Heart Gold Kingslocke: Episode 10

Introduction/rules here.

It’s orbing time.

…it is not orbing time.

That was a super effective critical hit!?  Ugh, Kadabra is so awful with physical attacks only.

…it’s orbing time?

STAND BACK; THEY ARE BEGINNING TO ORB

(That wasn’t a one-shot; Jynx just wasted two turns using Fake Tears.  Still satisfying though.)

You think Rest will allow you to survive the first Pokémon ever to do ONE ORBILLION DAMAGE?

Pryce is a lot stronger in this game than he was in the originals – more in keeping with his position as, theoretically, the 7^th gym leader.  The mid-game level curve of the first two generations of Pokémon is a bit screwy because there are several bits you can do in any order.  Pryce could easily be the 5^th gym leader you face – before either Chuck or Jasmine – but he’s nominally #7, and you do have to defeat Team Rocket in Mahogany Town before you can challenge him, so it feels a bit weird that he’s so much weaker than Jasmine.  He’s arguably still not as good as her, but the gap in the remakes is much smaller; Pryce is actually an appropriate challenge for where he fits in the game now.  My team on the other hand, is… pretty underlevelled for where we are, because of all the switching we’ve had to do.  We do have lots of Electric-type firepower on hand for his first two Pokémon, though.  With Piloswine waiting in the wings, it’s unlikely to be an Orbius Sweep, but we can certainly do our best to orb all over these guys.

My thinking here was maybe I could orb all over Pryce’s Seel and then Orbius could do over one orbillion damage to his Dewgong or Piloswine with the final Rollout hit, but unfortunately, between the level disadvantage, Electrode’s poor attack stat, Seel’s reasonably good defences and healing from Rest, it took the whole 5 turns of Rollout just to finish Seel.

Right, well, I would say, all things considered, that this could be going better.

I’m editing this post and I don’t even remember what my thinking was here; Blizzard is 100% accurate in Hail so there was no way Paradise was going to survive to make use of that Swords Dance.

This must be how Sony felt after Morbius flopped twice in a row.

CHRIS IS A USELESS DUMB IDIOT COUNTER: 2

So… the King of Pentacles’ blessing doesn’t protect Pokémon from being petrified (it actually did in the first draft of the Advanced Rules, but I decided that was clearly too strong), so we’re losing Paradise, Sesame and Hera, as well as Orbius and Esca.  The Nine of Cups allowing potential “lovers” to sacrifice themselves is basically useless here because you can only sacrifice Pokémon that aren’t banned or petrified themselves, and the Ten of Cups bans practically everything.  All I have left is Wendolene, who is a Champion and ignores everything, and any other Water or Electric Pokémon who weren’t involved in the Orbening.  That is…

I mean, that’s not too bad, right?  Maybe we should do some training before making another attempt, but Big Red is… well… pretty big, and impressively red.

Anyway, I just lost a battle, so it’s time to draw another card.

Twos are for catching wild Pokémon; nothing happens here.

We’ll just have to go away for a little while and and…

Yeahhhhhh boiiiii

sure, Tully. Sure.

Well, I have every confidence that Wendolene can solo Pryce’s Seel and Dewgong; the real question is whether Big Red can defeat his Piloswine.

Piloswine’s pretty chonky, and a higher level, so I think Dragon Rage is a stronger bet than Bite.

…ah, $#!t, Snow Veil or whatever it’s called; that ability that gives you a dodge chance in Hail.

Well, under normal circumstances, this would not be so bad; I could just heal up Big Red after the next Blizzard and keep going.  But thanks to the High Priestess these are not normal circumstances.  Can’t hope for Blizzard to miss, either; it’s 100% accurate during Hail.  There’s an argument I should use Leer instead of Dragon Rage to give Wendolene the best chance of finishing it off – Pryce will definitely heal Piloswine if it takes another 40 damage.  But… eh, I think the damage is more valuable.

Hail is over and Piloswine is using Mud Bomb now anyway, so we can hope for misses.

Haha, fµ¢£ you

Wendolene, being a Champion, is allowed to receive healing.

And boy, does she need it.

