is at +3 Defense which means my Tackles wont be doing much either. I go for the supersonic again and land the confusion this time, and Staryu hits itself! Fantastic!
Rex hits Staryu with another tackle, which takes it down to half health, and drops even further when it hits itself in confusion the next turn. Rex tackles again, Staryu makes it through confusion and uses Water Pulse. I really wasnt expecting that due to resistance, but damn! That actually did a good chunk of damage to Rex! This doesnt exactly fill me with confidence when Starmie comes out. But then, Ive still got my secret weapons.
Misty ends up using a Super Potion on Staryu and I burn a couple of mine and a regular potion on Rex, keeping him topped up with health before Starmie comes out. My strategy for Staryu was basically just keep him confused and whittle him down with tackle. Misty ended up using 2 potions which means she shouldnt have any left to use on Starmie.
Eventually Staryu goes down, Rex levels up to 22, learns Auroroa Beam at the expense of Icicle Spear and Starmie makes its appearance. This is where the fight gets tediously boring so Ill skip to the chase.
Starmie uses Water Pulse and does serious damage. Even with resistance Starmie is chunking Rex from 68 Hp all the way down to 22. My secret weapon in this fight is.... Super Potions. The only strategy I could come up with to beat Starmie was to confuse it and keep using super potions until it either ran out of Water Pulse pp or killed itself through confusion. Its not my proudest fight, but Rexs special Defense is that bad that it was literally the only way i could win.
And win we did. After what felt like an eternity, Starmie did run out of Water Pulse PP, which was good timing as I had just run out of Super Potions and was about to start using regular Potions. Starmie stArting using tackle and it was all Rexs fight from there.
Starmie goes down and we get our 2nd badge!
To celebrate our 2nd badge, we use a couple of dubious measures to get a Poliwhirl and end up trading it for Hynx aka Jynx. The Psychic/ice type and quite literally the only way Im going to beat LT. Surge in Vermilion gym.
Which well be getting to in the next run update. Stay tuned, the next one will be up sooner than the rest. From this point Im writing from memory as I skipped ahead a bit and am currently sitting in Saffron City gym heading towards Sabrina so Ive got a bit to catch you guys up on. Including sad, sad deaths :(
Update 4: Cerulean City - S.S Anne & Vermillion City
Rex gets a well earned rest after the battle with Misty as Hynx takes the lead and we get some training done. The next gym battle is against Surge at level 24 so weve got a bit of training to do, luckily, weve got a lot of trainers north of Cerulean as well as the SS Anne. Hynx is only level 8 though so we start off murdering some Spearows, Ekans and Sandshrews in the grass just west of Cerulean and then move up to murdering Oddish, Kakuna and Pidgey. The levelling process is fairly smooth with Hynx as she knows Powder Snow and Lovely Kiss so we just put everything to sleep with Lovely Kiss and knock em out with Powder Snow.
Its not long before Hynx has taken down all the trainers north of Cerulean, weve gotten the SS Ticket from Bill and retrieved the Dig TM. Ive always found it weird how that dude was all like THEM ROCKETS STOLE MY DIG TM, WHAT YOU GOT IT BACK? Its ok you can keep it. Like dude, did you want it back or not?
Anyway, we soldier on with Hynx, Rex still chilling (haha get it? Its an ice run and I said chilling.... sorry, Ill stop now) in his Pokeball and Spearow ripe and ready to trade for Farfetchd in Vermilion.
As were making our way through Route 6 just north of Vermilion, Hynx just laughing at everything that gets in the way, we get into a battle with Camper Jeff. Who starts off with a Spearow, who is dead on arrival. Hynx Powder Snows his feathery ass. Useless fact: Spearow was the first shiny I ever caught back in Original gold, I nicknamed it Eggy. Jeff then sends out Raticate and I have a momentary heart attack.
Now before I go into what happens here, I just want to bring attention to my current 2 Pokémon. Jynx and Shellder. Ive already talked about Shellders abysmal Special Defense stats and monsterous Defense stats in previous updates but the important thing here is Jynxs stats. Theyre virtually complete mirror images of Shellders. Shellder has great Defense bad special Defense, Jynx has great special Defense and bad Defense. They compliment each other really, really well. Up until this Raticate decides to use Hyper Fang on Hynx. And it crits. Like it actually crits. A STAB (same type attack bonus) crit hyper fang from a Raticate against a low Defense Hynx. Up until this point, Ive been really lucky with crits. And by lucky I mean I didnt actually realise Rex is ammune to crits because of his ability, which turns out, was most likely a huge factor in not losing to Misty.
Luckily for my run, and Hynx, I healed Hynx up to full after a fight with a bug catchers Butterfree not long before this one. Had Hynx not had full hp, and Im talking if she had 3hp less than full, my run would be over. Yep, Hynx was left with 3hp.
3 goddam hp.
I promptly switch out and Rex comes out of hibernation and Raticate uses Hyper Fang again. Which does 16 damage, Rex laughs at another Hyper Fang miss and then kills Raticate with Water Pulse, learned from the TM Misty gave us.
The battle finishes and we head straight into the Pokémon Center in Vermilion. Still hardly believing how ridiculously close we came to wiping. If Hynx died we wouldnt have wiped that battle, Rex would have cleaned it up, but Surge is a completely impossible fight for Rex. Super Effective Shock Waves that cannot miss are all going to one shot Rex so its quite literally an impossible fight unless Shock Wave doesnt get used and Rex doesnt get paralysed from Thunder Wave, and Rex doesnt miss at all and yeah, like 99.99999% chance of losing with Rex solo.
We survive though and head on in to the SS Anne, making a quick stop at the Mart to restock on some potions and a couple of other things just in case. We make our way through the ship, picking up a couple of potions, a couple of berries and a Rare Candy for our trouble and we find AssHat again. Urgh, this guy.
AssHat is really not difficult at all now. Hynx takes down his Pidgeotto, Rex comes in and takes out Charmeleon, Hynx comes back in and takes out Kadabra and the rest follow suit. We give the Captain a questionable massage and he gives us the Cut HM. I dont know about you but a 10 year old kid getting an item for giving a sailor a massage just doesnt seem right to me.
We trudge on out of the ship, it departs and we head on into Digletts Cave to grind out the last little bit of Xp on Rex, he hits 24 and Hynx is 22. We head back to the Pokémon Center, heal up, trade our Spearow for Farfetchd, teach him cut and head into the gym. This gym always brings back bad memories from when I was a kid. I hated the trash cans. I hated them so much I would just leave Vermilion Gym till last. One of the very few times you can actually skip a gym, it only gives you fly access and not actually needed.
