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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 23: You’re Lanakillin’ Me

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178481441120/chapter-22-i-dont-know-about-you-but-heres

After getting a tiny bit lost looking for it, I eventually found that last section of Vast Poni Canyon! None of the healing items I was hoping for were there, but I did find a rare candy, the T.M for Flamethrower, and an old man called Terry who was practicing karate by himself in the dark. Still a less embarrassing hobby than making up arbitrary rules to make pokemon games harder, if we’re honest.

Then I remember a whole other place I haven’t explored for healing items yet - the Haina Desert! I skipped over this place last time I was on Ula’ula island because I didn’t think it was worth going into a place where it was constantly a sandstorm if I couldn’t heal my pokemon afterwards, but now I don’t have to worry about that because I’ve got a couple of max repels going spare! Let’s see what I can be having here!

Nothing. No healing items here either other than a Max Elixir. Bit of an anti-climax, but oh well - at least I got the psychic-type z-crystal, which none of my pokemon can use because they don’t know any psychic-type moves. Yay!

With that done, I pop to the foot of Mount Lanikila, where Gladion is waiting for me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. He’s holding his hand in front of his head again, but it looks a bit less melodramatic this time; maybe it’s the camera angle or the fact that he isn’t vibrating slightly, but this time it just looks like he’s having a mild headache. That’s character development, that is.

Anyway, he tells me that he wanted to thank me for helping out his family in that Ultra Space adventure. No prob, Bob! Then he says “the only thing I can offer you in thanks is a great battle.” You’re being a bit harsh on yourself there, Gladion - I’ll bet you could arrange a really lovely fruit basket if you wanted to. But no, he wants to show me his full power “with the z-ring that old man gave him.” I know that he probably means Nanu when he says “that old man,” but my headcanon is that he’s just talking about a random old man that I’ve never met before. Gladion clearly has a life outside of the game I’m playing, after all.

Loki goes first against Gladion’s crobat. Instead of actually attacking the crobat, though, Loki’s just there to paralyze it with Thunder Wave and then set a couple of layers of Spikes, so that all Gladion’s other pokemon will get hurt now when they come into battle. Loki’s a devious little pisser like that. When Loki has had enough of being hit by the crobat’s Acrobatics attacks, I switch out Digit Al to finish it off with a Volt Switch attack.

Next into battle is Gladion’s lucario, who’ll be fighting Donna. Surprisingly, the lucario turns out to have a z-move - Corkscrew Crash, which he uses here without much effect. I would have expected one of the pokemon Gladion’s had for longer to have been given a z-move, but props to Gladion for being original, I guess. Anyway, a couple of Flame Charges later, the lucario is out for the count.

Gladion sends out his newly-evolved silvally next, but I keep Donna in the fight. Why not? It seems a waste to witch her out when her speed’s just been doubled, and she has a couple of moves which are good against fire-types, which I’m pretty sure this silvally is.

Ah. It turns out Donna still isn’t faster than this guy, and it uses Crunch, which brings Donna down to less than a quarter of her health. I guess that answers that “why not” question. I switch Donna out for Mr Nancy, who’s able to finish the silvally off, but not before taking a lot of damage as well.

Gladion’s last pokemon, weavile, then faces off against Digit Al. Though the weavile didn’t stand a chance of surviving Al’s Flash Cannon attack, it’s able to do an obscene amount of damage first by getting a critical hit with Night Slash. That’s a pretty good description of the whole battle, actually - Gladion didn’t stand a chance, but he did an obscene amount of damage anyway. I bloody hope the plot heals my pokemon before I face the elite four.

Then Gladion flashes me a creepily genuine-looking smile and hands me a Max Elixir which Lillie apparently wanted me to have. Since Lillie once gave me a bag to keep contact lenses in even though my character seems to have perfect vision, I can absolutely believe that she would believe a Max Elixir was a nice gift to give someone. Then he says “I know we aren’t friends. But we aren’t enemies anymore either.” You just described strangers, Gladion. That’s no fun. Haven’t you ever heard the term frenemies?

It’s at this point that I never beat that dancer back on the Poni Wilds who would only fight me when I beat everyone else there. What the heck, I decide; she might give me an item that Loki can hold that’s more useful than the Occa Berry she’s been uselessly gripping for the last three chapters. And sure enough, the dancer tells me before fighting that her pokemon use Focus Sashes, which probably means that’s what she’ll give me when I beat her. Nice!

Oh boy, I was wrong. That wasn’t nice at all.

It turns out that the trainer’s four pokemon are the four different forms of oricorio. The fight starts off great, with Digit Al beating both the fire/flying type one and the electric/flying type one. Unfortunately, for the third oricorio, I sent out Hedwig. I swear there was a reason that I sent my starter pokemon out against a strong bird pokemon, even though he’s vulnerable to flying-type moves and the oricorio was guaranteed to survive my first attack. I guess I was just pretty sure Hedwig would survive long enough to finish off the psychic/flying oricorio and level up.

No points for guessing that I was wrong, but man, I was really wrong. See, it turns out the light blue oricorio isn’t psychic type after all; it’s ghost type, and it’s just knocked Hedwig out with a tremendously powerful Revelation Dance attack. Oopsie doodle. That means I have to use one of my four max revives.

Anyway, I did manage to beat the dancer and get that Focus Sash in the end. Will the item end up being useful enough to justify using up one of my lifelines this late in the game? Time will tell.

I go back to Mount Lanakila now, and considering that it’s this game’s victory road (according to google, Lanakila is Hawaiian for victory), there sure aren’t any trainers about. I run through and am able to pick up a full restore, a max revive (yes! Back up to four!) and the ice type z-crystal without seeing anyone at all. What’s the deal with that? I can remember the victory road in pokemon Ultra Sun being much longer and full of trainers, just like it is in most other pokemon games. Maybe they just ran out of time when they were making the vanilla Sun and Moon version. The hilarious part is the rotomdex saying “Mount Lanakila is famous for being the most impregnable of all of Alola’s mountains.” I was able to pregn it in about ten minutes, mate.

I take the lift to the very top of the mountain. I walk past the pokemon center, because that’s the whole point of my challenge, you know? I don’t even totally know why I even bothered typing that. If you were expecting me to use the pokemon center at this point then you haven’t been paying attention to my entire journey.

A few steps later, I’m stopped by none other than Hau! Mate, it’s been ages! Where’s he been all this time? It turns out that after the business on Aether Paradise, Hau cleared the rest of his trials and then “went back home to train with Ilima a bit.” You went back home… to train? Did you think that through, young man? Did you really weigh up all your options and think “gosh, the best place I could possibly go to train is the island where the very strongest pokemon around are on level twelve”?

In any case, it turns out Hau came to Mount Lanikala to try out the pokemon league, heard from Gladion that I was on my way up here and dashed his way on up to meet me. He tells me that it’s the fastest he’s ever moved in his life. He probably shouldn’t brag too much about that - if Gladion was still at the bottom of the mountain when Hau got there, I had time to fly all the way to Poni Island and all the way back before he caught up with me.

Anyway, Hau challenges me to a battle to work out who should go up against the pokemon league first. And my god, this is a surprise - he doesn’t heal my pokemon to full health first! Maybe he did learn something from training with Ilima after all.