We should be fine from here, though.  Piloswine’s Mud Bomb put an accuracy drop on Wendolene, which could be unpleasant, but Dewgong just doesn’t have the firepower (or, uh… icepower) to outpace Wendolene’s Thunderpunch.

…unless the game really wants to fµ¢£ with me.

Aurora Beam’s chance to lower the target’s attack stat is one of those things that almost never comes up, except very occasionally at the worst possible times.

OH COME ON

Did I offend the game somehow?  All I said was that I thought an Electric-type would beat a Water-type of a similar level!

This just keeps getting worse.  We have to heal again, but Dewgong will probably use Rest now.

Or Pryce could just have another Full Restore.  Hmm.  I haven’t wanted to use Thunder Wave because Dewgong can just Rest it off, but maybe we need it.

SINCE WHEN DOES AURORA BEAM HAVE A 30% CRIT RATE??????

Balance is restored.

I don’t think Thunderpunch is quite enough to finish Dewgong here, and it will probably use Rest, so I’m going with Charge instead to get a big Thunderpunch and reduce Aurora Beam’s damage for the future.

Of course, the fun thing about Charge is you can just miss at the most inconvenient times.

Genuinely starting to worry about running out of PP for Thunderpunch, so I’m using Charge to try and get the most out of what I have left.

That one Mud Bomb from Piloswine is still seriously ruining Wendolene’s day.

Only one Thunderpunch left, so I’m going to try to get Dewgong to a point where it doesn’t want to use Rest yet, but is in range of a Charged Thunderpunch.

god damn it

okay, we are now… out of PP for both Thunderpunch and Headbutt.  If I don’t use an Ether here we just lose.

Okay.  We’re charged.  Dewgoing is damaged.  It’s already asleep so it won’t Rest.  All Wendolene has to do is not miss with Thunderpunch and we should knock it out.

…or she could get a crit, which bypasses the two attack drops from Aurora Beam and would have one-shot Dewgong AT LITERALLY ANY POINT IN THIS ENTIRE GODDAMN FIGHT.

Pryce, you have no idea how true that is.

well… Big Red was knocked out, so he’s petrified along with everyone else.  But I just earned a badge, so Jim the Editor can pick one Pokémon to free; let’s see who I get back.

Okay.  Wendolene and Orbius.

I don’t think I can realistically attempt Jasmine at this point; her Steelix will thrash both of my Pokémon unless I grind them to at least level 40.  There are a bunch of other areas in Johto you can explore using Surf, like the lower levels of Union Cave, where I could make more progress, draw more cards, hopefully change my situation somehow… but I don’t have Surf at the moment.  The Kingslocke lets you use “illegal” Pokémon for their HM moves if you need them to advance the story, but this isn’t about advancing the story; those areas are optional.  Fortunately, you’re always allowed to cheat out Fly (because I’m not a complete monster), and there is one other place I can go…

Baoba said his new Safari Zone was ready, so the Cliff Edge Gate is now open and we can access route 47.

There’s not that many cards in the deck that could make my situation much worse at this point… let’s see what we find.

Absolutely, I’ll take a Three.  We’ve seen the Three of Cups a couple of times now, but in case you’ve forgotten…

Three – Me: Immediate: You may catch the first wild Pokémon you see in this area, and may teach that Pokémon a TM/TR move of your choice.

Three of Cups: You may catch a second Pokémon of your choice in this area.  If you do, the two Pokémon you caught are married.  For the rest of the game, as long as either one of them is banned or petrified, the other one is automatically banned (unless it is currently a Champion).  However, while they are both in your party, they ignore all battle restrictions (their moves cannot be locked, they can switch freely with an Ace in play, they can be healed with the High Priestess in play, they ignore any custom rules from a Ten/Rule Card that limit battle actions).  They are always considered a compatible pair by the Lovers card and any other card that references the Lovers, regardless of gender or egg group.

It might take a little while to resolve this – I think the only wild Pokémon on route 47 might be in the water at the bottom of the cliffs, and we have to move through some caves to get there, which will be a separate area with another card draw, but I’m not complaining.  It’s two new Pokémon, probably two new Water Pokémon, which means they’ll actually be legal!

