nuzlocke Ultra Calamity: A Pokemon Ultra Moon Nuzlocke - Episode 17: Ultra Disaster

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Hello, and welcome back to...wait a minute, what the hell is this?  Why does the script make this sound like an intro for a YouTube video?  It looks like I'll be having a nice, long talk with the script crew about this one tonight.  It will not be a pleasant conversation, I'll tell you that much.  That's not what we're here for, though.  Today, it's time to scour the Alola region for content now unlocked since we've become conqueror of Alola.  Well, sort of, since we aren't going anywhere near Aether Paradise.  Now, let's not beat around the bush, let's...oh wait, I forgot.  Before we do go and take care of business, let's talk about team changes.

Since Captain Keys died, we're short one team member.  While I could always put Spark Plug back on the team, he's cursed, so the chances of him getting killed are very high.  Instead, I chose to put Mother back in the team.  Speaking of Mother, she's seen a bit of growth since she was last in the party, and by that, I mean she's level 70.  No, I am not joking.  How do you think I grinded up Blue Shrimp and Shadow before we fought the Elite Four?  So...yeah, Mother will be our red button on non Water types so that she doesn't die.  With that aside, let us begin postgame exploration, starting with everyone's favorite, Tutorial Island.

First, we have to pay a visit to everyone's favorite shirtless murderer, Professor Kukui.  All you have to do is talk to him, and finally, after all the horrid grinding, he hands over the almighty Lucky Egg.  For those not in the know, the Lucky Egg boosts the experience gained from encounters, and when you combine that with how the Exp. Share spreads to all party members along with a hot grinding spot I'll be mentioning later, the pain and torment of grinding against Oricorios in Ula'ula Meadow is a thing of the past.  Now, here's my question that I've been holding onto since midgame?

Why the hell did they not give us this item before?!

Like, seriously, why?  In Black and White, you get the Lucky Egg just handed to you in Chargestone Cave for free.  Sure, in Black 2 and White 2, you need to go out of your way to talk to Professor Juniper at Celestial Tower to get the Lucky Egg, but Gen 5 and X and Y are the only times they give you the item in the main story.  Sure, you can argue that you can DexNav Pelippers in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire to get a stockpile of Lucky Eggs and argue that you had to work for your experience points in other generations, but it's a glaring problem here.  Vanilla Sun and Moon has a sudden level spike at Lusamine 2, and there are no Rotom Powers to make the grind easier in that game.  There is zero excuse for why this item is postgame only, and this alone was a bad design choice.

Ok, sorry, I kinda strayed into a rant there.  Let's move on, because next on our hitlist for Tutorial Island is Hau'oli City.  First, clothes shopping.  What, you thought I was done talking about clothes in this game after the "knee high socks" ramble earlier on?  No, of course not.  Anyway, going to that one place where we caught the Bewear earlier in the game, there's a clothes shop here...and the prices are actually insane.  You can also scoop up the Gracidea, the item to change Shaymin's form, but good luck getting one of those easily because it's an event only mon.  Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about.  We're here to talk about the radical prices in this place.  I know very little about the male character variety, but you can get some ultra pricey designer tops, 55k sandals, satchel bags that break the bank, some nice, but pricey hats, and, when you become the champion, a special set can be bought.  For males, there's a Kommo-o set of clothes while for females, a Lurantis set.  To be honest, I'm not a fan of the Lurantis set much, more specifically, I'm not a fan of the Luran Tank.  It's just me, though.  I'm not too big on crop tops (or any midriff exposing tops, really), but then again, I despise jeans too, so your mileage may vary.

As a visual reference, this is the full set.  I found a picture on Google.  Why am I showing you this image instead of buying the items myself?  Because, combined, they are the most expensive clothing items in the game.  The Luran Tank and Shorts each cost 600,000 Poke Dollars while the shoes cost 500,000 and the headband costs 700,000.  We will be coming along a lot of money in the future, so if you really, really want to splurge on all this stuff, have fun grinding up 2,400,000 Poke Dollars.  Now, nobody can say I didn't talk about the Lurantis set, and this will be the last I speak of these items.  Not about clothes because more clothing related things are on our list.  Let's move on, though.

