Sun Nuzlocke – Chapter 3 – Food for thought

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Anti-Climactic Rivalry

You might remember back in Chapter 1 I said how I was doing this challenge to relieve some boredom from my sofa-bound, injured boyfriend and that after each Kahuna battle we were going to battle each other. Well… That’s not worked out so much. After a week of me looming over his shoulder asking “have you beat the Kahuna yet?” in the most nonchalant way I could muster while desperately wanting to continue my own game, he finally gave me the go ahead to continue and he would ‘catch me up’. This may or may not happen but I’m going to continue the challenge myself either way. A downside to having a non-gamer boyfriend is that when he does play stuff with me he gets really into it for one or two nights then never wants to play again, which leads to a lot of frustration for my inner achievement hunter.

Ride Pokemon appreciation

After the first Kahuna I was given my very own Tauros to ride and rock smash my way through obstacles. The way this game dealt with HMs is THE BEST, It’s one of my favourite things about it. I hate having to sacrifice one of my party to HM servitude but in Alola you are given a Ride Pokemon to do what would normally be an HM move. You also get some funky riding gear that is… a look, but safety first I guess. There’s a Tauros to smash rocks, Stoutland to sniff out hidden objects, a Charizard for fly, Lapras to surf, and more.

Look what you made me do

I retraced my steps smashing through all the rocks I could find and got to a new area ‘Ten Carat Hill’ where I got a Mawile called Nancy, a Pokemon I don’t usually use but I was very curious so added her to the party straight away. Then there was the ‘Farthest Hollow’ where I COULD have got a Roggenrola, which would have been really cool, but Taylor the Ekans had other plans and 1 shot it. Taylor had become my ‘catcher’ Pokemon, what with her ability to paralyse and not hit too hard, but I guess she wanted to prove me wrong and what with this being the second time she had knocked out a potential team mate I retired her from that role with a stern warning.

Arriving in Akala

Smashable rocks exhausted I headed to the beach and surfed a Mantine to the next island, Akala. Little fact here : The only reason I got Ultra Sun and not regular Sun is because of the Mantine surfing, it’s a fun mini game and I’ve always liked surfing/skating mini games. Once we got to Akala I was greeted by the Kahuna Olivia who is VERY different to Melemele’s Hala. I have a bit of a girl crush on her, not going to lie.

Look at this queen

Lillie wanted to go off to a posh hotel for plot reasons, you have to follow her but once you’re there she just goes “yep… this is the hotel all right!” Ok??? Temporarily unburdened by Nintendo’s albino plot device I ran to the nearest patch of grass to get my new Pokemon… An Eevee! Eevees are adorable and I was very happy. I’d found the TM False Swipe and taught it to Nancy (the new catcher of the team) so it was an easy catch and Smoothie the Eevee was mine! (It was just what I was eating at the time, I don’t know, coming up with all these names is hard). I boxed her temporarily as I wanted to plan what I wanted her to evolve into carefully. There might be a particular type that isn’t very common in Alola or my team might be severely lacking something when I get to the next trials.

The realities of food in the Pokemon world

Next stop was the Paniola Ranch so I could expect a farm-like addition to the team, though isn’t that basically just stealing Pokemon from the ranch? Seems sketchy. Anyway, after some interaction with a farmer and his Miltank I had the disturbing realisation that everyone in the Pokemon world drinks milk from Miltanks. I was then informed by my friend that there are only male Tauros and female Miltank and they can breed with each other so… Miltank provides the humans with milk and the Tauros provides them with… Steak??? That must be why they don’t evolve either, they’re primarily a food source. I guess that’s obvious but I had never thought about it and for a second it took me out of the magical world where humans lived on berries. We looked into it a bit more and apparently Slowpoke tails are a snack you suck on and slowly chew, Farfetch’d were hunted to near extinction because they taste good when cooked with their leek and Basculin is ‘remarkably tasty’. So there’s some light horror for y’all.

Any reserves I had about stealing Pokemon from a ranch were now gone (not that I really had any before) and I walked into some nearby grass to see which Pokemon I could save from the food industry and found a Mareep. I honestly did not realise until I started typing this despite all that ‘horrific realisation’ I then went totally absentmindedly went on to name the Mareep ‘Chops’ so… Yeah. Chops was saved from becoming its’ own name sake and we got out of there. Food talks aside, I am glad I got a Mareep as I think Ampharos can be a good Pokemon.

