Black 2 Kingslocke: Episode 5

Rules are here, and if you’re interested in hearing about the tribulations of other trainers suffering through this ridiculous challenge run I’ve created, check out the current season of the Exp. Share podcast!

Now, where were we?  Oh, right – on the way to Driftveil City.

You can actually find wild Pokémon on the Driftveil Drawbridge itself, so…

Knight – Challenge: Choose one of your current party Pokémon to fight every trainer battle solo until you have won at least five (not counting rematches) and drawn another card.  If it ever loses, it is disgraced and must be boxed until another card revokes this rule.  If it wins every battle, it becomes your champion and ignores all other rules and restrictions.  Either way, drawing another Knight ends all effects of this card and issues a new challenge.

Hmm.  I dunno if I trust anyone but Patracia to attempt this… then again, the main benefit of becoming a Champion here would be ignoring the Four Elements rule, unlocking STAB moves, and Patracia doesn’t actually have any STAB moves (she knows Super Fang, but it deals fixed damage; I guess I could teach her Strength, since HMs are always usable at any time in a Kingslocke).  I… am kind of dreading where this is going, but I think it might actually be better to have Fartstink accept the Knight’s Challenge.

As far as I know, there’s no particular reason to draw a card for entering Driftveil City.

This guy is the first of four move tutors in Black 2 and White 2 who accept ancient artefact shards of different colours to teach Pokémon rare and often powerful moves.  Now let me see… oh, this could help…

Seed Bomb will be extremely useful if we take Fartstink’s challenge into the Driftveil Gym, which specialises in Ground-types.  At 80 base power, it also slips in just under the threshold to be forbidden by the Temperance card.  It’ll use up a lot of my limited stockpile of Red Shards, but I think it’ll be worth it.  You’d better not screw me on this, Fartstink…

…ah, crap. I forgot about you.  Rood, the ex-Team Plasma sage, is only one trainer, so even though he’s a fairly big deal, I don’t think I necessarily have to draw a card just for him, but he is going to be a difficult first battle for Fartstink’s challenge.

Phew; that was a close one.  Herdier is a nasty Pokémon in single-player, with well-rounded stats and the ability to buff itself with Work Up.  In the end, it was the recoil from Take Down that finished this one off.

Of course he has a Psychic-type.

This is a painful, painful fight.  Fartstink has already buffed her defences with Stockpile against the Herdier, but Swoobat’s super-effective Heart Stamp still does enough damage to take her down in two shots, so I just have to sit here healing her, turn after turn, waiting for Rood to make a mistake and use Air Cutter instead.  But in the end…

Phew.

Kingslocke rules allow us to accept gift Pokémon.  Unfortunately, Zorua is male, so we can’t use him at the moment, and because he was formerly N’s Pokémon (with the trainer ID number of 00002 to prove it), we can’t even give him a nickname.

(Names are dangerous in Zorua’s business, y’know.  When you can change your appearance at the drop of a hat, having a name you can’t change is a liability.  Ties you to an identity, ties you to… certain things you might have done, certain people you might have done them with.  Or to.)

Well, we’re already at the Driftveil Gym; let’s take a hoe to these dirt-farmers!

Two – You: You may catch one Pokémon of your choice in this area.

No wild Pokémon in the gym, so alas, we get nothing.

Fartstink is weak against Ground attacks, but fortunately a lot of the Pokémon in this gym don’t actually have very good Ground-type moves to choose from.  Drilbur doesn’t get Earthquake until 33, Sandile doesn’t even get Dig until 31, Baltoy has to wait until 37 for Earth Power – it does have Extrasensory much sooner, but Baltoy’s offensive stats are crap and Fartstink’s Stockpiled defences are solid.  Clay himself will be a lot harder, but I’m pretty sure there’s enough trainers in here to complete the Knight’s Challenge before-

eep

HAH!  Fµ¢£ you, ya little griefer!  I guess no-one told you Selfdestruct and Explosion got nerfed pretty hard in generation V!

WHOO!  Five battles!  It was a close thing, but Fartstink has completed the Knight’s Challenge and won the coveted title of Champion!  She is now free to use Sludge Bomb in flagrant defiance of both the Four of Swords and Temperance!

To be clear, this in no way influences my well-known… issues… with Trubbish and Garbodor in general.  But this Trubbish in particular… eh, she’s all right.

