Reddit thread
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Text document (chart)
And for old times' sake, here's the one I made as a newbie guide to the series a few months ago when Pokemon GO first came out.
Newbie Guide (Reddit thread)
So during those two days, I did play the game a little bit, but avoided progress because I wasn't ready to do an LP update on it yet. So I just messed around in Festival Plaza a lot (got it up to level 12 or something, and I still have not bought anything with the festival coins). I also traded back my event Munchlax from the "Ron" playthrough on Day 1, and got a random Whimsicott from Joel's game because it was a version exclusive. But that was about it.
Where I last left off, I was in Brooklet Hill, where Lana wanted me to check out a suspicious splashing spot in the middle of a pond. So I finally do that, and see a bunch of small fish swim away to a different area. However, one of them stays behind, which I discover to be a Wishiwashi. Now this is kinda funny, because I did plan on adding Wishiwashi to my team, but I didn't realize that I could have gotten one this early. Kinda wish I had done so last time, but I guess it doesn't really matter. So I chuck a Dive Ball at it without even trying to weaken it, and it's mine. It's a male, is Calm and "Very finicky", and I name it Ratzenberger for a reason you'll understand in a little bit here. Wishiwashi's a bit of an odd Pokemon, and once the game shows off its mechanic, I'll explain it. For now though, it's super weak.
After catching Ratz, as I'll probably be shortening the name from now on, Lana asks me to continue going through the area and see what's causing the disturbance, because she's concerned that it might be a person thrashing about. Or at least, that's what she's trying to convince me, since I kind of doubt she actually believes it herself. But I do so, and the same thing happens - a buncha fish swim off, and I battle another Wishiwashi. Since I don't consider my team members part of a living dex, I have to catch another one of these things, so I throw a plain Pokeball at it, and it breaks out. Now here's where the fun begins.
This freaking thing calls for help EVERY single turn for about 20 turns in a row. It was getting to a point where several of my team members levelled up trying to fend them off, and it was really getting rather annoying. Finally I defeated the original one, and this seemed to end the streak, since its backup didn't call for more. After a few more balls, I caught it, but man that was annoying. Once again Lana asks me to continue onwards, as the weather suddenly takes a turn for the worse and it starts raining pretty heavily. Lana mentions that Kyogre lives here at the lake, which I know for a fact to not be true. When I call her out on this, she admits that it was a lie, and I'm not really sure what that was all about, but whatever. I head through a gate, and it turns out that this whole thing was secretly a trial all along! I mean, I kind of knew that, but the last trial prevented me from catching stuff, so it's kinda weird how I was allowed to this time. The only remaining part of the trial is to check the final splashy spot. And in a fairly dramatic cutscene that I already knew about from a trailer, a MASSIVE fish that seems to be made up of many smaller fish attacks!
So here's the thing with Wishiwashi. When it's above Level 20, its ability "Schooling" kicks in, which basically allows it to call in a ton of other Wishiwashis and form into a giant monstrosity with a surprisingly high base stat total, even higher than most legendaries. Its weakness is in its low Speed and HP stats, and when it goes below a quarter of its HP, the rest of the fish bugger off and you're left with just the single Wishiwashi, which is pathetically weak. I find this to be a pretty interesting gimmick, and so even though this is now the third water type on my team, I'm interested in trying it out. The reason behind the name is because John Ratzenberger does a voice in every single Pixar movie, and his role in Finding Nemo was the school of fish that forms into various shapes. So I thought it was fitting.
Anyway, back to the action, since a giant fish monster just attacked me, and it's a Totem Pokemon. This means it gets a stat boost (Defense, in this case), and it can call for help... which actually I guess isn't really unique to it anymore, but shut up. Luckily it chooses to only call in a regular Wishiwashi to start. I lead with Ratzenberger for bait-and-switch experience, but switch to Laylee to actually deal damage. I start off with Air Cutter, which damages multiple targets; doing a small amount of damage to the School but defeating the small one. In hindsight, I probably should have just left that there so it couldn't keep calling more. Especially since on its next turn, it calls in an Alomomola, which has access to both Healing Pulse and Helping Hand, both of which it uses to assist its partner. Oops.
To make a long story short though, Laylee fainted after another turn, and I beat this thing down with Skeeter through a combination of residual damage from Infestation and burn damage from Scald. I forgot to mention, I got the Scald TM a few minutes before this, and taught it to both him and Ratz, but not Lena. It's better than Water Pledge, but I don't like putting the same move on everything if I can help it. Anyway, after fighting off the main threat, I switched back to Ratz and beat the Alomomola, which was too stupid to stop using Helping Hand and didn't actually do any damage to me.
