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Hullo. Let's check out that Sorrow-Path-Thingy.
First though I apparently missed this? I'm obsessed with checking rocks, I don't know how I forgot to check this one.
This place is so sorrowful the sky is crying. Let's check some encounters!
Lots of ghost types here! Also maybe it's just me, but it's so odd seeing Ekans; it feels like it's been forever since I've seen one and they're a gen 1 pokemon. There's also Alolan Marowak on this route, but I'm holding out hope that I can evolve our Cubone into one.
This guy has about the same levels as the professor in the Lighthouse, which means he goes down just as easily. Sturdy is a bit rude though, so we take some damage.
Shred of Hope right next to this guy, we'll be using that later.
Another ability capsule too.
I sure do dare disturb it! They call me fountain disturber after all.
It's interesting how trash mons matter a bit more when healing isn't just a thing you're entitled to. I opted not to heal one of my mons after this cause I ran out of regular potions and didn't want to use a super, which was probably a mistake.
: Drinkers will be prosecuted.
Wha?
: Collecting free water puts jobs at risk.
The fuck you mean???
What's the harm? The worlds ending, who cares?
Hell yeah; these heal for like 30 HP a pop.
Who said that?
Oh shit, it's the police!
The cops just fucked up half my team!
I have to use 2 of the 3 free waters I just got to keep there from being a 4th casualty.
Caress off. All swimmers are bad.
: The water-thieves will not escape again.
I think I'll pass.
Amnesia is interesting. It seems really good for special tanks, but Calm Mind lets you raise special defense and attack at once, even if it's at a slower rate, and running both (or running amnesia and nasty plot) means half your moveslots are going towards setup, especially when you'd ideally want recover too. On the other hand, it might be really good on a toxic staller. I'm not a competetive pokemon player though; all I do is steal sets from Smogon 
Team was grass types I easily swept with Magcargo; didn't even bother to take a picture of them. Both this lady and the fountain girl are optional if you go through the grass, which if you bothered to grab the flute then you don't have to worry about grass. I won't say no to free money though!
Helping Hand is an increased priority move that increases the damage of the move your partner uses by 50% for that turn. I'm not entirely sure what use cases there are where just attacking a second time isn't more useful.
Entering the house, wow that sure is a massive hole in the wall.
Even more pokeballs! It's crazy both how the game gives these out like candy but also you can never have enough of them.
New key item!
So this is potentially handy if you don't know pokemon's level up levels or evolution methods off the top of your head. It also has a secondary function of letting you evolve Pokemon who are over their level up evolution level as a failsafe for if you cancelled it or something. Pretty neat!
: Flowers kissed by flame are woven through her hair. Around her feet are twisted bodies. The emaciated men and women cower in their shameful ugliness before the radiant Queen.
Emaciated apparently means thin or weak, particularly from lack of nourishment. Interesting.
: Their maker crafted them in a desperate hurry. You'll never get used to the sight of your reflection.
Hitting me right in the feels with that.
Protects from weather effects. I thought these were a Gen 8 item given all the new held items that gen added, but apparently these are gen 6? Huh.
Going through the hole in the wall takes us to this small cavern.
Is the game implying how this cave was created?
: They locked her away. Now they've fled to a place where my vengeance cannot follow. They should have known better than to test my resolve. My will is iron.
More lore. Definitely seems to be a few moving parts at play here.
More goodies laying around outside.
This bird weirdo is the last thing blocking us from the next area. He's probably tough if you still have level 5's from walking out of the starting area, encouraging you to catch some mons on this route to deal with him better.
Thankfully we're a bit beyond that point with our casual level 20 we found (Forretress is a really good earlygame carry), but even without them I doubt we'd have much trouble.
Another shred of hope! Again, we will be using this before the update ends.
A Thick Club. That would be excellent on Cubone if they weren't fainted. Hmmm...
5 more ethers. You'd expect a resource-management game to be all about that PP starvation, but surprisingly PP is very much in good suuply here, and not just because of Ether spam. Anyways, we're in the Farmlands now, I'm not sure why I neglected to screenshot the title card.
