1.06 | Tower Climber

11/12/2024, 12:02 PM

i figured Grechen deserved a bit of time to shine, so i'm putting her in the front of the party for now. there is one sliiiight issue here unfortunately, and it's that her only attacking move is ghost type. this means that she's kind of a sitting duck against normal types... luckily, this tower mostly consists of trainers using Bellsprout, with the occasional Hoothoot thrown in every so often, and we have Rocky for those. sorry Jano, you'll get your time eventually.

oh yeah!! Grechen's gonna be dishing out tons of statuses, since both of her moves inflict them. she also levelled up twice in her first trainer battle, nice. in her second battle, she learned Spite, a move that decreases the PP of the last move the opponent used. not gonna be super helpful in the normal type matchup, but it's alright i suppose.

as you go further up Sprout Tower, you'll see more trainers to fight and items to get. like i said before, most trainers here have either Bellsprout or Hoothoot, so they really shouldn't be that big of a hassle to deal with. as for the items, you'll see more of the early game classics, status cures, X items, etc. X items in this game aren't all that great, since unlike the later generations, they only increase stats by one stage instead of two. i never find myself using them all that often, personally.

oh shoot... i got a little too trigger happy with Grechen, and now she's out of PP for her only attacking move. uhhhh... i don't really wanna go all the way back down, so... guess Jano gets his time to shine after all!

Joey, i'm not going back down to heal up my new party member, what makes you think i'll go back to fight you? well speaking of which, we've reached the top of the tower! here we'll fight three trainers in a row, so make sure to come prepared. while i was fighting these guys, Jano actually learned a pretty cool move, Reflect! it puts up a barrier that increases the defense of whoever's out on your side, as opposed to normal defense buffs which only affect the current pokemon.

oh, switchin' it up, are we? interesting move, i thought it was only your boss who had a Hoothoot. well this was where i wanted to give Rocky a chance, but... it's looking like he might struggle a bit here, only being level 5. ah well, we'll just have to see. thankfully one of his options is Screech, a move that lowers the opponent's defense by two stages in one turn, so that'll help at least.

oh yeah, Rocky was able to hold his own just fine. because he's a traded pokemon, he gets an extra 1.5x exp from every battle, which is handy. something important to keep in mind if you're using a traded pokemon, however, is that once they reach a certain level threshold, they'll start to disobey you and waste turns in battle. you can increase this threshold with each gym badge you get, but it's just something to remember.

uh oh... looks like Lilac is getting up to something. the main sage gives her an HM, but says she needs to treat her pokemon better. but it just goes in one ear and out the other with her, and she completely ignores him. and then... she leaves. see ya around, i guess.

well no matter, we want that HM for ourselves! despite his "master" status, this guy isn't all that difficult. he starts out with a Bellsprout (who'dve guessed?) and at this point you've probably gotten used to fighting these.

his second pokemon is another Bellsprout (whatever) but his ace is a Hoothoot. again, shouldn't give you any trouble at this point, especially if you've got Rocky. damn, i even got a critical hit that nearly did him in! Rocky, you're not going to be a permanent fixture in my team, but i'm glad you're putting in the work all the same!

for our troubles, the sage gives us HM05, Flash. it can be used to light up dark places (like Dark Cave!) so we can see where we're going. it isn't strictly necessary, you can still absolutely fumble around in the dark until you find your way to the exit, but it's a helpful tool to have. unfortunately, we'll need to beat Falkner at the Violet City gym before we can use it for that, so it looks like we gotta finally bite the bullet and see what he's all about...