As always, Hau leads with his raichu. Having completely forgotten that Hau would be here, the first pokemon in my party is currently Wash, but that’s ok - his thunderbolt attack misses entirely when I switch Wash out for Loki. And what did I expect from Hau? Hell, I’ve faced off against Hau often enough to know how little to expect of him; I decide I might as well lay down a layer of spikes on Loki’s first turn, since there’s no way this raichu is gonna do any significant da -

What the heck? The raichu’s Thunderbolt just did 96 points of damage! That’s a LOT of damage! What’s with the power boost, Hau? Should I have been training with Ilima this whole time?

I switch over to Digit Al to save Loki from death, but it soon becomes clear that even Al’s not safe from the raichu - after Al does a fairly low amount of damage with Tri Attack, the raichu uses Focus Punch, and while the attack misses, it’s clear that it would have done a heck of a lot of damage if it had hit and might even have knocked Al out. I’m forced to switch over to Hedwig to finally beat the raichu with a Spirit Shackle attack. I mean, it’s good that I eventually managed it and all, but I had to switch out more than half my team to do it. That seems like too much.

Next out on Hau’s side is his flareon, which means it’s Mr. Nancy’s time to shine. But once again, Hau demonstrates an insane leap in power since I last saw him when the flareon uses Flare Blitz, which does so much damage that Nancy (who started the battle with about three-quarters of his health) is left with only about a third of his HP left. That’s insane, especially since Mr Nancy’s ability is that fire-type attacks do half as much damage to him. At least Mr Nancy’s able to do an awful lot of damage with his Scald attack, but that won’t be a whole lot of comfort if he gets killed on his next turn.

I consider switching to someone else in my party, but no; the only member of my team with more than half their health left is Wash, and while Wash has a lot of strengths, he also has a lower defense than any other member of my party. Switching to him, or any of my other pokemon, would be signing their death warrant. I’m gonna have to use a Max Potion instead.

It pays off; while the flareon’s next Flare Blitz attack does more damage than I’d like once again, Mr Nancy has just enough health left that he should survive his next turn. And that’s exactly what he does. He doesn’t get the chance to finish the flareon off, though - the knockback from his own attack knocks the flareon clean out. Good riddance!

Hau’s penultimate pokemon is a komala, which faces off against Wash. This, finally, is a much more straightforward battle. First, after getting hit by komala’s Sucker Punch, Wash uses Beak Blast. Then, correctly guessing that the komala would use Sucker Punch again, Wash uses Roost and ends up back to near-full health. Finally, Wash finishes the komala off with a Drill Peck.

And finally, Hau sends out his primarina, and so I let Digit Al out once again. Al uses Charge Beam, doing a lot of damage and raising his special attack. That should be enough for Al to beat the Primarina on his next turn.

Unfortunately, Al doesn’t get a next turn. The primarina uses Hydro Vortex, the water-type z-move, and knocks Al out in one hit.

Damn! I let out Hedwig and use a Max Revive on Al. I’m really, really lucky here, as it turns out - the primarina uses Moonblast and Hedwig survives, but with only 1 HP remaining. Hedwig is able to beat the primarina with Leaf Blade on his next turn, but that battle’s still caused a serious dent in my healing item lifelines.

Hau is a good sport about it to the last, telling me to go ahead and beat the Elite Four so that next time, he can come beat Champion Tori. Christ - if only the modern Labour Party had half that much determination.

Ooooh, and then he gives me 3 Max Revives. I always liked that boy. And he’s even healed my team up before the Elite Four! What a lad!

I jump back into Mount Lanikala to very quickly give some training to the members of my party who are closest to leveling up, then use the handful of Rare Candies in my bag on everyone else. And you know what? That’s enough for me. No more training - I’m not going to risk heading into the Elite Four with anything less than perfect health.

I step into the Pokemon League headquarters.

End of Chapter 23.

#Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #alola #hau #gladion #no Center challenge #suicide run challenge #pokemon #mount lanikila

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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^Team at the end of chapter 22! (https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178481441120/chapter-22-i-dont-know-about-you-but-heres)

Deaths/replacements: 5. I don’t think Remus/Nebby/Lunala counts because it was never in my team.

Items: 4 Max Revives, 1 Full Restore, 5 Max Potions, 1 Super Potion, 3 Sitrus Berries, 3 Oran Berries

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 22: I don’t know about you, but here’s chapter 22

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178360375750/chapter-21-trial-7-seven-trials-a-swimming-six

The moment I walk out of the trial room, Lillie runs up and heals my pokemon again. Yay! Then it’s up the stairs I go…

At the top of the stairs, Lillie says “I can feel the strong power of the moon”, like she’s an ocean all of a sudden. Then we stand on two platforms and each blow our respective flutes. I turned my volume up for this and it turns out we both manage to sing a passable harmony without any apparent rehearsal. Honestly, it makes me feel like Tori and Lillie have been missing their true callings throughout this game - if they’d just spent this whole time honing their gifts as flute prodigies, they’d be famous by now. In any case, playing the two flutes at the same time must level Nebby up a few times, because it’s a lunala now. And just to ruin the anime’s assertion that all pokemon can only say their own names, it turns out that the cry of lunala sounds like “mahina-pea!” I was never particularly fond of the pokemon-say-their-own-names thing, but I’ve got to say, I’m not quite sure why that’s less plausible than “mahina-pea!” Anyway, I had my volume turned up and it sounded mostly like “eaaaaa” to me.

Nebby then picks up Lillie and I and brings us into Ultra Space, which as it turns out, looks like an abandoned aquarium. “How surprising. It’s more beautiful than I would have expected…” says Lillie. Lils, you either had really low expectations or you inherited your mum’s rose-tinted glasses for anything with the word “ultra” in its name. This place is just creepy.

We soon run into Guzma, who calls us stupid for following him and Lusamine. Not an unfair assessment. “It’s all dark here… I’ve got no clue what’s going on,” he says. I didn’t know Ultra Space held screenings of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

No, it turns out Guzma tried to catch a Nihilego, one of the ultra beasts floating around the area, but he ended up with his mind and body possessed and found out what fear felt like. Gee, I wonder if this is foreshadowing something? Spoiler alert: yes.

Then Lillie and I run forward and see Lusamine. Lillie gets in an absolute killer of a speech here, which I just had to google so I could transcribe it in full; “Children... Children are not just THINGS that belong to their parents! Pokémon are not just THINGS that a Trainer can do whatever they want to! I am alive! Cosmog is alive! We are not things for you to collect! We're not made for you to just discard when you get bored with us! That is terrible, Mother! You are terrible!"

It’s a really powerful, well-earned moment; everything in the stories of Lusamine, Gladion and Lillie has paved the way to this confrontation, from the references to the experiments that Aether Paradise performed on both Nebby and Type:Null, to the fact that Lillie kept talking about how her mother chose her outfits for her back when she was dressed suspiciously like a Nihilego. The fact that this whole segment was excluded from Pokemon: Ultra Sun and Moon is part of the reason why I was so underwhelmed by those sequels. As it stands, in those games, Lusamine just seems like she gets forgiven at the end without either of her children calling her out for ignoring them. Also, in those games Lusamine’s obsessed with Necrozma instead, so is it just a complete cosmic coincidence that she still ends up dressing Lillie like a Nihilego?