Now that I need to have a think about my Eevee, which is your favourite Eevee evolution? Or which is more useful? I’m also running out of name ideas, drop some ideas in the comments! Any comment on the food situation? What would a Pikachu taste like?

New Challenge! Pokemon Sun Nuzlocke

Hello! It’s been far too long! I’ve been suffering from writers block very badly over lockdown. Most of the games I’ve been playing are simulators (Sims, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, etc) and anything I have to say about them has already been said. I’ve really missed writing and the blogging community though and didn’t want to give up completely. Finally, inspiration struck me for a new blog series: Pokemon Sun Nuzlocke!

The idea to start this came about because my boyfriend Dexter has hurt his back and has spent most of the week lying on the sofa, he’s understandably bored and frustrated so to pass the time he has been watching Jaiden Animations play though her Nuzlocke. He mentioned how it would be fun to play one with me where we battle each other after each gym so we would be each other’s ‘rival’. I wanted to do something to help him feel less bored, that and he doesn’t usually play games with me as he’s not a gamer so I got excited and started rifling through our combined Pokemon collection, which is one of the only games he does play. Between us we have quite a few but the only compatible ones were two copies of Sapphire or Ultra Sun and Moon. We settled on Sun/Moon as I have finished Sun but only once and I wasn’t that into it so I felt that a new perspective could change my mind, and he started it but didn’t get very far.

The Rules

As we were playing together, and the Alola region is a bit different to other games (trials and kahuna instead of gyms, ally pokemon, Z powers, etc) we reviewed the rules and came up with the following:

• If a pokemon reaches 0 hp it’s ‘dead’ and must be released
• You can only catch one Pokrmon per route and it must be the first Pokemon you encounter (if ally pokemon are summoned you can only catch the original pokemon)
• The starter Pokemon must be randomised
• A route is whenever the little blue box pops up to say you’re in a new area
• Gift Pokemon and eggs are OK, unless you have already caught a Pokemon on the route it is gifted on in which case you have to release it or put it in the Gift Box on the PC, a thing I made up because gift Pokemon are usually babies and I feel like they wouldn’t last long in the wild, the gift box is a safer place
• If I have a Pokemon that needs to evolve through trading then Dexter must also have one and agree to the trade, he has implied he might just choose not to because you know… He likes to antagonise me
• You can use the Switch Pokemon setting (to be honest, I didn’t know that you could turn this off…)
• No calculating damage before going into fights, this is mainly for Dexter, he loves numbers (nerd) and would do that for fun. I would not.
• You can do some research before big battles to see what you’re up against and what moves they have
• No legendary Pokemon
• You can frontload
• Daycare is not allowed
• Can’t use X items
• Can’t use Pokemon Care (I was upset about this as I like that feature but… fine)

We may add/remove rules as we go as well as we don’t know the game that well so we’ll see.

I Randomly Select You!

To kick everything off we randomised our starters. I was hoping for Rowlet, Dex wanted Poplio, but the reverse happened instead. Nevermind. I have nothing against Poplio I just think he looks like a clown and clowns are creepy. To get around this I named him Rudy after Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (he’s got a big red nose and will be leading my team!) That endeared me to him a lot more.

My First Catch

The part of the game I was dreading the most was the intro/tutorial. I remembered it taking forever. Unfortunately, this game is determined to have a plot and in depth characters, even if it means we don’t get poke balls for 40 mins. Finally I was able to catch my first wild Pokemon on Route 1… Drumroll… a Grubbin. I wasn’t super happy about that at first as I’d had one in my previous playthrough and it was good but it levels slowly, plus it can’t evolve into its final form until you get to Blush Mountain, and by the time you do that it kind of sucks. Having said that, as Bugsy Malone vice gripped her way to several victories I grew more confident, she’s probably one of the best Pokemon you can get on Route 1 after all. Unfortunately, Dex caught one too so I need to make Bugsy Malone the superior Grubbin.

My True Rival

In the first battle with Hau, his Pichu unexpectedly gave me a bit of trouble. Bugsy Malone was paralysed and the Pichu kept lowering her attack and hitting her with Thunderbolt but we persevered and took it out, his Litten was no trouble after that. Hau is an exhausting character with overwhelming positivity. If someone is that nice in real life they must have something to hide. He opens your first battle with “it doesn’t matter who wins as long as we both have fun!” Outside of the gaming world I wholeheartedly agree with that statement but I was raised with Gary Oak as my OG rival so I want to crush you, and if you don’t care when I do it then it takes the fun out of it for me. I really came to appreciate the idea Dex had had in that moment, my anticipation for our future battle was growing, and while I thought he would best me as I have very little experience with fighting real people in Pokemon, I was looking forward to a competitive fight. Dexter is my true rival in this game.

