Toggle Background Color
Previous: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=165622
We're back in Sorrow's Path. Remember this fountain?
I couldn't care less about the water; lets disrespect authority!
Oh no he has 5 pokemon whatever shall I do
Yeah okay he's a chump.
He pulls out level 20s, which would have been an insane spike back when we first fought him, but we're well past that now. Starmie flip turns to save itself.
Wartortle comes out in Starmie's place, and takes the brunt of the Aurora Beam I had planed for Starmie, while Sharpedo falls to Muramasa. The fight is over before it even began; neither Starmie nor Wartortle are a match for a boosted Mega Scizor.
I think you being in the fountain tainted it enough, buddy!
Let's steal some more water.
: We must prevent further devaluation of our water reserves.
That makes no sense! If your water is so valuable why would you poison it? That's also devaluing your water! What??? 
: Thank you for your support.
We still get an offer to take the water, poisoned as it may be.
Saying yes gives us Black Sludge. We can take as much Black Sludge as we want here, although unless you plan on running a Poison team you probably only need one at most.
There's a cave behind the rest house in Farmland that was blocked by Rock Smash, Cut, and this trainer. We have Rock Smash and Cut, so might as well get rid of this trainer.
He was probably intended to be fought earlier.
Ashen Shard and Ultra Balls, very nice. The Ashen Shard being hidden wouldn't surprise me if someone missed this, but you should be talking to rocks to disrespect authority at all times 
Nitra Mine! This place is very small; this screenshot covers almost the whole area.
The Nitra Mines have this passive shaking effect going on, almost as if the place is ready to blow.
Shred of Hope level 28; considering using that to revive Zapdos.
Mystical Fire is a special fire move; it's about 15 damage weaker than Flamethrower and cannot burn, but has the added effect of lowering the target's special attack. Could be really good on a tankier fire type who plans on healing after they've lowered the opponent's damage enough, or just in general against special attackers who might otherwise sweep your team.
: Water contains binary strings.
Contains what? 
No fishing? Oh, you shouldn't have said that.
Garbodor is a weird thing to fish up, but sure. It comes with Toxic Spikes, Sludge (65 power special poison move with chance to poison), Stockpile, and Swallow. It doesn't seem that great, but there might be some strats you can do with Stockpile and Swallow if you live long enough; Garbodor stockpiles, and then have a Spinda or the like Skill Swap Contrary onto Garbodor before it uses Swallow. Bam, full defense Garbodor who just fully healed. Unsure how good that would be, but it is a strat!
UM. Did I just fish up an Ultra Beast!?
That gets a Master Ball. I ran into this on my first playthrough without knowing the data resource existed, and it took so many balls even with the boosted catch rate. There aren't many other things worth a Master Ball.
Alolan Muk is a bit more impressive than Garbodor. It has a unique ability in Power of Alchemy (steal allies ability when they faint), and it's moveset seems pretty good. Minimize to avoid being hit, Disable to shut down whatever the opponent is trying to do, Acid Spray to support special-attacking partners, and Poison Fang to badly poison while dealing damage (I did not know that Poison Fang was 50% chance to badly poison, that's pretty great).
Tentacool is- wait shit I accidentally KO'd it.
I run into another Nihilego while trying to find another Tentacool, which is crazy cause I'm pretty sure these are rare.
Okay, finally caught a Tentacool. Tentacool's movepool does not impress (for good reason, it's unmodified from what a level 24 tentacool learns in Sword and Shield). It does not need both Water Pulse and Bubblebeam or Water Pulse and Supersonic. Screech is also a bit confusing, because Tentacool is a special attacker, it does not benefit from lowering opponent's defensse. I get the impression Tentacruel is a good pokemon though given I've seen it on rain teams; Rain Dish seems like a solid ability when you have bulk and have rain set up, and black sludge further increases healing.
There's only one trainer in the Nitra Mine. Also, move on your own? Didn't you just walk down to challenge me?
: I hid as long as I could, but it got me.
: It marches me like a puppet. Please, just let the days run out. Let it end...
Gym leader music is playing; let's help put this guy out of his misery.
...Oh, that's a level 50. Well, no problem, we have Muramasa, I'm sure things will be fine.
Oh sweet Jesus that left me with 1 health
Oh shit-
Okay thank god it missed.
Okay, the Diggersby is gone and the Muk isn't hitting very hard, thank go-
Okay, I need to heal EVE if I want them to survive this, now is as good as time as ever.
Huge Power Muk is insane.
Okay I need to regroup here.
Not risking bringing EVE into this fight; we're bringing both Cloyster and Galarian Weezing. Neutralizing Gas shuts down all abilities, and we need Huge Power and Power of Alchemy to not be an issue.
Also teaching Weezing Smokescreen to lower accuracy.