Sorry, you don’t come here to hear me going on tangents about which aspects of these games do or don’t work for me. As we’ve firmly established by now, you come here to see if my pokemon die and make me burst into tears. You monster. You terrible, terrible person.

Just like the first time Lusamine fought me, the first pokemon she sends out is a clefable, while mine is Digit Al the magnezone. This time, though, the clefable is surrounded by an aura which boosts its special defence, thanks to Lusamine’s Ultra Beast-melding powers. Luckily, it only takes a couple of Charge Beam attacks before Digit Al’s special attack is high enough again to do serious damage with his Flash Cannon move. Soon, the clefable has been beaten, having taken away a shade under half of Al’s health.

Lusamine sends out her bewear next, and since Al’s speed actually decreased a little when he evolved into magnezone, I decide the safest bet is to switch pokemon. Enter Wash the toucannon, who has to contend with a bewear whose defense stat has been raised one stage by the creepy Ultra Beast power. I decide to use my favourite strategy with Wash, which is to use Beak Blast and assume that the opponent will burn itself by using a move that makes contact.

That doesn’t happen, though; instead, I am the witness to the most elaborate example of self-sabotage I’ve seen in quite a while. The bewear uses Pain Split, a move which takes the current health of the user and the target and splits it so that each pokemon ends up with the average amount of health. Since neither pokemon has taken any damage yet, though, Wash’s health stays exactly the same, while the bewear’s health gets lowered by a pretty reasonable chunk, since bewears in general have quite a bit more health than toucannons do. Then Wash’s Beak Blast attack hits, doing even more damage, and on the next turn he’s able to use Drill Peck to finish it off. So that’s a whole member of Lusamine’s party beaten without Wash taking a single hit point of damage. Unexpected, but I am not complaining.

Next up, Lusamine sends out her mismagius (which has its speed ultra-beast-boosted), while I switch out Mr Nancy. The mismagius uses… Pain Split? Again? Okay! This time it doesn’t even seem to do anything - I wouldn’t be surprised if mismagius and Mr Nancy started off with the exact same number of hit points, because neither health bar seems to be affected by the move at all. Then again, I didn’t get that long to look at mismagius’s health bar before Mr Nancy used Crunch and took out more than half her health.

To Lusamine’s credit, it looks like she does use Pain Split at tactfully advantageous moments sometimes; that’s what she uses this move, too, doing quite a bit of damage to Nancy while bringing mismagius’s health back to the point where my second Crunch attack doesn’t quite kill her. On the following turn, though, she gets cocky and uses it again, and while that does leave Mr Nancy with less than half of his health left, it doesn’t heal the mismagius quite enough to keep the next Crunch from killing it. That’s three of Lusamine’s pokemon down. Cool!

Lusamine’s penultimate pokemon is a special-attack-boosted lilligant, and since Wash did so well in his last match, I decide to send him out once again. This match-up is the least challenging so far; the lilligant tries using leech seed, and when that misses, Wash’s Beak Blast attack knocks it out in one hit. Last pokemon now!

And… surprisingly, Lusamine’s milotic is just as easy! Hedwig beats it in one Leaf Blade attack after it basically wastes a move using safeguard. Sorry, sadists - none of my team are dead!

Time for a long old cutscene, everyone! Lillie calls on the legendary pokemon to save Lusamine when it looks like she’s having a bit of a wobble; Lusamine celebrates being back in her normal form by saying Lillie is becoming beautiful; then the whole of Ultra Space starts shaking. Fun fact; after Guzma starts saying “What now? What’s going on?” while the space we’re in shakes rapidly, I got distracted by something on the TV, and when I looked back thirty minutes later everyone was still looking around in panic in the middle of an earthquake and Guzma was still saying “what now? What’s going on?” Guess no-one thought to actually do anything in that time.

Then a bunch of Nihilego turn up and Lillie says “there are so many Nihilego!!!” She’s right! Good thing Nebby the lunala turns up to take us away. Hapu pops up in between the unconscious Lusamine and Lillie says “Hapu… Is my mother…?” while looking at the two of them. Bit oedipal, Lil, but whatever floats your boat.

Then the lunala asks me to try and catch it. Uh, that’s sweet, but there aren’t really any open slots on my team at the moment, pal. Please don’t take it personally, I’ll always like you as a friend. It’s not you, it’s me. I hope you’ll understand.

I do have to catch it to move forward in the game, though, so I get Loki to use Thunder Wave and Foul Play and then lob a ball at it. Since there aren’t any dead characters from franchises I’m in the fandom of called “Nebby”, I decide to call it “Remus” (because his nickname is Moony, do you get it) and send it to the PC box. I like to pretend that I’ve set it free.

“Nebby, you belong with Tori now,” says Lillie; “She will be the one to raise you. Just like any parent should raise their child.” Uh, about that…

Seriously, she keeps saying stuff like that for a full couple of minutes of tearful dialogue. “See the world… Have battles against strong Pokemon where you can use your full power...That’s the kind of world Tori can share with you!” All while Moony/Nebby is sitting on an island in poke pelago. Way to make me feel guilty, Lillie! It’s not my fault I’ve gotten attached to the team I’ve already got. Granted, it IS my fault that I’m playing a game where I’m never allowed to withdraw any pokemon from a PC, but that’s neither here nor there.

Then as Lillie rushes off to be with her mum, Nanu turns up at the top of the Altar of the Moone to tell me that the Pokemon League has been built now. Yay! He offers to take me along with him, but I say no; I’m pretty sure there’s a section of Vast Poni Canyon I forgot to explore the first time round, and I don’t want to go to Mount Lanakila without every item I can get my hands on.

I’ll leave all that for another day, though. I’m knackered after all that. End of Chapter 22.

#Pokemon sun and moon #alola #Pokemon moon #suicide run challenge #no Center challenge #pokemon #lunala #ultra space

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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^Team at the end of chapter 21 (https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178360375750/chapter-21-trial-7-seven-trials-a-swimming-six)

Deaths/Replacements: I can barely believe this, but still only 5

Items: 4 Max Revives, 1 Full Restore, 5 Max Potions, 1 Super Potion, 3 Sitrus Berries, 3 Oran Berries

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 21/ Trial 7: Seven trials a-swimming, six geese a-trialling, five trialen rings, four calling trials, three Kalosian trials, two trial doves, and a trial in a trial trial

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178325494555/chapter-20-my-island-poni-magic-is-friendship

Jumping right into the action, there are six Team Skull grunts blocking the road to Vast Poni Canyon, which is our next destination. One of them fights me with a fomantis, which goes about as well as you’d expect. After she runs off, the other five grunts claim that they’ll fight me all at once… Then end up just fighting me one pokemon at a time like normal. Horde battles (where five pokemon would indeed fight the trainer at the same time) were actually quite common just a single generation of games ago, but apparently everyone forgot to tell that to Team Skull.

