Pokemon BDSP Playthrough Discussion

[R_N]

btw re: Roark, unless the 1.1 update changed things his Cranidos has no EVs or IVs (Gardenia's Roserade is the first one to start using those) applied so he basically has DP Cranidos except Pursuit is Bulldoze (ymmv on which is more annoying to your team)

if you had trouble with him here, it's almost certain you had an approximate amount of trouble in DP. Or more trouble, potentially, because EXP share means everyone is gaining exp per battle and depending on how many levels you're seeking out for certain pokemon, you were potentially 2-3 levels weaker instead of 1 (I went into the battle abvout level 12, then everyone became 13/14 by the end of onix).

e: If I had to guess why people's experiences are "its not bad up to Gardenia" its probably because that's around the point were you start seeing "better" pokemon that thus have "better" exp than the early game does. Then it snowballs from there.

 

[Siggu]

I noticed a strange... visual quirk with Repels.

Since BW2, when a Repel runs out, it says that the Repel's effect wore off, and asks you if you want to use another one.

Here, on the other hand, it asks you if you want to use "another one", without ever mentioning the Repel until you make a choice.

 

[Wishy]

I'll probably still use Gligar even if it can't evolve until end/postgame. It's stats aren't that bad I guess.

Houndour/Houndoom's accessibility is weird and it's level up movepool is trash. Who at GF hates it so much?

 

[Siggu]

Houndour/Houndoom's accessibility is weird

Why do you find it weird? I came across it way more often that I'd have liked (although it gives fine experience at least).

 

[Wishy]

Why do you find it weird? I came across it way more often that I'd have liked (although it gives fine experience at least).

I just find it odd to include the final stage Pokemon in the wild but not the first stage.

 

[Chadlad50]

Well y'all I did it. I found a skull fossil and a Houndoom/Ralts. The latter two will be staying in the box for now cause they're 3 levels ahead of the rest of my team, but it's all coming together. Onto Hearthome city

I just find it odd to include the final stage Pokemon in the wild but not the first stage.

Yeah I also found that odd. I mean I'm not really complaining, but it's not what I expected to find

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

By the way, I noticed Box Link is disabled while within a gym. Does that apply to the Elite Four challenge, too? Because that would throw a giant obstacle in my plan if I can't swap Pokémon between each member.

Yes, it probably will. SwSh was the same for Gyms.

Edit: All these mons being pretty much ready for Gardenia make me wanna puke.

Exp. Share is probably hideously busted, even early game, I had 4 mons on par with Roark's Cranidos, just off beating all trainers/no wilds.

The Elite 4 is tough enough and has a massive level spike, so they'll be relevant. The rest of the game is nowhere as fortunate tho.

 

[R_N]

Honestly if anyone has beaten the game (or is just doing some flagrant cheating) and wanted to be very nice and trade me a razor fang I would be much abliged.

I really wanted to use Gliscor but carrying around a Gligar all game while whatever the rest of the team doesnt have to worry about this, just sucks.

I just find it odd to include the final stage Pokemon in the wild but not the first stage.

While always a little odd, not the first time it's happened. USUM did the same with Houndoom (funny how that worked...) & Manectric and...gosh, Bisharp is the funniest.

 

[Hada Yaba]

Tried all gym leader rematches n e4 rematch straight after cynthia fight with lvl 63s, (empoleon, magmortar, tangrowth, honckrow, rhyperior, electivire), fuck that was much tougher than i expected. The evs and ivs rly do matter, stuff like breloom outsped my evire with ease while all the super effective mons almost always one shotted unless they were targetting rhyperior or tangrowth. Special shoutout to maylene's medicham , i was completely unprepared so that hjk one shotted every single one of my team and of course, my evire couldnt outspeed it at all. Affection bs saved me there admittedly lol as empoleon dodged the hjk. Some other annoying stuff that i remember are focus sash spamming frail mons, sub spore f punch breloom who also outsped my entire team thank god i had sludge bomb tang and sub rain dish ludicolo.

The elite four rematches were actually easier up till lucian cuz i did them last, the early members were not as highly levelled and only had five mons. Cynthia was the hardest though as expected but the set mode and switch mode's diffculty differences were night and day here. I tried both just out of interest; switch mode was more than manageable cuz i had good counterplay to everyone of her mons (rhyp+tang for chomp) but set mode was merciless between milotic activating flame orb on the switch and chomp setting sd whenever it likes. Due to its jolly nature, ivs, evs and being lvl 78, i believe the chomp is more than capable of outspeeding everyone in the sinnoh dex (no evidence) and also ohko the vast majority of it after a sd (tang got put into red, TANGROWTH) so be very very careful to not give it any set up opportunities unless you're using op tools like set up moves and x items.

