Maybe it's because I'm getting stronger, but Cirno seemed like a much easier opponent than Tenshi. She managed to have even more screws loose than her, though. Athena took out most of her puppets singlehandedly. For the next leader I'm off to a place called Dragon Palace apparently. Is that really a place someone like me should be able to visit so casually?
In spite of the name, Dragon Palace is just a redesigned Vermillion City. There's two differences worth noting, however. First is the gym, which is in a VERY different building now. I can't get a good screenshot under current circumstances, though, so I'll get one when I go to challenge it. There's also two piers
now, both of which I'll be visiting later. The one on the left leads to the S.S. Titan, which is exactly the same as the S.S. Anne aside from the name. The other pier... well, you'll see.
For now, though, it's time to take a trip through the Forest of Magic.
Forest of Magic Puppets: Shizuha, Minoriko, cKana (Ghost)
, Momiji, cTokiko, cShikieiki (Steel/Psychic)
, cAya, cByakuren (Psychic)
. Level range is pretty wonky due to all the new chibis. cShikieiki appears anywhere from level 4 to level 12, and cByakuren appears at levels 5 - 7. Max level is 25. This is not an area to try grinding in, but it IS an area to pick up some interesting new puppets. cKana is your first ghost type and is pretty unique in having the ability Poltergeist, a renamed Soundproof that grants protection from sound-based attacks, and learns Perish Song. Pretty defensive set-up too. Shikieiki learns Judgement, which is the only instant-KO move in the game to my knowledge. Both these puppets basically have ways to beat opponents that might be far more powerful than you. Just too bad Kana lacks Mean Look.
Byakuren, on the other hand, gets the same treatment as the rest of the UFO cast. Chibi form is pretty standard, normal form is as strong as an Ex, and Ex form is as strong as a Last Word. Personally, I've decided not to use any puppets with stat totals over 600. I'll be raising both Kana and Shikieiki, though, for obvious reasons.
As for the Forest of Magic itself, it's actually pretty easy to get through as far as dark mazes in this game go. It's also the only one so far that Drakuaza made himself. It's basically like Death Forest, only without as many dead end paths. It's pretty easy to navigate and basically goes in one big circle, from Dragon Palace to the route house and from there to Yamame's Cave (read: Diglett's Cave). The only real trick is that Drakuaza did some fairly lazy movement permission editing. So what looks like an impassable ledge can just be walked over, and there's exactly one point where what looks like a path has an invisible barrier. If I had Flash, this would be a walk in the park. Instead, I go blind and use this map.
See? Easy.
Not shown in that map, however, are the trainers. There's quite a few of them...
- First up, Gambler Hugo. He had an ExYuugi and an ExKeine-H. Patchouli takes out the Yuugi and Athena takes out the Keine, who is steel and fighting.
- Youngster Dillon is next. He has an ExMomiji and an ExAlice. Tenshi and Athena take them out respectively. I tried to use Tenshi in a lot of these battles, for better or worse, to try to get her some levels. The next gym leader uses electric-types.
- Youngster Dave was the next trainer I faced and had an ExKisume and ExKoakuma. Prior to this battle, Athena had learned a fun new technique: Blazing Star. It's Volt Tackle, basically. 120 base power electric attack that damages the user. I decide to try it out on Kisume and take it out in one hit, though Athena takes a LOT of damage in return for it. ExKoakuma goes down to a Thunderbolt. Wasn't using Blazing Star again so soon.
- Gambler Jasper had an ExYuka that tried using Rainbow Beam (renamed Solar Beam, a two-turn, 120 power grass-type attack) on Athena but Athena got bored waiting for her to attack and just Dragon Meteo'd her. He had an ExSanae as well, but Medicine's getting good at handling those.
- Two electricians up next. First is Braxton, who just had a Shou. Being a UFO character she's basically an EX, but it makes no difference as she's also rock/electric. Tenshi takes her down no problem.