Plumeria then comes down from a nearby cliff, but she doesn’t fight me - she just gives me a poison-type z-crystal, telling me to find Guzma and bring him back. She also gestures and Lillie and tells me to “take good care of our little princess here.” How does Lillie get so many cool female characters calling her “princess” in this game?

Then Plumeria walks off and Lillie heals my team right back up to full health. Oh! Maybe that’s how.

Before I actually go into Vast Poni Canyon, Hapu says that she “wants to see this battling skill of (mine) that make Lillie smile so.” Did she just turn challenging me to a pokemon battle into a pickup line intended for Lillie? That feels rude. In any case, she’s challenging me to a grand trial. A few minutes ago it seemed like we were all pretty anxious to save Lusamine as quickly as possible, but yeah, I’m sure we’ve got plenty of time for this.

Mr Nancy starts the battle off in style by beating Hapu’s dugtrio with a single scald attack, giving her only enough time to whip up a sandstorm before fainting. Her flygon is a little trickier - the only move I have which would be super effective against it would be Loki’s Draining Kiss, and Loki’s vulnerable to ground attacks. Instead, I send out Wash, who takes quite a bit of damage but is able to beat the flygon in a couple of moves.

Hapu’s next pokemon is gastrodon, so I switch out Hedwig for this round. Despite taking quadruple damage against grass-type moves, though, this gastrodon is able to survive a Leaf Blade attack. Gastrodon’s defence stat must be higher than I remembered! Her special attack isn’t, though - she’s only able to do 28 damage against Hedwig before getting knocked out.

Finally, Hapu sends out her signature pokemon, mudsdale. I send out Mr. Nancy for this match, and it’s a bloody lucky thing too, because the mudsdale uses Tectonic Rage, the ground-type z-move, and even though ground type moves aren’t very effective against Mr. Nancy, he still only barely survives the attack. Since Nancy is one of my most defensive pokemon, it’s likely that none of my other pokemon would have survived that move.

Wait, hold on, Wash is immune to ground type moves. Never mind.

And after a couple of Scald attacks from Nancy, that’s the grand trial over! Definitely the hardest one of the four, but that’s not exactly hard. Hapu rewards me with a ground-type z-crystal of my own, and then I find a max potion off to the side of the canyon’s entrance. And as I make a move towards entering the canyon, Lillie gives me a max revive and heals my pokemon. It makes me a bit nervous, to be honest with you. It’s like the game is saying “here, you’ll need these in a moment.”

Here’s a fun thing, though - inside the canyon, a pair of Ace Trainers fight me with the alolan forms of ninetales and sandslash, and after Digit Al beats them, he evolves into a magnezone! That’s pretty cool - he’s been kicking it as a magneton for so long I’d almost forgotten that wasn’t his final evolution, but it gives most of his stats a pretty welcome boost. Enjoy your suddenly enormous head, Al!

Ooh, there’s a revive on the ground in between the first two caves. Yoink.

Although none of the trainers in the first two sections of this cave are anything but very strong, none of them give me too much trouble. The biggest scare I get is when a veteran’s talonflame is able to bring Donna down to 1HP before being knocked out. ...Actually that sounds like a pretty big deal now I’ve written it all out like that, but seriously, I think I’m doing pretty well.

Lillie catches up with me as I’m approaching a wooden bridge, and compares it to the bridge I first met her by, way back in chapter one. This turns out to be tempting fate, though, because just like back then, three bird pokemon fly in and block her path. This time, though, she’s able to summon up the courage to run past the three murkrow completely unscathed! Amazing!

Not really, of course; it’s a dramatisation of someone running into a wilk pokemon and clicking the “run” option. They even show a two second clip of my character kneeling next to the birds and gently shooing them away, just to drive home how little it needed to be made into a big deal. But hey - Lillie’s happy about it, and she even heals my pokemon afterwards, telling me she’s got loads of revives and potions and ethers. Hey, I have a question; why does this person who isn’t a trainer carry around loads of revives and potions and ethers?

In the third cave, in between shoving some boulders into some holes, I find a full restore. I’ve got to say, Vast Poni Canyon has been really good for my medicine cabinet so far. Hopefully I won’t have to use any of this stuff any time soon.

Okay, I jinxed that pretty badly. I don’t even get out of the third cave before I have to use a revive on Donna; a scientist’s magnezone knocked her out with a ridiculously strong Discharge attack. Oh well; ‘tis better to have used a revive and lost it than to never have had a revive at all.

Outside the cave, I run into Mina, the sole Trial Captain of Poni Island. She’s wearing a ring on her finger with the same symbol of a “+” control pad that Kiawe had on a pendant around his neck. Guys, we get it! You’re gamers! Anyway, Mina admits she doesn’t have a trial to herself - at least, not until the sequel games - so she just gives me a fairy-type z-crystal and walks off. I mean, not to be ungrateful, but she didn’t even ask for my name first - I could have been anybody. If it turns out that Lusamine has a fairy-type z-move in the big boss battle later in the game, I am absolutely blaming Mina and her lackadaisical approach to z-crystal recipient screening.

The two veteran trainers outside the entrance to the trial turn out to be very, very tough, and I end up having to use a few more healing items in their battles. First, during the fight against a tsareena, I’m forced to use an energy root on Donna; next, when a cloyster turns out to be faster than I was expecting it to be, I have to use a revive on Digit Al; and when both the trainers have been beaten, I have to use max potions on Hedwig and Loki, to undo the damage inflicted by a stoutland and a gengar respectively.

What a bloody waste of two max potions - Lillie comes running up behind me as soon as I walk a step further and heals all my pokemon. Oh well, could have been worse; at least now all the rest of my pokemon have been healed up, too. Anyway - trial time!

As ever, the pre-totem pokemon fail to make too much of an impact; Hedwig beats the jangmo-o and Loki beats the hakomo-o, with neither of them taking any damage from their respective fights. I don’t flatter myself by imagining this means the totem battle will be that easy though. And here it comes; the totem kommo-o!

Wash goes first for this battle and uses Beak Blast. This goes as well as I could have hoped for; the totem pokemon uses Sky Uppercut on Wash, leaving itself burnt from Wash’s charging beak, and then the Beak Blast hits it for a pretty sizable amount of damage. The Sky Uppercut attack did a lot of damage to Wash, though, and with the kommo-o having summoned a scizor to help it out, I don’t fancy Wash’s chances if I try to get him to attack again. Time to switch out to Loki.

That switch-out actually works out really well for me, too! The kommo-o uses Clanging Scales, a move which would have obliterated Wash, but which doesn’t affect Loki at all due to her fairy typing. The scizor gets a reasonable hit in with metal claw, but all told, this is the best that the fight could be going so far.

My word! There was a tense moment when the kangmo-o used Flash Cannon, which took away an unnerving chunk of Loki’s health - but that’s ok, because Loki was able to knock the kangmo-o out altogether with a Draining Kiss attack - a move which stole just enough hit points that Loki was even able to survive the scizor’s next metal claw! After that, it’s a simple case of switching over to Donna and having her defeat the scizor. Then I’ve done it! Another trial down - with no deaths!

That’s a pretty good place to call it a day, huh? End of chapter 21.