For this next one, we're going to pay a visit to Captain Ilima, and battle him because I didn't do it earlier.  Anyway, nobody died, but his mons are Level 60 now, so be careful.  Anyway, walking out of his room and going back in, he'll ask us to go to Verdant Cavern and put a piece of Normalium Z on the pedestal instead of him.  So, we get, and I quote this exactly from the game's own text, "the Ilima's Normalium Z."  Wow.  Such fantastic writing.  I bet the same person who wrote that also wanted every cutscene in this game to be unskippable.  Anyway, there are apparently a bunch of young trial-goers doing their island challenge even though we never saw any such people at all because this game has solid writing.  Anyway, even though we have a task from Captain Ilima, we're going to blow him off and do other stuff first.  Verdant Cavern isn't going anywhere, anyway.

What does Alola Photo Club offer us?  Crown stickers, and that's it.  Let's talk about Iki Town, because there's stuff there we can do.  Well, that's a lie.  By "some stuff," I mean we can battle Hala, who got shafted out of his Elite Four spot.  We can also go up to Mahalo Trail and find Lillie with Nebby, when I could've sworn that she went to Aether Paradise.  Nice game design, designers.  Guess they didn't account for the fact someone wouldn't go and do Rainbow Rocket straight away.  Anyway, you have a chance to catch your cover legendary, and with Necrozma being able to be caught since Mount Lanakila, you can roll through Rainbow Rocket with Dusk Mane or Dawn Wings Necrozma if you're really into that.  This is a nuzlocke, so I'm not allowed to do that.  A shame, but I set these rules upon myself.  Anyway, let's move on.  We have more to talk about.

Since Tutorial Island hardly had anything noteworthy to begin with, it stands to reason that all we have left outside getting a TM from a house on Route 2 is Verdant Cavern.  Be prepared before you head inside the Totem's Den, because, we have to fight...

Him, again.  And guess what?  They never fixed the Gumshoos cry.  This game is so lazy, I swear.  Anyway, it's time for our rematch with our very first totem, Alolan Raticate, and this thing isn't playing games this time.  First, it's Level 60 now, so I guess either Captain Ilima has been feeding it Rare Candies or venomization is a thing outside the Tales of Zesteria/Berseria universe and it's been killing Rattatas to get stronger.  Anyway, if you want to bother with Fighting moves, it also has a Chople Berry, which will reduce the power of a Fighting type hit one time only.  I mean, you could always do what I did on the Araquanid earlier in the run and Bug Bite the berry away, but who uses Bug Bite in postgame?

That's not the point.  We still have one other problem.  This thing gets the Totem Ribombee treatment and gets +2 to all it's stats.  Unlike Ribombee, though, this thing has no broken setup move.  Well, it has Double Team, but with my almighty strategy, that won't mean anything.  I chose to lead with Shadow for one reason only, and that is Toxic.  Yes, I am using true degenerate strategies and planning to stall this thing to death.  It's only fair, after all.  If it wants to be using evasion moves, I'll use Toxic stall.  So, the deal here is that, no matter how many of it's allies you slay, more will come without end until the Raticate (or Gumshoos if you're following along and playing Ultra Sun) is down.  Toxic stall.  It is a strategy.  I also still have plenty of X items left, so...yeah.  We're doing this.

Through the sheer power of Hyper Potions and Toxic, the battle was over.  The Rattatas did have Super Fang, which was a little troublesome, but it was fairly straightforward because of Toxic stall.  So what do we get for our reward?  A Trial Guide Cap and Trial Guide Tee.  Yes, that is it.  That's all we get.  Now I'm glad I used Toxic stall.  Screw this trial.  But...we did technically fight and beat a Totem, so...break out the MVP Spotlight to show off those new items we got!