Alright, round two. My hubris will be the death of me.
Lets shut down Huge Power.
Unfortunately, Cloyster immediately dies; I kinda wanted them to stay alive.
No matter; the level 50 now has lowered accuracy, so they'll be missing some attacks.
Punkachu comes out and trades missing blows with Muk. Very cool, accuracy!
Diggersby gets smokescreened, so both of the other teams heavy hitters are liable to miss now.
Meteor Mash does barely anything; ugh this is gonna be an uphill battle.
Punkachu goes down to Muk getting a hit in; 1 stage of lowered accuracy isn't good enough. Diggersby misses and lets Weezing get another smokescreen on Muk.
I bring out Kyubey, who has Double Team. Raising my evasion seems like a really good idea to double down on the Muk's lowered accuracy.
Despite that, the Muk still somehow gets a hit in and breaks decoy. Ugh, I don't like this.
Wheezing faints as Kyubey gets off a second Double Team. Hopefully their sacrifice isn't for nothing!
Kyubey now starts buffing attack as Aurora comes out. We'll need buffed attack to break through Muk.
Scald does nothing, and Muk manages to get a Rock Slide off on Kyubey. Really was hoping for a burn chance there.
Shadow Sneak likewise does nothing even after a single Swords Dance. Aurora takes a Hammer Arm from Diggersby like a champ and sets up Reflect (halves physical damage we take).
This is not enough to save Aurora from Diggersby's surprise Wild Charge. Why didn't they use it sooner? 
Muk tries to Rock Slide us but Toasty dodges it like a champ.
The Rock Slide brings Kyubey down to low health, but they manage to hold on. Their Shadow Sneak and Toasty's Sacred Fire both bring Muk low, and Sacred Fire gets a burn proc off to finish it off. Muk faints.
If there's any time to be using items, now is it.
Passimian and Diggersby miss, meaning our heal was free.
Diggersby finally goes down and Passimian's Thrash is doing barely any damage; things should be smooth sailing now, right?
Ahahaha so I thought. So I thought.
Reflect also wears off; that's really bad.
Shadow Sneak does about a quarter of Passimian's health per hit; Entei has ExtremeSpeed and there's a decent chance it KO's, so I should be safe.
Unfortunately, nothing can save me from my own stupidity! For some reason, I opted to use Sacred Fire instead of the safe ExtremeSpeed play, and Toasty goes down.
And to make matters worse, Blissey gets a Sing off on me. This is bad. That Passimian can one shot me if it gets a hit on me.
Thankfully, Thrash is an Outrage-like move where Passimian is locked into it for a few turns, and it being normal type means it can't hit Kyubey. I can at least get a heal off.
Thrash unfortunately did not last as long as I like. Passimian has to both not hurt itself in confusion and hit Kyubey through two Double-Teams, but it only has to do it once to win.
I get a Shadow Sneak off, but Passimian manages to not hurt itself in confusion.
Oh thank god it missed.
Okay, only Blissey is left.
Unfortunately, Shadow Sneak can't hit Blissey, and Disarming Voice is both a weak 40 power move, uses Mimikyu's weaker special attack stat, and has to contest against Blissey's massive special defense and HP bulk. That is how much damage a single Disarming Voice does.
On top of that, Blissey will keep trying to put Kyubey to sleep. Blissey only has Healing Wish and Sing thankfully; if it had anything else this fight would be over.
I go through all of Kyubey's PP of Disarming Voice. Thankfully, I have a ton of Ethers and PP isn't a problem.
Eventually, Blissey runs out of PP and struggles herself to death.
Jesus christ that battle was tough. I was lucky to get through it alive and that my hubris didn't kill me.
Our rewards are: an Ampharosite! Ampharos is a good boy and their Mega is probably really good.
Sludge Bomb! Basically poison-type flamethrower. Extremely good if we plan on using special-attacking poison types.
Shred of Hope Level 33! Given how many of our teammates just bit the dust, this will probably be used on one of them.
Another Ancestral Machine to teach tutor or egg moves to our pokemon.
Lastly, Pidgeotite! I went into detail about Mega Pidgeot last update, and that still stands; they're probably worth using, No Guard is a great ability.
We got Play Rough last update and for some reason I didn't teach it to Kyubey. Let's fix that mistake now.
Let's revive some teammates. Ohio Rizz will be making a comeback; black glasses beat up is incredible and I want to see more of it.
Sucker Punch instead of False Surrender seems more useful.
Let's use that Shred of Hope we just got to revive Muramasa; they have also proven to be a worthwhile member of the team and them being 5 levels higher will make things a lot easier.
I wanted to use the 28 Shred on Zapdos, but I opt to give it to Toasty instead; they earned it.
