#03 - Error And Trial
I'm returning to this run the next day from the previous session, I woke up way too early so I'm starting this very early in the morning. But! That's not important. What is important is that we have our first major battle coming up!
So, here's a fun fact about the Radical Red mod:
Within the documentation for Radical Red is team sheets for each and every one of the major trainer battles in the game. Base stats, items, movesets, levels, it even has a helpful section for you to see the actual speed stats if you fight them at the expected level cap. I know for hardcore nuzlockers like Pchal and others (i only know the one because I saw him do a video once), these team sheets are invaluable for finding their strategy going into each fight, and this stage is one of my favorite parts of doing a run for a game like this. Let's take a look at the documentation for our rival here:
Beautiful! Tells us everything we need to know. The rival in RR always chooses a Kanto starter, but the type advantage counterpick remains. So, because I chose Mudkip, our rival has Bulbasaur.
So, what do we do with this?
Well, we have 3 mons to deal with.
Snubbull has Intimidate and is running a physical set, Muscle Band and Adamant nature means it's going to hit pretty hard for our level. Power-Up Punch also isn't great right now, as it could snowball out of control if we don't have a good answer for it. Ideally we'd want a physically bulky mon that's a special attacker. Why special attacker? Aside from Intimidate, its base special defense is the lower of the two.
Slowpoke is running special moves and Thunder Wave, but what's most troubling is Regenerator+Leftovers+Teleport. Slow switches with Teleport bolstered by the recovery power of Regenerator and Leftovers is going to make Slowpoke very hard to put down, so it might end up being the last thing on the field. It's also weaker on the special side, and while Water Pulse would normally be a threat to our Ground types, I already have 2 Water Absorb party members to choose from. Because both Wooper forms have the same base stats at this point, I'll likely choose our Water/Ground Wooper to not be vulnerable to Psybeam. In fact, that Wooper is immune to Water Pulse and Thunder Wave, and if Slowpoke is the last mon on the field, Teleport becomes useless. Therefore it only really has to survive enough Psybeams to take Slowpoke down. That may be a tall order, but it already puts Quag the Wooper as my initial counterpick here.
Bulbasaur is the mon I'm most worried about. Sleep powder certainly is no fun to encounter, and Mega Drain hits the one weakness of our best defensive typing. We're still early enough in the game to have limited options, and since I'm trying this before even entering Viridian Forest, I'm not working with much. But this is the challenge, and this is what I'm here for.
So, now to actually design my approach.
Like I keep saying, we're unfortunately a bit limited at this stage so it's not going to be flashy.
Marshtomp has our highest base stat total so far, so I'll likely throw it in front of the Snubbull to see how far he can get. Intimidate may drop our physical attack (Marshtomp's preferred attacking stat), but its current Water coverage is actually Brine (since it doesn't have access to any physical Water moves yet). We can add the Wise Glasses we picked up from the house we did the Poke-Vial encounter in to give Marshtomp some more oomph behind it. Marshtomp won't really get us much further here, since that Brine will thud into Slowpoke and Bulbasaur, but it's a safe enough bet that we can confidently call Jimothy our Snubbull answer.
For Slowpoke, I already went into it earlier but Quag is likely our pick. Honestly it's really not my preferred choice, it's a bit rickety at this stage. Base 25 special defense is rough to say the least, and base 55 hp is really not helping. At this point it's not even really worth running a special defense boosting nature since it's so low, so we'll want to give it more...
Actually, should it be attack or special attack?
ohh... that's rough.
Well, we know Slowpoke has better physical defense than special (65 vs 40). Wooper would have STAB on Mud Shot, which is 55 power (effectively 82.5 after STAB), and Slam has base 80 power. I'll be honest, I thought Slam had a paralysis chance, but it doesn't, so special attack boosting it is.
It is really weird to have a Modest Wooper.
Now, for Bulbasaur. Since this isn't a Nuzlocke, I have some room to play here, I can make a few sacrifice picks for this one. And luckily, I just so happen to have 2 great candidates for sacrificing early on. Swinub and Phanpy both have supereffective Ice Shards on priority, which can ensure I get some damage in on Bulbasaur.
And...
That honestly might be enough on its own.
It sounds a little reckless, but - for as brutal as it can be - Radical Red is not without its softballs. With this in mind, I feel like I can attempt this first fight for the first time.
My rival leads with Snubbull, I lead with Marshtomp.
I start off with Brine which takes Snubbull down to half, and Snubbull responds with Power-Up Punch that does a bit to me. I'm not worried at this point, another Brine will for sure net the KO and I'm pretty sure the enemy won't switch right now. RR AI tends to be better about making defensive switches, but not enough to respond to stuff like this.
