The path to Cinnabar
Feb. 8th, 2019 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheSo our Pokey shenanigans continue.
I should mention that while I say the challenge is based around getting EXP from trainer battles only/not from wild encounters, I should clarify that I mean EXP isn't to be gained from repeatable random encounters. One-time scripted encounters like the Marowak in Pokemon Tower, the two Snorlaxes blocking roads, and Legendary Pokemon are of course allowed. Especially since often these are required battles anyway, but that also means optional legendary Pokemon are allowed, too. Since we're not focused on capture, we get to defeat these big beasts as boss battles, instead, consuming their delicious EXP.
The next order of business is to go to Silph Co in Saffron. This is an even more obnoxious "puzzle" area than we've seen so far, now with random teleporters all over the place. There are a few dozen of these and the building has 11 floors, each with several teleporters on it, and the teleporters take you to different areas on different floors, and there's also locked doors that you can't unlock until you've found a Card Key item, which makes more teleporters available... yeah, it's a pain.
But in here, we get to fight our boyfriend Giovanni again, but more importantly, we get TM26: Earthquake! Now MAILLET finally has a power move to match the strength of the rest of the team, and isn't stuck just using Horn Attack.
After that, we head all the way back to Cerulean to Surf to the abandoned Power Plant, something we couldn't do until now. It's a good thing we're not using Fly, because on the way there, we stumbled upon a little place we could Surf to to receive the TM for Pay Day. I replaced MAILLET's Tackle with it, which allows us to scrape up a little extra cash here and there. It's actually been quite useful. Since we're also limited to how much money we can make, this is really good.
The Power Plant is home to no trainers at all, though there are a few scripted Voltorb and Electrode battles we're able to squeeze a little extra EXP out of. The big prize is Zapdos at the end. This thing is... strong. It's Lv50, while our party was barely touching Lv40 at the time, and it has legendary-class stats with awesome moves like Drill Peck. It took pretty much the entire party to take it out, leaving us looking like this in the end:
But we got like 1500 EXP from it, which is pretty awesome. About the same as fighting 3 trainers' Pokemon.
After that, we went to Cycling Road and fought all the trainers there, then headed south from Fuschia toward Seafoam Islands.
This place is a bit of a maze, though it's really not that complicated at all. But every time I come here I make a severe error and somehow forget it every time, leaving myself baffled and taking way longer to clear the area than I need to.
Basically, there's a "fast current" at the bottom of the cave, and you have to push boulders into holes until they fall into the water to block the current so you can Surf across. The two boulders you need to push are both easily accessible from the entrance on the first floor.
My problem is that I never remember that both boulders are in the entrance area on the first floor, and when I get back up to the entrance again after pushing one boulder, I'm like "Oh, no, this is the beginning, I need to go back" and immediately turn around back down the ladder trying to find the other boulder somewhere else. Eventually I get frustrated and go back to the beginning like "OK I'm going to check every fucking little square in this entire cave" and then find the other boulder right away and hate myself.
It doesn't help the frustration that the encounter rate is stupid high in here.
There's also a little puzzle you can do on the side to find Articuno, who was a bit easier than Zapdos, but gave the same amount of EXP.
Only Bakula fainted this time:
Once getting outside of Seafoam, I skipped past all the trainers in the water to get to Cinnabar Island. This is the last unique area in the game we'll get to -- the next town past the last route is our hometown of Pallet. We're still putting off the Saffron Gym since it's Psychic-type, and unlike the cartoons we can't just win by making Sabrina laugh at a funny face. We have to, like, fight Alakazams and stuff. And Nico's Alakazam was already one-shotting half the party in Silph Co.
So next up is to go back and pick up the trainers on the routes surrounding Cinnabar, head into the burning mansion and learn about how Mewtwo killed a bunch of people, and start working on our final three gym badges. I'm worried about how little EXP is left before we have to head to the league. This is my first time trying this "challenge" in the original games, and while it's not that bad getting through the main game, the League is a huge difficulty spike, and basically the challenge is in making sure the entire game has led up to us being properly prepared for it.