Bit of an annoying thing when buying Berry Juice; the first option is Free Drinks so when mashing you're likely to select it first, and pressing B to back out of it instead has Snorlax make you a Bottomless Pheromosa with no choice to back out of the free drinks menu. Poor Snorlax is making me drinks I won't drink 
We're all the way over at the dreaming halls vendor. I'm running low on Pokeballs and I plan on catching a few in a second, so I buy a couple.
Let's break through this trainer preventing us from catching Pokemon in the dreaming halls.
Wow I almost feel bad.
Weavile goes down to a single Terminus, and Muramasa gets their attack buff up.
Shedinja senses danger and flees; Reuiniclus comes out to die.
Musharna goes down to a +3 Bullet Punch, and Reuniclus takes the Fire Punch meant for Shedinja. Shedinja comes back out; there will be no escaping from it's fate.
Shedinja eats a Fire Punch...
And survives because of course it's Focus Sashed.
Unfortunately for it, I got the burn proc off so it won't survive to see another turn. We win these.
Down the stairs the guy was guarding, we have two trainers guarding items.
I could probably take them, but I don't feel like pushing my luck today. They're guarding a level 38 Shred of Hope, which would be excellent to have.
This schmuck on the other hand...
3 PP Maxes; I'm going to hold off on using these for a long time. Ethers are serving me pretty well, and the only place PP starvation will ever matter is the endgame potentially.
Finally seeing some tall grass. There's a spell tag here to power up ghost moves; there's also two barriers that we can only lower by coming from above.
A PP-UP; again, it's not worth wasting on a Pokemon until the endgame. Also the terrain here is getting, um.
10,000 Pokedollars total can be found scattered around this... whatever you'd call floating scattered grass?
Twisted Spoon boosts psychic attacks for whoever holds it. Yeah, I guess twisted is a word I'd use to describe this place.
Lets see what sort of twisted mons we can find here.
Okay well we're off to a great start with me KOing the first thing I find.
I have not played Sword and Shield, so I have never used an Indeedee. Supposedly they can enable some stuff in Doubles?
Exeggutor! My friend found out that someone made an Exeggutor fighter in the Rivals of Aether workshop and kicked our asses with them the other night, fun times. Other than that, they have decent special attack and a cool Grass/Psychic typing. They're probably good.
Sigilyph looks like it should be related to Unown. Anyways, great abilities in the form of Magic Guard (only takes damage from attacks) and Tinted Lens (doubles damage of not very effective moves; basically making them either normal effective or just regular not very effective (if double resisted)). Unfortunately it doesn't have any single great stat; they're all seemingly average, with special attack being it's best. Comes with Cosmic Power though, which is a pretty good buff move.
Alolan Raichu! It's everyone's favorite surfer pika. With electric terrain, it will outspeed a lot of things. Is it worth using over a cosplay Pikachu though? Unsure. It's movepool doesn't impress.
Lunatone was a monster in Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness in one fight, and a threat early on in Pokemon Insurgence, so I had the impression it was pretty solid. It comes with Cosmic Power and Rock Polish to be a beefy sweeper, and Psyshock to hurt pokemon with low physical defense. Rock Slide isn't great though with Lunatone's poor attack stat, and it can't learn any special Rock moves. If it could learn Power Gem or Meteor Beam (both of which it can learn in Sword and Shield, but the former is a TM move that I don't think got carried over into Salt and Shadow and the latter, while a tutor move, can't be learned because Ancestral Machine doesn't work on Lunatone) maybe it could put that Rock typing to use. It does get Moonblast and Moonlight though, which are pretty good!
Oh they angy.
Hypno is one of the statue ingredients for the Nightmare Child! They're a mixed attacker; apparently there's a psychic-type attack buffing move called Meditate that I didn't know about. Unsure if they're good, but they're a very creepy Pokemon.
Slowking makes a return here! We already caught one down by the beach.
Again, never played Sword and Shield, but Smogon says Hatterene is really good. I'd believe it! Psychic Fairy just seems like an excellent attacking combination, they have a really good special attak stat, Stab Draining Kiss seems excellent (especially if you give them a Big Root), and they seem to have good movepool coverage.
Reuiniclus was one of the mons on my ideal Black and White team as a kid; Serperior, Volcarona, Carracosta, Archeops, Reuniclus, and Eelektross. Magic Guard and Regenerator are great abilities, and good special attack is always great. Seems like their biggest flaw is their speed, so they're better suited for Trick Room teams.
Here we are! Another Cosplay Pika, Idolachu! Idolachu sounds dangerously close to idolater, the latter of which has forever been ruined for me as a word because of a song in Binding of Isaac. Don't be greedy, for a greedy Pika is an Idolachu!
