#06 - Escaping The Forest
After our previous defeat left a bad taste in my mouth, I decided to reconsider the trainer order list. There's another documented trainer in the area, Ace Trainer Nelle. I decided to give her team a look, and...
This looks *way* more manageable. Fire and Poison are both hit for super effective damage by Ground, and both her mons are pretty slow. I'm still going to plan ahead, but this feels like a much-needed easy one to try before going back to the stupid bug catcher.
For Charcadet, Marshtomp is the easy answer, and I'm not inclined to turn down an easy counter. The worst it can meaningfully do to Marshtomp is live a Bulldoze and hit Will-O-Wisp, which isn't *not* a possibility, but just prolongs the inevitable. Gulpin is tanky enough to potentially pose an issue, but Toedscool outspeeds and can hit back with Mud-Slap. It even has Stun Spore in case Gulpin actually ends up causing a problem.
I'm rolling in with my team, let's not have a repeat of last time.
Jimothy vs Charcadet, we're going to hit Bulldoze here. We're faster, and the speed drop will reinforce that.
Easy oneshot. Now Gulpin comes out. Even though it has Bullet Seed, I'm prepared to click Bulldoze again anyways. We're still faster, and it should still do big damage. Marshtomp's 85 base attack is the highest attacking stat we have right now, so if anyone can put in some big numbers here it's Jimothy.
This is going remarkably well for us. Bulldoze almost fully KOs Gulpin. It does consume its Iapapa berry, which is important because this Gulpin has Belch and Gluttony, so it having a berry isn't insignificant. But only 2 hits from Bullet Seed, and in total they don't even deal half Jimothy's health? Music to my ears.
Bulldoze.
And we're done.
No, Nelle. Gulpin couldn't.
So what do we get from this? Well, TM for Electroweb.
So that's neat. We also get access to a new section of forest with new mons to choose from, but unfortunately for us, none of them are (or become) Ground types.
So we're back to Bug Catcher Sammy. So what do we learn from last time? Honestly, I'm not sure how much helpful learning we have, other than "get a better plan". It might benefit us to remember that Toad and Shoal both have status moves: Stun Spore on Toad, and Will-O-Wisp on Shoal. Volbeat is immune to paralysis and is a special attacker so burn won't be very effective. Destabilizing Dustox is important, but finding a way to force it to switch out is going to be nightmarish. And we didn't even get to Kricketune in the last one.
Well, here's an idea: for Volbeat, Shoal might do well. Water Compaction will cause a defense boost if it's hit by Water Pulse, which can help mitigate confusion self-damage. That said, Shoal also doesn't really have anything to particularly threaten Volbeat back, so I'll hold off on declaring that my counter. We could try leading Donna with Rollout and hope 1) that Donna survives long enough and 2) that Rollout hits enough times to get big damage. It's not reliable (and I currently don't have damage calculator access) so it's risky.
Now, I must admit, in lieu of damage calculations I've done a few save state test runs just to see what would happen. I promise, I'm not doing whole attempts and only sharing the winning one, I only go maybe two turns deep before loading. I've learned that Lady *should* win a 1v1 against Kricketune if it stays in (remember- last time it switched out immediately). This already brings the number of mons to consider down to 2. I don't have anything that can ignore confusion so there's unfortunately still a sticking point here. But if we can minimize the number of times it comes up, then it should help improve consistency. With Volbeat, minimizing confusion means dissuading Water Pulse, which means Water Absorb. Since it has Hidden Power Grass, that means Clod is our option here. Hidden Power Bug and Mega Drain won't be fun to get hit with, but ideally we can exploit Volbeat's lower physical defense with Poison Tail (perhaps even poison condition proc) to take it out. My other idea is Shoal, who has a 79 base special attack behind Mud Shot, and Water Compaction not only (basically) removes water weakness but also raises defense, mitigating potential confusion damage. Clod and Shoal are for Volbeat. Now we have 3 mons left over to deal with Dustox.
I just remembered Dustox has Shield Dust, which to my recollection will make Stun Spore not work on it. But I also remembered Toedscool has Mold Breaker, which should counteract this. Jimothy's Rock Tomb is going to be invaluable for dealing high enough damage to break through Dustox. Ground attacks are neutral on Dustox, which I can use to my advantage to get good STAB damage.
