nuzlocke Ultra Calamity - A Pokemon Ultra Moon Nuzlocke: Episode 2 - Ultra First Trial

[NyxAvatar69]

Welcome back to the backlog of Ultra Moon Nuzlocke episodes, where I rave on about random things while trying not to lose a nuzlocke.  Please have fun and enjoy my despair.  I'm trying to get on track with these until I'm caught up to where I actually am.

 

So before we get into this, let me just say that Pokemon Crystal is available on 3DS eShop for only 10 bucks.  If you got a 10 dollar eShop card laying around, treat yourself to the best region ever.  No, I am not being paid by Nintendo to say this.  If only I was.  Welp, with that aside, let's get on to potential destruction by Pokemon games.

Trainer's School is a very uneventful area, to be honest.  I took the time to get the entire team up to Lv. 12...well, except for Tiny, who's Lv. 13 because it was taking too long to grind up Master Derp.  Not having a reliable Water or Psychic move until around Level 9 in an area full of things that either have Dark type moves or land Poison Gas 100% of the time.  I actually had to look it up because I thought Poison Gas had terrible accuracy, but I was probably thinking of Smog, a terribly weak Poison move with 70 accuracy that may as well be 50 for the player because I swear I never get a Smog to hit.  Anyway, my ranting about bad Poison moves aside, let's discuss the Trainer's School.  Kukui wants us to beat four trainers, and they're going to teach us stuff against our will.  Doesn't change how I'm gonna blow them all up.

Anyway, with those four battles out of the way, we get called up to the second floor because I blew up the students so badly, I'm getting in trouble for it.  Thinking about it now, it reminds me of a line that Rotom says on the bottom screen that was in the original games, but got changed in these games.  While it may not sound bad when you play as a female character, look at this line with an open mind.

"Zzrt?! You were called to the office already? Naughty girl! It's off to 2F with you!"

...I have a dirty mind, ok?  I may or may not have taken it totally out of context for a kid's game.  Anyway, it's time to face the teacher, and she's always going to have the starter that can beat yours.  In my case, Popplio.  That may explain what happens to the forgotten Popplio since Hau picked Rowlet.  However, I have three team members that aren't weak to Water that I can use.  This battle was no threat to me.

Now that we blew up the Popplio (or slowly Tackled it to death with Master Derp), we meet Ilima, the guy who's probably planning to screw me over hardcore with his trial.  We'll talk more about him later because he's not too important right now.  Even though we're done with the Trainer's School, we still have one order of business left.  The Tauros from before is still blocking the way.  Hala's got it covered...somehow, but he wants us to pet the Tauros.

Would you ever want to pet this pissed off bull in real life?  I sure wouldn't.  I'd be heading for the hills.  Luckily, this is Pokemon, where Tauros can't totally kill you.  Hau even agrees with me.  That thing is scary.  Anyway, let's slide on over to Hau'oli City, which is apparently the biggest city in Alola.  A bit surprising, since you normally visit the largest city in the general region later in the game than now.  Whatever.  Coming up is the best two places you'll find in the Alola region, but let's get through the boring stuff first.

Not even ten seconds and Hau is playing around on the beach like a kid.  Well, to be fair, he is still a kid.  Meanwhile, some random lady somehow knows we're not native to Alola and teaches us how to greet someone in Alola.  You greet someone by saying Alola, kind of like how you say Aloha in Hawaii.  I see what you did there, Nintendo.  Not gonna lie when I say Hau'oli City looks pretty nice for the first real city in the game.  Iki Town was decent, but a bit small.

On a totally unrelated note, apparently, Hau knows the sound of our feet.  I knew the kid was a bit of a weirdo, but let's ignore that for now and get a camera installed on our Rotom Dex.  Well, it's a Poke Finder, but it may as well just be a camera since that's all it does.  After we step outside, we get a forced tutorial on how to use our new camera...not like it matters much at all.  We're just taking pictures of a Pikachu, and we can't even zoom in until we get enough thumbs up to get the zoom feature.  It's pretty dumb, but it's the final roadblock to the best places in the game.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the clothing and hair salon, the best places in the entire Alola region.  Right outside, though, Lillie starts asking weird questions like "do you pick out all your own clothes" and handing over a free Lens Case and Makeup Bag if you're playing as a female because she was the 99,999th customer to visit the store even though she didn't buy anything.  Even so, she already apparently has the same set, so whatever, it's free.

I'm not gonna lie here.  Melemele's apparel shop doesn't have much of anything I personally like.  If this was the original games, I'd take that stupid chicken hat off right away.  I think I said it in Episode 1, but I honestly really like the Vacation Hat.  I am going for the hair color change to honey blonde, though.  I think it looks nice, but that's just my opinion.