This time however, we head in and take out a few trainers with Hynx which bumps him up to 23. After about 10minutes of wandering around opening the first lock and resetting it we hit the jackpot and the door opens. We trek back to Digletts Cave and grind Hynx up to 24, close enough to 25 that shell level up after Surges first Pokémon, theres strategy involved there ;)
While grinding we encounter a Dugtrio. Now these Dugtrio are absolute pains in the ass. Theyre always level 28+, fast and hit like an absolute truck. Oh, and they can have Arena Trap ability meaning you cannot run away. They can single handedly end your runs if youre not prepared.
We were prepared though. I go into my bag and just toss out a Poke Doll. These handy things first show up in Vermilion Mart. Something I found extremely handy and Im positive they were put in there purely because Diglett can have Arena Trap. We finish grinding Digletts Cave, heal up and head on in to fight Surge.
For what would have been an impossible fight with Rex, Hynx actually makes this fight ridiculously easy. Not only does Hynx have a high special Defense stat, shes the ONLY Ice type in gen 1 to not be weak to electric.
Voltorb is Surges first Pokémon, who uses Screech as his first move. And doesnt get another chance as Hynx puts Voltorb to sleep and proceeds to take it out with a few Powder Snows and hits level 25 once Voltorb faints.
Heres where my extra strategy comes into play. The extra stats from level 24-25 are minuscule but Hynx learns a new move at level 25. Ice Punch. One major benefit to this generation is they havent gone through the Physical/Special attack split yet, so some moves, like Ice Punch that have been changed to physical moves in future generations are still Special attacks in gen 3 and lower. Meaning Ice Punch is a base power 75 ice type special attack and combined with Hynxs STAB, it actually turns into one of the strongest possible attacks this early in the game. The others all being normal types EG mega punch, mega kick from move tutors near Mt.Moon and Hyper Fang from Raticate.
Ice Punch one shots Surges Pikachu and a double tap on Raichu gives Hynx the W and I slot another badge onto the belt. Hynx, the Most Valuable Pokemon probably for the run so far. Only pipping Rex because Rex wouldnt have been able to do this gym.
We head on out of the gym and heal up at the Pokémon Center before heading off towards Rock Tunnel. Our next gym is Erika at level 29 so we dont have a huge amount of wiggle room with our Xp through Rock Tunnel to Celadon City so well try and avoid as much as we can.
So far weve got 3 badges, and no deaths. Unfortunately the no deaths thing doesnt last forever. But well get to that in the next couple of updates.
Next update will come soon!
Update 5: Vermilion City to Pokemon Tower
So far weve taken down Brock, Misty and Lt.Surge with Rex and Hynx. But weve still got a long, long way to go. Thi run has been going for close to 2 weeks already and Im a good few badges behind in the write up. Im going to skip some of the boring bits and just get through to where the action is i.e the gym battles and random difficult encounters.
Weve finished at Vermilion City and obtained our bicycle so we start making our way towards Rock Tunnel, picking up a couple of escape ropes in case we run into trouble. Now that the levels of trainers are starting to get a bit higher, rock type Pokémon will start throwing out Rock type attacks, which will be super-effective, so thats something to watch for in the Rock Tunnel, mainly for Hynx as Rex still isnt Ice type just yet. We work our way through the little maze of rocks, walls and trainers as we journey closer to Rock Tunnel. Eventually we make it there, heal up at the Pokémon Center and enter the cave, using cut to bypass the trainer at the bottom of the map ;).
Due to it being so dark, and not having access to flash, Rock Tunnel could easily turn into a bit of a nightmare if youre not properly prepared. However were pretty well stocked on potions and cures at the moment, with a couple of escape ropes and poke dolls in case things go south really quickly.
We spent a grand total of about 15minutes wandering around the darkness, randomly running into walls and using them to point us in the right direction. There was nearly no trouble with Rock Tunnel at all except for using 1 escape rope to head back and heal after a trainer had 2 Slowpokes, who resist all my attacking moves at the moment and both Rex and Hynx decided they were going to attack themselves instead of the Slowpoke. Losing a Pokémon in Rock Tunnel would be embarrassing. Lucky for us, after we heal up and head back into the cave, the rest of the tunnel goes as smoothly as you can ask for and we finally find the exit and enter Lavender Town.
This is probably the most exciting part of the run apart from the Elite 4. Once you get to Lavender and then Celadon City the whole game virtually opens up. Theres a lot of things to do, between the department store, game corner, saffron city, Pokémon Tower theres just so much stuff to do.
We quickly heal up at Lavender and Trek on to Celadon, managing your avoid most of the trainers along the way to conserve XP for Erika at the next gym. We enter Celadon, hit the Pokémon Center quickly and then survey our options. The first thing we do is head down to the gym and scope out how many trainers are in there and take out a couple with Hynx while were there. After we take a couple down we head back out of the gym and pick up the coin case. Before we head to the game corner Ive got some purchases to make at the department store.
First stop, floor 4. A Water stone for Rex hes earned it. Our very first evolution of our generations run. Rex is now a Cloyster!
While were at the mart, we teach Hynx Counter, not sure why, it was there and might come in handy, were stocked up on potions at the moment so we grab some X items instead, loading up on Defense, speed and special attack X boosters for now. Well get more as we get some more money.
After the department store we make our way to the game corner and start some gambling. Theres a couple of upgrades i can grab here. One of the majors being TM13 - Ice Beam and the other being Mystic Water, a hold item to boost the power of water attacks.
We run around the game corner, grabbing the free coins available, take out the Rocket Grunt guarding the poster for more money, then buy some more coins and start farming coins. We need about 15,000 coins to get everything we need and have a couple of TMs leftover. I like grabbing a couple of extra TMs so I can delete them and reteach them for specific fights or for extra PP if I get really desperate. Them big brain strats.
I jump on Amazon Prime, load up an episode of The Boys and start farming. Thank god for playing on an emulator and having speed increase! After a while were up to 3,500 so we go load up with 3x Mystic Waters. We got 3 so we can give one to each of our water/ice types once we get them and dont have to swap the items around. Back to the game corner, and Ive just found out that pressing R automatically restarts the reels with your last lines. FML. Ive been pressing down to get max lines for like the last 10 years. I max out on coins twice before the episode finishes so we load up on Ice Beam TMs and head on out.
Before heading to the gym, we head over to Celadon Mansion, grab the Tea, give it to the guards to get into Saffron. A quick heal at the Pokémon Center to open the fly route and then we head over a couple of houses for our secret weapon against Erika and head back to Celadon.
Before hitting the gym we go run through the Rocket Hideout in the game corner to max out Hynx and Rex at 29 for Erika. Nothing much happens there, neither Hynx nor Rex have any issues thanks to Ice Beam. We take out Giovanni for the first time, head out for a heal and then head to the gym.
