Entry #6 Nimbasa
Lot to cover. Lay down roots in Nimbasa, started a family, gave up on pokemon and the Nuzlocke, released everything and became a goat herder. Now living a happy life with my wife, kids, goats, and pickup truck.
And while you were distracted reading that, caught a Cottonee in Lostlorn Forest (Tornado), and a Liepard on Route 16 (Loki II). Now catching a Liepard sounds like a failure, considering at this point Lokina could have been a Liepard without the useless ability Unburden. But Lokina is dead and released, so we’re moving passed that. Secondly, Liepard proved the key to defeating Nimbasa’s Eleesa in my White Nuzlocke, using a combination of Hone Claws, Pursuit, and lots of items. Her Emolga is a friggin’ pain, more than any of the other pokemon. The only moves it seemingly had were Volt Switch and Double Team. By the time the rest of her team was dealt with, and only Emolga remained, it had Double Team-ed about as much as it possibly could. Hone Claws raises Attack and Accuracy, which is a rare combination and proved the key to beating her.
That did not happen this time around. After training the team, grinding, exploring, finding stuff, battling people, etc, I thought having everyone at lvl 26 would be enough. Unfortunately, in one of the last battles, Genos went down from a critical hit Scald attack. More on that later. Upon making my way to Eleesa with a team of four lvl 27+ pokemon, I learned we were quite outmatched. Her team started at 28 and went up to 30. It started with Emolga which for the entirety of our battle, used nothing but Volt Switch. Even with Hone Claws, Fake Out, and Snarl, Loki II was utterly outmatched. Eleesa’s strategy consisted of Volt Switch-ing Emolga into Flaafy, then using Thunder Wave to paralyze and Volt Switch back into Emolga for more fast damage. The only pokemon with a chance was PuriPrison, our new Audino. Sometimes to beat a cheap piece of crap, you have to become a cheap piece of crap. What could possibly be worse than a Volt Switch/Thunder Wave combo? Attract.
The most broken status condition in the game. Can’t be healed, makes the pokemon useless more than 50% of the time, and easy to prepare. Eleesa is a girl, meaning so will all of her pokemon. PuriPrison is a boy. Check. Still involved a lot of healing and Refresh-ing, as every time a Volt Switch got through, the Attract would go away. But given how easy it was to predict her next move, eventually we got through and whittled her down. Secret Power did the rest.
Moving on, the plan for fallen pokemon has a new idea in development. Since the idea behind naming Magnemite after Genos was that he could keep getting wrecked and coming back, I want him to make a return. That said, just healing him and bringing him back is unfair. It may be that he must wait until the next gym or until the next gym is beaten to return. Having him make an appearance at every gym would be a fun idea, even if he gets crushed.
Catches:
Lostlorn Forest: Cottonee, aka Tornado
Route 16: Liepard, aka Loki II
RIP
Genos (temporarily out of commission, but awaiting new upgrades from Dr. Kuseno)