The Trial Guide stuff is by no means spectacular, and we'll be getting some cooler clothes soon in this very episode.  So, with that, not counting the fact I didn't battle Hala yet and catching Tapu Koko and Lunala are things I'm not doing because nuzlocke, Tutorial Island is done.  Now we never have to come back here, ever.  And I swear, if someone begs me to buy the Luran Tank for the memes, I will refuse.  Now, how about we move onto Akala Island?

 

Welcome back to Akala Island, folks, the place where several of my team members met their untimely demises.  If my memory is correct, and it sometimes is, there's not too many things to cover here, and I promise not to go on a tangent about Larvesta having a 1% encounter rate in one area in the entire game.  If you bothered to get the high scores on all the Mantine Surfing spots, you can head on over to The Surf Association in Heahea City to get your Surf Pikachu.  By mere chance and possibly for the sake of a meme, I somehow managed to get the high score on all the spots.  Maybe it was when I was BP grinding to get those Leftovers for Shadow.  Heck if I remember, because that Mantine Surf grinding was one of the most boring things I've done in my entire life, only being topped by waiting for hours to take my dogs to the vet while having nothing at all to do for those several hours.

Anyway, I may as well take it.  It's a static encounter, and it's a sign that this is still a nuzlocke even if we've done so few nuzlockey things so far in this episode.  As for the nickname, I went with a good old classic from the anime.  Ok, that's also a lie because while I originally planned to name it Puka after the Pikachu from the surfing episode, I found out that there's just enough characters to name this Pikachu Humungadunga, so I did it, and I had a good laugh when I found out I could.  It was a good time.  A shame that we'll probably never use him because Spark Plug is my go to Electric type, even if he's marked for death.  Also, Adamant nature.  He sucks, so he'll be permaboxed.

Next up on our list is...the building right next door.  On the second floor of this place is the Game Freak room, which I'm pretty sure is also in other games.  If you're masochistic enough, you can try completing the Alola Pokedex to get the Shiny Charm, and when you do complete it, you also get another outfit.  A Karate Gi for males and a Nurse Joy outfit for females.  Before I say that I can't show you this on my own file because I haven't even finished the Alola Dex on my Ultra Sun, let's talk about how bad completing this dex is.  The problem with this region's dex is a mix of low encounter rates on annoying things, the SOS system just in general being a pain to work around because low chances of getting SOS only mons, and the worst one is they threw in a lot of things that evolve late, mostly from Unova.  So, have fun scouring Alola for that variety pack of 1% encounter rates.  It's not good in the slightest.  Let's move on.  Talking about this nightmare of a Pokedex bothers me.

Heading back to Route 8, we can meet up with the fabulously fabulous man of a man, Colress, who asks if we know about Genesect.  Well, of course not because Genesect is an event only Pokemon and we in the US never got the shiny Extremespeed Genesect because of course not.  Anyway, we're just gonna lie and say we do know, and he'll give us the drives to change the type of Genesect's Techno Blast.  He also informs us about a place called the Battle Tree, but we'll be talking about that later.  Anyway, we're done with Akala Island, so it's time to spread our wings and move to Ula'ula Island, even though there isn't much to do there either.

 

There's actually a lot less to do here than I thought.  Before we do that, though, I just realized there was a place I never mentioned that was added in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and that is the Kantonian Gym in Malie City.  It's a gym based off of Lt. Surge's gym, also known as one of the worst gym puzzles in the series (unless it's Gen 2 where there is no puzzle and you just waltz over and battle Surge).  Luckily, there's no puzzle here.  You gotta pay to get in, though.  It's not that expensive, and be warned, in postgame, every trainer will have Pokemon in the high 50s.  There is also a chance you'll encounter this weird guy in red who uses Dragon types, so he's a thing.  He was in vanilla Sun and Moon, but he was only just there as a Champion Title Defense battle and nothing else.  Anyway, let's move on to the only other relevant thing on this island.