We use Ice Beam with Hynx to destroy a couple of trainers on our way to Erika and start the battle with Erika. This fight was probably the most one sided gym fight so far. Hynx used Ice Beam once and the our secret weapon, Psychic against everything else. Grass/Poison against STAB Psychic from Hynx? Nothing survived. Vileplume was the only one to not get one shot but didnt provide any issues either. 2nd gym in a row where Rex got to watch from the sidelines.
4th badge acquired!
We duck over to the west of Celadon and pick up the Fly HM and teach it to Farfetchd, he doesnt get a nickname because hes technically not part of the run, and we fly back to Lavender Town and heal. Next up, Pokémon Tower and another battle with AssHat.
Not much to report on the battle with AssHat, we use Hynx to take out Pidgeotto first to force Charmeleon out, we switch to Rex and destroy Charmeleon with Water Pulse. Biggest issue here is Ember did a reasonable chunk to Rex. Nothing worth a potion, just something to consider in future battles. We switch back to Hynx to take out Exeggcute (interesting that he has Exeggcute only available from the Safari Zone which is in Fuchsia, currently blocked by Snorlax... I call hax) and then Gyarados and finally Kadabra. All of who go down quite easily with Psychic. A few extra levels above helps too.
Once AssHat finishes boasting about how many Pokémon hes caught (like dude Ive taken all yours out with 2 Pokémon so far) we make our way up through the tower just Psychicing everything. Pokémon Tower is a great spot for EV training your special attackers too with Gastly and Haunter both giving Sp.Attack EVs.
Its not long before we encounter Marowak, Rex puts it to rest and Hynx destroys the Rockets on the top floor to save Mr Pokémon. All in all, quite easy with Psychic and Ice Beam.
Next up Fuchsia City gym and Silph Co... after this next update well be caught up to where I am now. Remember when I said deaths? Yep, theyre coming [emoji24][emoji24][emoji24]
Update 6: Lavender Town to Fuchsia City Gym
Now that weve cleared the Pokémon Tower and received the Poke Flute from Mr. Pokémon (if that even is his real name) the rest of the game opens up to us. And theres so much we can do. First, we head south of Lavender and wake the Snorlax up and just run from it as theres really no benefit to fighting it. If it was holding Leftovers I would have used some sort of strategy to get them but nope, only a berry :(
After we get passed Snorlax we cruise on down through route 12, using Rex to take out a plethora of bird keepers and campers. Not much to write about here except I flew back to Lavender to heal up a couple of times just as a precaution. You can never be too careful in a Nuzlocke run.
Eventually we enter Fuchsia, heal at the Pokémon Center and head straight to the safari zone. Twisting and turning through the safari zone we catch a Nidorina to teach it Strength and make our way to the centre house for the hidden prize, and one of the most important items of our whole run, HM03 - Surf, we grab the Gold Teeth to give to the Warden and then head on out.
Rex learns Surf in place of Water Pulse and now his kit is looking much more dangerous. Surf, Ice Beam, Supersonic and Protect. Ive found Protect very helpful in previous Nuzlockes as it gives you a chance to scout potential attacks that may surprise you. Plus, it gave Rex the added bonus of ignoring Dig while grinding some XP in Digletts Cave.
Kogas Ace is a level 43 Weezing, and the gym immediately following is Sabrina also at level 43 so theres a bit of juggling of XP and levels required here. Im going to have to partially clear the Silph Co for XP, beat Koga, finish Silph Co and then beat Sabrina. AssHat shouldnt be an issue in Silph Co because his Charizard will only be level 40 and Rex now has Surf.
We head into the Silph Co and start clearing. Mainly using Hynx for now as she is going to be the most important member for the next couple of gyms. STAB Psychics against Koga and resistance against Sabrinas Psychic types will be important. Hynx is making very short work of all these Rocket Grunts considering most of them have some form of Ekans Zubat combination with a few Rattata and Raticates thrown in that Rex deals with, yes Ive learned from the incident near Vermilion. Hynx dings to level 40 and Rex is sitting at 37 at the moment, which should be plenty to take down Koga with Psychic. We clear everything up to AssHat but leave him till after Koga for strategic reasons.
Back to Fuchsia we go and head to the gym. Running into a trainer with a Drowzee and a Hypno we actually gave me a bit of trouble. After dealing with him, we heal and then make our way to Koga. Starting the battle Koga leads with Koffing, no real dramas here as long as we dont get poisoned. Thinking strategy here I go for an X Speed, making sure we out speed everything so we can just land Psychic straight up.
Disaster. Absolute carnage in my brain right now as I watch Koffing use Self Destruct.
Goddam Self Destruct and a god damn Crit. Self Destruct and Explosion crits should not be a thing. Koffing uses self destruct and I watch in horror as the words Critical Hit pop up on my screen. Only mere moments after watching Hynxs HP bar deplete. To zero.
Hynx is dead.
Gone.
Im shook. Hynx was such an important piece of this puzzle, of my strategy. She single handedly took down Surge and Erika and would have done the same if I used Psychic instead of an X Speed.
I send out Rex and Koga sends out Muk. Im still a bit shaken and cant actually believe what just happened. The rest of this fight just got a lot, lot harder. Rex is level 38, Muk is 39 and I know Kogas Weezing is 43. Were in trouble.
The only saving grace is this situation is that Rex has crazy Defense and All poison attacks are considered Physical in this generation, so while Muk and Weezing might be throwing out super powered Sludges, Rex SHOULD be able to tank them like a pro. Again, poison could be an issue.
Before we start looking at options for the rest of the battle. I take a quick mental break. I grab a coffee, contemplating just how in the actual crap I am supposed to finish this run now.
Enough of that, Ive got to focus on finishing this fight before getting too far ahead of myself.
Rex launches into Muk with Surf and it does a bit less than a quarter of Muks hp in damage. I was really hoping for more but I guess Muk has pretty decent Sp.Defense. Muk uses Acid Armor which is fine as I dont have any Physical moves, feel free to use that again a few more times Koga. Its at this point I wish I grabbed a couple of Guard Specs when I had the chance. I could have used them to avoid poison and wouldnt have to worry at all about Toxic. Which is exactly what happens next.
Rex uses Surf again and Muk poisons with Toxic. Toxic isnt too bad as long as you dont let it get out of hand. I decide to let Toxic run for another turn while hitting Muk with another Surf and Muk uses Minimise.
Great.
Koga has an absolute pain in the ass strategy of using toxic and then increasing evasion to burn turns for toxic, which i guess makes sense for a Ninja if you really think about it.