Starved for knowledge? Or just starved in general? Given the apocalypse, I could buy ether- I mean either.
SpinToWin is deathly allergic to fire, but I have only 3 pokemon and my options are limited; sending in a water type would be risky against magnemite.
yyyyup, that sure is me just barely hanging on with 1 HP. The magnemite is gone though, so switching into Clauncher shouldn't be an issue.
Both Baltoy and Litwick fall, leaving only Umbreon.
The umbreon spam tail whip and growl; this should have been a massive red flag, but I assumed it was just acting as support for non-existent teammates.
Fool that I was, assume makes an ass out of umbreon and me. RIP Clauncher.
You can't handle the answers.
I dunno, I barely have time to play games I paid for, how could I justify playing a demo? Eh sure, why not.
How'd you fit a sheep inside a game
It broke out of 5 pokeballs consecutively, including one that was a critical capture.
Eventually I just chuck an Ultra Ball at it. Anyways, this is one of the statue ingredients back at the hub; all we need is a Celebi and we could activate one of the statues.
An observation post? Huh. Also don't mind that weird looking sprout thing to the left-ish of me; we'll be back to that in a bit.
I dunno, looks more like a rest area to me.
: among the clouds as the Seamother looks up with loving pride.
Yes!
Early Fly is always a good thing.
Even more pokeballs! Why not.
So hey, these things! They're found at every rest area besides the one in the hub. They fully heal your PP as many times as you want, but that's not all!
They're also a free move relearner!
Who is "she"? 
: At last, our memories are safe from the Willbreaker.
I have more questions!
Anyways, we have access to a PC now, so it's time to replace our fallen members.
I might have mentioned this, but Shreds of Hope can work as a poor girl's revive, provided they can actually level up the mon you want to revive. We're bringing Marrow back, baby!
Jigglypuff will also be joining us.
Ominous. Hey, is it just me, or is there a weird marking on that wall?
Poke.
Poke.
POKE. 
Anyways I found this by accident on my playthrough; I was for (for no particular reason 
) paranoid of walls and made a habit of checking them, when I found this. I had not noticed the tell; it's quite subtle if you don't know to look for it!
Weird place...
Stepping on the floor tile below the item lowers the barrier. Heat rock might be useful if you plan on running a Sunny Day team.
I get the impression there are more than one entrance to this place.
Metronome is interesting. It powers up repeat moves, so stick that on a one move wonder mon and watch the carnage happen. Light clay is also probably decent if you use any of the barrier moves. Aurora Veil with it seems really tempting.
...Huh? Did I stumble onto private property?
: you disturb the Dreamer.
Eh, it's fine. I'm sure you have 2 other dreamers out their maintaining the seal on Black Egg Temple.
Uh, sure I guess?
The heck is this place? Well, I mean it says Dreaming Halls but like... what is this place?
Hyper Potions! Those will be useful later I'm sure. Most of our paths are blocked by trainers, and I don't want to commit too deep into this area when I'm already 120 images in...
: It's all that remains of a Wanderer that finally lost hope.
So lets commit to something else!
Remember the Battle Sims from Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness? Yeah, we're bringing those back.
We're given a set team to defeat an opponent, usually involving a puzzle-esque solution. For the most part, these are really cool. I kinda regret that this is the first one I'm showing off though. This puzzle is a lot more open-ended, which means it's easy to fall into red-herring solutions that seem like they're what is expected of you but then you realize that oh, wait, maybe sacrificing Amoonguss to take down these first two mons is actually a bad idea cause you need them later. RNG isn't seeded during these, so eventually if you bash your head with a suboptimal solution the game will just hand you a lucky crit or a freeze or something (or inversely, you can get crit or burned during an otherwise intended solution). What I'm trying to say is that I think I lucked out the first time I did this puzzle and when you're on camera, watching a 40 minute recording turn into a 2 hour recording makes your brain fry and it's harder for you to rethink your strategy. I still don't think I did it correctly (I didn't even realize Amoonguss had regenerator until I watched the video back and noticed a suspicious HP gain) and I think I lucked out here with opponents choosing moves that they had equal chances of picking with other moves that ended up being beneficial. If you think you can figure the intended solution out, you're probably smarter than me.