#totem kangmo-o #Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #alola #suicide run challenge #no Center challenge #pokemon #trial captain mina

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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^Team at the end of chapter 20 (https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178325494555/chapter-20-my-island-poni-magic-is-friendship)

Deaths/Replacements: 5

Items: 3 Max Revives, 1 Revive, 5 Max Potions, 1 Energy Root, 1 Super Potion, 3 Sitrus Berries, 3 Oran Berries

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 20: My Island Poni: Magic is Friendship

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous Chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178210009320/chapter-19-whos-your-baddy

Oh hey, I guess I’m still on Aether Paradise. There’s a bit more dialogue to skim through before I take my first step on Poni Island. For starters, we see that Lillie has dressed herself and is super proud of herself about it. Well done, young lady! Your mother has been working with a criminal organisation to try to enslave a monster from another world, but gosh darn it you sure look cute.

Gladion wanders up to us and shows us the Sun Flute he found, and tells us how some old myths say that it can call “the legendary pokemon” when played at the same time as the Moon Flute. He does realise that there are about fifty legendary pokemon, right? Imagine if we played the Sun Flute and the Moon Flute at the same time and it summoned a Regirock instead. “Oh legendary pokemon, we need a portal into Ultra Space!” “Can’t help you there, but if you’ve got some braille that needs to be translated, I’m your ‘mon...”

Gladion then gives me a master ball and turns away in full brooding mode to talk about how he’s got to “clean up Aether Paradise.” Does he, though? I’m pretty sure that if people found out Greenpeace was working with the mafia to try and enslave the only known member of an endangered species, we’d just get rid of Greenpeace. But maybe I don’t understand as much about brand management as this edgy homeless teenager.

Hau then turns up and does a big show of acting like he doesn’t recognise Lillie in her new outfit. Hau, I’ve changed into at least four different outfits in the time we’ve known each other, why have you never done this pantomime with me? He then admits that he still hasn’t done Acerola’s trial yet. This does not surprise me.

Now, here we are at Seafolk Village! I like the little scene between Lillie and Gladion before we get going anywhere, where Lillie chews Gladion out for leaving her alone with their abusive mother for two years. You really believe the history these two share. It’s little touches like that which really made me fall in love with this game.

In a boat off to the left, a guy tells me that he’s sorry he doesn’t have any wares to sell at the moment, and gives me two very rare evolutionary items to thank me for coming in. Does he not realise that those two items were wares that he could have sold? In any case, they’re useless to me, since I don’t have a magmar or electabuzz and don’t really plan on changing that.

A little further into the village, a man standing on a ship shouts down to us that it’s nice to see some new faces in the village, and the sight of him freak Lillie the heck out. Lillie, you’ve literally seen your mother disappear down a hole into another world. How are you this shocked by a man who is slightly high up? The man turns out to be “the chief of the seafolk.” I guess he doesn’t have a name. I may have slightly oversold those little touches I was talking about earlier. In any case, he tells us about how Hapu lives nearby, so I guess it’s time for me to escort Lillie to her next date.

We step into Poni Grove together, and Lillie tells me that she’s going to be making her own way forwards “with plenty of max repels.” Now, the first time I played through the game, I thought this was a big plot hole; repels only keep away wild pokemon that are a lower level than the first pokemon in your party, so why would they work for someone like Lillie who isn’t a trainer? But of course, Lillie does have a pokemon with her - Nebby, a cosmoem who will evolve just a little bit further into the plot. Cosmog evolves into cosmoem at some point above level 40, and doesn’t evolve again until after level 50. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume Nebby is strong enough for the repels to work. Yay!

Bloody hell - they might not work for long though! The difficulty level has really spiked up with the new island. In fact, every pokemon I run into in Poni Grove is a higher level than any of Lusamine’s team in the last chapter, and by extension, any pokemon I’ve run into on my adventure so far.

The trainers’ pokemon around here are even harder. Why did we even bother going to Aether Paradise in the last chapter? If we’d just stopped off here first and picked a couple of people up, the whole problem would have been sorted in about five minutes. One of the trainers even uses a z-move! A regular trainer! What is this, the future? There’s another beat-the-other-trainers-on-the-route-first trainer in the corner of the route, and I make an effort to keep as far away from her as I can. Maybe I’ll give her a shout when stop being a little bit nervous every time I see a wild pokemon.

Over to Ancient Poni Path, now! It’s neat how none of the routes on Poni Island are called “route (number)”, right? Really helps sell the island as being just a little bit more rural than the other three. Reminds me of driving down a road in Wales and suddenly finding that the signs don’t have the english language written first on the signs any more. Hapu comes out and starts talking to Lillie about how she looks like she’s “ready to go all out in something now.” That sounds like third date talk to me. Then Hapu says “no one could call you lily-livered” and I feel a deep, deep kinship with this awkward lesbian.

Then Hapu’s grandmother gives me a machamp on my pager to carry me around in its arms when my legs are getting sleepy. Coincidentally, though, it has a second and much less important function; it can push giant, cubic boulders around. Before going forward, I decide to glide over to some places where I can remember seeing these boulders earlier in my journey - Diglett’s Tunnel and Ten Carat Hill. Pushing aside the one in Diglett’s Tunnel gets me the T.M. for Will’O’Wisp, and in Ten Carat Hill I get the flying-type z-crystal. And since I’m on Melemele Island again, I decide I might as well visit some areas I skipped earlier in the journey - Seaward Cave and Melemele Sea. Before long, I’ve found a Super Potion and a Max Revive, and while one of these is more useful than the other, I’m grateful for both.

When I get back to Poni Island, though, the difficulty jump finally catches up to me, and I have to use two revives in quick succession. The first becomes necessary when a raticate gets off a critical Crunch against Wash the toucannon; the second comes because a tourist’s geodude unexpectedly survives a Bonemarang attack from Donna to use Earthquake. I could really have done without that - it brings my lifelines down to three Max Revives and only one regular Revive. Gulp!

Lillie and I make it to the Ruins Of Hope, where Hapu gets made the new kahuna. Who could have predicted the kahuna would be the only character from Poni Island who has been in cutscenes who has a first name? Anyway, there’s a quick bit of exposition here - the other flute we need is on Exeggutor Island, the chief of seafolk village can get us there, Lillie is all flustered about being Hapu’s “friend” - and then we’re over to Exeggutor Island, where I immediately have to save Lillie from a giant tree. Has the number of times that I’ve saved Lillie from something reached double figures yet? I’m pretty sure it has.

Before long, it starts to rain, and even though that’s never been a problem before in this or any other pokemon game, Lillie and I have to hurry to hide in a nearby cave. While there, Lillie laughs about how rare rain is in this region, and tells me the story of her first time seeing rain outside a movie. I guess Lusamine never took her kids to Po Town. To be fair, I wouldn’t either. It’s a sweet story, though, ending up with baby Lillie and Lusamine catching a cold from dancing in the rain. I like the added dimension that this gives Lusamine. It reminds me of the part in the Nuzlocke comic where it’s revealed that Maxie, the head of Team Magma, hates water so much because his sandcastle got destroyed by the ocean when he was young. ...Maybe that’s a strange thing for it to remind me of.

