I just beat Tower Tycoon Palmer for the first time after 4 months of trying.
Video code is: 68-64119-31924
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Happiness
I was on instant messenger last night, and a friend asked me how about I go about raising happiness for a Pokemon. It's necessary for certain evolutions, like Espeon, Munchlax, that sort of thing...
First, some rules about Happiness.
1) Happiness is reset to a specific number (70) if a Pokemon is traded. (It doesn't hate you, or like you all that much.)
2) Maximum happiness is 255, minimum is 0. Maximum happiness will give allow you to get a ribbon from a guy in a house just east of Pastoria. For the Pokemon who need happiness to evolve, they don't always need the maximum.
I usually just get it two massages in a day (one in Veilstone, one at the post-game Ribbon Syndicate), and then feed it berries. According to Bulbapedia, starting at 70 and then two massages puts it at 78. 220 happiness would need 142 more points, or 71 EV-reducing berries (#21-#26)...a really high number, which I recall being about 20-40 berries.
Luxury Ball is supposed to raise happiness faster - if Bulbapedia is right, it's anywhere from double to triple the gains of a normal Pokemon.
How do you guys raise happiness?
First, some rules about Happiness.
1) Happiness is reset to a specific number (70) if a Pokemon is traded. (It doesn't hate you, or like you all that much.)
2) Maximum happiness is 255, minimum is 0. Maximum happiness will give allow you to get a ribbon from a guy in a house just east of Pastoria. For the Pokemon who need happiness to evolve, they don't always need the maximum.
I usually just get it two massages in a day (one in Veilstone, one at the post-game Ribbon Syndicate), and then feed it berries. According to Bulbapedia, starting at 70 and then two massages puts it at 78. 220 happiness would need 142 more points, or 71 EV-reducing berries (#21-#26)...a really high number, which I recall being about 20-40 berries.
Luxury Ball is supposed to raise happiness faster - if Bulbapedia is right, it's anywhere from double to triple the gains of a normal Pokemon.
How do you guys raise happiness?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Pokemon tournament at PAX
There's supposed to be a Pokemon video game tournament at the Penny Arcade Expo on Labor Day weekend (Sunday, 11am-4pm). Rules haven't been posted, so who knows what the format is supposed to be. It'll be in the handheld lounge, so it's unlikely that it will go through Pokemon Battle Revolution.
Depending on the format, I'll play. 5 hours of Pokemon play? PAX has almost too much stuff going on to be tied down for that long.
Depending on the format, I'll play. 5 hours of Pokemon play? PAX has almost too much stuff going on to be tied down for that long.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Trials of a Level 30 Magnezone
I’ve been engaging in a relatively fruitless quest over the past several weeks. I train most of my competitive Pokemon for level 30. It’s partly from the format I started with in competitive battling, but also a recognition of the difficulty of training a Pokemon within set limits.
The challenge? Magnezone. If you haven’t followed Magnezone before, it’s pretty awesome. Its Magnet Pull ability prevents Steel-types from escaping. It has excellent stats, focusing on Special Attacks. The drawback is that Magnemite evolves to Magneton at level 30. Magneton evolves into Magnezone in Mt. Coronet, during a level up – standard tricks, means that I have a level 31 Magnezone.
The answer? Find a wild Magneton, below level 30. Sometimes wild Pokemon will exist in forms that you can’t duplicate, such as a Magneton below level 30. You can find them in the wild in Platinum, but they’re all too high in level. Diamond & Pearl don’t have them showing up at all, only Magnemite. I dusted off my Ruby game – meaning I can find them in New Mauville (just south of Mauville City, then Surf east). Unfortunately they’re rare. As in, out of 150 Pokemon, I’ve seen 3. (“150” is a loose number. It could easily be higher. And that means hours of play, but something you can do while you watch a DVD or bust out on a bus.)
The primary drawback to using wild Pokemon as a base to build from is that you can’t breed a bunch of them, check their IVs, and use the best one. Finding one of even the right nature and ability is hard enough…waiting for amazing IVs seems like a lost cause.