The cliff cave has three floors, but all of them are tiny, so I’m not even going to check whether their encounter tables are different; I’m just going to count them as one draw.

Six – Chicks: Ongoing: Your male Pokémon are banned (unless you have no female or genderless Pokémon).  This rule is revoked if you draw a Five/Guys and cancels out if you draw another Six.
Immediate: You may catch the first female wild Pokémon you see in this area.

Six of Pentacles: Choose one female Pokémon that was in your party when you drew this card and make it a Champion.  Choose two male Pokémon that were in your party when you drew this card and petrify them.

No problem now.  Orbius isn’t male; their only gender is Orb, so we won’t be losing anyone else to petrification.  Unfortunately, Wendolene is already a Champion, so this doesn’t help her much.  I guess she’s… a double-Champion?  Maybe this means she’ll still be a Champion if we somehow lose the Emperor but still have the Six of Pentacles in play.

More importantly, we catch the first female Pokémon we see.

Sweet!  I didn’t even realise there were any Water Pokémon in here; I’ll actually be allowed to use this one!

Named according to her flavour, of course, in honour of the recently revealed Paldean chocolate Wooper.

And here’s the water – time to go fishing!  Two things to remember here: one of the Pokémon I catch has to be the first one I see (although I can skip duplicates), and although the second one can be any I choose, I don’t know exactly what Pokémon live here, and I can’t check it because of the Moon.

Pokémon from the same evolutionary line count as duplicates in the Kingslocke, so we’ll skip Magikarp for now.

The impression I’m getting after fishing a few times is that the only Pokémon available here with the Good Rod are Magikarp, Chinchou and Tentacool, which are all Pokémon I have duplicates of.  I suppose I’m not really in any position to turn up my nose at another Gyarados, but I’d like to see if there’s anything else available, so I’m going to teach Blueberry Surf and try out the water.

Ah-hah…

The question now is whether to take up the Three of Cups on its offer of a second Pokémon.  After having a look around, I don’t think there are any new Pokémon here: in addition to the ones I fished up, I’ve only found Staryu.  I have a vague notion that there might be some grassy areas further along route 47… possibly?  But I’m not sure about that; checking my Pokégear map, there’s actually another route before we reach the Safari Zone, and I might be thinking of that area.  In any case, married Pokémon can be a double-edged sword – they’re really strong when they’re together (in particular, Phoxy would be able to use Surf if she could ignore Temperance and Strength), but they can also cause each other to be banned, which is a particular risk with the Nine of Cups in play.  In the absence of any Pokémon I particularly want (and considering that I unexpectedly picked up a usable Wooper in the caves as well), I’m going to leave Phoxy single.

Phoxy actually doesn’t have any physical moves, which means she can’t comply with Strength.  I have to teach her one if I can.  I could use my TM for Secret Power, but I’d rather save that.  Instead, let’s nip back to Ilex Forest and…

I’ll give Blueberry Headbutt as well while we’re here; it does slightly less damage than Slam, but Slam’s accuracy is so horrible I just don’t want to do that to myself.

As long as I’m flying around, there’s something else I can do to make my life a bit easier…

That’ll make levelling Blueberry and Phoxy a lot easier – and a lot less risky, with the Nine of Cups still in play.  That nice, quiet water area at the bottom of the cliffs on route 47 should be a great place to train with Orbius; we can orb all over those guys.

And Blueberry can evolve into a great big blueberry pie!

Yeah, I think at this point we can safely move on.

Here’s route 48!  And here’s what we’re drawing!

…oh boy.

Justice: Immediate: Catch one wild Pokémon of each species in this area up to six (if there are seven or more species that you do not already own, you may choose which six to catch).  Count evolutions as a single species.
Ongoing: All of those Pokémon are compulsory.

Y’know, for the most part this is probably good news.  Justice will kick out my oldest Major Arcana card – Temperance.  And since, for the most part, I can only use Water and Electric Pokémon, there probably aren’t all that many things Justice can force me to use.

The Moon allows you to look stuff up if you need the information to follow other rules, so I’m going to check what’s on route 48 and see what I have to catch.