Next turn we heal our Poison and Muk uses Sludge. It actually chunks Rex fairly decently, meaning I have to use a potion next turn as Muk poisons with Toxic again.
I let toxic run another turn and hit with Surf again, Muk uses Minimise again. Next turn I heal poison and Koga uses a potion. FML I hate Koga. This fight is already annoying because Hynx died let alone the stupid Muk.
Muk is now at full health with +2 evasion, Rex is about 75%, no poison.
I take a minute to assess the situation. Chances are Im going to miss at some point soon, and Koga will likely use one more potion.
I check my items to see what Ive got in my bag I can use. 3 antidotes left, which isnt great, X speed, X Special, X Defend, and a couple of Full Restores.
Ok new strategy, Use X Special, healing poison and hp and try and nuke down Muk and Weezing when they come out. Muk uses toxic again, which this time Rex avoids it like he new it was time for revenge and I start pumping him full of the glorious X special boosts. Muk uses Sludge this time and I load up X special again. Muk uses sludge once more, poisons and I use another x special followed by a full restore. Muk lands toxic and I load up on another 2 x specials in the following 2 turns and then heal poison.
So now were at Muk at 100% health +2 evasion and Rex at about 80% HP, poisoned and with +4 Special Attack. I figure I may as well go for the last 2 x items so I heal poison, use another X special, heal hp and use the 6th x special. Rex now has capped Special Attack at +6 and after my last full restore hes at 100% health and no poison. Time for revenge.
Rex goes for Surf and as expected, missed. Wow. That was an anti climax. Muk poisons again with toxic and Im starting to wonder exactly how much PP toxic has. Its seriously never ending. Rex goes for Surf again and again, it misses. Muk uses sludge and at this point Im second guessing my strategy. I heal up the poison, leaving my with 1 antidote and 1 full heal left to cure poison. Muk uses sludge again, I heal up to full hp, still got 11 hyper potions so thats not an issue and Muk uses toxic. Again. Surely thats got to be the last one.
Rex goes for Surf... and....
Lands it! Muks hp starts to go down. Slowly but surely it goes down further and further. And Muk faints! Success! 2 down 2 to go!
Out comes Weezing. Odd I thought hed send that out last. Anyways, now I dont have to worry about the evasion from Muk. But Weezing will most likely be faster. Which proves true as Weezing goes first and uses Smokescreen.
*sigh* these damn evasion tactics again.
Rex still manages to land surf though and Weezing goes down! Were one Pokémon away from the Soul Badge. Koga sends out another Koffing and Rex is seriously seeing red at this point. Another Koffing. The brother of the one that killed Hynx.
I give Rex an inspirational speech about how killing this Koffing will make Hynx proud. About now destroying Kogas last pokemon will bring shame on Koga and his family.
Rex launches a Surf, which Donald Trump would only be able to describe as the worlds best Surf, so good in fact, that other countries dont have Surf as good as Rexs.
Koffing dies.
Koga gives us the Soul Badge and the toxic TM which Im tempted to sell straight away.
We turn off the increased speed weve been using on the emulator to show exactly how sad we are as we walk very slowly back to the Pokémon Center. And then to the pc.
Bills PC
Deposit.
Hynx.
Hynx is deposited into the box of death.
Rex and I heal up and then exit the Pokémon Center. We go give the warden his teeth, teach nidorino strength and grab the rare candy. It was an extremely sad sigh when we go to teach Nidorino Strength and not seeing Hynx. But unfortunately, them the breaks of a Nuzlocke run.
Were going to need more party members for the next few fights so I open the map, Rex points to spot and we both nod.
Were headed to the Seafoam Islands.
Update 7: Fuchsia City - Silph Co
Still reeling from the death of Hynx, Rex and I jump on Farfetchd and Fly back home to Pallet Town. We stop in to say a quick hello to Mom. Shes still sitting at the table, her back must be killing her by now and her posture must be absolutely atrocious. Anywho, before we head off we spend a bit of time fishing just below Pallet Town where we catch Charlotte! Charlotte is a Shellder that will stay in storage until the very slim chance that Rex doesnt make it through a fight. Sticking with my rules, Im allowed one encounter of each Pokémon and seeing as though technically I didnt actually encounter Rex he doesnt count as the one encounter for Shellder. Yes Im pulling at straws but Im sticking with it. Stupid Koffing and stupid self-destruct.
Rex uses surf and we swim down to Cinnebar Island. Weve got a couple of options here, we can do some training at the Mansion, catch a Ponyta and trade it for Seel or go to Seafoam Islands and catch a Seel. We decide to head to Seafoam Islands and catch our Seel first. Given Ive only got a maximum of about 4 or 5 possible Pokémon I can use from now until the Pokémon league I dont think the extra XP boost from using the traded Seel isnt really necessary.
We depart Cinnebar and head for Seafoam, taking out a few trainers along the way as well as a few tentacool and a Tentacruel. We arrive to the Seafoam Islands and after a bit of walking around we find our Target, Seel. A couple of Surfs and 2 great balls later, Steve joins our party!
So now weve got Rex and Steve in our party, and Charlotte chilling on the bench. While I was tempted to include Articuno in my runs given the low number of Ice types and its ability to use Fly I decided against using legendaries so we head out and leave Articuno in solitude.
We Fly to Vermilion, teach Steve Surf and he gets to work in Digletts Cave, dispatching the little moles left, right and center. Poor things had no chance. Chucking on another episode of The Boys on Amazon Prime while I grind Steve up, before the end of the first episode, Steve has already evolved into Dewgong!
We boost Steve a little bit more at Cinnebar Mansion and Fuchsia City and head back to Saffron. Weve got Steve at 40 and Rex is now 42. We climb back up the stairs of the Silph Co and find AssHat. I really should have called him An AssHat so when we fight it would say An AssHat wants to battle! Alas, you cannot fit that many characters in his naming page.
Rex leads out against AssHats Pidgeot, not caring at all about the Quick Attack it launches and takes it out with Ice Beam. Charizard comes out and we Rex gets excited and my cursor hovers over Surf. Beautiful, beautiful Surf.
So here we are again. Just trying to casually take out Charizard with Surf when Charizard uses Flamethrower.
Now for somebody thats been playing Pokémon games for literally over 20 years youd think Id be fairly knowledgeable by now about what attacks most Pokémon have and when they learn them etc. I started playing Pokémon on my game body pocket when I was like 7 years old, Ive sunk 10s of thousands of hours into different varieties of Pokémon games over the years. And yet, I was still surprised when this god damned Charizard killed Rex with a single flamethrower.