Idolachu is an Electric Fairy type, with the ability Dancer. Dancer means that whenever any pokemon uses a Dance move, Idolachu will use that move immediately after as a free turn. It seems really good, with the only issue being having a partner who has dance moves. Clangorous Soul is apparently one of the moves that gets danced, so pairing up with Punkachu might not be a bad idea?
Since it's relevant, the amount of pokemon with different base stats is small, and we haven't seen all of them, but here are the relevant ones, courtesy of the data resource:
Salt and Shadow complete data resource posted:
Murkrow +20 spdef, +10 all other stats
Croagunk +40 hp, +30 atk, +20 def, +20 spatk, +30 spdef, +20 speed
Toxicroak +16 hp, +5 def, +10 spdef
All Pikachus use Partner Pikachu stats as a baseline
(45 hp, 80 atk, 50 def, 75 spatk, 60 spdef, 120 speed)
Bo Peepachu +45 hp
Idolachu +15 hp, +50 spdef
Punkachu +15 hp, +50 def
Besides these, there are two statue mons with changed stats, and the cosplay pikas we have yet to see.
The last mon we can find here is Gengar. Gengar is excellent even without it's mega stone, and with mega evolution it's really good.
Unfortunately catching it is another matter. Mimikyu is allergic to Shadow Ball.
I switch over to Vaporeon, and... accidentally misclick run away. Ugh.
10 minutes later I find another one and manage to catch it. That's all for Dreaming Halls for now until I feel like fighting a Lugia or the Latis.
We've been procrastinating on puzzles, so lets do a few.
Memory of Arrogance only has two pokemon, but they're very high leveled.
Meanwhile, we have a team of low levels.
This puzzle was one of the last puzzles I did in the game on my first file; I believed it was extremely difficult because of a stupid false assumption. I thought I needed to do sandstorm strats and stall.
Instead, we protect and stealth rock. It doesn't matter who Charizard targets here; Hoppip is protecting themself and Onix has sturdy.
Next turn, Hoppip faints; this is good, because we want to get our next mon out.
In fact, we're done with Onix too, so the solution here is that Onix fucking dies.
Okay, now we have Murkrow and Growlithe out. It's time to win this now.
Murkrow uses Quash to make Charizard go last...
And Growlithe uses Roar to send Charizard back to it's ball.
Moltres comes out, and eats half it's lifebar to Stealth Rocks. My false assumption was assuming that my opponent only had one pokemon; because it was a double battle and they only had one mon out on the field. I felt so stupid when I realized it was not the case.
Rinse and repeat; send Moltres back and bring Charizard out to get Stealth Rock'd.
One more time!
Moltres faints from Stealth Rocks...
And Charizard comes out just to die.
Hell yeah.
Over in Shrine of Silent Gods, there's a tree blocking a path back up to Ranger's Rest that we can cut now.
Walking past this tree, we're surprised by a pokemon cry.
Surprise Greninja!
EVE has water absorb and Greninja isn't smart enough to avoid water moves, so we aren't punished too hard for failing a catch.
I manage to catch it with my second-last great ball. Starting to run low on Pokeballs!
I know Greninja was OU and a lot of it had to do with Protean; getting same type attack bonus on everything is pretty good, and surprising your opponents with type changes is also good for competetive! I'm not sure how good that translates to a single player game, but I imagine they're still pretty solid!
But enough about Greninja, we have puzzling to do!
See those pokeballs in the top left? They're a lie.
Yes you're reading this right, this joker has 7 pokemon.
Meanwhile, we only have 4.
Okay so this seems like a sweep setup, so the first thing we want to do is put up stealth rocks. This will prevent sturdy and focus sash from activating on switch-in.
Dwebble faints, but they performed what they needed to do.
I was curious if the opponent was holding anything, and it turns out they were holding an Eviolite! Better snatch that.
Omanyte flips on right out of there, and Abra comes out.
I try to sucker punch, but unfortunately the Abra is sashed and didn't take any stealth rock damage on entering because of Magic Guard, so they live.
Scraggy goes down, but Pumpkaboo comes out to finish the job.
Ponyta comes out to get revenge for it's fallen friend, KOing Pumpkaboo and forcing us to bring out our final Pokemon. At this point, I'm convinced that I've failed the puzzle because I've only knocked out one mon and haven't set up anyone yet.
Vullaby comes out and takes a hit from Ponyta; they survive, and get a speed boost from weak armor.
Vullaby's red card activates, forcing Ponyta to switch out for Gastly, and Vullaby gets off Nasty Plot. At this point, there's only one thing left to do.
We win these!!! Yeah I wasn't expecting to win that first try; I figured I'd need a couple attempts.
I'm not sure what we'll be doing next time. We're at a point in the game where the ADHD kicks in and there's a lot of options. I'm sure I'll figure it out!
Next: https://lpix.org/sslptest/index.php?id=165624