Something I liked about the narrative (plot-spanning observation, but nonspecific):
Unlike most of the Pokemon games, here the Pokemon League (or its regional equivalent) isn't the center of the universe. Even when they didn't have a League (yet) in Sun and Moon, the eight-stage trials were a rite of passage, something you had to finish to be considered an actual adult. Here, the Pokemon League is still a massive cultural figure, but there's no assumption that just because you own a Pokemon and battle with them from time to time that you'll be involved with the league or make a try at the Gym Challenge. You're certainly welcome to, and our player character does as a matter of course since it's a mainline Pokemon game, but as far as the setting's concerned it's not Why We're All Here. It was a refreshing change of pace.
I also like that the Gym leaders aren't all doing the Gym leader thing as a full-time job. Katy runs a patisserie, Brassius is a sculptor, Iono's a streamer, Larry's implied to be an office worker, but it could just be that he runs double-shifts as gym leader and Elite Four member, Tulip's a fashionista, Kofu's a chef, and Ryme's a rapper. The only one of them who explicitly is using the gym as a full-time job is Grusha, and that's because an injury ended his snowboarding career. So if he could still be doing that as his career, he would. And I think that makes sense. Even in a world as Pokemon-fixated as this, I can't imagine that there's a steady-enough stream of challengers to be a gym leader full time every day, and it can't be paying that much money, unless there's a lot of sponsors and such.
One thing that I find amusing is how your gym challenges have little to do with the gym or battling itself, but rather is something related to the interests of the gym leader. You don't even get to find out what Kofu's usual test even is. Some guy outside the gym says the test is a real doozy, but you just get given "Give Kofu his wallet back!" as an impromptu test, which I find very amusing.
Also (endgame)
Even though you're required to do the gym challenge to activate the end-game, I feel like it probably wasn't necessary. Arven assumes Nemona will only give your mission the time of day if one of you is Champion-ranked. But Nemona is so fixated on you in the first place that I feel like she'd have come along anyway, if only to remove a distraction from the gym challenge lol.
So, I like the post-game tournament as an idea, and I like that you can repeat it. It reminds me a bit of B2W2's PWT, which I've been missing in each subsequent game. However, the first run didn't do any level-equalizing, and I have my doubts that reruns will do that. And that bugs me; I liked that the PWT would equalize levels and focus entirely on Battle Tower-style rules.
Yeah unfortunately there's no singleplayer level-equalized mode in this one like Battle Tower stuff. I presume one of the casualties of the game's release schedule.
That's a damn shame. I like the tournament idea, but this format means I need to remake my team or re-train a new generation of the same team to avoid outleveling literally every opponent.
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited December 2022
So I beat it over the weekend That ending was great. Still a little shocked the story in this game is actually kinda good. Can this be the norm going forward? Legends Arceus was great too.
Huh, never pegged Turo for a robot. My guess was that he time traveled to the future, not died. But this works :P I'm curious to see how the story is different for Scarlet. Will have to watch a let's play. I assume it's mostly the same but Sada is obsessed with the past (the robot thing feels less on-point with her tho). Poor Arven man. Robot dad said some nice things to him.
I'm currently in the middle of doing the gym rematches. I outlevel everything by like 5-10 so it's been pretty easy.
Also got with a friend this weekend and we both traded for all the version exclusives so now I have all the Scarlet exclusives (minus a couple evos I need to do myself) including Koraidon. Woo! I missed out on Charizard but I should be ready when he comes back in a week or so. My Azumarill is up to 94 :P
Did my first 5* raid last night, Ice type Gyarados. Man, fuck this thing. It legit had me raging, it took so many tries. First off, it has Intimidate so there's an immediate attack drop. It also has water moves, flying moves, and dark moves, which pretty much counters all of my counters by one-shotting them (sometimes, it was very inconsistent). Eventual strategy ended up being bringing in Klawf, swords dance 3 times, Rock Slide for massive damage, pray he doesn't Aqua Tail one shot me (that is, knock his hp down too fast to use it, pray to RNGesus), confuse me (killed me so many times including times I would have won), and generally be an ass. I actually killed him once, then after his hp was at 0, he aqua tail one-shotted me and I lost to time. That pissed me off so much. The time I won I don't even know how because my cat was sitting in front of my health bar. Somehow I didn't die when he hit me with a ton of crunches and aqua tails *shrug* Maybe ignorance is bliss.
