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So our adventures in Pokémon Crystal continue. I'm not too far but there are so many reminders of what is great about this game and very little about what is bad about it. So I think unless it takes a bad turn, I'm going to end up enjoying this run a lot lot.
First up, the team is getting SLIGHTLY stronger. By defeating Falkner, we got the TM for Mud Slap, which gave a different type of move to MAILLET. Though his Scratch attack is ridiculously powerful for this point in the game. I checked and when he was at Lv10, he had 24 Attack, while DONNELLY had 19 at Lv12, and BARON had like 20 at Lv11. That's... a lot of Attack to have ahead of everyone else. It also helps that he gets STAB from Scratch, too, since he's Normal-Type.
I also kept DONNELLY in the front of the party a lot to get him up to Lv12 quickly so he'd learn Bite, which is a huge step up from Leech Life. And then in that tunnel, we got the TM for Swift, which I gave to DONNELLY as well.
BARON is still getting by with Poison Sting and it's pretty awful, so any battles with him usually rely on the opposing Pokémon getting poisoned or being significantly weaker than him. He has Flash now from the HM we got in Sprout Tower, so that can help him try to avoid damage while waiting for poison to take its toll at least...
In Azalea Town we freed the Slowpokes, and then when heading over to Ilex Forest, this jerk appeared. And uh, this was pretty hard. I died and had to restart! That didn't happen once in Pokémon Blue. But here we are dying already. Granted, this is probably the hardest part of the game when we still have this very underdeveloped party, but still...
His first Pokémon is Ghastly. The first time I fought him, it used Hypnosis and immediately put MAILLET to sleep. So I switched out to DONNELLY (whose Bite is Super-Effective, too), but he got put to sleep right away as well. I just kept Biting until finally he woke up and was able to take him out.
Then comes Zubat. It basically was just a battle of the Zubats. But DONNELLY eventually fainted and we swapped out to MAILLET again and waited for him to wake up. The Zubat was no match for the amazing power of STAB Scratch with 24 Attack. Actually it was higher Attack now because we leveled up a couple times since I last checked it.
Then Croconaw comes out. Hoo boy. This thing has massive HP and defenses compared to what our party is able to dish out. I think some of what I was doing was doing literally 1 damage.
I sent out BARON first, not expecting him to be able to do much. My goal was to get as many Flashes in as I could to lower his accuracy as much as possible. After he died, the current "powerhouse" (if you can even call him that) of the team, MAILLET, came out to try to actually deal some damage. I started out with a Mud Slap to lower the accuracy a little more and then went straight into spamming Lick. The goal was to hope to land the paralysis so that with 4x reduced accuracy and paralysis I might be able to just Scratch my way to a slow victory while Croconaw missed over and over.
But it only took a couple Water Guns and we died.
The second time through, we got a lot luckier on Ghastly; Hypnosis didn't work and we were able to take him out with like 4 Mud Slaps. Not starting the battle with two Pokemon asleep was very helpful.
Zubat went better, too -- I let DONNELLY fight Zubat-to-Zubat since I wanted to conserve MAILLET and BARON for the final battle. Had to use a couple Potions, but it was fine.
Six Potions and one Berry left. Croconaw comes.
I start out with DONNELLY still in the battle, hoping to land a Supersonic before he faints. I manage to get it off, and then Croconaw hurts himself in confusion twice (!) doing minor damage to himself. All dat HP yo. DONNELLY's Bite does almost no damage, and he's slower than Croconaw (who is way higher in Level) so I can't hope for the flinch. Swift is equally weak, and Leech Life would deal literally 1 damage.
(Also, fun note: the way the game handles critical hit damage, it's possible for a critical hit to deal 1 damage, even though it's supposed to do double damage. This is because the damage calculation, including the double, is done before checking if the number is between 0 and 1 and then rounding to 1 if it is. I actually had a Zubat deal 1 damage with a critical on me when fighting some Rockets.)
I'd rather get to the other Pokes anyway while the confusion was still in effect, so I just spammed Swift until DONNELLY died (which was after like, a single Water Gun once Croconaw didn't hurt himself in confusion). We switched out to MAILLET to go for some Mud Slaps again. Scratch does a little more damage, but we need that accuracy lowering effect. Used a couple potions to keep him alive, but eventually he fell to the Water Guns anyway. Sadly another unlucky crit meant we only got out like 3 Mud Slaps out in the end.
Our last hope was BARON, who was now coming in with full health. We spam Poison Sting and manage to land the poison effect on the second try. Croconaw uses Leer for the very first time, which lowers Defense. Pointless since he's using Water Gun, which is a Special move, right? Well, I guess the computer got smarter for this game, because once our defense was lowered, he started spamming Scratch or some other physical attack, which dealt more than 50% of BARON's max HP in damage. We had eight of our Potions left, though, and I just kept using them every turn (fortunately our HP is so low that a single Potion restores BARON completely) waiting for poison to slowly kill the brute. Whenever he'd miss (thank you Mud Slap!) we could avoid using a potion and throw another Poison Sting out to deal an extra 1 damage lol.
With using up quite a few Potions, we finally defeated Nico. This was a nerve-wracking battle but a ton of fun. I feel like I'm really having to strategize to get past the harder parts of this game. I don't know if the whole game with be like this combining our team of mostly weaker Pokémon with the EXP cap, or if it will get really easy once we get a full team and some decent levels, a lot like the first game did.