- Then there's Bernie, who leads off with an ExLunachild. Fairies. Just had to be fairies. Lunachild makes things difficult by setting up Reflect as I'm switching to Tenshi. Lunachild then makes an absolute pain of herself with Secret Power and more Reflect, but Tenshi takes her down eventually. Up next is ExNitori, who fights a hard battle against Medicine due to Medicine's lack of a decent grass-type attack. Poison eventually wears it down though. Lastly is an ExMarisa. She goes down in one hit from Tenshi's Earthquake.
After battling all these trainers, I find a Sun Stone at the end of the fence. Forgot to get a screenshot of this, though. Here's a screenshot of me getting the itemfinder
inside the route house, though. On that note, going past the route house we find out that sleeping puppets just aren't enough of a road block for Drakuaza.
Not that they'd be much of a roadblock anyway, but the ledge here just comes across as a big "fuck you". Not only because it blocks your path but because it means an extended trip if you're coming down from... whatever Lavender is and decide to heal at Dragon Palace. Just incase the Forest of Magic wasn't enough of a deterrant.
Going back into the Forest of Magic, we head toward Yamame's Cave now. If you looked at the map you would see that, while the bottom part wasn't much of a maze, this part isn't a maze at all. There's a few more trainers to face along the way, though.
- Gambler Darian is up first with an ExKeine-H and an ExYuugi. Athena takes down the first, Patchouli takes down the second, and I get an odd feeling of dejavu.
- Youngster Yasu is an interesting opponent, leading off with an ExKurumi. I think this is the first PC-98 puppet we've seen that wasn't Mima. She's pretty tough, takes a Thunderbolt from Athena and then flees so an ExChen can take her place. I take my chances with Athena and she manages to beat it with Dragon Meteo. Kurumi returns to be finished off by Athena, and his last puppet was an ExKisume.
- Gambler Dirk is next. He tells me he's never lost before, and I believe it. He leads with an F-Meiling, a puppet I'm really starting to hate. Athena nearly takes her down with Blazing Star. F-Meiling is a fighting/dragon puppet so she resists electric attacks, but has nearly non-existant special defense. Athena is taken down and I send out ExSakuya in her place, predicting a Full Restore. Turns out I'm right, which gives Sakuya the chance to attack with P-Square. It's an ice-type attack so Meiling goes down in one hit. His second and final puppet is another old nemesis of mine, LwTenshi. Even though it's been so long, she still proves to be a pain in the ass since I'm lacking a puppet that can do significant damage to her. So, instead, I opt to use my own Tenshi. Both end up bulking up with Iron Defense and the battle drags on until LwTenshi only has Iron Defense left with any PP. Patchouli comes in at that point to finish her off.
With Dirk out of the way, I finally have access to Yamame's Cave. Every puppet in this cave is new. At a glance, it also seems to be relatively unchanged. However, Drakuaza seems to have made an even lazier attempt at a maze.
See that water? At this point, you can catch two things there. One of them is cHina, level 1. The other... is this.
The only reason for those to show up is missing wild pokemon data. In other words, the encounter data for the water here wasn't even complete. I actually tried to catch one, against my better judgement, but it doesn't matter because it ends up being uncatchable anyway. Eh.
Yamame's Cave Puppets: cYamame (Bug/Ground)
, cRika (Fire/Steel)
, cMeira (Steel)
, cParsee (Ghost/Dark)
, Yamame (Bug/Ground). Level range is 15 to 22, save for the evolved Yamame appearing at levels 33 or 35.
Two wild PC 98 puppets, and these two DON'T suck. Unfortunately, cRika has a base stat total of 610 in her EX form (which is dark and steel instead of fire and steel) so I won't be using her. She makes a VERY good physical tank though, for obvious reasons. cMeira, on the other hand, makes a decent physical sweeper so I might try her out. Incidentally, read cMeira's dex info? Seems rather weird for that to be a CHIBIS' dex info, no? Moving on, cYamame is a decent defensive puppet, but not one I'm terribly interested in raising.