I assume future 5*s will go better once I don't have an Ice type that literally one-shot counters rock, fire, and fighting... (I didn't have a steel counter T_T)
Yeah I’ve run into some rough ones like annihilate and dragonite are pretty tough. Others are soloable. Idk. I think making sure your defense covers their base types is #1. Then making sure you have coverage that isn’t ineffective to their Tera for shield breaking. Even normal is fine once you terastalize.
My friend sent me a chart when I first started of like “here’s like 6 to focus on to start for general coverage” I’ll find it again and edit it into here if it helps
Raids have me tilted a lot actually. So many times my moves just don’t seem to happen, getting blown out early, wild pokemon cheating and using 4 moves in a row, sitting there for ten seconds unable to select anything, on and on.
And that’s before other players being idiots. Went to a six-star raid. 3 Perrserkers and a Azurrill. I’m the only one that cheered. Ever. Spoiler: we failed.
The part where the wild mon can interrupt your tera and kill you before your move goes off, wasting it... still the most bullshit part for me. Although Tatsugiri raids and their OHKO Counter are also stupid. At least they're fragile.
Oh yeah, raids with anything that knows Yawn, because you will rapidly hit everyone asleep. Over and over. (or something that can confuse) Torkoal was especially awful because it also spammed Clear Smog to reset stats.
I'm trying to level up a Sandy Shocks to use in raids. And I got a few questions.
1: what's a good moveset to use with this guy for coverage? After the Electric and Ground moves, I'm thinking Power Gem? To hit flying/electric types, and Grass types? Am I missing an important type combo there? THis guy doesn't exactly have the widest move pool, so I'm thinking it's either Rock, Steel, or Tera Blast for coverage.
2: Is Metal Sound enough damage support to carry with this guy? I think someone previously was talking about Sandy Shocks as a support guy in raids?
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the raid "real time" coding feels somewhat shoddy. I was noticing that last night as I banged my head against the wall on Gyarados. I had a leftovers on my mon and that seemed to really fuck with things for example. Any stat changes will tick down the time as you're forced to wait for the text, sometimes you'll lose access to menus while other shit is going on, etc (or they will not respond because some other event is happening at the moment and the game wants to wait). It's really dumb.
Metal Sound and Screech on Sandy Shocks are both great for lowering defenses. Add in thunder wave and another debuff for full support. For the Charizard raid, my friend had a lot of success with Thunder wave, Eerie Impulse, Metal Sound, and a filler move.
Interesting. The filler move would be, I assume, Thunder(bolt), Earth Power, Flash Cannon, or Power Gem, depending on the target. Which, considering how easy move-relearning is, you can easily swap your attacking move based on the target.
+1
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Got family of three Maushold in a raid. Apparently pretty rare.
They ate the second kid that was supposed to be there.
So, the northeastern-most point of the map. It's pretty odd, isn't it? An extremely arbitrary cliff-wall that -raidon can't climb, and a segment of ocean that pushes you away, despite not even being at the extreme edge of the map. All of which blocks off a pretty odd blob of map space.
At the risk of thinking myself more clever than I am, I wouldn't be surprised if that chunk of the map got used in some capacity for DLC later on.
Enlong on
+1
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
So, the northeastern-most point of the map. It's pretty odd, isn't it? An extremely arbitrary cliff-wall that -raidon can't climb, and a segment of ocean that pushes you away, despite not even being at the extreme edge of the map. All of which blocks off a pretty odd blob of map space.
At the risk of thinking myself more clever than I am, I wouldn't be surprised if that chunk of the map got used in some capacity for DLC later on.
I mean.. in the real world that's where France would be I like to think that that's Kalos in there (and yes, plz be DLC with Kalos)
It would be very cool if DLC had a chunk of Kalos to explore. But that's getting way off what I would reasonably expect from DLC
I definitely wouldn't expect *all* of Kalos but maybe if we got to visit, like, southern France equivalent? There's a big chunk of Kalos that just gets ignored in X & Y because there's no content down there. I could see them maaaaybe doing DLC where its like, here's that small chunk so it's new but you maybe get to see familiar people and stuff.
And point; "cologne" is a French word. Though both French and Spanish find roots in Latin, and Spanish has the similar-sounding "Colonia".
And I just learned this, but both sound a bit like "colony", because they come from the Latin word for that. Which I was not expecting to be part of the etymology for a perfume. But apparently it comes from the name of a place that produced the stuff originally, kinda like champagne, parmasean, and hamburger.