Ok, once again, I lied, because there's an area I want to mention before we do the last thing on Ula'ula Island.  To the right near the end of Ula'ula Meadow is an alter, and this alter will be the opposite one of whatever alter is at the end of Vast Poni Canyon.  In my case, it's the Alter of the Sunne.  This area is relevant, but we can't do anything with it yet.  Keep it in your hat for now.  It's time we paid one final visit to Po Town.  Even with Team Skull disbanded, there's something we can pick up there.

Our visit in the "rainy all the time" Po Town takes us to the local Pokemon Center, where the Team Skull grunts still are for some reason.  After a very...conversational conversation and a chump change of 10,000 Poke Dollars, you will be the proud owner of a Skull Tank, and in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon only, you get a Skull Cap for free as well.  After that, the Team Skull guys and the Spinda leave.  I mean, I guess it's fine.  All I wanted was the Skull Tank and Cap.  So, before we move onto the meat of today's episode, get the picture ready!

To be honest, I really like the Skull Tank in combination with the black skirt and striped knee high socks.  The Skull Cap is a little...eh, but it was free and easily replaceable with the Vacation Hat.  Funny how much I praise the default hat in this game when the option of not wearing a hat actually became a thing in this generation.  Also, I used Mother for this picture because there aren't any trials left, so she won't get an MVP Spotlight.  Poor, poor Mother.  Anyway, let's move onto the meat of today's episode, and that is Poni Island.

Hoo boy, Poni Island.  With a chunk of it blocked off completely until postgame and mostly being the plot hotspot, now is the time for us to explore it to our leisure...outside of Vast Poni Canyon because that place can go screw itself.  Anyway, starting off with Seafolk Village, there is one thing for us in the Pokemon Center.  Near the sitting policeman on the left side, there's a sightseer who will battle you when you talk to him.  All he has is an Exeggcute, but not just any old Exeggcute, but a shiny Exeggcute.  Yes, a regular trainer with a shiny.  Doesn't change the fact I had Shadow blow it up with two Paybacks.  He can't give us the shiny, but we get a Nugget for winning against him.  Not just one Nugget, but six of them.  That is totally fine with me.  With that, it's time to move on.

So remember earlier when I said I wasn't going to catch Lunala because it's a legendary?  Well, that means I can't do something at the Altar of the Moone.  In order to do this next thing, Solgaleo or Lunala is required for it.  Because I myself can't do this, we shall just talk about it using my best resource, Serebii.  So, after the Necrozma fiasco, or in vanilla Sun and Moon, after you get Lusamine from Ultra Space and catch your cover legendary, an Ultra Wormhole will still be at the altar.  Now, since we're playing Ultra Moon, that wormhole will always be there so we can go to Ultra Megalopolis or go delving into the wormhole for legendary hunting.

Anyway, this system also has a specific time based gimmick.  If you have Solgaleo, you can only access this thing at night, and during the day with Lunala.  With this restriction covered, you can go to alternate world where the times are flipped.  As we know, Sun and Moon have a 12 hour time difference.  Sun follows your 3DS's internal clock to the letter, so if it's the early afternoon, it'll be daytime in Sun, but nighttime in Moon.  In the alternate world, these times are flipped.  Along with that, your respective altar will also be swapped, so the Altar of the Moone will become the Alter of the Sunne and you get what I mean.

Now, you're probably wondering "why are you wasting so much time with this pointless banter?"  Well, my good friend, allow me to jump straight to the point with a question.  What if you could have a second Solgaleo or Lunala?  This alternate world has a Cosmog that you can go and get if you have your cover legendary in your party and head over to the area located within Ula'ula Meadow.  For Sun, it's normally the Lake of the Moone, but of course, this is an alternate world we're talking about, so it's not the same area anymore.  In a sense it is, but you know what I mean.  If you're into getting another legendary, then there you go.  You can also save beforehand and soft reset to change it's nature.  Ok, lengthy ramble over.  Let's start off with new areas, starting with where those Ultra Beasts were running around, because we can get an encounter over there.  Let's get started, shall we?