Getting Schooled

In the game-enforced interest of trying to get to know Lillie better we were basically handcuffed together as she dragged me round town and we ended up at the Trainer’s school where it was decided for me that I should enroll. I fought my way through the students there and was then challenged by the teacher who, in a good twist I think in Pokemon games, fought me with the leftover starter Rowlet. Bugsy took care of it but it was a bit tricky and I had to use a fair amount of potions. Then Dexter fought her in his game where she sent out Litten against his Rowlet and… HE GOT KO’d!!! We both looked at each other, and for a second I was torn between laughing maniacally or offering an out. I offered an out. That is how annoying the intro of this game is. If Dexter had had to restart the game at that point he would have had to go through ANOTHER 2 HOURS to get back to this point and we both knew he wouldn’t do it. Instead we agreed to pretend this never happened but any other KO after this would definitely count.

Despite our agreement I did tease him and acted like I had the moral high ground, but Karma is a bitch. I met Llima in Hau’oli city and was taken out by his ridiculously aggressive Yungoos. It just kept coming at me, and when it wasn’t doing that it was lowering Bugsy/Rudy’s defence. I looked at Dex sheepishly and now it was his (rightful) turn to be smug. As he had been KO’d and I’d let it pass he did the same for me on the same conditions. I do feel guilty but… I can’t do that intro again so soon guys, I can’t, and I’d got too excited about finally having something to write about to give up so we’re doing it, think what you will of me. Guilt and failure aside I thought we had bigger problems. I genuinely did not think that I could beat Llima with my two Pokemon. Neither of us expected this game to be this hard so early on. When we made the rules we had done a bit of research on Reddit and there was some dispute on what is classified as a Route. We decided to use the rule where anything classified as being on Route 1 (i.e. the beach near Kukui’s house, the Trainer school and Hau’oli city) is all one area, we had also put a level cap where you could only be the level of the next big battle’s Pokemon (so right now we were capped at 10). However, in light of the aggressive Yungoos we decided to ditch the level cap (it was getting hard anyway as Rudy was leveling so dang fast), and that you could catch a new Pokemon in any area where the blue box appeared in the bottom of the screen saying where you were. This meant I could go back and get three new Pokemon in the city, the beach and the school.

My Hero

My first catch was a Wingull in the city, who I named Peeko (Sapphire throwback). Not the knight in shining armor I was hoping for. At the trainer school I caught a Meowth called Rocket, which is definitely not the best Pokemon I could have got there but it’s fine, I’m fine, we’re fine. My final hope was the beach near Kukui’s house. I had kind of given up hope at this point and had resigned myself to being a basic bitch trainer BUT Tapu Koko must have been smiling down on me. I caught an Inkay (Squidward). It did not take me long at all to realise that Squidward is KICK ASS. It has the ability Contrary which makes stat changes have the opposite effect and it knew both Reflect and Foul Play, meaning I could lower any physical damage being done to my team, then attack using the enemies’ strength against it (perfect for say… An aggressive Yungoos) AND when the Yungoos would inevitably try to lower Squidward’s defence he would just raise it instead. I sauntered back up to Llima and that is exactly what happened. I know you’re not supposed to have favourites but Squidward is currently top tier, the best, I love him. If anything happens to him I might cry.

A very bad start to my new challenge but we are both having fun so it doesn’t matter, right Hau? Have you ever tried a Nuzlocke in Sun/Moon? How did it go? Also, how are you in general if you were a previous Dragons Tea Party reader? I hope it’s been a good year for you all. Stand by for the next post where we will hopefully complete the first Island challenge!

Chapter 2 >

Video Game Vacation Spots

Dragons Tea Party Travel Agency here! It’s summer holiday time and I have selected a wonderful selection of game-based vacation spots that will appeal to everyone! Take a look, see what takes your fancy. Are you here for a lazy, sunny holiday or an activity packed fitness getaway? We’ve got it all…

The Rook Islands – Far Cry 3

You wanted some sky diving, scuba diving, beach time and a lavish hotel? We’ll do you one better. A truly back to nature experience: hike across the island, see lots of rare and exotic animals, hunt and kill them to make a range of bags and clothing. Become a local hero showing the natives how it’s done as you liberate their homes from scary pirates (no previous fighting experience necessary). Fancy a souvenir? How about a tattoo documenting your adventures and achievements throughout your time on the island? Perfect for the adventurous adult seeking escape and excitement.