I'm going to bring Toad to try and make that Stun Spore to work, para chance is less reliable but free turns could really turn things my way. Last I'm bringing Donna, if Magnitude rolls high it can deal some serious damage to Dustox.
Alright you stupid kid, *I'm not going easy on you.*
Lady vs Kricketune, *if it switches out now I'm going to be so confused, I don't know why it switched the first time.*
That's more like it. Oran Berry got stolen, but Kricketune was already at full health, didn't really make a difference. We keep clicking Struggle Bug until it goes down.
Another good trade, I'm happy with where this is going.
And Kricketune is down. That's one mon we don't have to worry about.
Volbeat is out next, I'm going to click Sucker Punch here just to get a bit more damage through before sending my Volbeat counter in.
That's good enough for me, nice job Lady. Now to decide which Volbeat switch to use, I'm going Clod. I don't want Volbeat to try Mega Drain.
Now we start spamming Poison Tail.
Nice job! Mega Drain didn't end up healing that much, and a Poison Tail crit did pretty well! It's not a ton of damage overall but still! Keep using Poison Tail.
Mega Drain is dealing pretty rough damage, but the health bar is trending downwards.
I don't think Clod will survive this next hit, but I'm going to click Poison Tail anyways.
Marvelous! Clod is performing excellently today, this is the type of thing that makes me really believe that this little guy will eventually turn into an immovable special wall in the future. Now, we actually have a choice here, this is a very advantageous position to be. We know Clod will go down to whatever the next hit is, and that becomes a safe entrypoint of whatever we choose. We could try clicking Slam - that way if Dustox switches in we do non-resisted damage. But what I'm going to do instead is Tail Whip. Volbeat is faster than Clod, so if it's going to get the KO it's just going to do that. But if Dustox comes in, a defense drop could make my job of taking it down *much* easier.
I think this is the first time in recorded history that Tail Whip has actually been part of someone's legitimate strategy.
You did good, Clod. And now, Donna comes in. Priority Ice Shard should be strong enough to seal the deal here.
Say goodnight, Volbeat.
I bet this kid doesn't feel so hot now, huh? But now's not the time to get cocky, we still have our biggest obstacle ahead of us. Dustox looms large, but I still have 4 mons left to deal with it. We know turn 1 is always Toxic, and I'm tempted to click Rollout. But Dustox could easily click Protect on turn 2, putting an end to the buildup. So we just click Magnitude.
Let's. Go. Gambling.
Respectable, although not enough to outpace Roost. Dustox is still at full enough health to not click Roost yet, and it doesn't have a reason to click Protect yet, so we know this is going to be an incoming Psybeam. It's not my favorite thing to have incoming, but we're doing fine so far. Magnitude.
That was amazing! Not only do we not get confused, Magnitude 9 has 110 base power! Now, I have to play my cards very carefully here. Ice Shard probably isn't strong enough to net the KO, and if it doesn't get the KO I'll fall way behind on outpacing Roost healing. If it clicks Psybeam again I'm liable to get confused again, and getting another high Magnitude number isn't likely. It's a situation where I have no guaranteed winning move, which is where I have to prove my mettle as a Pokemon player.
Ultimately, even though Ice Shard sounds amazing, the only way it could take the game now is a high damage roll crit. I'm going to be responsible and click Magnitude.
Naturally, the most responsible and reliable answer is gambling.
Magnitude 7s won't be enough to outpace Roost healing, but the more times I can force Dustox to Roost the closer I can push it to running out of uses of Roost. Although- I actually don't know if enemies have limited PP in this game, maybe they don't. But my thinking is, if I can leave Dustox in a bad position for my next incoming mon, I'll have a better chance of winning.
No confusion on Psybeam and Magnitude 8? This is the moment. This is the range for Ice Shard.
I hope.
You *know* it, I'm *so* good at this. Stupid kid.
And now, we can exit Viridian Forest! We can finally move on to Pewter City, we can finally obtain our next batch of mons! But I'll leave that for the next post, I feel like that'll make a fun opener for the next post. Bye for now!