Lillie then asks me what I’m going to do once I’ve finished my island challenge. Bloody bold of you to assume I’ll make it that far, Lil - have you seen my medicine pocket lately? There’s no “I should be so lucky” option, though, so I tell her I don’t know. This seems to make Lillie feel better about her own crippling anxiety, and the camera lingers on her for just long enough for me to realise she looks a bit like Angela from the US version of the office. Then the rain stops, a rainbow appears, and Lillie grins really widely, just to really drive home how hecking gay her character is. She’s great.

The Moon Flute is on display on a plinth at the end of the island. You know, the way everyone was talking about these flutes, it sounded like they would have been kept somewhere really safe where only the worthy could get to them or something. As it i, I’m frankly surprised that this one didn’t get stolen away by a passing gust of wind. Ah well - we have two flutes now! Yay!

Heck - those flutes seem like a nice way to bookend this chapter, don’t they? That’ll do for today. End of chapter 20.

#Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #pokemon #alola #no Center challenge #suicide run challenge #poni island #exeggutor island #hapu #lillie

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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^Team at the end of chapter 19!

Deaths/Replacements: STILL only 5. You know, if I were to think of this game as an adapted Nuzlocke game, this would be my most successful Nuzlocke game to date.

Items: 2 Max Revives, 3 Revives, 4 Max Potions, 1 Energy Root, 3 Oran Berries, 3 Sitrus Berries

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 19: Who’s your Baddy

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous Chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178209899825/chapter-18-its-aether-hau-but-not-as-we-know

Boy howdy, am I glad that the glowing red light fiasco happened earlier instead of now. The cutscene that happens before I can fight Lusamine takes forever. Eight full minutes of exposition! Close ups of a slowpoke and pyukumuku frozen in ice! The much-foreshadowed reveal that Lillie and Gladion are Lusamine’s children! Shots of Ultra Wormholes above every island and a Pheromosa fighting Kahuna Hapu and Tapu Koko! Were all these things really necessary all at once? You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally started watching an anime instead of playing a video game!

...Incidentally, am I being really thick, or were those pokemon frozen in ice never adequately explained?

Finally, though - FINALLY - I face up against Lusamine. Her first pokemon is a clefable, which also happens to be the only pokemon I remembered Lusamine had in advance. Although clefable has pretty impressive defensive stats, Digit Al is able to beat it by doubling his special attack with two Charge Beams and then using a super-effective Flash Cannon. I tell you what though - before it faints, that clefable manages to summon up two bloody obscure attacks with Metronome. I was just about about aware of Mist Ball, the first summoned attack, which I believe is the signature move of either Latias or Latios - but what in the heck is Vacuum Wave? I’m fairly certain I’ve never come across that move in twenty years of playing pokemon. Even now, the only thing I know about it is that it’s super effective against magnetons. Is it fighting-type? Ground-type? Fire-type? Why would a Vacuum Wave be ANY of those types? I don’t get it.

Anyway, after clefable is out of the way, Lusamine sends out a bewear. Now, although I’m aware that she’s done this because Digit Al is vulnerable to fighting-type moves, I decide that Al’s doubled special attack is too big a tactical advantage to pass up. I keep him in battle just for the time being.

And my gambit pays off! Digit Al successfully outspeeds the bewear to use Volt Switch, an attack which takes out more than half of the bewears health and - thanks to the Shell Bell he’s holding - brings Digit Al’s health back up to full health. It also lets me send out Hedwig in his place, meaning that the bewear’s Hammer Arm attack (which probably would have done an awful lot of damage against Al) has no effect whatsoever.

Oh, and by the way, some more good news - sometime in that endless cutscene, my pokemon got healed again. Eight healings in one chapter has to be a record in this run-through, but you won’t hear me complaining about this one - I’ll take any advantage I can get in this fight.

Before Hedwig has a chance to finish off the bewear, Lusamine switches it out for her mismagius. Now, I’m pretty sure Hedwig would be able to beat that mismagius with a single Spirit Shackle attack. Unfortunately, I’m just as sure that the mismagius would be able to hit Decidueye with its own super-effective attack first, and if that attack is a critical hit - or even just a slightly better attack than I’m expecting - then Hedwig is done for. I’m not risking it; I switch Hedwig out for Wash, who’s immune to ghost-type moves.

The mismagius doesn’t use a ghost-type move, though. It uses Power Gem, which is super effective against Wash and also a critical hit.

Wash survives the attack, but only barely - it does 130 damage, leaving Wash with 4HP. Why did that just happen, though? What reason would this ghost-type pokemon have to see a pokemon who was weak against ghost- and dark-type moves and think “Hmm… yes, a rock-type move will be splendid in this situation”? Does Lusamine have a mole on my team? I suspect Loki. I know she’s got form, I’ve seen all the Thor movies.

Needless to say, Wash can’t stay in the battle. I switch him out for Loki, who’s able to survive both another Power Gem attack and a Shadow Ball attack in order to paralyze the mismagius. Now that my opponent’s speed is halved and it has a chance of failing to attack, I feel rather more confident sending out Hedwig again. And although the paralysis doesn’t quite manage to stop the mismagius from attacking Hedwig before he can kill the bloody thing, mismagius only uses Power Gem again, so I guess that randomly using Power Gem when it doesn’t make tactical sense is just something that the mismagius does for no reason sometimes. Okay Loki, you’re off the hook.

Next up is a lilligant, so I send out Donna. Although the lilligant does a surprising amount of damage with its Petal Dance attack, it’s not enough, and it gets beaten with two Flame Charges. Something of a contrast to how much damage the last pokemon did, eh?

Next up is a milotic, so it’s back to Digit Al for me, who only uses the one Charge Beam this time. The milotic actually has an amazingly strong Hydro Pump attack, but since Al’s ability leaves him immune to one-hit knock-outs, his survival is a foregone conclusion. Al handily beats the milotic with a charged-up Volt Switch. That just leaves the already-weakened bewear, and if it wasn’t already obvious, it doesn’t have any offensive moves that can hit ghost-type pokemon. That’s Lusamine sorted!

Obviously she and Guzma disappear into the Ultra Wormhole to prolong the plot and I get another two minutes of unskippable cutscenes, but who cares about that? I can barely believe it! I just beat Lusamine - and everyone else on Aether Paradise - without a single death to my pokemon! That’s not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

As I’m wrapping the chapter up, my pokemon then get healed again. Seems about right.

Poni island next! End of chapter 19!

#lusamine #no Center challenge #suicide run challenge #Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #alola

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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…Of course since I wrote chapter 18 and chapter 19 all at once, I didn’t take a picture of my team in between the two battles. Just take my word for it that Donna the marowak and Wash the toucannon were fairly low on health, Mr Nancy the araquanid had taken a little damage, and everyone else was fine.

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 18: It’s Aether, Hau, but not as we know it

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous Chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178054697565/chapter-17-forget-it-hau-its-po-town

Before I go back to Aether House, since I’m in the area, I can say hello to the fight-me-when-you’ve-beaten-everyone-else lady of route 15. “You didn’t waste any time beating the other trainers!” she says, knowing full well that I first talked to her in chapter sixteen, a full week ago. I can’t tell if she’s being patronising or really, really sarcastic. Either way, Donna beats both of her steel-type pokemon with little trouble, so that’ll show her.