After the battle, not only did Ratz reach Level 20 (meaning it can now make use of Schooling), but Skeeter got to Level 22, ending its short time as a Dewpider and evolving it into an Araquanid! I mentioned before that there's two new Bug/Water types this generation, and I think both of them are pretty cool, but I went with Araquanid because I felt like it was the lesser used of the two, plus you get it earlier. And its ability, Water Bubble, makes all Water moves do a crazy amount of damage, so that's pretty cool too. I will admit though, I didn't realize it was more of a physical attacker than a special one, and 50 Special Attack is pretty weak. Hopefully the ability makes up for that on moves like Scald.
With the trial complete, Lana gives me a ton of stuff. First the Waterium Z, which I give to Ratzenberger, then a Fishing Rod, and then ten Dive Balls which I'll probably never use because I'm a stickler for sticking with only the basic ones for anything that isn't a team member. She also mentions that she caught a red Gyarados once, and it's unclear if she was just joking or not. Either way, it's a nice callback to something that isn't Gen 1, for once. So with this new Fishing Rod in hand, it's time to do YET ANOTHER series of backtracking to get stuff that is now available, but thankfully it's a lot less stuff this time around. I start by fishing here at the Brooklet, and catch a Magikarp, Goldeen, Feebas (which I showed to a dude in the Route 5 Pokemon Center for money), and Alomomola. The trick with fishing for the rarer stuff is to go up to the swirling water spot (there seems to always be one per area), save in front of it, and reset if you don't get what you want, since the swirliing spot will stay there and you don't have to keep leaving the area and coming back.
Backtracking to Melemele Island, I went to the ever-obscure Seaward Cave, where I fished up a Barboach, which called for help from a Whiscash. Wasn't planning on that, but sure, caught it anyway, then caught another Barboach. The hidden Kala'e Bay is connected to here, so I checked to see if there was anything worth fishing up, and through pure luck found that Shellder was there. Apparently this is the only place it shows up, and I didn't even check a guide for that. Next I went back to the beach on Route 1, where the Corsola event occurred. I knew this could happen from looking at the list of items on Serebii, but I'm still not sure what triggered it. Basically, there's a couple of Corsolas on the beach, and they seem to be hurt, so you are given the option to use a Potion or to take them to a Pokemon Center. Regardless of the choice made, a girl shows up and says she left them there to play, but they got attacked by a Mareanie. For trying to help out, she gives you a Wide Lens, which boosts the accuracy of moves. None of my Pokemon actually have any inaccurate moves, so I don't really need it, but this does tie into the next bit.
I'm still making it a point to not specifically seek out anything that only shows up through SOS encounters, but Mareanie is an exception because it's a brand new Pokemon. As the previous event sort of hints towards, they prey on Corsola, and so the only way to encounter them is to battle a Corsola, have it call for help, and then they have a chance of showing up. The game could probably do a better job of explaining this, but I think it's kind of interesting to do weird stuff like that once in a while, instead of just sticking everything in standard wild encounters and not doing anything extra with them. But yeah, I do some fishing here and catch a Luvdisc and Corsola, and then stick around to try and get a Mareanie to show up. People seem to have a pretty hard time with this, but I got lucky and it didn't take that long. The Corsola took ages to actually successfully get something to show up, but when it finally did, it was a Mareanie on the first attempt. Mareanie and its evolution are pretty cool and I'd be tempted to use one, but I've already got more than enough Water types, so it'll have to wait until a later playthrough.
Alright, so that's it for fishing. All the way back at the Paniola Ranch, I go up to the Sudowoodos blocking the way, show them the Waterium Z, and they apparently have some kind of PTSD with that, so they run off. Kind of would have been nice to battle them and get a chance to catch one, but oh well. This gives me access to Route 6, which is just a straight line leading back down to Heahea City, and is literally called "Straight Road". There's not a whole lot here other than some generic trainers and some grass that I didn't think held anything interesting, so I continue onwards to the next plot event. Team Skull is back being as unthreatening as always, and they're being challenged by a character that looks like a much dumpier version of Iris from Black and White, if she was about 30 years older and an overworked stay-at-home mom, but also never got any taller. This mess of a character is named Hapu, and I'm not really sure what her deal is, but she has a Mudsdale, so I guess that's kinda cool if you're into that sort of thing. I think she is a trial master, but not on this island? Not sure, I guess I'll find out later. After a typical one-move-and-you're-dead battle against the Skull Grunt, they book it and I gain access to an area called Royal Plaza.
This area interests me because it has a small garden of pink flowers, and I know that this is where you get the Pink Nectar to change Oricorio to the Pa'u Style. So I head in, avoid progressing the game in any other way, and check out the flowers. There's nothing there. Good.