Here's the party's levels as we first land in Cinnabar:
MAILLET Lv40
BAKULA Lv41
RICKMAN Lv41
BARON Lv41
KOBAYASHI Lv41
DONNELLY Lv39
I should mention that while I say the challenge is based around getting EXP from trainer battles only/not from wild encounters, I should clarify that I mean EXP isn't to be gained from repeatable random encounters. One-time scripted encounters like the Marowak in Pokemon Tower, the two Snorlaxes blocking roads, and Legendary Pokemon are of course allowed. Especially since often these are required battles anyway, but that also means optional legendary Pokemon are allowed, too. Since we're not focused on capture, we get to defeat these big beasts as boss battles, instead, consuming their delicious EXP.
The next order of business is to go to Silph Co in Saffron. This is an even more obnoxious "puzzle" area than we've seen so far, now with random teleporters all over the place. There are a few dozen of these and the building has 11 floors, each with several teleporters on it, and the teleporters take you to different areas on different floors, and there's also locked doors that you can't unlock until you've found a Card Key item, which makes more teleporters available... yeah, it's a pain.
But in here, we get to fight our boyfriend Giovanni again, but more importantly, we get TM26: Earthquake! Now MAILLET finally has a power move to match the strength of the rest of the team, and isn't stuck just using Horn Attack.
After that, we head all the way back to Cerulean to Surf to the abandoned Power Plant, something we couldn't do until now. It's a good thing we're not using Fly, because on the way there, we stumbled upon a little place we could Surf to to receive the TM for Pay Day. I replaced MAILLET's Tackle with it, which allows us to scrape up a little extra cash here and there. It's actually been quite useful. Since we're also limited to how much money we can make, this is really good.
The Power Plant is home to no trainers at all, though there are a few scripted Voltorb and Electrode battles we're able to squeeze a little extra EXP out of. The big prize is Zapdos at the end. This thing is... strong. It's Lv50, while our party was barely touching Lv40 at the time, and it has legendary-class stats with awesome moves like Drill Peck. It took pretty much the entire party to take it out, leaving us looking like this in the end:
But we got like 1500 EXP from it, which is pretty awesome. About the same as fighting 3 trainers' Pokemon.
After that, we went to Cycling Road and fought all the trainers there, then headed south from Fuschia toward Seafoam Islands.
This place is a bit of a maze, though it's really not that complicated at all. But every time I come here I make a severe error and somehow forget it every time, leaving myself baffled and taking way longer to clear the area than I need to.
Basically, there's a "fast current" at the bottom of the cave, and you have to push boulders into holes until they fall into the water to block the current so you can Surf across. The two boulders you need to push are both easily accessible from the entrance on the first floor.
My problem is that I never remember that both boulders are in the entrance area on the first floor, and when I get back up to the entrance again after pushing one boulder, I'm like "Oh, no, this is the beginning, I need to go back" and immediately turn around back down the ladder trying to find the other boulder somewhere else. Eventually I get frustrated and go back to the beginning like "OK I'm going to check every fucking little square in this entire cave" and then find the other boulder right away and hate myself.
It doesn't help the frustration that the encounter rate is stupid high in here.
There's also a little puzzle you can do on the side to find Articuno, who was a bit easier than Zapdos, but gave the same amount of EXP.
Only Bakula fainted this time:
Once getting outside of Seafoam, I skipped past all the trainers in the water to get to Cinnabar Island. This is the last unique area in the game we'll get to -- the next town past the last route is our hometown of Pallet. We're still putting off the Saffron Gym since it's Psychic-type, and unlike the cartoons we can't just win by making Sabrina laugh at a funny face. We have to, like, fight Alakazams and stuff. And Nico's Alakazam was already one-shotting half the party in Silph Co.
So next up is to go back and pick up the trainers on the routes surrounding Cinnabar, head into the burning mansion and learn about how Mewtwo killed a bunch of people, and start working on our final three gym badges. I'm worried about how little EXP is left before we have to head to the league. This is my first time trying this "challenge" in the original games, and while it's not that bad getting through the main game, the League is a huge difficulty spike, and basically the challenge is in making sure the entire game has led up to us being properly prepared for it.
Here's the party's levels as we first land in Cinnabar:
MAILLET Lv40
BAKULA Lv41
RICKMAN Lv41
BARON Lv41
KOBAYASHI Lv41
DONNELLY Lv39