I started by using Protect and Perish Song. A big key to success here is how well you can deal with these first two mons, and Perish Song is a good way to take both out in one swing. I'm unsure how luck based this is; if both Feraligatr and Starmie attack Lapras, I think Lapras faints, but I don't know if Feraligatr will target Lapras first turn.
I now need to bring in gothitelle safely in order to Shadow Tag them and prevent them from switching out. To do this, I have Amoonguss use Rage Powder to make the opponents target them so that gothitelle, at worst, only has to deal with surf damage. Gothitelle then uses Fake Out on Feraligatr, the heavier hitter, and Amoonguss uses protect.
Gothitelle uses Protect while I switch Amoonguss out for Lapras, which is enough time for Perish Song to activate on my opponents. Now I have to deal with Dugtrio and Dusclops; Dugtrio has Arena Trap to prevent me from switching, and Dusclops being ghost type is immune to Shadow Tag. Perish Song antics aren't going to be great here.
Lapras is able to Freeze-Dry Dugtrio before going down, while Gothitelle uses substitute to limit damage taken in case they're attacked. Pangoro comes out, and is able to Vital Throw Dugtrio to the grave while Gothitelle protects.
Celebi comes out, and now we're dealing with the two biggest problems. Celebi can one shot most things on my team while also taking having good recovery via leech seed and leftovers, and Dusclops straight up can't be hit by Pangoro, the only one who's immune to Celebi. Celebi will oneshot basically any mon who can get rid of Dusclops, and if Pangoro is the only one left when Dusclops is still alive, I can't win.
So originally my plan was to switch in Haunter expecting them to be one-shot so I could switch over to Amoonguss and, using a fake-out from gothitelle (who was about to be switched back in because of Pangoro's Parting Shot), get some Toxic action in, but Celebi decided to use Calm Mind and not attack Haunter, which means
I can guarantee that one of them will go down to Perish Song, as when you have 3 pokemon left you can only switch out one pokemon in a turn (because who else are you going to switch the other pokemon with?).
I stall for a turn with protect, and then try to heal gothitelle with Rest while using a Shadow Ball on Dusclops; unfortunately Celebi outspeeds and KO's Gothitelle, and while I get the Shadow Ball off, the life orb puts me just down into KO range.
I protect stall for another turn, at which point the timer on Perish song counts down. My opponent chooses to switch out Dusclops to save them from their fate, leaving Celebi to die. At this point, we're in the home stretch.
The moment I get toxic off, I've basicaly won. Both Pokemon are on a timer, one due to recoil and the other to Toxic, and I have enough health and time to outlast them.
So yeah; bit of a complicated puzzle. I feel like it's one of the weaker ones, which is a shame cause Perish Song puzzle feels kinda iconic given this game's prior name.
By beating that, the tree blooms, and we get a Memory of Triumph. What is that?
It's a Revive (technically a Max Revive!). These, the Beds/Dying, and Shreds of Hope are the only way to revive Pokemon. Definitely don't use these willy-nilly!
There was another sprout right outside the rest area we just reached; this one's a much better introduction to these battle puzzles and the one you're more likely to run into first.
My opponents team doesn't matter. Can you figure out why?
It's a baton pass puzzle. You want to alternate between substitute and protect to build up speed for 12 hours- I mean build up speed to the max via Speed Boost.
Baton pass over to Poliwag, who is immune to the water moves the wartortle has been spamming at us.
It swaps out to try and get something that can hit us, but not before we Belly Drum to max out attack.
Technically I messed up the puzzle order but the game took pity on me and missed Hyper Beam twice in a row; we want stealth rocks up just in case the opponents have sturdy or focus sash so we can sweep them without consequence, but we should have set them up at the beginning (probably via a baton pass after a single speed boost), not while we have the baton chain going. Ah well.
And now, our trap card has been activated. Flail is a move that becomes more powerful the lower health you are, becoming 200 power at it's strongest when you're below like 3% health. We have max speed and max attack.
And thus, we swept.
So we have two revives now, and either the farmlands or dreaming halls or well... anywhere to go (thanks Fly).
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