Parsee, on the other hand, is yet another puppet good for beating up stronger puppets. Defensive, only weak to steel-type attacks since dark is weak to steel in this, and knows some unique attacks. Envy is Pain Split basically, a good way of healing and taking a chunk of hp out of the opponent at the same time as it takes the current hp of both puppets and divides it evenly. Then there's Voodoo. Voodoo is Curse. When used by a ghost-type, it takes half the puppet's hp to lay a curse on the opponent. The curse drains 1/4th of the opponent's hp every turn. Normally pretty useless, but Parsee can put it to good use against puppets I would otherwise have a very, very difficult time dealing with. The AI won't switch out the puppet and while Full Restore will heal the lost hp, it won't remove the curse. And if Parsee survived using Voodoo then you can time an Envy with the opponent's Full Restore usage for free healing + damage.
Oh yeah, it's dark in here now, too. I'd complain if I wasn't able to stumble blindly and still find my way out in only slightly more time than it would take me to get through the cave normally.
Now you're probably wondering why I did this, right? I mean, those of you who know Pokemon know there's no reason to go through here without Cut. Well, in this hack, you'd be wrong. There's no reason to go through the cave even WITH Cut.
The game is rather dead set on sticking to its darkened dungeons for as long as possible. Only reason to come all this way is if you really want a chibi Sanae and have brought a chibi Alice to trade for it. Personally, I'll probably come back later when I have Fly. And Surf.
Now that I'm done there, though, let's make this installment REALLY long by taking a trip to the S.S. Titan! 'cause there's a LOT of trainers here. As I said before, though, it hasn't changed at all from the S.S. Anne appearance-wise.
- Fight Gentleman Thomas. He starts with a level 63 ExRin that does a lot of damage to Tenshi before going down. Follows up with an ExChen. Sakuya takes this one on.
- Gentleman Arthur is next. He leads with an ExTewi and follows up with A-Tewi. They're annoying but pretty harmless against Tenshi.
- Run into a Youngster Tyler who has nothing but a LwMomiji. I thought Tenshi could take it but, no, it gets a crit. After taking out Sakuya and BucketTank, Athena shuts it down with Blazing Star. Didn't want to take any risks so I went full power.
- Battle Lass Ann next and she starts off with LwMystia. Athena takes it out. LwNitori is next. It's a hard fought battle. Medicine and Tenshi both chip in and Patchouli makes the finishing blow.
That covers the rooms on the entrance level. After beating those trainers I stop by the kitchen and find a berry, a Great Seal, and a Full Restore in the garbage cans. Then another Full Restore in the open. After raiding the kitchen, I head for the deck next.
- Head out onto the deck and fight Sailor Edmond, who has a LwMeiling that manages to take out four out of six of my puppets. She's like F-Meiling only without the crippling weakness to special attacks. LwKomachi is next. Yes, LAST WORD Komachi. She takes out BucketTank. Medicine gets lucky enough to beat her with poison and Razor Leaf. I turn and hurry back to heal after this... only to run into the sailor below. Oops.
- Sailor Trevor has an EA-Meiling and LwNitori. Fuck the LwNitoris. Naturally I lost the first time. Second time, Patchy easily beats A-Meiling and finally manages to beat a LwNitori by powering up with Mana Charge.
Having a room on board to heal at is making it easy to heal in between fights at least... on to the basement now. Immediately at the bottom of the stairs is a trash can with a Sun Stone in it. Score.
- Down in the lower level now. Battle Sailor Duncan. He has two ExKomachis and a LwKomachi that sweeps my team with Aqua Blast. Drag out ExLilyB and give Medicine a Leftovers for the rematch. Medicine beats the ExKomachis both times but loses to LwKomachi, who just LOVES to spam Aqua Blast and manages to take Medicine down in spite of this. Patchy is next and manages to weaken her enough for Athena to score the finishing blow.