Thats right. Rex is dead. Gone. Joining Hynx in the afterlife. Im just staring blankly at the screen at the writing Rex fainted. Just blinking I still can barely believe that just happened. Like, it wasnt a crit, it was just a normal Flamethrower. I know cloyster doesnt have great special Defense but shit that took me by absolute surprise.
I really wasnt expecting that. At all. I mean I feel bad for Rex, hes been with me from the start but geez, I just got gamed. Even when Flamethrower got used I thought yeah thatll hit hard but Ill just heal or something along those lines. Yeah it hit hard. Really hard. Im just stunned. Its at this point that I really regret not choosing Charmander as my starter. I could have avoided this just by thinking about battling Charizard or Venusaur. Battling Blastoise would have been so much better. I guess this was bound to happen given the mistake of choosing Bulbasaur because it was in the first pokeball at Oaks lab. Its been a long time coming but Charizard takes revenge on all the times Rex has taken him out.
Good thing I did catch Charlotte after All. I didnt expect her to actually see the light of day but as it turns out, she will. I send out Steve and have a quick check of stats. Steve is much more rounded. Reasonable Defense, Special Defense, speed. Its all just... adequate I guess youd say. Although one of the big benefits of Steve in this situation is Thick Fat ability. Reduces incoming fire damage. In hindsight I should have used Steve but I wanted to use Rex as he hadnt seen much action recently.
I used an X Special on Steve, mostly just to scout and see how much damage Flamethrower would do. It doesnt actually do much thanks to Steves bulk and ability. It would probably take 3 maybe 4 hits total to take Steve out with Flamethrower so I use a 2nd x special and then heal to full. Charizard uses another Flamethrower, nice Flamethrower spam AssHat, and Steve takes it out with a single Surf. Alakazam comes out and uses Future Sight, Steve uses Headbutt twice and takes it out. Gyarados and Exeggcute are formalities, neither of them can do anything against Steve, his +2 surf was too strong for Gyarados and Ice Beam destroyed Exeggcute in one. AssHat takes a victim but we get the win.
Fortunately for us, while the loss of Rex leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth, we claim our final member. Quade the Lapras. Quade is going to be one of my most important members now that Hynx is gone.
We head on upstairs and Steve makes short work of Giovanni and we get a useless Master Ball. Silph Co cleared but weve taken another hit. I feel like the loss of Rex is a perfect example of why I chose Ice as my type. Theyre strong but fragile at the same time. Cloyster is bulky but fragile, if youre not careful, they can die very easily.
We trudge back to the Pokémon Center at Saffron and deposit Rex into the death box next to Hynx. Hopefully we never have to put anything in there again. We withdraw Charlotte and teach her Surf and get to grinding. Once she learns protect at level 25 well evolve her.
Weve got a fair bit of grinding to do, weve got Quade and Charlotte to grind up before we face Sabrina. At this point our team is
Quade the Lapras
Charlotte the Shellder/Cloyster
Steve the Dewgong
This is all weve got left for the rest of the run. We have the chance to replace Steve with a traded Seel if he dies but if we lose Charlotte or Quade that slot is gone for good. Its going to be extremely difficult from here on out but fortunately for us, the addition of Quade to the team brings us an extremely strong Nuzlocke win condition. Perish Song. The perish song switch combo is extremely Efficient at taking out the last Pokémon of trainers. Couple that with Protect from Charlotte and weve got ourselves a pretty reasonable strategy.
As of this point, were now up to date with where I am. Still grinding away with Quade and Charlotte, Ive been focusing on catching up with the updates more so than grinding so now that were all caught up I can do a bit more. Ill try and keep the updates more recent so Im not writing from memory as I feel my writing suffers a bit.
2 updates, 2 deaths. Fingers crossed we can get through Sabrina without too much trouble. Its going to be tough without Hynx but well try our best.
Update 8: Saffron Gym
With a renewed vigour and confidence despite losing 2 Pokémon in very quick succession, we took a minute to catch out bearings and assess where we are and what we have left to do.
Weve only got 3 badges left, a few things over on the islands and the Pokémon league left. As long as we get through this next gym battle with Sabrina we should be able to make it the rest of the way to the Pokémon League without too much drama, considering we have type advantage against the last 2 gyms.
Before we take on Sabrina, I want to make sure were as ready for anything as we can be. Level cap here is 43 so were going for 43 with Quade, Steve and Charlotte before we head in. Before we start grinding, we spend about 4 hours catching Chanseys and hoping to get a lucky egg. After 4 hours, we managed to get 2 and we set the Chanseys free. We also grab the item finder from one of Prof Oaks Aides and grab 2 Leftovers that I never knew were buried underneath The 2 sleeping Snorlax.
Between the 2 lucky Eggs, 2 lots of leftovers and Mystic Water, weve got ourselves a good combination of items. Unfortunately we cant get Nevermeltice to boost our ice attack power until after the Elite 4, which is a shame because it would be extremely helpful for Lance. Anyway, armed with our Lucky Eggs we get to grinding again. We load up the lucky eggs and head to one of the best training locations in any Pokémon game. Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town.
What makes this place so good isnt the amount of xp but the fact that its loaded with Haunter and Gastly which give Special Attack EVs and comes with its own Pokémon healing location. Meaning if you managed to get paralysed by Lick or something, you only need a few short steps to full heal. Its not the greatest xp, but the lucky eggs help and its so mindlessly easy that I can do it without paying attention. Extra shoutout to Cubone which gives Defense EVs which also dont go to waste.
After a while were finished our grinding. Everybody is ready for Sabrina at level 43 so we fly back to Saffron and head to the gym. I already cleared out the trainers for XP so theres no issues there we just wander around aimlessly until we hit the right panel to get to Sabrina.
Im going with Quade lead for this battle. Steve has slightly higher special Defense but Quade has about 40hp more so I feel that is going to be more beneficial.
Sabrina leads with Kadabra, Im pretty sure these things have Calm Mind and I dont want Kadabra getting too many special attack boosts because it already hits like a truck so we just go straight for a mystic water boosted Surf which does around 75% damage. Sweet.
Kadabra uses Calm Mind and Im happy because I successfully predicted something for once. Quade goes for a 2nd surf but Sabrina uses a Hyper Potion and brings Kadabra back to full health. Quades surf hits and does slightly over 50% damage. Still good as Its over half. Quade goes for a 2nd surf and Kadabra uses calm mind again, meaning the 2nd surf doesnt kill and leaves Kadabra at about 20% hp.
I know another potion is going to come so I change up my strategy a little and go for the Ice Beam instead of Surf, hoping to get a lucky freeze and BOOM! Frozen Kadabra! Kadabra stays frozen while Quade takes it down with another 2 ice beams and weve got Sabrinas first Pokémon down without taking any damage.