 

[Sirya]

This Pokémon difficulty curve is nonexistant, omg was I not prepared for the E4 (this was all on set mode).

After spamming A through the entire game, being overleved during all of it for no other reason but fighting the trainers and catching some mons, and deleting the leaders with 1 mon spamming something, i thought the first encounter at the league was about to be more or less the same.

Lol, first they suddenly caught me on levels, but Cynthia was something elese. My team, composed of torterra, gyara, rachi, luxray, gengar and staraptor, had almost no counterplays to hers. After entering the league and checking they were on my level, my first though was "how the fuck am i beating Spiritomb with this team?", Jirachi dies, torterra dies, luxray dies, gyara dies... So i just sent Staraptor. Brave Bird was a 3HKO. 3-H-K-O and i was 3 levels above Spiritomb. TL;DR, Spiritomb alone killed 2 and a half mon before i could beat it.

Then was the Milotic problem. Torterra didn't count since Milotic is faster an OHKOs it with Ice Beam. Jirachi can't do shit, and the only real option apart from setting DD and then recovering Gyara was Luxray. I didn't know how much damage Scald would do, so i pivoted directly into Jirachi, then I u-turned into Luxray on scald and checked it was a clean 3hko, so i volt switched again on jirachi and used healing wish, but the fucker switched milotic out at 50% hp to sent out luke. I used my newly recovered Luxray to paralize him with t-wave knowing i couldnt do shit to it anyway with t-bolt, then sacked Luxray (gengar knows focus miss but i used it to dent Spiritomb and was already dead) and killed him with Staraptor CC. She switched to Gastrodon and again, i couldnt do shit to it since my torterra doesn't know grass moves, and this and spiritomb were the only mons on her team outspeed by my torterra so... I ended up killing gastro with gyara, spamming crunch since i dont know what ability it has and it could be collector, if not i'd have gone for the flinch with waterfall. At this point I knew the match was impossible if I didnt heal, and i was sure what i was about to do with Garchomp, because i couldnt think of a single way of defeating it with my team.

I used a revived Jirachi on roserade to revive 2 intimidate members, just to sack then on Chomp the moment she sent him out. I sacked gyarados and luxray on chomp, i didnt want to pivot between gyara and lux because if garchomp attack gets too low he probably will attempt to raise again with swords dance, and i needed a clean -2 garchomp to send torterra. I did it, and with the help of Garchomp setting SD at the same time i was setting Curse, + some max potions i had, we stalled each other for a while. +1 Dragon Claw did about 45% to my Torterra after 3 Curses (absurd damage), barely missing the 2HKO, whereas +3 EQ put Garchomp on red bar, forcing Cynthia to use Full Restores. Thankfully she did not crit me, and i ended up winning with all my team out of service and a Torterra with 23 HP.

 

[Plague von Karma]

And that's that! This game is really fun and just what DP needed. Considering the original Diamond and Pearl were frankly very dated and flawed by this point, this was a breath of fresh air to a generation I admittedly see as the "least good". Very fun game. Levels were 57-61 by the end, which is about what I expected.

Thanks to ausma for being very helpful and evolving my Onix! Sorry about that glitch with the Scizor though, why did it unlearn Bullet Punch...

Hmmm...what to share.

• I think Maylene gave me the biggest wake-up call I've ever received in a Pokemon game, oh my god LOL. I led off with Misdreavus expecting an easy ride, but she switched to Machoke and OHKOed me with Knock Off because I held an Amulet Coin. Bulk Up + Drain Punch Lucario proceeded to sweep my team!
• Cynthia took two tries and was quite brutal. I won't say much for the people who are still getting to that point, but she will certainly surprise you! I really had to dig into my bag of gimmicks to win here...
• The high levels of the Pokemon in the Grand Underground were very scary! I even lost to a Misdreavus when trying to catch one initially, and even had a few close calls when beating Pokemon up.
• Drapion was an absolute god in this playthrough for me. Knock Off felt very nice with the abundance of held items in the big fights, and it felt very nice to use Toxic Spikes in a playthrough for a change. Oh, and Swords Dance is a drug as always.
• Mismagius was all-around incredible, give it Nasty Plot in Veilstone and it'll do work. It does fall off a bit prior to Galactic HQ where you get the Dusk Stone to actually get it, so the evolution is a bit late, but it pays off in spades.
• Houndoom, despite coming without a Fire move at first, still did good work. Its Attack isn't bad and TM Snarl comes way, way, way earlier than it should, so it just didn't matter. Veilstone helped out a ton with TM Flamethrower to get that juice going early!