Before we can get our encounter for Hau'oli City, though, Ilima has to interrupt us with talk about shiny stickers called Totem Stickers.  You see, in Pokemon X and Y, they made a third legendary to make a trio with the cover legendaries, Xerneas and Yveltal.  This Pokemon was Zygarde.  Unlike Xerneas and Yveltal, who were the central legendaries of X and Y respectively, Zygarde was just randomly in a cave in postgame.  You catch him and that was it.  Since there was no third game for Kalos, Zygarde used to be pretty worthless.  Sun and Moon came along and Zygarde got two new forms, a 10% that makes it look like a dog and a 100% form that was so broken, it got banned from Smogon OU.  Oh, and it got two new moves, but just about everyone only uses Thousand Arrows.

So you're probably wondering why I'm going on this side tangent and what it had to do with the Totem Stickers.  Don't worry, I'm getting there.  Later in the game, you run into a couple of people who should seem very familiar if you've played X and Y.  They hand you a very special item called the Zygarde Cube and they want you to gather up the various cells and cores of Zygarde.  In an area later down the road, you're able to score yourself a Zygarde form depending on how many cells and cores you collected.  This goes back to what I had said earlier about the Zygarde forms.  The horrible part about this was that the cells were annoying to find, especially since some were exclusive to day or night.

Totem Stickers, on the other hand, while there are 100 of them, they're big, shiny stickers that you would have to be blind to miss unless you absolutely can't get it (and yes, there are a few you can see, but can't get right away).  Anyway, tangent over.  I'll be scooping up any Totem Stickers I can find for later.  In the meantime, let's get ourselves an encounter for Hau'oli City.

Magnemite could be a fairly decent encounter, to be honest.  I had it's evolution, Magneton, in my Pokemon Glazed Nuzlocke until it got killed by a crit Surf from a Milotic.  A shame we can't see what ability it has until catching it.  At the same time, though, this is another example of a mon that doesn't fully evolve until lategame, so it's going to be a Magneton for a long time.  I would give him a very dirty nickname considering he's going to be a Magneton for a while, but I'll play nice and name him Magneto.  It's the name I give all my Magnezones when I'm not making references to stores in the US that sell auto parts.

So I have good news.  For the first time ever, I didn't get a nature that's absolute garbage.  First, I got a Sturdy Magnemite.  For those who don't know, Sturdy used to be an ability that only blocked moves like Fissure, Horn Drill, and Sheer Cold.  Those moves could kill a mon instantly if they hit, and that's a big if because they only have 30 accuracy.  In Gen 5, the ability got buffed to where you can't kill the Sturdy user in one hit unless you have something like Mold Breaker that ignores abilities.  After that, we got Bold nature, so more Defense in exchange for Attack, and since Magnemite is a special attacker, this turned out well.  However, I already have Spark Plug and we're going to be in a situation where Magneto won't be very useful, so I'll be leaving him behind in the PC until Spark Plug dies or something.

So while exploring a bit, ripping Totem Stickers off walls, I encounter Hau's favorite place in the universe, the malasada shop.  I swear, the kid is obsessed with them.  Fetishes aside, a couple of weirdos show up.  Turns out these are the Team Skull guys Ilima brought up after his ramble about Totem Stickers.  They're not exactly evil team of the week, but they are Alola's resident evil team.  Team Rocket is still miles better.  I can admit, though, that Team Skull has a pretty good battle theme, even if they aren't really threatening.

Since they were no challenge at all and clearly have too much time on their hands, let's get interrupted by Ilima almost straight away.  At least he heals my team for free even though all that guy's Zubat did was use Supersonic and miss before Class Act killed it with a Bite.  Although, in typical Pokemon game fashion, now Ilima wants to battle.  I'm not gonna lie, this is the first battle that's actually a little scary.  He has a mini T-I mean, Yungoos, but that thing's no big deal unless he uses a Potion on it because next level strategies.

What I meant by "scary" is his second Pokemon, Smeargle.  Don't let it's awful stats fool you, at this point of the game, depending on your team, this thing can do damage.  Trust me, I lost a mon to this guy in my Sun Nuzlocke.  This time, we have Spark Plug, who can spam Mud-Slap to lower it's accuracy and Master Derp, who can eat a couple of Tackles.  The battle isn't hard with the right team, but this is earlygame, so your options are pretty limited at this point.  Gotta love how he wails on my team and just leaves.  What a jerk!  Oh well, let's just go on to Route 2 and score an encounter there.  Our first trial is coming soon, so being prepared will be nice.

But of course before we go anywhere, Lillie has to go and interrupt progression.  She apparently has no sense of direction.  Reminds me of another character in an RPG (looking at you, Bravely Default and Agnès' nonexistent sense of direction).  Anyway, she slides us over some Revives, totally useless items in a nuzlocke outside of selling for money.  Translation: she just wasted my time.  Speaking of wasting time, it's time for more Tauros petting.  This is totally E rated, not like the removed petting minigame in localization for Fire Emblem Fates.  Hey, I like the game and all, but even I'll bash it when I need to.