You know, I was going to say something really pessimistic because I was expecting a bad encounter, but I found a Heracross, which is actually amazing because it has a 10% encounter rate.  How do I know that?  Well, at the time of writing this, I'm undergoing the masochistic task of completing the Alola Dex...unless Marshadow is mandatory to complete it, in which case I will go on a rant about how dumb this dex is.  Heracross was a Poni Island Pokemon I was missing for my dex.  But enough about my Pokedex completion woes, let's talk strategy.  Because I didn't want Shadow to get obliterated, I sent in Blue Shrimp to tank the Close Combat.  Lucky for me, Heracross resists Dark, so Crunch got it to half health, and after that, it was the "throw balls and it and pray it catches" game.  I mean, I still caught it, but it sure put up a fight.

So it's a male Heracross.  I think I'm gonna name him The Horn...and mother of Arceus, he's actually really good.  Jolly nature for more Speed with Guts so status conditions just make him hit harder.  If my team wasn't full, I'd honestly consider putting him in.  For now, he'll have to be boxed, and we'll be on our way deeper into the parts of Poni Island previously blocked off to us.  There are also trainers about, so be careful.

Next up on our Poni Island exploration list is Poni Plains.  If you've been worried about levels for the Rainbow Rocket encounters, look no further than here.  Let's be real here, in vanilla Sun and Moon, there is no simple, very easy way to grind in postgame.  In this area, it is possible to encounter Chansey, who is an actual experience goldmine.  But while we're here, we can still score ourselves an encounter, so let's hit up the grass for something...like a Gumshoos, but I have a Yungoos, so this is dupes.  The second try got me a Tauros, which I don't have, and it could be...somewhat useful.  Quick Ball technology is on my side, though, so catching it was a snap.  As for a nickname, I named him Cain, because the character Cain from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is known as The Bull, and Tauros is a bull...so yeah.  Pretty creative, am I right?

What is going on in this episode?  Sure, Cain has Anger Point instead of Intimidate, but he's Adamant nature.  Why are these mons getting good natures all of a sudden?  I could've used these when my team was getting slaughtered back at the Fire trial.  Sadly, once again, my team is full and Styles has proven himself as more than cannon fodder, so Cain will also be hitting the box.  So with that covered, we have options on where to go.  But first, if you explore a bit and head to a cave in the northwest, you can find yourself the Kommonium Z, so if you want Nintendo to copyright claim your videos for using Kommo-o's Z-Move, then you got your source right here.

Anyway, we have two paths we can take.  We can go to Poni Coast or head on over to Poni Meadow.  Between the two, going to Poni Meadow may be potentially dangerous for a certain reason, so we're doing that first.  As you approach the meadow, Dexio and Sina will show up and then you'll be forced to battle.  Dexio has five team members, and I believe they're all Psychic types.  Do not take him lightly, though, because we're getting to that.  For that reason, I am, naturally, abusing X Items again.

So he leads with an Espeon, perfect X Item spamming fodder for Shadow to abuse.  I used X Sp. Defs to make sure none of it's attacks hurt that much, and just in case of any random Focus Blasts.  With some Paybacks, the Espeon went down, only for this man to send in a Metagross next...with Brick Break.  Confuse Ray is a useful tool even if it hardly helps, so it was time to throw on some X Defends, because if Shadow dies, we're kind of screwed.  Of course, the bots never hurt themselves in confusion because Pokemon, so you know how it is.

Ok, scratch what I said earlier.  The Metagross hurt itself one time.  Once, out of eight or so Brick Breaks.  After three eternities, Shadow managed to kill the Metagross, only for an Alolan Raichu to come next, which means Focus Blast that won't miss...or Reflect and Thunderbolt?  Where was the Focus Blast?  Does it even have Focus Blast?  Let's find out through our reliable source, Serebii.