Sabrina then sends out Mr.Mime. Fun fact, in original Gold, Silver and Crystal, Sabrina has a female MR.MIME! Female.
Anyway, we use Mr.Mime as our fodder for boosting and we start to load up on X Specials. Im not scared of Mr Mime at all compared to Kadabra and Alakazam. Mr Mime uses Barrier to boost his Defense as though he just wants to prove my point. We load up another 3 X specials to bring us to +4 special Attack and then 2x x speeds just because we can.
By this time, mr mime has used barrier 4 times, future Sight once and something else, maybe calm mind, I wasnt paying that much attention to Mr Mime to be honest.
Once we get out 2nd x speed away future sight hits and does like, 25ish% damage. Not enough to justify doing anything about it so Quade just launches a Surf and KOs Mr Mime. Sabrina sends out her 2nd Kadabra and Quade one shots it with Surf. Out comes Sabrinas last pokemon Alakazam.
Alakazam still outspeeds Quade and uses Calm Mind. Quade launches a Surf and Alakazam is left with what can only be described as a bees dick worth of HP. If you think about it, a bees dick must be very small hence the reference to Alakazams HP.
Alakazam uses Future Sight and Quade takes it out with Surf and we earn our 6th badge.
I have a quick look at my team after the fight with Sabrina. Im still scarred by the last couple of battles expecting something to have randomly died during the fight. Quade is at 75% hp and Steve and Charlotte are both full
HP. Happy days.
Our next stop is back at Cinnebar Island for our next badge. Blaine is capped at 47 and Giovanni after him at 50 so we have a bit of grinding to do. Ill make the next update consist of the next 2 gyms and the journey through victory road. Assuming we make it that far of course.
Update 9: Cinnabar and Beyond
Weve finished our grinding to 47. Quade, Charlotte and Steve are all level capped to face Blaine and according to me trying to use a Calcium and a Carbos on all of them, their special attack And speed EVs are all above the limit for the stat boosters. Weve trained our team pretty well, virtually speed and special attack capped. In hindsight, some special Defense effort values for Charlotte might have been a good idea to avoid special attack shenanigans but cant change that now.
For now though, we head to Cinnebar Island, the location of our next gym fight. The doors locked so we have to make our way through the Pokémon Mansion to find the secret key. This doesnt turn out to be too much trouble, besides the constant Quick Attacks from Raticates just whittling down our HP it was a piece of cake. Leaving with another Rare Candy and a few more healing items under our belt.
After a quick heal we head to the gym, unlock the door and head inside. Ive always enjoyed this gym thanks to the quiz questions instead of just pure battling. It always felt like it matched the anime so much better as opposed to the standard beat 5 trainers and then the leader, that the majority of gyms follow. I wouldnt mind seeing more of this, hell, even the trials in Sun and Moon were a nice change of pace, even if that game was insanely slow and drawn out.
Anyway, we breeze through the quiz, except for one question which I accidentally spammed B too quickly and answered wrong, but we end up facing Blaine without losing any HP.
Before I started this run, I highlighted Blaine as a potential threat to my run. The fire type Pokémon he has are extremely quick and hard hitting. Especially after so many issues I had with Rex and his lack of Special Defense I was just dreading the fight. High powered Flamethrowers, Fire Blast, I just thought I wasnt going to have a good time.
And then I caught Steve. Steve is a water/ice type. Steve has thick fat ability to reduce damage from fire type attacks. Steve is good. Be like Steve.
Blaine leads with his Growlithe with Intimidate lowering Steves attack. Lol. Steve uses Rain Dance, further reducing the damage of fire type attacks and boosting water damage and Growlithe uses Take Down, which does 19hp of damage.
Steve launches a surf and as expected, Growlithe dies miserably. Blaine sends out Ponyta, Steve destroys it with a surf. Blaine then sends out Rapidash which outspeeds Steve and uses Fire Spin. The original hit of
Fire Spin does 1hp of damage. 1 single hp. What an absolute beast Steve is. Steve then uses Surf and Rapidash dies too.
Out comes Arcanine, Blaines ace. Its at this point I look at Arcanines sprite and think to myself. Shit. He better not have Thunder Fang.
Rain Dance is still up for another turn so I know Surf is going to either kill it or leave it so close to dead a hefty sneeze would finish it off. The only thing to stop Steve would be Thunder Fang and most likely a critical one at that.
I tell Steve to use Surf...
Steve outspeeds and KOs Arcanine with a single surf!
We get the Volcano Badge!
Im not sure if Steve was supposed to outspeed or not. Maybe Arcanine was going to use Roar which has negative priority. But that doesnt matter, Steve won. Taking a grand total of 20hp of damage. Quite embarrassing for a 7th gym leader if you ask me.
We leave the gym and Bill shows up. Time for a quick detour to 1,2 and 3 island. We take down a few trainers, find Lostelle and do a bit of training. We stop off at Mount Ember. Me thinking we can do a bit of training with the higher levelled Pokémon there.
We encounter the standard Geodudes, Zubats and Machop before we run into a Machoke. This would have been an absolute disaster if we werent grinding levels on Charlotte at the time. Charlotte uses surf but doesnt get the KO and Machoke uses Revenge. A super-effective STAB fighting type move with 60 base power that gets doubled if the user has already taken damage, which he did with surf. It hit. Hard. But thankfully Charlotte has an absolute ridiculous amount of Defense. Like stupidly high. So high that youre not really going to be taking it down with physical attacks before Charlotte takes you down. Which, luckily for us, Charlotte won in the 2nd turn.
If that was Steve or Quade, they die from revenge every single time but Charlotte survives. Technically not a close call because Charlotte survived easily but either of my others would have died. Close enough to scare me out of Mount Ember anyway.
We walk back to the boat to take us back to Vermilion. Taking out some more wild pokemon for XP. The goal is level 50 for Virridian Gym and then a couple more levels for the AssHat fight and the trek through victory road afterwards. We pick a few different places to train, Pokémon Tower briefly, Digletts Cave and Two Island. By this stage all 3 of our Pokemon are extremely close or already maxed out on Effort Values so now were just going for xp. Playing on an emulator, Ive always found it easier to farm wild Pokémon for XP instead of the VS Seeker because of the increased speed but thats just personal preference. The vs seeker also gives you money which is extremely helpful.
After a little while weve got all 3 Pokémon at level 50 and weve cleared our path to Giovanni already so we just get to waltz straight in and take him on.
The fight with Giovanni ended up pretty similar to the fight with Blaine. Very one sided. It was Charlotte this time that destroyed everything.