There's probably more I could share, but eh, this is prolly enough right?

 

[Ze Diglett]

So I managed to get Spiritomb before reaching Solaceon Town. The bad news is... it's not pretty.

As I'm sure you're all aware, in the original DPPt, Spiritomb was summoned by placing the Odd Keystone in the Hallowed Tower, talking to 32 other players in the Underground, and going back to the Hallowed Tower. As far as I'm aware, this method still works in BDSP, but only in local play. I have no idea why, but there's NO WAY of interacting with other players in the Grand Underground online, making it impossible to use this method in online play.

"Thankfully," though, the devs at ILCA added an alternative method for solo players: talking to 32 NPCs in the Underground. As far as I can tell, the NPC spawns in the Underground are more or less fixed, with one or two NPCs that can spawn in every tunnel of the Underground between the dens. (I can't confirm this personally, but after undertaking the Odyssean task of summoning this thing, this is roughly how I THINK it works.) The issue is, there aren't enough NPCs in the first two sections of the Underground to reach the 32 count needed to summon Spiritomb - I was only able to get up to about 22 by doing this. However, for some reason, there are a few very specific tunnels that can summon NPCs from ANY part of the Underground, such as the symmetrical ones surrounding Sunlit Cavern. (Shoutout to this Reddit post for telling me this!) This is where I went to get the last 10 or so NPCs that I needed, which took me about 2 hours. So yes, it is possible to get Spiritomb with only two badges in this game; it's just that if you don't have a LOT of friends that are willing and able to help you locally, you're going to be grinding for a while.

I can also confirm that affection bonuses are not tied to the following mechanic. The bad news is they aren't tied to anything; affection just kicks in after a certain point and there isn't much you can do about it. I was already getting affection bonuses on my Monferno by the time I got to the second gym because I was running around in the Underground for so long, so it's something that just sorta happens if you're using your Pokemon. Kinda sucks

Anyway, I just facerolled Maylene and Wake's teams and looped back around to Hearthome. My FINALLY complete, fully-evolved team is Mamoswine (35), Bronzong (36), Electivire (36), Spiritomb (36), Rampardos (36), and Infernape (37). Finding an Elekid with an Electirizer was surprisingly merciful, as I only had to catch five before I got one, so it's nice to see the game throw me a bone after all the Underground-related shenanigans I've been through. This game's pretty piss easy so far, but I am definitely expecting that to change in the endgame.

 

[R_N]

Honestly I still think there's SOMETHING else going on with happiness because people are clearly beating the game without experiencing any of those bonuses (& by the end you'd PROBABLY at least get to the first bonus) but then you still get a few people say they have it by gym 2

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I can also confirm that affection bonuses are not tied to the following mechanic.

Bruh, are you kidding me? That's... Nvm. Trying to be nicer. Not gonna go off again.

We gotta figure out something beyond "dumping herbal meds to keep it at bay" tho. There's gotta be something that breaks the threshold. We just don't know what yet.

Did anyone here manage to get to... say, Pastoria with no signs of Affection kicking in without using herbs?

 

[Chadlad50]

Well my first trainer loss of the game was...some random dude in a cafe with only Sudowoodos. I only had Cranidos and Buizel (and an egg) because I was training them up independently from my Grotle and Staravia, and of course the bastard had Wood Hammer. In fact he even predicted my switch to Buizel after he was spamming Stone Edge on Cranidos

I'm on my way to Veilstone. The Mons are showing signs of growing affection (shaking/hopping before battle) but no Pokemon Aime stuff yet

 

[MrHands]

Has anyone ever played the old God game Black and White (not the Pokémon games). You could raise a creature and use a Pokemon amie-like feature where you could praise your little monster for doing good by petting it. But also you could beat the shit out of it if it did bad. Pokemon needs this. Pikachu did you dodge 3 attacks in a row? Slap that little rat until he takes it like a man. Empoleon survives a crit Earthquake? Kick its ass until it learns to die like a Team Rocket grunt.