- In the same room is Sailor Leonard with a level 64 LwNitori. Fuck these sailors. Fuck them all. Starting to think I should have MsSunshine with me. Athena manages to take it down.
- Sailor Dylan in the next room. Has an ExParsee, ExStar S, and an ExShikieiki. Tenshi takes out the first and last. Athena demonstrates her Blazing Star technique to ExStar S, since it's her first time encountering one since learning the technique. Ex Star S went down in one blow.
- Next room, face Sailor Huey. Has an ExNitori and a LwKomachi. Athena takes out Komachi, Patchy takes out Nitori. Tenshi and Medicine go down in the process.
- Fight Sailor Philip, who has a goddamn F-Meiling. I seem to keep running into those. Medicine actually ends up taking this one out.
- Fisherman Barny is the last trainer on this floor. He starts with an ExHina. Tenshi had it until Hina revealed she knew Giga Drain. Ground/Rock still takes 4x damage from grass in this game. Sigh. Patchy finishes it off. ExKomachi is next. Medicine happily takes care of that. Last puppet is an ExKisume that Athena Blazing Stars into oblivion.
Okay. Almost through this. Almost. Fucking. Through this. Top floor now...
- Heal again. Top floor. Fight Fisherman Dale. ExKisume, ExHina, and Ichirin. There's those UFO characters again. Athena beats Kisume, Patchy beats Hina and Ichirin.
- Gentleman Brooks has a LwSatori. This is new. Satori is kinda... Wobbuffet-ish. Focused on countering and copying you. Her signature technique, Third Eye, copies the last move you used. Lacks any attacking capability of her own, though. Status effects are the way to go. Just don't expect a quick battle. Medicine takes this one.
- Next room with trainers, fight Gentleman Lamar. He has an ExRin and LwMystia. Tenshi takes on both.
- Lass Dawn is next, in the same room. She has an ExMedicine and ExReisen. ExSakuya and ExLily Black take them out respectively.
And that's finally it for the trainers, except for the last one that I'm totally not ready to face yet. As you may already know, the rival is next. However, in this hack, the rival has gone from a team of EX puppets to a team of Last Word puppets. Level range 62 - 68. I'll need to raise my puppets some more and arrange my team specifically to counter her puppets in order to beat her.
The puppets I end up raising are ExSakuya, ExChen, ExMedicine, ExLilyB, ExTokiko, and newcomer ExParsee.
There's a specific puppet I'll be needing Parsee for. I train them all to level 60, but it's not my rival I end up facing.
Instead of facing her, I take a detour so I can face this guy instead (video).
This is Link. Who's Link? No idea, but I've pretty much got the guy pegged as either an Author Avatar or Self-Insert at this point. He basically does nothing but look cool and act mysterious so far as I can tell. Hell, the "????" name is pretty pointless at this point considering the name Link is equally meaningless to me. Anyway, on to the battle...
First off, ExFlandre. She manages to survive Mud Bomb, surprisingly enough, which is a pretty damn good indicator that my team still needs work. Flandre's attack actually manages to miss, though, thanks to Flandre's own ability. +50% damage to physical attacks in exchange for a 20% accuracy loss. It's a much better tradeoff than I thought it was, but a miss is still a miss. The crit Mud Bomb that followed pretty much sealed the deal.
ExTokiko is sent out to deal with Link's next puppet, ExYuyuko. It goes down in one Aeroblast thanks to a special training regimen I decided to give Tokiko. I've started looking into EV training to increase my puppet's capabilities in specific areas. I'll get more into that in a bit. Tokiko is level 61 because that's when she learns Aeroblast.