Anyway, it's time for a brand new route with brand new encounters and more trainers to obliterate.  There's actually another area close to Route 2 where we can scoop up another encounter, so we can kill two birds with one stone.  First, we got Route 2.  We get ourselves a Furfrou.  A Gen 6 dog Pokemon with an ability that lowers damage from physical moves...and I'm pretty sure it hits kinda hard.  I've never really used one, so I can't be too sure.  Anyway, it's a poodle that can get groomed and get different forms.  I'm gonna name him Styles, because...he gets different styles?  I don't know.  It's better than nothing, right?

I'm really starting to believe I'm cursed.  Hasty nature on a Pokemon weak to a type that is mainly only physical.  What's Hasty nature, you ask?  +Speed, -Defense.  I hate to say it, but Styles is going to be joining Magneto in the PC.  We already have Class Act, who's weak to Fighting and Tiny will eventually also be weak to Fighting.  I'd rather not have so many common weaknesses this early on.  Now for our next stop, Hau'oli Cemetery.  Yes, we're getting an encounter in a graveyard.  I swear, if I don't get a Gastly as my encounter, I'm gonna explode because there is something in this grass I'd rather run into later rather than now.

Looks like today was my lucky day.  I don't have to explode.  Gastly.  Raising it will be tough for a long time because good TMs don't come for a long time.  Even worse, this is a case of a Pokemon that fully evolves when you trade with someone else.  I mean, it's the current gen, so it is possible, but there's this thing called trust that I have issues with.  I could use a Haunter the whole run until it dies, but who knows?  For now, I'm gonna name him Spooky...because he's a ghost.  There's this running theme here with my whole team being male so far, I swear.

I'm cursed.  I don't want to talk about it.  I'm just going to take my frustrations out on the trainers until something eventful happens.  Oh, and Spooky will temporarily be on the team, but I'll probably grind him up later along with everyone else.

On the way up the route, something eventfulish happens.  Some guy wants me to follow him to some place.  A place exclusive to Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, but since we'll be forced to go there for plot anyway, I'm going to ignore it and continue walking up the route...but of course not, because this game needs to be ultra linear, so we have no choice.  Geez, this isn't Doki Doki Literature Club.

So, as expected, it's a beach.  We can't do anything at all here yet.  The main attraction of Big Wave Beach is Mantine Surfing, but we can't do it until we're done on Melemele Island.  Not until "we're as tough as a real kahuna."  Nice foreshadowing, game.  But of course, the moment I want to leave and get on with the dang game, Team Skull just so happens to show up to harass the Mantine for probably no good reason. 

Turns out they're the exact same guys from about 20 minutes ago.  They weren't threatening then and they sure as hell aren't threatening now.  Class Act made quick work of the grunt and his Drowzee.  From what they seriously said in front of my face, I have a feeling we'll be seeing them again in less than ten more minutes.  Whatever.  Onward to Verdant Cavern!

On the way, it's the weirdos again.  The Ultra Recon Squad.  Apparently, they don't have Poke Balls or even know how to catch a Pokemon.  They should hit up the Trainer's School.  I hear they hand out free Great Balls for blowing up a Popplio.  Anyway, Verdant Cavern.  Let's go.

Welp, after about four interruptions, we finally made it to Verdant Cavern.  Of course Hau is lurking about near the Pokemon Center...then he hands over more useless items and teaches us about the run saving Roto Lotto, which I am probably going to abuse to increase my odds of survival.  Now, I will say one thing before we go into this.  Once you go into this trial, you can't leave until it's done.  Stock up on whatever you need.  Don't be afraid to use those Roto Boosts if you're in a tight spot.  Let's get it done.

Once you walk through that gate, it's time for...

Trial #1: The Trial of Captain Ilima!  Rat Extermination!

All we need to do is wail on some Alolan Rattata.  If you're playing Sun or Ultra Sun, it's Yungoos instead.  Once we take care of the Rattata, we head deep into the cave and take the Z-Crystal from the pedestal.  Ilima will warn us of a super powerful Pokemon known as the Totem Pokemon.  At the same time, we are banned from catching anything during the trial, so no encounter until then.  If you're playing Ultra Moon like me and have a Grubbin or just about anything with a Bug or Fighting move, this trial shouldn't be hard at all.  The first Rattata will hide in it's hole, but as you approach the second, the encounter will come rushing at you, so be ready.