Leading with Charlotte we pop a couple of X Speed just so we outspeed everything and use an X Special just because we can. Thankfully, none of his Pokémon know Horn Drill even though Im pretty sure most of them could have learned it by their current levels.
Charlotte tanks all the Earthquakes from Giovannis Rhyhorn like an absolute trooper. We potion back to full health and then Charlotte sweeps. Getting first turn against everything except Dugtrio, which does very little damage as well.
Giovanni gives us the Earth badge and we heal up ready to take on AssHat for the 2nd last time.
AssHat was another one sided battle. Using Steve to blitz them all down and switching in to Quade against Alakazam to drop Perish Song to take it down. We didnt have to use any X Boosts or potions at all in this battle so hopefully thats a good sign.
At this point, Steve, Quade and Charlotte are all 51, almost 52. We breeze through Victory Road, using are preloaded Nidorino to push the boulders around for us and just Surf/Ice Beaming everything that comes our way. I think the team is really hitting their straps now thanks to the amount of grinding we did in Pokémon Tower and Digletts Cave. Theyre all hitting like trucks.
We search most of Victory Road, grab as many items as we can and head for the exit to heal up.
Weve reached the Pokémon League. Its time to complete our last grind before hitting the Elite 4 with 3 ice type Pokémon. Man, Im so hyped right now.
Im contemplating recording the Elite 4 instead of a write up. Let me know if youd rather see a video, a write up, or both.
The end of generation 1 is so close now I can taste it!
Update 10: The Elite 4
Video available here: [Only registered and activated users can see links]
Were ready to face the Eite 4. Steve, Quade and Charlotte are all at level 60. Im stocked up on items in case I need them and Ive deposited Farfetchd and Nidorino.
Its down to ice types and strategy now.
We load up our save, were already healed up and ready to go in to face Lorelai.
We start our first match against Lorelai and first up is Dewgong. I lead with Steve, my own Dewgong and start my strategy. My plan here is to use Rain Dance and then swap to Quade to take everything down with Thunder. Steve uses Rain Dance and the Lorelai uses Surf, doing very little damage.
We swap Steve for Quade and Lorelai uses Hail. Which is nothing to worry about as all our 3 Pokémon are immune to the damage but that gets rid of our rain boosted thunder plan. A quick think and we come up with another plan. Instead of Rain boosted Thunder, we decide to go with the sole X Accuracy in our pack to boost the accuracy of Thunder. We use an X Accuracy and Dewgong uses Safeguard. Next turn we bump our special attack up with an X Special and we should be plenty strong enough to take everything down already with 100 accuracy Thunder.
Quade uses Thunder, Dewgong goes down. Out comes Cloyster, Quade takes it down with Thunder. Slowbro comes out, Quade destroys it with a single Thunder as well. Jynx comes out. Thanks for rubbing that in my face Lorelai. RIP Hynx :( Quade goes for Surf, but it doesnt quite kill as Jynx uses ice punch. Ice punch does so little damage that Quade heals to full with Leftovers at the end of the turn and then KOs Jynx with Surf the very next turn. Out comes Lapras, Lorelais last Pokemon and Quade uses Thunder again. Surprisingly, Lapras survives with about 5HP and uses Confuse Ray to confuse Quade.
Considering Quade is at 100% I decide to try and just attack through confusion and use Perish Song because I know Lorelai is going to use a potion, which she does.
So now weve got 3 turns before we win this fight by default. We decide to switch to Charlotte and eat up turns with Protect. Which turns out to be a masterful switch as Lapras uses Body Slam to do a total of 18 damage, but paralyses Charlotte. We go for the protect, which gets through paralysis (we almost accidentally used Explosion which would have been a disaster) and we protect ourselves against Confuse Ray. Last turn before Lapras faints and we switch to Steve just because I dont want to be surprised by a random Electric attack to KO Charlotte. Lapras uses Surf, Steve resists it and Lapras goes down from Perish Song. 1st E4 Member down.
Next up is Bruno. We heal the paralysis from Charlotte and lead with her for this fight due to her massive Defense and start the fight. Thankfully, Bruno leads with Onix which gives us some breathing room before the fighting types come out. Were going to use Onix as fodder for boosting Charlotte for a sweep. We start with a few X Speeds but Bruno counters with Rock Tomb, which is Super Effective and also lowers Charlottes speed, bringing it back to normal. We try a couple more times to get a speed boost but Onix sticks with Rock Tomb, dropping our speed but only doing 19Hp damage. Now is a good chance to note how important Charlottes ability is to block crits.
We swap from X Speed to X Defend now to further boost Charlottes Defense. I think shes going to need the Defense boosts to survive Hitmonlee and Machamp. We get a couple of X Defend away when Onix swaps to Earthquake which is great because it wont drop our Speed. We use another X Speed and Onix uses EQ again, no speed drop, sweet. We use another X Speed and Onix uses Rock Tomb. But it misses! +2 speed now, awesome. We start using X Special and get ready to sweep. But Onix has other plans.
Onix uses Roar. And out comes Steve. All those X Boosts are now pointless. I decide just to take Onix out and remove the threat of Roar. Steve uses Surf and OHKOs it.
Hitmonchan comes out and I contemplate whether I should risk taking it out with Steve or if I should just switch to Charlotte. I end up deciding to switch to Charlotte and Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut. I send Charlotte in but shes only got 78hp. Fingers crossed the Sky Uppercut doesnt do too much.
Sky uppercut lands and it does 64hp of damage. Leaving Charlotte with a whopping 14hp. That did a lot more than Id hoped. We heal up and Hitmonchan uses Mach Punch which would have killed Charlotte if wed tried to take it out. We pump an X Special on Charlotte, theres no chance of Hitmonchan one shotting because were immune to crits. Hitmonchan uses Rock Tomb to Lower our speed and we go for an X Defend as Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut again to chunk us for a good amount. I go to use another potion but decide to use another X Defend instead. Were immune to crits and X defend will further reduce the damage so theres still no threat of death here.
Hitmonchan uses Sky Uppercut again and it does 30 damage. Weve reduced it down to less than half of its original damage of 64. We heal up and Hitmonchan uses sky uppercut twice more as we decide to finally start attacking. 2 sky uppercuts take us down to just under half and 1 surf takes hitmonchan down to red bar. But no one shot. Bruno heals and we use an X Speed to recover from the Rock Tomb drop and then use Surf. Charlotte outspeeds now but still no one shot as Hitmonchan survives with what has to be just 1 or 2 hp. Im tempted to heal up but decide to just use Surf again as Im predicting another potion. Bruno doesnt heal and Charlotte kills Hitmonchan. Bruno sends out Hitmonlee. A very powerful dangerous Pokémon that could easily end our run.