...or so I thought. I really wasn't expecting this, I'm typing this in real time as these things are happening, so you know. Brine thuds into Slowpoke, but I'm not exactly ready to face Slowpoke yet. But while Marshtomp isn't really my best Slowpoke answer, it's good enough for me to want to stay in and try some physical damage against it. Bulldoze and Rock Tomb both have speed drop effects, which aren't really that useful here since it's Slowpoke. But Body Slam has the paralysis chance, so while its base 85 power is lower than a STAB-boosted Bulldoze (effective 90), I think it's overall more useful in this context. Let's see how it goes:
No para, and minimal damage. This is getting nowhere fast, but I need to keep at it. Right now I'm just not equipped to back down, i don't exactly have a better answer.
Not even bothering with the screenshot, pretty much nothing changed. And I didn't even realize at first, but Slowpoke using Water Pulse actually confused my Marshtomp. So now each click is more of a risk. I could switch to save it, but I'm still very limited on answers.
But you know what I just remembered? Shoal is in the back pocket.
Water Compaction should halve Water Pulse damage, it has Ominous Wind and Absorb as super effective moves, and
That's about it, but it's something. Let's see what it can do.
Ok so it didn't intercept a Water Pulse but I'm still liking that outcome. I'll throw out an Ominous Wind for now, that should be a decent play no matter if they stay or switch. If they stay it should be nice STAB super effective Ghost damage, if they switch...
Well, player-side omni-boosts are removed in Hardcore mode, but it'll still deal some damage, I can still be hopeful.
Yes! That's a welcome surprise.
Now we stare down the barrel of Bulbasaur, and I don't like the odds of this. Except actually, I really do, because Shoal already earned its trade. Taking down Slowpoke is worth a mon, so I can start pressuring Bulbasaur with whatever I want here. Once Sandygast goes down, I can swap in my Ice Shard mons to start making some big swings.
Shoal goes down to Mega Drain, out comes Swinub.
Swinub launches an Ice Shard, which takes about half off of Bulbasaur and forces it to use Oran Berry, but Mega Drain OHKOs Swinub and brings Bulbasaur back to full. Not promising. Let me check my numbers again:
Bulbasaur currently has a speed of 26. Not a single one of my mons is faster than it, so whatever I send in has to be able to survive a hit. Paldean Wooper has the typing to resist Mega Drain, which will also slow Bulbasaur's healing, and it also can hit back with Poison Tail. Bulbasaur is weaker on the physical side, so this might be a good play. Let's try it.
...or that could happen, sure. I'll be honest, I'm not exactly at the top of my game right now, this maybe isn't a great showing for my skills as a Ground type specialist. But just remember how arbitrarily restricted I'm being, not even stepping foot into Viridian Forest before attempting this fight, where there are more mons that would absolutely help with this fight.
I'm not being defensive, YOU'RE being defensive, shut up
Anyhow, I have a choice to make. I could leave Clod in and try to last long enough to wake up, or I could switch and let something else get hit. I know most players tend to swap a sleeping pokemon immediately, but I like to run the clock a little. Let's see what happens.
I'm getting very lucky here, I'll admit. I forgot Bulbasaur had a boosting move in Growth, but Clod woke up turn one to hit a Poison Tail. My ideal situation right now is one where Clod faints to Bulbasaur without giving it enough health back to be out of range for Donna to come in with Ice Shard. It's a tall order, as Donna's Ice Shard will be weaker than Erosion's, and Erosion's did about half Bulbasaur's health. So that means Clod needs to take Bulbasaur down to at least below half in such a way that Mega Drain doesn't bring Bulbasaur above half. But I believe in the heart of the Ground Types, they haven't failed me before.
Alright, I'm taking so many screenshots so far, I might need to reconsider how I cover my battles. Hopefully text will suffice for more of the coverage, I don't know if I'll have enough space on the website to store the images.
Skipping ahead a few turns, Bulbasaur hit Clod with Sleep Powder again, Clod woke up frame 1 again and hit another Poison Tail, but Bulbasaur was able to growth twice and was able to hit a +2 Mega Drain. It's not quite at full, but it's pretty close.
This isn't looking great for us right now.
Anyhow, Donna goes out, hits Ice Shard for not that much damage, and then immediately goes down to Mega Drain.
I'll be honest, folks: I don't think I'm taking this battle. My last two mons are Water/Ground types against a +2 Mega Drain spammer, and neither are faster.
So, what's the lesson here?
Don't underestimate this mod.
I do kinda have to leave this here for the moment, I thought I'd do a quick and easy win to share some progress, but this might actually be better for the story here. I'm not making a blog of every time I win, I'm sharing the whole process. Now I've tried it, I've learned things, and next time I'll come at it with that new knowledge and try something new.
But the sun has risen now, and I have stuff to do. I'll be back with another update soon, probably!
Footnote from editing Modesty here: it turns out I have enough image storage to maybe document the whole run at that pace of images, but frankly I'm not sure I want to. It's just a lot to do. I'll keep experimenting with how I want to actually cover the battles.