The final one is a bit tricky.  It's going to move between three holes at first, and the first couple of checks will yield no results.  It'll go back to it's original hole after checking the third hole, but of course, the Team Skull guys from before are back, so we need to blow them up for a third time.  Easy battle as always.  But of course, we gotta get a second warning about the upcoming Totem Pokemon.  Let's ignore Team Skull because they're just giving you the solution to this whole thing.  But instead of a Rattata or Yungoos...you get a Raticate or Gumshoos.  Hmmm...I wonder if this is more foreshadowing.

Anyway, with all three Pokemon defeated, let's go score our Z-Crystal.  Of course, it won't be that simple.  We still have one more battle left.  Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to fight...

This thing.  Totem Alolan Raticate.  I just realized that the Raticate still makes the Gumshoos cry.  Nice laziness, designers.  Anyway, this thing is only Lv. 12, but gets a free Defense boost.  Of course, I get flinched turn 1 because my luck is cancer.  I was hoping for a quick kill, but now it's time for the Roto Boost.  So, Totem Pokemon will always call in an ally to help them out, making it 1v2.  Why can't you just use two Pokemon?  Hell if I know.  Same rules apply here.  If you have a good Bug type or even better, a Fighting type, this battle is a joke.  With a Roto Boost, Raticate went down in two Bug Bites from Spark Plug, then it's ally Rattata didn't last a turn once Raticate was out of the picture.

So with that defeat, the first trial is completed!  No deaths, too.  Sucks I restricted myself from using Z-Crystals, but Ilima is going to teach the pose for using Normalium Z.  He'll also hand over some free Great Balls when a TM would be much, much better.  Whatever.  The free heal is nice.  Of course the weirdos are waiting for me outside the Totem's Den.  At least now they're introducing themselves instead of being cryptic all the time.  That's not important, though.  It's time for our encounter, so let's do it.

Zubat.  A low leveled Zubat at that.  Welp, looks like I'm going to be taking my time with this one because all of it's moves absolutely suck until it gets Bite and Wing Attack.  Grinding is going to be a nightmare for me, I can just feel it.

So, from this point forward, random encounters have a chance of calling for help when their HP is low...or just in general.  I'm not sure of the exact trigger, but it can get pretty annoying when it's two against one, so be careful about that.  Anyway, once we step out of the cave, Ilima feels the need to introduce himself as Captain Ilima for the fourth time and extend our linear path by unblocking the gate to Route 3.  Here's the thing, though.  Kukui ends up coming from Route 3.  Therefore, the whole "gates to block progress" is almost a total waste of time.  Complaints aside, we have to go find Lillie and take care of the rest of our business on Melemele Island...but we'll do that next time.  Let's hope the upcoming challenges go well, and nobody dies...at least not before the real challenging parts start.

[lVergill]

Wow! You are so passionate with this and also writing that deep as well Nyx. o.o

Is this where your time is coming from while also playing and RP?

[NyxAvatar69]

1 minute ago, lVergill said:

Wow! You are so passionate with this and also writing that deep as well Nyx. o.o

Is this where your time is coming from while also playing and RP?

Well, other than reading books and light novels, playing games, working, sleeping, and watching streams on Twitch, yes, and this is part of the reason why my sleep schedule is such a trainwreck.  I work on these parts at 2-3 AM EST when I can focus on what random thing to blather on about while trying not to lose team members to some disaster or something.

[lVergill]

I admire your determination Nyx, but how do you even manage to pull it off and sleep well through the job? I mean it should be impossible since fatigue and lack of sleep should hit you hard while also having the chance of getting sleep paralysis from that which isn't pretty. o.o

[NyxAvatar69]

1 minute ago, lVergill said:

I admire your determination Nyx, but how do you even manage to pull it off and sleep well through the job? I mean it should be impossible since fatigue and lack of sleep should hit you hard while also having the chance of getting sleep paralysis from that which isn't pretty. o.o

The short version would be "sheer persistence."  I guess I'm just used to throwing my sleep schedule all over the place on a regular basis or something.

[lVergill]

Is that so?.... 

So, I could do it too if I try? xD

Just kidding, it is impossible which make me worry about your health but I am sure you know the consequence of your action. 

[NyxAvatar69]

4 minutes ago, lVergill said:

Is that so?.... 

So, I could do it too if I try? xD

Just kidding, it is impossible which make me worry about your health but I am sure you know the consequence of your action. 

I know the consequences of being dumb with sleeping super late, but as long as nothing bad has happened yet, I'll probably end up just doing it more because bad habits are hard to kill.  Alolan Raticates, however, are super easy to kill.

[lVergill]

Just try to sleep a bit early, if something bad happens it will be far too late but I am not someone to tell you what you can or can't do.  All I can do is talk with you and have a good time as we talk about game and RP. =)

[NyxAvatar69]

I make no promises about that first part.  On a totally unrelated note, I might go and put up Episode 3 to finish the Melemele trilogy of episodes, then wait a day or two before I start Hell Island, also known as Akala Island.