And point; "cologne" is a French word. Though both French and Spanish find roots in Latin, and Spanish has the similar-sounding "Colonia".
And I just learned this, but both sound a bit like "colony", because they come from the Latin word for that. Which I was not expecting to be part of the etymology for a perfume. But apparently it comes from the name of a place that produced the stuff originally, kinda like champagne, parmasean, and hamburger.
"Lechon" also describes roasted suckling pig. At least half my Filipino friends will start salivating if you mention it and The Philippines have a lot of Spanish influence in food names.
"Cologne" technically has a very specific meaning, that of a light strength citrus based fragrance that originated from Cologne, Germany. The language has loosened up though and Eau de Cologne is a fragrance industry term for any fragrance within a certain concentration range that's on the lighter side. American English has then drifted things further and applied the term "cologne" to any fragrance marketed (or worn) by men. Something similar applies with the word "Perfume" which technically refers to the strongest concentration category of fragrance but in casual usage just means any fragrance marketed to/worn by women. This does mean unisex fragrances do get called both. There's irony in that most fragrances fall into all the categories between Eau de Cologne and Parfum. Eau de Toilette and the stronger Eau de Parfum are the most common types of fragrances marketed for men. Not as familiar with women's fragrances for obvious reasons but some people/channels cover more than just men or women's fragrances and I can't recall one ever talking about a straight up Parfum strength concoction.
Yeah 5/6* raids are driving me crazy. People online are consistently dumb as shit, like every single person who joined a psychic tauros raid with a dark type to get OHKO'd forever, and AI teammates offline are consistently useless as shit.
They're also slow as hell and constantly yank control away from you for no clear reason and it feels very bad to play.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Belly Drum Iron Hands does a good chunk of damage, but it absolutely can't ohko every 5 star raid with 0 support. Depends a lot on what pokemon you're facing and whether anyone else in the raid clicks screech/helping hands/attack cheer or whatever.
As for the reason there are so many videos screaming about how OMG BROKEN?!?! it is, well, that's just the Engagement Machine of content creation at work. One person makes a reddit post about their build they've been having success with in raids, someone makes a youtube video about it, someone else makes a video about that video, and pretty soon you have 6 thousand identical videos of people badly explaining this sick Iron Hands build that can totally solo any raid!
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 2046-2410 (757.7 - 892.5%)
This is how much damage a level 100 Adamant Iron hands with perfect IVs, 252 attack EVs and a Life Orb does with a Belly Drum boosted Drain Punch vs a level 75 steel tera type Garchomp. As you can see, it would kill a normal Garchomp 7-8 times over, so pretty damn good damage!
But 5 star tera raids have a 20x HP multiplier, so that Garchomp's HP isn't 270, it's 5400. Which means instead of doing 757%~892%, you're doing around 37 to 44% depending on your damage roll.
Now what happens if 2 people land Screech, so the Garchomp is at -4 defense instead?
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 6208-7308 (2299.2 - 2706.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
There we go, now you're hitting that 2000% needed to guarantee the kill. And since no one actually brings Life Orb on a belly drum tera raid set:
+6 252+ Atk Black Belt Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 5730-6744 (2122.2 - 2497.7%) (with Black Belt)
+6 252+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 4776-5622 (1768.8 - 2082.2%) (with a non damage item like Sitrus Berry)
In conclusion, defense drops are important if you want those high roll OHKO moments. This rarely happens in random terra raids, so take your ~40% drain punch damage and have fun
Edit: note that all these calcs were done on something that is weak to fighting attacks, if Drain Punch is doing neutral damage instead then OHKOing high def pokemon is a lot harder
So, I caught a Lurantis from a raid. It happened to have its hidden ability: Contrary. I envisioned making some kind of set where I use moves that would normally lower my stats. But Lurantis only learns one such move; Leaf Storm. And that’s a special move, whereas Lurantis is physical-focused, and has 0 special coverage moves outside of Tera Blast.
And it’s a shame, because in Sword/Shield, Lurantis could learn Superpower, which absolutely did have that kind of synergy.
I suppose maybe Lurantis could be used in a doubles strategy. Maybe like, Kilowattrel using Featherdance as a bootleg Swords Dance.
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 2046-2410 (757.7 - 892.5%)
This is how much damage a level 100 Adamant Iron hands with perfect IVs, 252 attack EVs and a Life Orb does with a Belly Drum boosted Drain Punch vs a level 75 steel tera type Garchomp. As you can see, it would kill a normal Garchomp 7-8 times over, so pretty damn good damage!
