Pokemon Sword/Pokemon Shield

I'm still annoyed that Brick Break and Psychic Fangs don't have any extra effect against the Dynamax barrier.

@dragonfire5000: Regarding status ailments and Max Raid battles... well, they're somewhat useful, but in general, yes, they aren't what you should use.

The pulse that a Max Raid boss sends out that nullifies your stat boosts and ability (though thankfully, the latter is only suppressed for one round) also will cure non-volatile status ailments (both types of poison, burn, and paralysis, specifically). Technically, freeze and sleep get around that by preventing an action, but each of a Max Raid boss's moves per round act as an action for purposes of ticking off when those moves will wear off, so at best you'd get a boss to lose a single turn trying to shake off their effects. Same with confusion - I have seen it be effective (particularly if you manage to confuse it after it loses its first set of shields), but it's almost certainly going to shake off the confusion in one round's worth of actions.

That said, volatile status ailments do persist, so a confused Max Raid boss will still be confused after the nullification wave. That said, as noted above, confusion isn't where this really benefits. The volatile status ailments where you can benefit are the ones that trigger at the end of the round of battle - Curse, Leech Seed, and binding (they're immune to Perish Song, so no cheese possible with that). However, if my experience with Curse is an indication, there are probably special rules in effect to prevent anyone from just cheesing those to grind out a victory - it wouldn't surprise me if a Max Raid boss takes less damage from all such status ailments. Also note that you can't set a non-volatile ailment while shields are up, so there's also the usual timing issue.

I imagine that it's probably possible to really pile on the various effects to really grind out Max Raid Mewtwo, with Leech Seed, some bind move, and throwing on Sandstorm for extra grinding damage, but it still depends heavily on being able to tank everything it can throw at you, and even then hoping that it'll have a moveset that won't just ruin your build (for example, between Earthquake, Focus Blast, and Blizzard, Mewtwo can potentially one-shot every popular Sandstorm setter, and that's also assuming Mewtwo doesn't just use Max Flare or Max Hailstorm to wipe the weather).

European Championships have been cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.

A ton of events all over are taking this extremely seriously, as they shouls; this crisis spreads like wildfire, and the last thing we need is several young competitors losing their lives over video games.

People in Japan can get two mythicals for SwSh after preordering tickets to Pokemon Koko (movie 23); shiny Celebi starting April 17th and Zarude starting July 10th.

This leads me to wonder that the patch that allows Zarude into the game will come with the first DLC.

Yeah, it is highly likely Zarude will be added alongside Urshifu, Kubfoo, and those 100-odd old 'mons.

Kinda wish they added new Com Mons as well.

Though that technically has never happened - USUM had only brought new Legendary-like and Mythical mons. But a man can dream.

Edited by KusaMigeru on Mar 11th 2020 at 5:09:08 AM

I decided to work on my Dex now that I can use the GTS to get the version exclusives.

XP candy just speeds things up so much compared to previous Gens.

I'm already at 250/400 just from evolving all the Pokemon I had from catches in the main story + a few hours running around the Wild Area catching anything I didn't have.

I did start with about 60 XL and L candy though.

I haven't updated my Wild Area News since the Kanto starters + Mewtwo event started, so I'm trying to catch all the Kanto starters with their Hidden Abilities before I do so. Those impossible Mewtwo raids are annoying as heck, but at least I can time-travel around them. Plus, the EV-reducing berries from the starters are nice.

I feel like catching Pokemon is more addicting in Sword and Shield because of how fast the momentum keeps you going.

Woke up this morning planning on adding 10-15 to my dex, but it's almost 5PM now and I've gone from 300 > 388.

Was lucky that I had almost exactly the amount of XP candy needed to do all of the leveling. Only have 1 XL and 2 L left.

Just missing a couple of weather locked Pokemon, some trade evolutions I'll probably import from Sun/Moon plus the other box legendary.

At first I thought the GTS was terrible for getting version exclusives, but then I realized changing the settings a bit helped to get more options.

Oddly enough none of them were direct trades like Vulpix for Growlithe. It was still 50:50 version exclusives or random stuff I went and breed for. But they never matched. For instance I traded a Mawile for a Solosis.

....and grabbed some pokemon!

That's cause you plan to be....the champion!

You're not, just one in a million, it's gonna be your time to shine!

You are, gonna solo the whole league, with only Mr. Mime!

Sorry. I had to do it.

I just mass produce something rare across the board and ask for anything short of legendary. Works every time.

I just breed starters and version exclusives, and ask for other starters and version exclusives.

Well, I've mass-bred some Beast Ball Dreepies and HA Darumakas and then traded them for what was left. Mostly. Got my Dex completed about a month ago.

Urgh, just spent an hour this morning breeding and trading my missing trade evolutions.

But when I went to move them from Gen 7 > 8 I forgot that premium Home was needed to do so.

Hey, would anyone be able to help me with some (6) trade evolutions on Sword/Shield?

I've got everything ready in my PC with items all held, so it shouldn't take longer than 5-10 minutes.

I've also got an extra Karrablast/Shelmet so you wouldn't need to catch anything.

Managed to find someone to do them all 399/400!!

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Mar 16th 2020 at 11:50:35 PM

Bug fix fixing crash when someone sends you a hacked Pokemon out.

I hate to sound like I'm venting, but I don't get it when people start Max Raids (especially "gold" ones) and then cancel the raid for some reason once they have three other players. Were we not the people they wanted to have join? Did they not like the Pokémon we chose? What gives?

Edited by kablammin45 on Mar 22nd 2020 at 9:55:38 AM

They are probably using the day skip trick and don't bother to turn off internet.

I remember I was once a host of a Mewtwo room that filled up before I could tell my friends to come in, I honestly didn't expect it to fill it with randos, let alone so quick. I had to drop them out to make a private room.

I'M SORRY I JUST DID A DUMB WAS ALL

An honest review of Pokemon Sword, out five months too late:

The game was So Okay, It's Average. It wasn't worth $60. It was barely pushing $50 in value, which is what I bought it for (because Wal-Mart). Graphics were okay despite moonwalking doggos, gameplay was typical Pokemon fare. Probably won't be going back to it when DLC hits for a number of reasons, most prominently because the cash grab is ridiculous for an "okay" game.

Do I miss the Nat Dex? Not really. I can't be arsed playing with Bidoof and Friends for the sixth time at this point. If you want the option to transfer over your favorite mons, I'm somewhat judging your attachment to 1s and 0s but I won't say anything else besides that.

At the very least, I can say that this game hasn't made me say "I want my money back". That honor goes to Persona 4 and it alone.

It's pretty cool, though, that Game Freak made training up perfect 'mons so much easier with the mints, because I'm not going to reset 25 times for a good Eternatus. If they do add back the full dex then I'll certainly give comp a whirl, even though I'm probably going to see the same four teams all the time because Smogon isn't helping by issuing arbitrary "bans" on everything.

Overall, it's a C+. It could have used more time in the kiln, but it's not god awful like a certain faction of the fanbase seems to interpret it as.

I agree that it needed more time.

Crunch is a fucking plague on the video game industry.

I think part of the problem is that we're getting oversaturated with annual to semi-annual game releases. I personally wouldn't mind if Game Freak took a break from Pokemon for a while, and came back to it when nostalgia starts to hit. Maybe sneak in a surprise patch in the middle of a dry spell, sort of how Animal Crossing did it.

That way, they can work on polishing one big project instead of trying to churn out for a Christmas release every year.

Edited by TheAlbinoPrimid on Mar 27th 2020 at 10:20:46 AM