(Fartstink was only ever really along for the ride, but she’s just glad she can help.  The other two are a bit too close to the weeds in all this, Aurelia with her boyfriend’s career on the line and Patracia with her brother or cousin or whatever he is, not to mention this whole Patratriarchy business.  She doesn’t know about all this “Champion” how-d’you-do, but they really need someone to tidy up their lives a bit – gather up all the rubbish so they can focus on what’s really important.  After all, one ‘mon’s trash is another ‘mon’s treasure, that’s what she’s always said, and at her age, she should know!)

I’m also still paying tithes to heal, which are up to 4000 Money now that I have a fourth badge; at the end of this entry it’ll rise to 5000.

Well, here’s Clay… to be honest, I don’t know if the girls can handle this fight yet; it’s been such a short time since the battle with Elesa and Clay’s Excadrill is a nasty piece of work.  Also, this’d be a short episode if we fought Clay right away.  I think we should poke our heads out onto route 6 for some training.

And another card draw, obviously.

Three – Me: You may catch the first wild Pokémon you see in this area.

Sure, I’ll take another Pokémon.  It’s only 50/50 that the first one I see will be a female Pokémon I’m actually allowed to use, of course, but with a roster as… restricted as mine has been at certain points, I’ll take anything to bulk up my numbers.  The rules of Kingslocke allow you to skip Pokémon of species you already own when you’re told to catch “the first Pokémon you see,” but this is an example of a situation where it might pay to catch a duplicate; a female Tranquill to fill the Detective’s shoes could be a decent pickup, for instance.

Or I could get one of these; I’ll always be happy to take another Grass-type.

Pepper is already well equipped for fighting under the Elements rule, as she knows both Faint Attack and Double Kick.  Deerling actually learns Jump Kick at level 24, but unfortunately Jump Kick is too strong to use with Temperance in play.  The good news is, I’m very close to meeting Black 2 and White 2’s move reminder, so I can always keep Double Kick for now and come back later with a Heart Scale to pick up Jump Kick if I want it (Kingslocke allows the use of move tutors and move reminders at any time as long as you can pay for them, except for the free unlimited move reminders in Sword and Shield, which you have to treat like TMs).

Huh.  I guess I get another Deerling anyway.  Well, this one’s a male, so he might be useful to have if we get switched over to a male-only team later.

(They’re twins, obviously – both great believers in ensuring that all meals are properly seasoned.)

(No, I will not apologise.)

The scientist calls Salt a “rather rare” Deerling because he has the rare ability Serene Grace, while Pepper has the more typical Deerling ability Chlorophyll.  I’m not sure off the top of my head which moves Deerling can learn that are good with Serene Grace, but we can look into that if he ever winds up on the team.

I’d like to keep training some more, but… well, frankly there’s only so much my wallet can take with the Hierophant still in play.

My first thought is that I can Stockpile defences against Clay’s Krokorok with Fartstink, but its Bulldozer attack is way too strong and I have to switch her out.  Fortunately, Pepper’s Double Kick turns out to be a superb plan B.

Sandslash ends up being just slightly more than Patracia can handle after she misses twice in a row with Hypnosis, but once again Pepper is able to come in and clean up with Faint Attack.

And then there’s Excadrill.  Excadrill is an absolute monster at any level and in any format, single-player or competitive, and to be honest, I beat this one mostly through luck.  First, Pepper dodged a Metal Claw and got a chance to land a Leech Seed on it.

After that, I figured that Fartstink and Aurelia (who are both weak to Ground attacks) were a lost cause, and my only chance was to sacrifice them to buy time to revive and heal Patracia, who has a super-effective Dig and might be able to go toe-to-toe with Excadrill as long as I had more healing left in the tank.

Then Aurelia decided to be an absolute legend and dodge two Rock Slide attacks in a row – so not only did I get to heal Patracia, Aurelia had time to hit Excadrill with Dig herself.

Obviously not enough to bring down Excadrill in one hit, even with the Leech Seed damage, but enough that when Patracia came in…

She only needed to nail it once.

Five badges!  Next time we turn northward and head for Mistralton City, but for now let’s review what we’ve learned.

And here are the cards currently in play:

The Hierophant – must pay a tithe to use Pokémon Centres

Temperance – no attacks with more than 80 power

King of Wands – Detective Coolumbo the Tranquill is in the Vessel

Eight of Pentacles – Woshua the Dewott cannot be used

Eight of Swords – Mulberry the Leavanny cannot be used

Four of Swords – Pokémon cannot use STAB moves

Six of Swords – no male Pokémon

Knight of Wands – Fartstink the Trubbish is my Champion and can ignore all other rules