I pop into Aether House to find out that Lillie and Nebby have been kidnapped. What??? Let me get this straight. This is a person and pokemon who someone has had to save from some kind of peril in almost every one of her appearances in the game. Gladion had just told us to look out for them because Nebby has a lot of power and there are some bad people after her. And you’re telling me that leaving her alone in an orphanage run by the Aether Foundation didn’t just work out hunky-dory for everyone involved? I am shocked to my core.

Gladion bursts in and points out that everyone involved are idiots. Quite reasonable, in my opinion. He challenges me to a fight, but Donna, Loki and Hedwig make pretty short work of his golbat, sneazel and type:null. Upon being beaten, he heals me and says “that was wrong of me… I shouldn’t have dragged you into a meaningless battle like that.” What made that a meaningless battle, as opposed to the ones that are meant to happen every time any two trainers make eye contact?

Then he takes me to the docks and says we’s going to follow the baddies to their destination; the Aether Foundation. Further shock and awe. It’s like living in an M. Night Shyamalan film, this is.

First, though, I have to do my grand trial. Nanu comes along and fights me. I won the grand trial. Yay!

...What? Not every battle needs a blow-by-blow account, and we’ve already established that the grand trials are super easy compared to the regular trials. Anyway, for this one, I actually had to go out in between doing the battle and writing it up, and it was so underwhelming that I’ve actually forgotten everything that actually happened in the fight. It’s fair to say nobody died.

Over to Aether Paradise now. When we get up to the first floor, Faba runs up to us and fights me with a hypno, which Mr Nancy beats with a Crunch and a Leech Life. Then Gladion asks Faba nicely to make the lift take us to the basement, and… he just does? He says he’s doing it as a kindness but he’s doing everything with this really evil smile? There’s so much I don’t understand about this sequence. First of all, if Gladion knows that the Aether Foundation is evil, why the heck does he trust the creepiest and second-highest-ranking member of the organisation to just do what he’s told to do with no hidden motive? Gladion literally says “Faba can’t be trusted” a few lines of dialogue later, so what does he think is special about this interaction?

Second, why does Faba just… do what he says he’s going to do? He could have turned the lift off so we couldn’t use it any more. He could have taken us to a different floor and then turned the lift off so we couldn’t do anything useful. He could have just put the walls of the lift up and trapped us in! Why are we still expected to take the stakes of this part of the game seriously if the characters of the game don’t do that?

Ok, I’m done now. Thanks for putting up with me criticising elements that don’t really matter in a game for children. Let’s get back to business.

When we get down to the basement, Hau comes up to me and gives me a Max Revive. Thanks, Hau! I will admit, though, that I don’t know what it is about this specific moment that makes this the perfect moment to give that to me. Has he not been standing next to me this whole time? Maybe he wandered off and found this item while I was fighting Faba.

I walk through the door to the laboratory area, where three Aether Foundation people dressed as Daft Punk are blocking my way. They’ve earned their musical cosplay suits by being the slightest bit stronger than the other trainers here; I distinctly remember that the alolan muk owned by the first guy caused one of the deaths in my recent Nuzlocke run-through of pokemon ultra sun, and that’s a big deal, because as you all know, my memory is terrible.

It seems my team is better this time around, though, because Wash and Loki are able to beat the big colourful ball of slime with half their health intact each. Hedwig does something similar with the next two synth-pop-band cosplayers, who have a magneton and a porygon2, and that’s the end of them. Maybe next time they’ll dress as a group that they have an appropriate number of members for.

I go into Secret Lab B with Hau next, where some more normally-dressed Aether goons try to keep us out with a double battle. I assume Hau doesn’t actually control his pokemon during this, because he was having an intense argument with a shelving unit when the battle started. This explains why his pokemon actually do a pretty good job in the battle.

When the battle’s over, all my pokemon have been healed! Wow, Hau really does heal every pokemon he ever comes into contact with after every battle, doesn’t he? What a nice boy. Also, the exact information we came into this room to find happens to be on the computer screen. How neat.

Back up to floor one we go. Hau asks what our next move is, and Gladion does the pose he thinks looks cool again (“Nooooo! The disembodied hand! I thought I had escaped but - run, you fools, while you still -”) and says “Beat whoever stands in our way.” Hau agrees, on the condition that Gladion stops saying hmph all the time. These guys have such a fun buddy-cop dynamic that I sometimes feel guilty for being their constant third wheel.

I speed my way through the next double battle a little bit because my 3DS’s “charge me up, you asshole” light is flashing distractingly, which makes in all the more excruciating that Hau wastes about half a minute of time using his Primarina’s z-move against a pokemon who had maybe 12 HP left. Then after the battle, Wicke (whose role in the story I don’t fully understand) wanders up and heals my pokemon, which I think is the fifth time my pokemon have been healed by the plot since the end of the last chapter. Where were these people when I was getting ready to go into Po Town?

My 3DS actually runs out of battery right as it’s saying “saving… don’t turn off the power.” When I turn the game back on it turns out that it’s saved the game perfectly fine, but if one of my pokemon suddenly sprouts an extra head in the middle of a battle, I’ll know why.

Next, we have two double battles in a row! For the first a one, Gladion helps me beat a pair of nameless goons with a magmar and an electabuzz. Donna, who still knows bonemarang, does most of the heavy lifting here. For the second, it’s Hau and I against Faba and another nameless goon. Donna beats the goon’s ledian on the first turn with rock slide, which makes the rest of the match a two-on-one match against Faba and basically a piece of cake. (Hau’s raichu does get killed at one point, but since he’s a casual gamer who doesn’t use ridiculous rules, this doesn’t really mean anything.) My team gets unnecessarily healed after both of these battles, by the way - that brings the total to seven times in one chapter. Outside we go!

After brushing up against a couple of Skull Grunts on the balcony, I find out that Guzma has beaten all of Gladion’s pokemon. Impressive, since when Guzma faces off against me moments later, all his pokemon are on full health. Not five minutes ago, Gladion was standing next to me with a golbat who knew Acrobatics, a move which has 110 base power and is super effective against every single one of Guzma’s pokemon; how did he manage to do that badly? Maybe Guzma has friends who heal all his pokemon after every other match, too.

Hedwig goes first up against Guzma’s golisopod, and with a couple of Pluck moves, he’s actually able to activate the golisopod’s Emergency Exit ability before it can actually do any damage against him. That’s my boy!

With his golisopod having retreated, Guzma lets out his masquerain. Since I know rock-type moves will be double-super-effective against this bug/flying type pokemon, I let out Donna to beat him with a Rock Slide attack. I only realised moments later that this was a really needlessly risky pokemon pokemon to send out - why didn’t I assume the masquerain had some water-type moves when it literally has the word “rain” there in its name? For whatever reason, though, the masquerain doesn’t manage to use any super-effective moves and Donna’s able to beat it.