I don't want my battle slaves to show me affection. I don't even name them or feed them.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Has anyone ever played the old God game Black and White (not the Pokémon games). You could raise a creature and use a Pokemon amie-like feature where you could praise your little monster for doing good by petting it. But also you could beat the shit out of it if it did bad. Pokemon needs this. Pikachu did you dodge 3 attacks in a row? Slap that little rat until he takes it like a man. Empoleon survives a crit Earthquake? Kick its ass until it learns to die like a Team Rocket grunt.

I don't want my battle slaves to show me affection. I don't even name them or feed them.

And as I post this, I look desperately to the higher-ups in this forum and ask in disbelief.

Where is the WTF reaction button?

I'm on my way to Veilstone. The Mons are showing signs of growing affection (shaking/hopping before battle)

That's roughly where Return really starts to get good in DP, so I assume that Diglett was right and there is no threshold for Amie nonsense.

This franchise...

 

[Chadlad50]

Has anyone ever played the old God game Black and White (not the Pokémon games). You could raise a creature and use a Pokemon amie-like feature where you could praise your little monster for doing good by petting it. But also you could beat the shit out of it if it did bad. Pokemon needs this. Pikachu did you dodge 3 attacks in a row? Slap that little rat until he takes it like a man. Empoleon survives a crit Earthquake? Kick its ass until it learns to die like a Team Rocket grunt.

I don't want my battle slaves to show me affection. I don't even name them or feed them.

My God they're beating up Incineroar

 

[R_N]

Well we've got 3 people here who have beaten the game, did any of you guys notice affection by end game?

 

[Teru_XD]

The only thing that holds back this game from being the hardest in main series is the Exp. All + the affection mechanics. I say this because I managed to get underleveled to the first two gym leaders through some box storing shenanigans and by avoiding as many trainers as possible, and I was getting utterly destroyed.

For comparison, I played through Diamond twice like five months ago and beat the game comfortably while being 5-10 levels behind throughout the whole thing.

 

[CTNC]

I can also confirm that affection bonuses are not tied to the following mechanic. The bad news is they aren't tied to anything; affection just kicks in after a certain point and there isn't much you can do about it. I was already getting affection bonuses on my Monferno by the time I got to the second gym because I was running around in the Underground for so long, so it's something that just sorta happens if you're using your Pokemon. Kinda sucks

I'm on my way to Veilstone. The Mons are showing signs of growing affection (shaking/hopping before battle) but no Pokemon Aime stuff yet

I was willing to look past the issues with Fire types and hearing that PostNatDex Underground Pokemon can run away because the post game sounded like a hard mode game, but forcing Easy Mode BS on me makes my rage burn hotter than Flint's PLATINUM Team! >:(
I just E-Mailed my grandma to ask her for Metroid Dread instead of this for Christmas. I'm so glad I was lazy enough to not get around to asking her for Not so Brilliant Diamond until yesterday.

Has anyone ever played the old God game Black and White (not the Pokémon games). You could raise a creature and use a Pokemon amie-like feature where you could praise your little monster for doing good by petting it. But also you could beat the shit out of it if it did bad. Pokemon needs this. Pikachu did you dodge 3 attacks in a row? Slap that little rat until he takes it like a man. Empoleon survives a crit Earthquake? Kick its ass until it learns to die like a Team Rocket grunt.

I don't want my battle slaves to show me affection. I don't even name them or feed them.

...

Uh... Dude, you're kind of messed up...


I wouldn't say no if it was the alternate to OP Affection BS though...

 

[Sirya]

Hm, i was not aware of the drifloon thing and conviniently i missed that trainer on the gym lol, seems like i've to wait 1 week xdd

 

[sb879]

I will be playing with this team. In 6 hours, when I get a chance to obtain a Burmy...sigh.

Imagine doing something in this game that isn't checking fucking honey trees

Up to 17 trees checked...

 

[R_N]

Imagine doing something in this game that isn't checking fucking honey trees

Up to 17 trees checked...

I'm with you there, brother. At least I got a girl combee (after several resets) but I also want to use Wormadam and alas...
6 Hours is just way too long a wait time, especially with these encounter rates.

 

[MrHands]

I'm playing a Nuzlocke where I'm banned from any non-Pokeball items (including TMs) and can't use Pokemon with BST 501 or higher. Haven't even fought the first gym and I've lost Goat the Bidoof, Pod the Budew, and Skin Dog the Chimchar.

Pretty sure Rock guy is about to sweep my team of Shinx, Starly, Zubat, Geodude, and Onix. Pray for me.