#09 - Reaching Cerulean
We've just arrived in Cerulean City, and we get access to the Move Relearner after another puzzle. I've been waiting for this one, it allows me to not have to be so careful about what moves I overwrite, and after evolution I can get access to moves I normally might have missed. Additionally, we have the new level cap, so I spent time leveling all my guys up to the new cap.
We have 3 new evolved mons!
We also have another chance for an egg, which I still haven't decided what I want to do about.
We also get to buy a ton of TMs through the mart.
Our next battle is against our Rival, but there's a twist here:
You'll notice here that the level cap sorta splits here. Why? Because you can face Misty before *any of these guys*. I could technically go fight her right now if I wanted. You can basically progress all the way up to *Lt. Surge* before fighting Misty, and the game basically uses whatever level cap you're currently at.
I'm not sure what we'd consider the easier or harder challenge, but the way I've gone about this in the past, I do absolutely everything I can before fighting Misty, which means our Rival is the next fight. We can explore Cerulean City to a limited extent, because if we go too close to Nugget Bridge he comes out to fight us.
But before that, we have some other fun options.
We can grab the Punching Glove, if we have Punching moves I guess.
There's also a move tutor who teaches Fang moves, which is fantastic coverage, and I will certainly be taking advantage of.
We can grab a Sun Stone from Route 4 (which doesn't have any Ground types unfortunately), but the Sun Stone doesn't really help us because there aren't any Ground types that come from it. (Yes I took the screenshot before checking whether I got anything from it.) We also have a Thunder Stone and a Water Stone in our inventory, which are similarly of no use to us.
This may be of better use to us though.
But anyhow, enough stalling: what does our Rival have?
A lot, it turns out. Hitmonchan, Arbok, and Eevee are all physical attackers while Clefable, Simipour, and Ivysaur are all special attackers.
The good news is that Clod is a shoe-in for our Clefable counter, the best it can do is Icy Wind while we're striking back with his newly learned Poison Jab. Easy. Simipour, honestly probably could also be handled by Clod thanks to Water Absorb and neutrality to Grass Knot, leaving it only vulnerable to... another Icy Wind. But for the sake of taking this seriously, we can try to find another workaround. Shoal is my pick against Eevee, it's immune to Round and Double Kick, and has a high defense stat to deal with Bite. It also has Will-O-Wisp, which should help against Bite. Then we can use whatever move we want, it's just a sitting duck.
Angela is an easy counter for Arbok, it's not going to switch into Angela so I'm either going to be defensively switching into it or just raw switching into it, so Intimidate won't be an issue. Angela is immune to Poison Jab and Thunder Fang, sure it'll get hit by Sucker Punch but Bulldoze will still do a lot of damage to it. Angela also outspeeds everything (save for Evoboost Eevee), which is nice.
Now, the biggest issue here: Simipour. Simipour has the custom ability Sage Power, which is basically the special version of Gorilla Tactics. 50% boost to special moves, but locks you into the first one used. This could be a huge problem for us depending on what move it locks into. If it locks into Water Pulse, Clod easily counters. If it locks into Icy Wind, not so good. Luckily, I'll have the advantage of knowing what it chooses to lock into before I send my response out. Toad the Toedscruel actually can tank an Icy Wind, and there's a percentage chance it heals back enough to survive a second and finish Simipour off with Mega Drain. We're probably going to have some leftover mons from dealing with Clefable and Eevee, so that should help us.
Erosion the new Piloswine does major damage to Ivysaur, but it'll be effectively a trade. Ivysaur outspeeds and can hit with Giga Drain, but a one-two of Ice Fang into priority Ice Shard will seal the deal.
Oh yeah, and Nidoqueen is my Hitmonchan counter. With a Jolly nature we outspeed and can hit 2 Aerial Aces, which has a 70% to 2HKO. If not, it should still be fine, with have other mons that can do cleanup.
Here's our team.
Let's go.
We start with Aerial Ace, enemy will probably go for Ice Punch.
We get a lucky Poison Touch, which is nice but we're already in a good spot. Hitmonchan can try to Mach Punch or Sucker Punch, but it won't put us down, and our Aerial Ace will KO either way. If it tries to wait out another Ice Punch, it won't get the chance.
He actually switched into Ivysaur, which is a bit unexpected, but Aerial Ace is still going to do big damage. We'll outspeed and hit another Aerial Ace, it may or may not down us with Giga Drain and recover some of that HP, but we're still in the lead either way.
That too, Leech Seed also works. But we're still in the major advantage here with Aerial Ace's damage.