One lucky escape was enough for me - I switch Donna out for Wash, who has proven himself to be a Guzma killer twice already. Sure enough, he’s able to finish off Guzma’s golisopod, pinsir and ariados, and while his health is now low enough that he probably won’t be that much use in the fight against Lusamine, I think the battle went as smoothly as could be expected.

Speaking of the fight against Lusamine, though… I actually wrote the boss battle against Lusamine as part of this chapter too, but good lord, have you seen how long this chapter already is? You’d be exhausted by the end of it. End of chapter 18.

#aether paradise #Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #alola #suicide run challenge #no Center challenge #guzma #gladion #hau

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Team at the end of chapter 17 (https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/178054697565/chapter-17-forget-it-hau-its-po-town). Sorry about the JJ Abrams style lens flare in the lot left corner.

Deaths/replacements: 5

Healing Items: 1 Max Revive, 3 Revives, 4 Max Potions, 1 Energy Root, 3 Sitrus Berries, 3 Oran Berries

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dontfindyourcenter · 6 years

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Chapter 17 - Forget it, Hau, it’s Po Town

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous Chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177913421470/chapter-16trial-6-the-trial-blood-prince

Hey, look, Plumeria’s back! She and a couple of goons are standing outside Aether House, and she challenges me to a battle. It’s weirdly refreshing how straightforward that is, really - no time wasted on why she came here other than “Wasn’t expecting you back so soon, let’s fight!” The battle doesn’t take that much longer than the setup, though - Digit Al beats her golbat and Wash beats her salazzle in one move each. Having been beaten, she says “if you want us to return the pokemon, then you’ll have to come get us alone.” Putting the cart before the horse there, pal - I don’t know what pokemon you’re talking about yet.

We learn the answer when we go inside Aether House and get told that one of the children inside has had her yungoos stolen. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the kid was only pretending her yungoos was lost so that she could guilt us into getting one of the better pokemon you can get in every corner of the game, but nope, she actually wants it back. I guess there’s someone out there for everyone in this wonderful world. Upon finding out that the theft has happened, Acerola says “Looks like those numskulls did something pretty clever for once!” Citation needed, Ace.

So I’ve got to get to Po Town, Team Skull’s home base, but to do that, I need a way to get past the large rocks in the ocean on route 15. Enter the dramatic ass of Grimsley, the Unovan Elite Four member whose gimmick is meant to be compulsive gambling. He’s in full creep mode here, calling himself Uncle Grimsley while looking for all the world like he’s wearing a white dressing gown on the beach. He flips a coin and tells me to guess which side it’ll come down on. When I say “tails,” he says “Astonishing. You just took a stab, like some kind of prophet.” For a gambling addict, he really seems to be confused about the basics of guesswork.

Anyway, he registers a sharpedo to my ride pager, and now i can crash my way through rocks in the ocean. An NPC in a pokemon game turning up to give me a way around an obstacle the moment it becomes necessary for the plot? What are the chances! Uh, don’t answer that one, Grim - it seems like you kinda need a new hobby.

Not much to report about surfing along route 15 or walking along route 16, except that I get to know Loki the klefki better. Appropriately enough given her nickname, her strength lies less in actually fighting than it does in annoying her opponents - she’s very good at paralysing her opponents and then putting down layers of Spikes while the other pokemon is finding it harder to fight back.

As I enter Ula’ula Meadow, I realise that the health bar of every pokemon in my party is coloured red, and this strikes me as a Bad Thing. Before I resort to using healing items, though, it occurs to me that most of my pokemon actually have healing moves. Loki has Draining Kiss, Mr. Nancy has Leech Life, Hedwig and Wash have Synthesis and Roost respectively, and Digit Al is holding a Shell Bell. If I back up to somewhere with weaker pokemon, I can heal my pokemon and train at the same time! This is great!

Yeah, this isn’t great. Oh, the healing itself goes fine, but what I didn’t fully consider here is that these pokemon aren’t just on low health - they’re also super worn out. They haven’t been healed externally since just before the electric trial, and that means a lot of their moves are running very low on PP. By the time they have been healed and have made it back to Ula’ula Meadow, I’ve just traded the need for one kind of healing item for another. And after all that, Hedwig gets hit by a critical hit from a surprisingly on-the-ball office worker, and I actually have to use a revive on him. Let that be a lesson; never trust get-healthy-quick schemes. (As a carer to someone with a chronic illness I really should have already known that.)

On the outskirts of Po Town, a young woman tells me that our surroundings are a “paradise” for Team Skull. These guys need to raise their standards. This place permanently looks like a flashback to someone’s tragic backstory.

I wander up to the main doors, where a couple of grunts try to stop me from going into the town itself with a haunter and a drowzee. And god damn - the haunter unexpectedly uses a sucker punch before Hedwig can knock him out, and I have to use another revive. I’m down to my last three now! That’s less than four! And that’s terrible. This isn’t up to your normal standard, Hedwig - step it up, mate.

Upon beating these grunts, I meet Nanu, who looks like he’s easily the most tired man in this or any other video game. He asks me if I’ve really thought through going into Po Town, and when I say yes, he bleakly tells me he’ll “be sure my remains at least get back home.” This is a children’s game, Nanu! Besides, has he met Team Skull? What does he think they’re going to do, dab me to death?

I hand out a couple of healing items, but the closer I get to the big house, the less interested grunts seem to be in actually fighting me. It’s a bit unnerving, actually. One guy crouching on the ground next to a car says “I’m a straight shooter…. Straight and simple as an arrow,” and just lets me go. That’s some great shooting, pal. Another guy, waving at another grunt in the distance, says “What is wrong with him? Doesn’t he see that we’re gettin’ invaded here?!” Yes, you are! By me! I guess they must have both mistaken my bright purple outfit for a Team Skull uniform.

The security is just as lackadaisical inside the main building, with all their passwords written plainly on bits of paper on the ground that some of these grunts could easily have just picked up or put away. And you know what else hasn’t been put away? A max revive! Lovely. The game saw that I used two lifelines and gave me a bigger one to replace them.

Remembering how useful Wash was last time I went up against Guzma, I use a Hyper Potion on him before I go into the boss’s room. That was my last hyper potion - the only healing items I have left now are four max potions, an energy root and a handful of berries. Eep.

...Ok, I needn’t have eeped. I beat Guzma in two turns - a Beak Blast for his golisopod and a drill peck for his ariados. Having been beaten, he says “I gotta admit, that was great!” I’m not sure I can agree with that - I had more challenging matches against some of the grunts.

I go outside, where Nanu has caught that yungoos I came here to save, and he heals my pokemon up. Score! We also get an explanation of sorts for why Nanu looks so bloody tired - he lives in a house next door to Po Town because the rent is cheap. Can you imagine how loud it must get when all the grunts are practicing their terrible dancing? Plus, I had a look in that house earlier and it had about a dozen alolan meowth in it. I have enough difficulty sleeping while living with our two cats.

I guess that’s it for Po Town. Just the Grand Trial to go and then I’ll be done with Ula’ula island, if I remember rightly! You guys… do you think I’m actually going to win this dumb challenge after all?

End of chapter 17.

#no Center challenge #suicide run challenge #Pokemon sun and moon #Pokemon moon #alola #po town #guzma

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