ExChen is next but flees with her twin tails between her legs when she gets hit by Medicine's Razor Leaf. Likewise, Medicine is NOT staying in against THAT. ExUtsuho. Most of her stats range from decent to crap, but her special attack is off the goddamn charts as you can plainly see when ExParsee hits the field. Parsee has very good hp and special defense and STILL takes a crapload of damage from Utsuho. She uses Voodoo and faints herself in the process, but Tokiko returns to stall Utsuho down to about half hp and then finish her with Aeroblast. The battle is then back to Chen and Medicine for the obvious conclusion.
ExRemilia is up next. She's dark/flying and, as mentioned before, dark is weak to steel in Touhoumon. With that in mind, it's up to ExSakuya to go back to her roots and defeat the devious Scarlet Devil once and for all. Sculpture is a steel-type attack that I believe is largely exclusive to Sakuya and maybe Yumeko. The more popular characters got more than their fair share of signature techniques, you see. In any case, Remilia goes down pretty easily to Sakuya.
Lastly, we have a truly deadly opponent in LwMarisa. She's pretty much capable of one-shotting my puppets. I'd probably need someone as specially-bulky as Patchouli to take LwMarisa on. My puppets manage to deal some damage thanks to Artificial Stupidity, but all go down... except one. Medicine. When Medicine hit the field, the AI's stupidity levels reached an unprecedented new high. As did my luck. This all occurred on my first try, by the way. Perhaps I was right about Link. Perhaps he IS a shameless Self-Insert by Drakuaza, and maybe this was nothing less than fate. Whatever the cause, Medicine manages to take down the mightiest opponent I've faced yet through nothing but sheer luck. I'm still in awe over just how lucky I got in this battle...
I get a Moon Stone for my troubles. Moon Stones evolve puppets into their Last Word forms. If you're willing to wander around Youkai Mountain you can have I think two by now. This would be a third. Not using these things though.
Anyway, even though I won I think I need more training. Not just because I almost lost this battle... but because the rival is far stronger. Same level range pretty much and a full team of Last Words. With so many Last Word puppets popping up now, I think it's time I started taking this hack a bit more seriously.
I think it's time I rebooted this team of puppets. I'll breed new ones on Route 5 so I can get better natures, then EV train them. What's EV training? EV is short for Effort Value, a hidden stat that's existed in some form since the first generation but became much more prevalent in the third generation when they became more limited. No longer could every stat be maxed out. Your pokemon could only have 512 effort values total, and a given stat can only have 255. Any puppet/pokemon defeated gives 1, 2, or 3 effort values to a specific stat. At this point my team's effort values are all over the place. But the new puppets I'm breeding will be trained to have higher stats in specific areas. Combined with natures, which raise one stat by 10% and lower another by 10%, my puppets will become very good at whatever job I set them to do. This will pretty much close the gap between Ex and Lw, assuming the AI's puppets don't have specific EV placements.
Normally you wouldn't have to worry about effort values or, heck, even natures in a typical playthrough of a pokemon game. It's usually post game content like the Battle Frontiers where you'd have to worry about anything like this. But what I'm facing right now is the equivalent of going up against a trainer that has a Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-oh, Rayquaza, Groudon, and Kyogre making up their team. And they're higher level than you. And not used by some kid whose Ho-oh probably knows Fire Blast, Sacred Fire, Flamethrower, and Recover.
EV training and re-breeding is my solution to this issue since otherwise I'd need very specific puppets that I simply don't have access to right now, assuming the right puppets exist at all. Only downside, though, is this will probably be a fair bit time consuming. On the bright side, once I'm finished I won't have nearly as much need for level grinding as I'll probably have high enough stats to handle higher level puppets for a while to come yet. Still... where's a Training Montage when you need one?
On a final note here... my refusal to use puppets with stat totals over 600 is partially a challenge... and partially just because I'm bloody stubborn and personally bothered by the idea that, since not all puppets have Last Word forms, some puppets might seem unusable and thus one can't simply win with their favorites like they would in a typical Pokemon game. Maybe after I beat the game with EX puppets I'll evolve them to Last Word and rechallenge the Grand Masters again.
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