Alola – Pokémon Sun and Moon

Whether you want to chill out and relax in a beautiful resort or ‘find yourself’ while backpacking and island hopping, Alola is the place for you. Boasting four beautiful islands, each with varying environments and terrain, you can easily find somewhere that ticks all your boxes. Beautiful weather and islands aside, nowhere has souvenirs quite like Alola: catch a local Pokémon, take some pictures with it, enjoy the local delicacy (Malasada) with it, and of course, teach it to fight mercilessly. Thanks to the miracle of Stockholm Syndrome (though the locals call it “friendship”) it will grow to like you eventually.

Banoi – Dead Island

The perfect escape for a fitness fanatic, this resort has it all: cardio, weapon training, rationed food… Enjoy some therapeutic mediation as you take in the gorgeous scenery while unleashing any pent up anger you may have on the island’s endless supply of zombies. Perhaps you fancy a break from all that running and hitting, take some time to get creative with an eco-friendly arts and crafts workshop creating exotic weaponry from litter found around the island. This intense but fun routine guarantees that you will leave a dress size smaller than when you arrived.

Fun fact: you burn more calories running from zombies than running around the park at home!

Winterhold – Skyrim

Perhaps you are tired of the sun and would like a winter break. We can help you with that too. Winterhold offers one of the finest un-pisted ski resorts in video game history, the numerous chalets you can break into and kill the owners of really add to the skiing vibe. Watch as the local blacksmiths craft fine, handmade skis out of dragon bone especially for you, no messing about with ski lifts, just remember to bring your trusty  gravity defying horse and journey to the highest peaks. From there enjoy the slopes all the way back to the village, or go off piste and discover some ancient ruins. Once you’ve had enough return to your stolen chalet, steal a sweet roll, and put your feet up in front of the fire. Ahhh…

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

You want to go back to nature but don’t want anything scary, it needs to be active but zombies and pirates aren’t quite your thing… How about Animal Crossing Island? Here we take glamping very seriously and the name of this game is friendship… True friendship… Promise!

As everybody knows, the mutated animals of Animal Crossing Island were part of the nuclear disaster of 2001. Developing humanoid bodies and speech but retaining some animal features they were ridiculed and bullied by most of society, to allow them a fresh start they were moved to a beautiful island so that they could develop their own, peaceful community but some people still travel there to try and fit in with the idyllic lifestyle these mutants have created. While the mutants are peaceful creatures they are also incredibly unforgiving of the human race and slyly appoint the visitors ‘Camp Manager’ upon arrival but really they’re just blissfully ignorant slaves used to create entertainment, fetch them food, and use their own resources to build luxurious campsites that the mutants can lounge around in, napping, chatting, and playing all day while the humans run around catering to their every need, sometimes they just make up errands for the hell of it.

All this so that you can feel like you have friends. You are free to leave whenever you want to of course, but do you really want to make that dog-person cry? You just got matching outfits and now you’re leaving? You monster.

So you got me to catch you fish KNOWING that you couldn’t do anything with them…

Maybe some of them do become your real friends, I for one really don’t mind when friends refuse to come to my house because I haven’t built that merry-go-round they asked me to make yet. Better get cracking and gather up those materials!

Cocoon – Final Fantasy XIII

You’ll never find somewhere quite like Cocoon, this futuristic paradise is a continent hanging over the land of Gran Pulse. The whole continent is hollowed out with its residents living inside its shell in harmony, protected from the dangerous land below. Marvel at the incredible technological advancements that the land has to offer and explore the huge variety of cities; Beach town Bodhum has a spectacular annual fireworks display, the ‘capital of entertainment’ Nautilus is a giant fairground famous for its’ tame Chocobos, and of course there’s Palumpolum where you can shop to your hearts content… There is no end to the fun here, almost anything is possible.

Please note: They’re not too friendly with outsiders, take care no one finds out you’re not local and you’ll be able to avoid being purged. Should your presence be discovered Dragon’s Tea Party Travel Agency will deny all knowledge of you and we take no responsibility should you be intercepted to or from your destination. We also recommend that all trips to Cocoon are taken sooner rather than later as this reduces the risk of your soul being farmed for sacrificial purposes. Travel insurance is not provided.

 

There you go, the finest video game destinations we have to offer! Which vacation spot would you visit? Are there any games you’d like to visit on holiday?