But 5 star tera raids have a 20x HP multiplier, so that Garchomp's HP isn't 270, it's 5400. Which means instead of doing 757%~892%, you're doing around 37 to 44% depending on your damage roll.
Now what happens if 2 people land Screech, so the Garchomp is at -4 defense instead?
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 6208-7308 (2299.2 - 2706.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
There we go, now you're hitting that 2000% needed to guarantee the kill. And since no one actually brings Life Orb on a belly drum tera raid set:
+6 252+ Atk Black Belt Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 5730-6744 (2122.2 - 2497.7%) (with Black Belt)
+6 252+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 4776-5622 (1768.8 - 2082.2%) (with a non damage item like Sitrus Berry)
In conclusion, defense drops are important if you want those high roll OHKO moments. This rarely happens in random terra raids, so take your ~40% drain punch damage and have fun
Edit: note that all these calcs were done on something that is weak to fighting attacks, if Drain Punch is doing neutral damage instead then OHKOing high def pokemon is a lot harder
I’ve been using the booster energy item, but is black belt better? Also been considering the punching glove to stop getting goo’d by Goomy and the like.
Posts
Yeah the gym leaders this time have a lot of um appeal no matter your preferences
Teachers too.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
One thing that I find amusing is how your gym challenges have little to do with the gym or battling itself, but rather is something related to the interests of the gym leader. You don't even get to find out what Kofu's usual test even is. Some guy outside the gym says the test is a real doozy, but you just get given "Give Kofu his wallet back!" as an impromptu test, which I find very amusing.
Also (endgame)
I'm currently in the middle of doing the gym rematches. I outlevel everything by like 5-10 so it's been pretty easy.
Also got with a friend this weekend and we both traded for all the version exclusives so now I have all the Scarlet exclusives (minus a couple evos I need to do myself) including Koraidon. Woo! I missed out on Charizard but I should be ready when he comes back in a week or so. My Azumarill is up to 94 :P
Did my first 5* raid last night, Ice type Gyarados. Man, fuck this thing. It legit had me raging, it took so many tries. First off, it has Intimidate so there's an immediate attack drop. It also has water moves, flying moves, and dark moves, which pretty much counters all of my counters by one-shotting them (sometimes, it was very inconsistent). Eventual strategy ended up being bringing in Klawf, swords dance 3 times, Rock Slide for massive damage, pray he doesn't Aqua Tail one shot me (that is, knock his hp down too fast to use it, pray to RNGesus), confuse me (killed me so many times including times I would have won), and generally be an ass. I actually killed him once, then after his hp was at 0, he aqua tail one-shotted me and I lost to time. That pissed me off so much. The time I won I don't even know how because my cat was sitting in front of my health bar. Somehow I didn't die when he hit me with a ton of crunches and aqua tails *shrug* Maybe ignorance is bliss.
I assume future 5*s will go better once I don't have an Ice type that literally one-shot counters rock, fire, and fighting... (I didn't have a steel counter T_T)
My friend sent me a chart when I first started of like “here’s like 6 to focus on to start for general coverage” I’ll find it again and edit it into here if it helps
And that’s before other players being idiots. Went to a six-star raid. 3 Perrserkers and a Azurrill. I’m the only one that cheered. Ever. Spoiler: we failed.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Oh yeah, raids with anything that knows Yawn, because you will rapidly hit everyone asleep. Over and over. (or something that can confuse) Torkoal was especially awful because it also spammed Clear Smog to reset stats.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
1: what's a good moveset to use with this guy for coverage? After the Electric and Ground moves, I'm thinking Power Gem? To hit flying/electric types, and Grass types? Am I missing an important type combo there? THis guy doesn't exactly have the widest move pool, so I'm thinking it's either Rock, Steel, or Tera Blast for coverage.
2: Is Metal Sound enough damage support to carry with this guy? I think someone previously was talking about Sandy Shocks as a support guy in raids?
At the risk of thinking myself more clever than I am, I wouldn't be surprised if that chunk of the map got used in some capacity for DLC later on.
I mean.. in the real world that's where France would be
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
I definitely wouldn't expect *all* of Kalos but maybe if we got to visit, like, southern France equivalent? There's a big chunk of Kalos that just gets ignored in X & Y because there's no content down there. I could see them maaaaybe doing DLC where its like, here's that small chunk so it's new but you maybe get to see familiar people and stuff.