Let’s see… oh, of course; headbutt trees, there’ll be a bunch of things to catch off those… Okay.  The list of Pokémon on route 48 on Heart Gold is: Fearow, Gloom, Diglett, Growlithe, Farfetch’d, Tauros, Hoppip, Girafarig, Exeggcute, Hoothoot, Pineco, Spinarak.  The most up-to-date version of Justice does allow you to skip duplicates, just like everything else, so we can cross off Fearow, Farfetch’d, Tauros and Girafarig.  That’s still eight Pokémon, so I choose six of those eight.  At this point I should probably consult the Pokédex and see if any of them will have the blessing of the King of Pentacles…

Hmm; Arcanine is #130 in the Johto ‘dex, so that’s a good long-term pick, but that won’t allow Growlithe to dodge the Ten of Cups now.  I don’t think anyone else has a Pokédex number ending in 0, but I haven’t seen Pineco or Exeggcute yet in this game, so my in-game Pokédex doesn’t have the full information.  Hmm.  I guess I’ll skip Spinarak and Hoothoot; they’re both pretty garbage, even if they do have advantages from the other two Kings.

hmmmmm…

For now, the Justice League will remain in their Fortress of Justice, awaiting the call of duty – but as soon as my other rules change to allow it, they will spring into action.

And here’s the Safari Zone!

To unlock the full functionality of the Safari Zone, you need to complete Baoba’s tasks, and the first of those requires you to catch a Geodude.  This is a rare situation where you have to catch a Pokémon that the Kingslocke rules wouldn’t normally allow you to catch in order to make progress.  I’ve ruled in the past that this is permissible if you release the Geodude afterwards.

Anyway, the Safari Zone is a new area with wild Pokémon, so let’s draw…

Oh, good; this is back.

Seven of Pentacles: Ongoing: Whenever you enter a new area, starting with the next one, draw an extra card.  This rule is revoked if you draw another Seven.

Well, let’s just catch a Geodude, release it and move on.

In principle, I regard Safari Zones as multiple areas that deserve multiple draws, but I also don’t remember exactly how the Johto Safari Zone works, what you can catch here, or what you have to do for Baoba to unlock its full potential, so I’m not going to try to head any deeper inside until I’ve gotten rid of the Moon and had a chance to review its mechanics.

Well, I’m still not ready to challenge Jasmine, but I do have some Pokémon with Surf now, so I can return to Union Cave and do some more exploration… not to mention, as I’m writing this, it happens to be a Thursday, so if I get to the bottom of Union Cave tomorrow, there might be something nice waiting there for me…

I think this is a good place to end today’s entry, but we may as well see what the next draw is (or the next two draws, since the Seven of Pentacles is back).

…yeah, this might as well happen.

The Devil: If you own eight Pokémon or fewer (not counting Pokémon in the Vessel) when you draw this card, or if you are using a party given to you by the Vessel, ignore it and draw another. Otherwise…
Immediate: Catch the first wild Pokémon you see in this area, then have an observer choose a new party of six Pokémon from all the Pokémon you own, except for Pokémon in the Vessel.  Revoke any ongoing rules that would make this team illegal.
Ongoing: All of the chosen Pokémon are compulsory.

Ace – Waterfall: Ongoing: You cannot switch Pokémon in battle unless one faints or is forced out of play.  When your Pokémon do faint, you must use them in party order (you may still change your party order outside of battle).  This rule is revoked if you draw a Nine/Snake Eyes and cancels out if you draw another Ace.

Well, first things first.  The Devil kicks out my oldest Major Arcana card, Strength, and the Ace of Wands overwrites the Nine of Cups.  The first Pokémon I see is…

The Geodude I caught in the Safari Zone is not real and does not count, so this is not a duplicate and I am not entitled to skip it (not that there’s much reason to do so anyway).

No, I will never let this “Rock Pokémon have just human first names with surnames that make rock puns” bit die; the legacy of Andi Site will live on!

Now.  We must consult the Devil.  The Devil used to select Pokémon from your PC at random, but in the Third Revised Edition, this is a choice allotted to the observer.  So I’ll be getting a new team (and possibly losing some rules) in accordance with what Jim the Editor wants… next time!