You know what, more than I expected. Makoto goes down to Giga Drain. But we can immediately send Erosion in for cleanup. Ice Shard should immediately put Ivysaur down, unless it uses Protect.
Yep, no point prolonging the inevitable.
Clefable comes in, and Erosion is slower, but we're just going to switch to Clodsire. Clod should effortlessly stomach anything Clefable can do.
Case in point. From here we Poison Jab.
We actually get a Poison proc, although it doesn't matter against Clefable because of Magic Guard. Another Poison Jab seals this.
That does make sense actually, but we have the perfect counter for this. It's probably going to go Crunch or Sucker Punch, but we're switching to Angela.
Yikes, that's a lot of damage! I wasn't expecting that, *uh oh*. I have to check to see if Sucker Punch might actually KO.
Oh shoot, Sucker Punch actually does KO. I didn't realize Arbok would be this strong. We're switching to Erosion.
We survive the Crunch decently, but we're hit with a defense drop. According to the calculator, even with that Erosion should be able to survive one more Crunch, even with -1 defense. So this is where I Bulldoze to nearly take it out and reduce its speed.
Now, we do run into an issue that Sucker Punch KOs us, but our Ice Shard KOs Arbok. We just have to hope it chooses Crunch for some reason so our Ice Shard wins.
I really thought I was just coping there, but look at that. Alright, thanks for the free win.
Oh boy. It's you.
Well, we actually have a chance to manipulate the situation a bit. We can launch an Ice Shard and go down to whatever move Simipour clicks, and that actually increases our likelihood that it's something we can deal with. In fact, because Erosion is *neutral* to Ice thanks to its own Ice typing, we're very likely to either get hit with Water Pulse or Grass Knot. Whichever one it clicks, we have a good switch for it.
We get hit with Grass Knot, which means Toad is incoming! Neutrality means it's going to do very little to Toad.
We hit the highest damage roll, which takes Simipour down just like that!
Eevee switches in. Currently our enemy is down to Hitmonchan, Eevee, and Clefable. The two on the bench aren't doing too hot, but my team isn't either. We have healthy Toad and Shoal, with injured Angela and Clod on the bench. I won't put Toad into further harm, we're sticking to the plan with switching to Shoal.
I swear, it sometimes feels like this game doesn't even pretend to not know what you're doing before picking a move. First thing's first, Will-O-Wisp.
Alright, not great so far, we take another Bite and we whiff on Will-O-Wisp.
Take 2.
Cool. Alright fine, let's try this again.
I know this isn't unexpected, but it's still disappointing. I'm going to let Shoal go down with the ship here, I'll click Will-O-Wisp again in case it goes for the Evoboost, but we're dry switching Angela in to do whatever damage it can muster.
Alright, you didn't need to do that.
Actually, instead of Angela, I'm sending Toad in. It's faster, and Eevee can't hit it for a super effective Double Kick.
Since we're at full, we're going to start with a Mud Shot to lower its speed, just in case. Plus Mega Drain healing won't really do anything yet.
That's strange, still no Evoboost? I mean, now would be the time to do it, right? Oh well. Now we Mega Drain.
Now to finish it off. Although in case something else tries to switch in, I'm going Mud Shot to get the speed drop.
No need, I suppose. Eevee is down.
Hitmonchan comes in, and this could end a few ways, but most of them are me winning. Hitmonchan's Ice Punch is super strong and can OHKO Toad even at full, but we're faster. Mach Punch and Sucker Punch don't do enough to take Toad down, so we get to make our move. Our best bet is actually Hex, a move I didn't really put much thought into (it just sounded like alright Ghost coverage), but thanks to that lucky Poison Touch from the *very beginning of this battle*, Hex has a 37% chance to KO in one. And even if it doesn't, I have the sneaking suspicion it'll put Hitmonchan into range for poison damage to take it out.
Or we get lucky! Very nice. Now Clefable is all that's left, and we can just kinda click buttons here. If Toad fails to seal the deal, we still have Angela with STAB super effective Metal Claw to clean up. This game is ours.
And just like that, the battle is won.
We also get the Pokerider, which is a very nice QoL feature for me.
Although right now, there's not really anywhere I need to go, since all the progression is through Nugget Bridge. Nugget Bridge consists of six encounters, the first 5 have three pokemon, the last one has four.
While it makes this post particularly short, I'm going to cut this one off here so Nugget Bridge can be its own set of posts, I'm estimating 2 if I let them run long, 3 if I don't.