And point; "cologne" is a French word. Though both French and Spanish find roots in Latin, and Spanish has the similar-sounding "Colonia".
And I just learned this, but both sound a bit like "colony", because they come from the Latin word for that. Which I was not expecting to be part of the etymology for a perfume. But apparently it comes from the name of a place that produced the stuff originally, kinda like champagne, parmasean, and hamburger.
Your new rival could be the kid who’s house you’ve got to stay at.
"Lechon" also describes roasted suckling pig. At least half my Filipino friends will start salivating if you mention it and The Philippines have a lot of Spanish influence in food names.
"Cologne" technically has a very specific meaning, that of a light strength citrus based fragrance that originated from Cologne, Germany. The language has loosened up though and Eau de Cologne is a fragrance industry term for any fragrance within a certain concentration range that's on the lighter side. American English has then drifted things further and applied the term "cologne" to any fragrance marketed (or worn) by men. Something similar applies with the word "Perfume" which technically refers to the strongest concentration category of fragrance but in casual usage just means any fragrance marketed to/worn by women. This does mean unisex fragrances do get called both. There's irony in that most fragrances fall into all the categories between Eau de Cologne and Parfum. Eau de Toilette and the stronger Eau de Parfum are the most common types of fragrances marketed for men. Not as familiar with women's fragrances for obvious reasons but some people/channels cover more than just men or women's fragrances and I can't recall one ever talking about a straight up Parfum strength concoction.
Language is weird.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
They're also slow as hell and constantly yank control away from you for no clear reason and it feels very bad to play.
Raid mons have wildly inflated HP values
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
Do you have the proper IVs, EVs, and nature? Those can all have a huge influence on whether you OHKO or just get close.
As for the reason there are so many videos screaming about how OMG BROKEN?!?! it is, well, that's just the Engagement Machine of content creation at work. One person makes a reddit post about their build they've been having success with in raids, someone makes a youtube video about it, someone else makes a video about that video, and pretty soon you have 6 thousand identical videos of people badly explaining this sick Iron Hands build that can totally solo any raid!
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Yep, I did the Whole Thing.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 2046-2410 (757.7 - 892.5%)
This is how much damage a level 100 Adamant Iron hands with perfect IVs, 252 attack EVs and a Life Orb does with a Belly Drum boosted Drain Punch vs a level 75 steel tera type Garchomp. As you can see, it would kill a normal Garchomp 7-8 times over, so pretty damn good damage!
But 5 star tera raids have a 20x HP multiplier, so that Garchomp's HP isn't 270, it's 5400. Which means instead of doing 757%~892%, you're doing around 37 to 44% depending on your damage roll.
Now what happens if 2 people land Screech, so the Garchomp is at -4 defense instead?
+6 252+ Atk Life Orb Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 6208-7308 (2299.2 - 2706.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
There we go, now you're hitting that 2000% needed to guarantee the kill. And since no one actually brings Life Orb on a belly drum tera raid set:
+6 252+ Atk Black Belt Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 5730-6744 (2122.2 - 2497.7%) (with Black Belt)
+6 252+ Atk Iron Hands Drain Punch vs. -4 0 HP / 0 Def Steel Tera Type Garchomp: 4776-5622 (1768.8 - 2082.2%) (with a non damage item like Sitrus Berry)
In conclusion, defense drops are important if you want those high roll OHKO moments. This rarely happens in random terra raids, so take your ~40% drain punch damage and have fun
Edit: note that all these calcs were done on something that is weak to fighting attacks, if Drain Punch is doing neutral damage instead then OHKOing high def pokemon is a lot harder
So, I caught a Lurantis from a raid. It happened to have its hidden ability: Contrary. I envisioned making some kind of set where I use moves that would normally lower my stats. But Lurantis only learns one such move; Leaf Storm. And that’s a special move, whereas Lurantis is physical-focused, and has 0 special coverage moves outside of Tera Blast.
And it’s a shame, because in Sword/Shield, Lurantis could learn Superpower, which absolutely did have that kind of synergy.
I suppose maybe Lurantis could be used in a doubles strategy. Maybe like, Kilowattrel using Featherdance as a bootleg Swords Dance.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I’ve been using the booster energy item, but is black belt better? Also been considering the punching glove to stop getting goo’d by Goomy and the like.
Twitch: akThera
Steam: Thera