Alright, so screw that area for now. I head back to Route 6 and catch a Pa'u Oricorio for the living dex, but have no intention of replacing Laylee. Since this road leads back to Heahea City, I decide to go check out what other sections are opened up to me. Not two seconds after getting back, I see that one ass with the Stoutland, and he's STILL blocking the road ahead, looking for more hidden items. At least I now have access to some stuff I didn't before, but this piece of garbage is preventing people from going places in what I assume is the major city of the island, all because he's looking for stuff on the road. During the amount of time he's been doing this, I got my own Stoutland, checked the entire first island and got all the hidden items there, came back, checked this island for items, got the ability to Surf, went back again and did everything I could with that, got the Fishing Rod, and went back AGAIN to catch all the Pokemon I could with that, and he's STILL HERE. I swear, if I find a single hidden item on this road that you missed, I'm stabbing you in the back of your neck.
Luckily for him, no such hidden items existed, but there was some kind of item tucked away behind a building, I forget what it was. All I know is that there's three points of interest on this stretch of road, and I couldn't do anything with them. First I found Diglett's Tunnel (or more accurately, an NPC took control of the camera and he showed it to me), where I got stopped a few feet in by Olivia. She basically won't let me through until I've completed all three of the trials on the island, but didn't make it extremely clear that that was the reason why. So whatevs. There's also a building called the Dimensional Research Lab, which sounds cool, but the professor there wasn't around, so I couldn't actually do anything. The last thing was a building that houses Gamefreak's office on the second floor (complete with random squatting guy out front) and Aether's office on the top floor. I can't remember if I'm already supposed to know who they are at this point of the game or not, but either way, there was nothing of use there, or in the Gamefreak office. So I guess we're heading back to Royal Plaza.
The best thing about this area is the giant Machamp and Hariyama balloons outside of the Battle Royal place. The game apparently wants me to go in there, since it has the usual marker on its location on the map, and there was a cutscene showing Gladius go inside, but I'm avoiding it for now. The only other real thing of note in this area is the Thrifty Megamart, which is a large store that was surprisingly useless. When you go in, you get a coupon that lets you buy things at a discount (stuff was half off when I bought some items, not sure if that's typical or not), but none of the items were beyond what you'd normally find at a regular Poke Mart. There was, however, a display of Pyukumuku body pillows, and I definitely want one of those. Inspecting the shelves there's also a fair amount of references to stuff from other regions, which is fairly cool flavor text. The last thing of note in this area was a random Hypno sitting around with a sign asking for money. I gave it a small amount of money when I first saw it, and thought nothing more. Later on in the day though, I found out that if you give it a thousand Pokebucks, it reveals itself to just be a dude in a costume, and he gives you the Rest TM. I mean, alright, why not.
It was at this point where it passed 6 PM in real life, and therefore 6 AM in the game, so it was now considered morning instead of nighttime. And apparently that's what was required to get the Pink Nectar to spawn in the flowers, so I snagged some of that and changed Laylee's form with it. She's now a Psychic type, which may not be better than Electric defensively, but I like the way this form looks better than the Pom Pom one, and once she gets Revelation Dance, it'll be my to-go Psychic attack on my team. Unfortunately that's still a ways off.
Remember the marker at the Battle Royal place? Well, the game surprisingly seems to have no problem with me ignoring it and heading onwards to Route 7, which is a sort of rocky, volcano-y, beach-y place. One of the exits is blocked off until I complete another trial, one exit presumably leads up to said trial, and the other direction is a beach where you can do a bit of exploring, so that's what I ended up doing. Pyukumuku is in the water, so I caught one of them. And as with Mareanie, this is another Pokemon I'd like to try out at some point, but I can't justify another Water type. Plus, Pyukumuku's a bit of an oddball, since it doesn't learn a single directly damaging attack. It's kind of like a more versatile Wobbuffet in that respect. I don't typically use funky stuff like that on my teams, but I'd be interested to give it a shot eventually.
Also in this area is a fairly hard-to-reach outcropping where you find the Thunder Wave TM (which I taught to Crazy Bus, finally deleting Mud Slap) and a rippling fishing spot. Staryu is the rare encounter of the area, and it took an unreasonable amount of time to show up, but I finally got one. And ... that's about it for Route 7. I decide to check out the other path, Wela Volcano Park, but I'm not ready to go through it completely yet. There's plenty of new stuff to catch though. The first encounter was a Magby, which happened to call a Magmar. Both of them were female, which is kinda rare (25% chance), so that's cool. Caught the Magmar, then got a Kangaskhan that was called by a Cubone, which was also super lucky because Kangaskhan by itself is a 1% encounter rate in this area, so I'm glad to have gotten it. Caught a Cubone and Magby after that, both of which took entirely too long to get because of SOS encounters, followed by a Salandit. I'm not going to use Salandit, but only the females of the species evolve, so I did take the time to find a female. The last thing I caught in the area was actually the most common, Fletchling, simply because it's so similar to Pikipek that I didn't even realize it was a new encounter until I checked the Pokedex and noticed I didn't have one yet.
Whelp, that's it for today's segment. Next time I guess I'll be checking out the rest of this volcano, and see if the game still lets me ignore the Battle Royal stuff.
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