Last time,
Continuing to the world above Slateport, I find a L23 oddish. My thunderdoggy murders it and now it’s time to evolve!
Mightyena gives obvious signals when it is preparing to attack. It starts to growl deeply and then flattens its body. This Pokemon will bite savagely with its sharply pointed fangs.
She now has the option of learning snarl, described as The user yells as if it’s ranting about something, which lowers the Sp. Atk stat of opposing Pokemon. So it’s really better termed “rant”. Also, given we can’t understand pokemon speech, maybe it is ranting about something. Or trash-talking.
Now a minun. This one Mightyena only almost faints, and I capture it.
Minun is more concerned about cheering on its partners than its own safety. It shorts out the electricity in its body to create brilliant showers of sparks to cheer on its teammates.
How do you exist even.
Anyway, I decide to swap out Mightyena for Grovyle, since starters should really be your highest leveled pokemon.
Okay, just found a voltorb. Let’s look up the pokedex data.
Voltorb was first sighted at a company that manufactures Poke Balls. The link between that sighting and the fact that this Pokemon looks very similar to a Poke Ball remains a mystery.
I would like to throw out a hopefully unique theory: pokeballs are the processed remains of voltorb. The ones seen had escaped from the pens.
Electrike! Yes, new teammate!
Electrike stores electricity in its long body hair. This Pokemon stimulates its leg muscles with electric charges. These jolts of power give its legs explosive acceleration performance.
And now to go try to find a hidden one with a special move.
Oddish again!
During the daytime, Oddish buries itself in soil to absorb nutrients from the ground using its entire body. The more fertile the soil, the glossier its leaves become.
I find an electrike with eerie impulse! I name him Tryke. I realize eerie impulse is terrible. Back to looking for electrike. Best would be one with ice fang.
HOLY SHIT I FOUND A SHINY.
I have never actually seen a real shiny in my games. I assume I probably have encountered them and just never noticed because I play with the sound off and often while doing things, and I’ve hacked things to be all shiny all the time, but no legitimate shinies.
It is good being Lucki.
I don’t even know if I should nickname this guy. Well, I can always change it back, so…
I now have Tryke the L23 one-star shiny electrike.
Okay, continuing on is a wall of Team Magma grunts.
Let’s keep going through Route 110 and head for Mt. Chimney! It’ll be quite a long journey. Let’s take a rest at Mauville City, which is on the way.
I concur!
And off they trot.
I follow, because I am a responsible individual, and run into a woman who wants to show off her L15 plusle, which is like how strong the wild ones are. It then throws my grovyle an oran berry. You guys don’t really know how to do this, do you? Then she sends out a minun who switches items and gives my grovyle another oran berry. Grovyle has now eaten two delicious berries while they wasted their turns not attacking.
Then there’s Trick House. I never properly finished this in the original games, so there’s that. I get some stuff before quitting for now.
Alright, Makit’s evolved! Time to kick you to the box for good.
Hariyama practices its straight-arm slaps in any number of locations. One hit of this Pokemon’s powerful, openhanded, straight-arm punches could snap a telephone pole in two.
While I’m here, let’s see what Birch has to say. Mm-hmm-hmm! It looks as though you’ve spotted 46 different Pokemon here in Hoenn! It looks like you’re getting the hang of things. But the adventure has barely begun!
Also, I got Silver to L16 (because why not use him in an area he’s weak against everything?), but then stopped him from evolving because I want to go through contests with him and take pictures of his lavender-eyed Silverness. Should I try to keep him a squirtle the whole game?
If a shiny evolves, will its evolved form also be shiny?
What’s this? Thunderdog is evolving!
…
…
…
Congratulations! Your thunderdog evolved into a thundergod.
Yup, although the color scheme might be different.
… dachshund.
Hounds.
Canines.
What’s really disappointing is that most shinies seem to have the better color scheme on the lower forms.
He should evolve after he starts getting the shit beaten out of him further along when all the other pokemon are bigger~
I played with a shiny poochyena without evolving him until it was too difficult to catch groudon without everyone fully evolved. It still nets so much experience from being traded and from Kalos that it’s 10 levels above the others.
And shiny manectric are awesome looking. Even a shiny mega evolution.
That seems like a good balance.
Maybe minun and plusle have a symbiotic relationship with other pokemon to survive? Also, (slightly) happier theory on voltorb: maybe they’re ghost-types that possess discarded pokeballs and become a new pokemon (either through choice or by getting trapped)?
Oooh, I like that theory. Perhaps they’re meant to be symbiotic with each other, but in time when they’re few they latch on to the nearest compatible thing?
See, I assume that was the idea but it seems like they’d just spend every turn using helping hand on the other one and never attack. They’re both set up to support instead of attacking, so they should be a disaster together. All they have going for pairing up is the ability boost.
If they could boost each other while attacking, then it’d make sense.
Silver evolved in Lucki, didn’t she? Maybe do it around the same time, and then maybe Blastoise after Lilycove.
“I would like to throw out a hopefully unique theory: pokeballs are the
processed remains of voltorb. The ones seen had escaped from the pens.”
SOYLENT GREENPOKEBALLS ARE PEOPLE!Oh, wait, no, they aren’t people. Just pokemon.
I’ve had two shinies in my decade of play– a tangela in Gen II, which I missed because fuck me, and a numel in Gen III, which I caught. They were the two most stressful battles.
I loved the trick house last game, and they nuked it this gen, which was disappointing. Originally there were ten levels and it updated after each gym, but this time there were like 4 and I finished them all at once.
I’ve had two! One I missed, and a shiny graveller I caught and named Goldirocks. It’s awesome getting a legit shiny.
I guess I should check out the original again.
At least the boulder and arrow tile puzzles (4 and 6) were decently puzzling, but yeah, it stops at 6 puzzles and you can complete them all by the time you can use Strength when there had been 8 puzzles before. I was annoyed because I was looking forward to how the Trick House might look in the remakes only to find they took out two puzzles.
The last half don’t have battles inside either, so at least you don’t have to worry about overleveling by checking them out? idk, I’d sort of be interested in your thoughts on the difficulty levels of the puzzles.
I think they may have made finding shinies easier, because I’ve heard lots of people are finding them since ORAS dropped and I’ve gotten two of my own without even using the Dexnav, which I think functions like the Pokeradar in the past games.
That’d be nice, but I feel like that’s what I hear every gen. I’ll see if I run into anything else playing normally.