But I want a Modest-natured Magneton. Modest gives its powerful Special Attack stat an even higher boost, at a cost of Attack. Sadly, I migrated most of my Pokemon up to Diamond back in the day, so I have very little ‘catching’ Pokemon in reserve. I really wanted a Modest Abra with Synchronize (if it leads the party, half the Magnetons I would run into are Modest), which meant a long exile into the caves by Dewford. Abra tries to teleport out, so you either have to put it Asleep, or throw money/balls at it. I decided that Hypnotize would be the fastest route, so I found a Spinda and was in business.
Except it wasn’t perfect. Hypnotize has a 70% accuracy and I kept having to catch a lot of Abra, and none of them were Modest AND Synchronize (Inner Focus is useful as an ability, but not for what I wanted the Abra for). I realized I went about it all wrong, and started catching Ralts instead. If the wild Ralts used its “Trace” ability on my Spinda, I knew I didn’t have to catch it…and it also doesn’t know Teleport for those times where Hypnotize would miss. Catching a Modest-natured Ralts was fast - I had one in 20 minutes.
So I have Ralts, have Spinda, and now spend all of my time in New Mauville. The three Magneton that I have caught so far aren’t Modest – I’d even settle for a Timid one at this point. But the upside has been that in one of the random battles, a Shiny Magnemite showed up…and the 50% paid off, so I’ll have a sparkly Modest Magnezone for my level 50 build!
The challenge? Magnezone. If you haven’t followed Magnezone before, it’s pretty awesome. Its Magnet Pull ability prevents Steel-types from escaping. It has excellent stats, focusing on Special Attacks. The drawback is that Magnemite evolves to Magneton at level 30. Magneton evolves into Magnezone in Mt. Coronet, during a level up – standard tricks, means that I have a level 31 Magnezone.
The answer? Find a wild Magneton, below level 30. Sometimes wild Pokemon will exist in forms that you can’t duplicate, such as a Magneton below level 30. You can find them in the wild in Platinum, but they’re all too high in level. Diamond & Pearl don’t have them showing up at all, only Magnemite. I dusted off my Ruby game – meaning I can find them in New Mauville (just south of Mauville City, then Surf east). Unfortunately they’re rare. As in, out of 150 Pokemon, I’ve seen 3. (“150” is a loose number. It could easily be higher. And that means hours of play, but something you can do while you watch a DVD or bust out on a bus.)
The primary drawback to using wild Pokemon as a base to build from is that you can’t breed a bunch of them, check their IVs, and use the best one. Finding one of even the right nature and ability is hard enough…waiting for amazing IVs seems like a lost cause.
But I want a Modest-natured Magneton. Modest gives its powerful Special Attack stat an even higher boost, at a cost of Attack. Sadly, I migrated most of my Pokemon up to Diamond back in the day, so I have very little ‘catching’ Pokemon in reserve. I really wanted a Modest Abra with Synchronize (if it leads the party, half the Magnetons I would run into are Modest), which meant a long exile into the caves by Dewford. Abra tries to teleport out, so you either have to put it Asleep, or throw money/balls at it. I decided that Hypnotize would be the fastest route, so I found a Spinda and was in business.
Except it wasn’t perfect. Hypnotize has a 70% accuracy and I kept having to catch a lot of Abra, and none of them were Modest AND Synchronize (Inner Focus is useful as an ability, but not for what I wanted the Abra for). I realized I went about it all wrong, and started catching Ralts instead. If the wild Ralts used its “Trace” ability on my Spinda, I knew I didn’t have to catch it…and it also doesn’t know Teleport for those times where Hypnotize would miss. Catching a Modest-natured Ralts was fast - I had one in 20 minutes.
So I have Ralts, have Spinda, and now spend all of my time in New Mauville. The three Magneton that I have caught so far aren’t Modest – I’d even settle for a Timid one at this point. But the upside has been that in one of the random battles, a Shiny Magnemite showed up…and the 50% paid off, so I’ll have a sparkly Modest Magnezone for my level 50 build!
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