Im predicting High Jump Kick so we go for a protect, hoping to to get some free damage from the crash but Hitmonlee uses Brick Break instead. Next turn we hyper potion and then hit with Surf, to scope out how bulky Hitmonlee is. Surf does roughly the same as Hitmonchan so 2 Surf will easily KO it. Hitmonlee uses Brick Break twice but only does about 22hp each time and we take it out.
Machamp comes out and we heal just for safety. Machamp starts off with Scary Face, which is good for us. No damage. We go for Ice Beam which does about 75% as Machamp uses Cross Chop. Which does a good chunk of about 40hp damage. Still, not enough to worry us.
Machamp uses Cross Chop again but MISSS! We go for another Ice Beam and Machamp goes down. Brunos last Onix comes out, does very little with Earthquake and then dies to a single surf. Brunos down.
2 down, 2 to go.
Before we face Agatha, we heal up and swap Quade to lead. We start first turn with an X Special as Gengar uses toxic. Great, more toxic shenanigans. We decide against healing for now and use another X Special and an X speed while Gengar uses double team, twice. Im over here getting Flashbacks to Koga. I use another X Speed and again, Gengar uses double team to take himself to +3 evasion.
We go for a full restore next turn to get rid of the poison and take us back to full hp. These things are way overpowered against poison users. Again, Gengar uses Double Team, +4 evasion now. Im not a big fan of taking on Gengar with any more evasion so I start heading for Surf. Miss. Balls.
Gengar uses Confuse Ray and now im definitely getting Koga flashbacks and Im not enjoying it one bit. We go for Surf trying to get through confusion but it doesnt work. Quade hurts himself and Gengar uses toxic again. Again, we try to surf through confusion but it fails again, we take damage from confusion and poison AND Gengar uses Double team again.
We use another Full Restore to fill our hp and remove poison and confusion, Gengar finishes his evasion stacking and uses Double Team to take himself to +6 evasion. Quade is at full hp and no status so I really need to start trying to take this Gengar down. Luckily, the X Speed we used first up gives us enough Speed to go first and Quade uses Surf...
It hits! Gengar dies!
From there, Quade goes on a rampage, One Shotting all the rest of Agathas Pokémon before they even get a chance to move. Agatha down!
3 down, 1 to go.
We head up to Lance, dont even need to heal as Quade still has full hp. We lead with Quade again and use Thunder against Gyarados, which hits first turn and OHKOs Gyarados. Aerodactyl comes out and uses Ancient Power, does some decent damage and gets the full stat boosts. Not good.
Quade uses Ice Beam, which is x4 super effectiveness so even with the ancient power boosts, it still kills Aerodactyl, it did crit so maybe that helped but it was a super powered Ice Beam so probably wouldnt have mattered. Lance then sends out Dragonair, it gets one shot from ice beam, 2nd Dragonair, same thing and finally, Dragonite comes out. Which always gave me grief back in the day. But this time, Quade takes it down with a single Ice Beam and weve beaten Lance.
Weve beaten the Elite 4! Weve just got AssHat to go. Note: theres also a little Easter egg in the AssHat fight coming up. Shoutout if you find it!
Before we start the fight with AssHat we heal up and swap Charlotte to lead. We started our game with a Shellder, were going to finish it with a Cloyster.
Pidgeot comes out first and Charlotte OHKOs with a first turn Ice Beam. Pidgeot must have been going to use Whirlwind with negative priority. AssHat sends out Rhydon, Charlotte KOs it with a single Surf. Exeggutor is next, but also dies to a single Ice Beam. The EV training at Pokémon Tower really coming into play now.
Alakazam is next and we use Protect with Charlotte to scout out what hes going to do. Charlotte Protects against Psychic. I have no intention of losing Charlotte now so we swap to Quade as Alakazam uses Reflect. Alakazam uses Psychic to do a good chunk of damage and Quade uses Ice Beam and lands a freeze!
The freeze actually does nothing though as Alakazam defrosts the very next turn and uses Psychic again. Leaving Quade at 100hp, enough to take out Alakazam with another Ice Beam.
AssHat sends out Gyarados but Quade knows exactly what to do and takes it down with a perfectly executed Thunder after we do a quick heal.
AssHat sends out his last Pokemon. Charizard. The bastard the killed Rex. And its time for my revenge to come full circle.
We swap Quade out and send out Steve as Charizard goes for Fire Blast which does a whole 43 damage, reduced to 32 after Steve recovers with Leftovers.
Steve uses Rain Dance to further reduce the power of Fire Blast and boost his water damage after Charizard goes for another fire blast.
Were sitting with Steve at 127/191hp, rain is up and Charizard is at full health. Its time.
Charizard decides Fire Blast isnt cutting it and goes for Aerial Ace which leaves Steve at 88. Steve uses Surf and does about 80% damage to Charizard. Steve recovers with leftovers and Charizard recovers with a Sitrus Berry.
Charizard uses Aerial Ace again, taking Steve down to 60hp. And Steve uses Surf...
And Charizard dies.
We are victorious!
AssHat has lost his mantle as Pokémon League Champion and we steal it from him using just 3 ice type Pokémon!
And with that the first leg of our generations run is complete! We can now move to generation 2 where we get access to another couple of ice type Pokémon!
Lets do a quick recap of our first leg.
Deaths: 2 - Hynx and Rex. Hynx to a crit Self Destruct against Koga and Rex to a Flamethrower from AssHats Charizard in the Silph co.
Pokémon used: Rex - Cloyster, Hynx - Jynx, Quade - Lapras, Steve - Dewgong and Charlotte - Cloyster.
Easiest gyms: Celadon, Cinnabar and Viridian were the easiest by far.
Hardest Gyms: Cerulean Misty and Fuchsia Koga. Saffron Sabrina would have been more difficult if I didnt use X Boosts and Vermilion Surge would have been impossible if i didnt have Hynx.
Saddest death: Hynx to the crit.
Biggest heart attack: the Raticate before Vermilion.
Happiest moment: Rex finally beating Misty.
MVP: Very hard to pick just one. Charlotte was MVP against Bruno, Quade against Lorelai and Lance and Steve made Charizard a walk in the park. If we can only pick one, its got to be Quade, Thunder and Perish Song just brought so much to the table. Landing consecutive Thunders against Lance and AssHats Gyarados were clutch.
Quade definitely deserves the MVP, taking our team from the brink of defeat after losing 2 members in quick succession.
Next up, Heart Gold and Generation 2. We get to start with Quade, Steve and Charlotte!
I hope you all enjoyed the first leg! Im planning on doing more and will continue to update this thread for as long as I can!