BARON Lv13
DONNELLY Lv13
MAILLET Lv13
TOGEPI Lv5 <-- this little buddy is here because of that egg that's part of the story lol. Still gotta take him back to Elm.
First up, the team is getting SLIGHTLY stronger. By defeating Falkner, we got the TM for Mud Slap, which gave a different type of move to MAILLET. Though his Scratch attack is ridiculously powerful for this point in the game. I checked and when he was at Lv10, he had 24 Attack, while DONNELLY had 19 at Lv12, and BARON had like 20 at Lv11. That's... a lot of Attack to have ahead of everyone else. It also helps that he gets STAB from Scratch, too, since he's Normal-Type.
I also kept DONNELLY in the front of the party a lot to get him up to Lv12 quickly so he'd learn Bite, which is a huge step up from Leech Life. And then in that tunnel, we got the TM for Swift, which I gave to DONNELLY as well.
BARON is still getting by with Poison Sting and it's pretty awful, so any battles with him usually rely on the opposing Pokémon getting poisoned or being significantly weaker than him. He has Flash now from the HM we got in Sprout Tower, so that can help him try to avoid damage while waiting for poison to take its toll at least...
In Azalea Town we freed the Slowpokes, and then when heading over to Ilex Forest, this jerk appeared. And uh, this was pretty hard. I died and had to restart! That didn't happen once in Pokémon Blue. But here we are dying already. Granted, this is probably the hardest part of the game when we still have this very underdeveloped party, but still...
His first Pokémon is Ghastly. The first time I fought him, it used Hypnosis and immediately put MAILLET to sleep. So I switched out to DONNELLY (whose Bite is Super-Effective, too), but he got put to sleep right away as well. I just kept Biting until finally he woke up and was able to take him out.
Then comes Zubat. It basically was just a battle of the Zubats. But DONNELLY eventually fainted and we swapped out to MAILLET again and waited for him to wake up. The Zubat was no match for the amazing power of STAB Scratch with 24 Attack. Actually it was higher Attack now because we leveled up a couple times since I last checked it.
Then Croconaw comes out. Hoo boy. This thing has massive HP and defenses compared to what our party is able to dish out. I think some of what I was doing was doing literally 1 damage.
I sent out BARON first, not expecting him to be able to do much. My goal was to get as many Flashes in as I could to lower his accuracy as much as possible. After he died, the current "powerhouse" (if you can even call him that) of the team, MAILLET, came out to try to actually deal some damage. I started out with a Mud Slap to lower the accuracy a little more and then went straight into spamming Lick. The goal was to hope to land the paralysis so that with 4x reduced accuracy and paralysis I might be able to just Scratch my way to a slow victory while Croconaw missed over and over.
But it only took a couple Water Guns and we died.
The second time through, we got a lot luckier on Ghastly; Hypnosis didn't work and we were able to take him out with like 4 Mud Slaps. Not starting the battle with two Pokemon asleep was very helpful.
Zubat went better, too -- I let DONNELLY fight Zubat-to-Zubat since I wanted to conserve MAILLET and BARON for the final battle. Had to use a couple Potions, but it was fine.
Six Potions and one Berry left. Croconaw comes.
I start out with DONNELLY still in the battle, hoping to land a Supersonic before he faints. I manage to get it off, and then Croconaw hurts himself in confusion twice (!) doing minor damage to himself. All dat HP yo. DONNELLY's Bite does almost no damage, and he's slower than Croconaw (who is way higher in Level) so I can't hope for the flinch. Swift is equally weak, and Leech Life would deal literally 1 damage.
(Also, fun note: the way the game handles critical hit damage, it's possible for a critical hit to deal 1 damage, even though it's supposed to do double damage. This is because the damage calculation, including the double, is done before checking if the number is between 0 and 1 and then rounding to 1 if it is. I actually had a Zubat deal 1 damage with a critical on me when fighting some Rockets.)
I'd rather get to the other Pokes anyway while the confusion was still in effect, so I just spammed Swift until DONNELLY died (which was after like, a single Water Gun once Croconaw didn't hurt himself in confusion). We switched out to MAILLET to go for some Mud Slaps again. Scratch does a little more damage, but we need that accuracy lowering effect. Used a couple potions to keep him alive, but eventually he fell to the Water Guns anyway. Sadly another unlucky crit meant we only got out like 3 Mud Slaps out in the end.
Our last hope was BARON, who was now coming in with full health. We spam Poison Sting and manage to land the poison effect on the second try. Croconaw uses Leer for the very first time, which lowers Defense. Pointless since he's using Water Gun, which is a Special move, right? Well, I guess the computer got smarter for this game, because once our defense was lowered, he started spamming Scratch or some other physical attack, which dealt more than 50% of BARON's max HP in damage. We had eight of our Potions left, though, and I just kept using them every turn (fortunately our HP is so low that a single Potion restores BARON completely) waiting for poison to slowly kill the brute. Whenever he'd miss (thank you Mud Slap!) we could avoid using a potion and throw another Poison Sting out to deal an extra 1 damage lol.
With using up quite a few Potions, we finally defeated Nico. This was a nerve-wracking battle but a ton of fun. I feel like I'm really having to strategize to get past the harder parts of this game. I don't know if the whole game with be like this combining our team of mostly weaker Pokémon with the EXP cap, or if it will get really easy once we get a full team and some decent levels, a lot like the first game did.
BARON Lv13
DONNELLY Lv13
MAILLET Lv13
TOGEPI Lv5 <-- this little buddy is here because of that egg that's part of the story lol. Still gotta take him back to Elm.