Wow.  This Raichu sucks.  Anyway, next up is a Slowking, who also have next to no real options for Shadow, and I can Toxic stall it while I prepare for Dexio's ace because I need the Payback PP.  It has Own Tempo, so no confusion.  Doesn't matter, anyway.  He also does no damage because Shadow is so bulked up on X items.  On the other hand, Shadow doesn't hit for much damage anyway, so before the Slowking died of poison, I threw on an X Attack just to speed up the last Pokemon's death a bit.  Well, that and for safety reasons.  Why?  Because it's an Alakazam.  Not just any Alakazam, though.  This is a Mega Alakazam with Focus Blast, and Mega Alakazam hits like a truck.  Without those X Sp. Defs, I can bet that a Focus Blast would even kill Shadow.  Yes, I'm serious.  There's a chance it could kill my bulkiest team member if I didn't use X items.  A shame that Alakazam's defense still sucks, even when mega.  Oh, and it also didn't miss because of course not.

So for surviving that battle, we obtain the Key Stone along with Alakazam's Mega Stone, the Alakazite.  Here's the thing.  I never banned myself from using megas, and it's incredibly frowned upon to use them, so here's how we'll do it.  If I force myself to grind more Mantine Surfing to get one, and only one, Mega Stone, I can only use it against other megas or legendaries.  Why am I specifically pointing out legendaries?  Well, you'll see.  That's a topic we'll be going on about in detail later.  Anyway, we have a meadow to explore, so let's do just that, because there's another area inside Poni Meadow we can also explore for an encounter.

Mememele, and Ula'ula had meadows we could explore and find Oricorios.  Akala didn't have a meadow, but there was an Oricorio form there.  It stands to reason that here in Poni Meadow, you can run into Oricorio, but it's been locked behind postgame until now, even though it's type kinda sucks.  Anyway, as for the encounter of Poni Meadow, well, I found an Oricorio, but I already have Dance Fever, so it's dupes.  I ended up finding a Floette, which would evolve into the specially bulky Florges with a stone I probably don't have.  On it's own, it's very bad for postgame, and the special AZ's Floette will probably never, ever be released, ever.  Also, Quick Ball technology.  I named it Flowers because reference to Kalos.

Welp, it was going to happen sooner or later.  The bad natures strike again.  Boxed.  End of discussion.  Now, there's another Probopass in this place, but at least this one didn't randomly yell at me like Olivia's rude Probopass.  She needs to teach that thing some manners.  Rude Probopasses aside, with a bit of exploration, we found the Overheat TM and a cave.  This is Resolution Cave, the place they shoved Zygarde because hunting Zygarde Cells and Totem Stickers would just be too boring.  We can also get an encounter here.  I want to explore this place because the TM for Earthquake is here, but let's talk encounters first.

This place should honestly be called Golbat Cave, because that's almost entirely what I ran into until I finally reached the floor where Zygarde is and encountered a Druddigon.  Blue Shrimp nearly got killed by a crit Rock Climb, but we lucked out and he lived on 4 HP.  Quick Ball technology failed me, so we went with a classic, the Ultra Ball.  As for a nickname...I got nothing this time.  I guess I'll name her Dweller.  Gentle nature is a little bleh, but I'll go with it.  It's not like I'll use her or anything, so to the box with her.  Since Zygarde is a legendary, I won't be catching it, but if you do, you can go to, I believe Route 16, to see Dexio and Sina in order to change Zygarde's form.  It is also required to complete the Alola Pokedex, so...yeah.  Anyway, I'm gonna head out, heal my team, and then we'll take the path we didn't go down.

So, on my way towards where we're going, I encountered a trainer who is required to get by.  I dealt with his Skarmory no problem, and thought The Third could handle his Electivire, but it had Fire Punch and instakilled The Third.  I knew he had bad Defense, but I didn't think he'd die that easily.  Such a cruel fate for a survivor of the Elite Four.  I had to send in Mother to teach these bullies a lesson in pain.  On a related note, this guy's Araquanid has also gotten four Defense drops in a row with Liquidation when it only has a 20% chance.  This was the cursed battle.  It was bound to happen sooner or later.  This Araquanid alone almost killed half my team because of hax and Lunge doing boatloads of damage.  Thanks to Mother and Styles, there were no other deaths.  But now I have to go heal again and put The Third in the death box.

A survivor of the Elite Four...killed by an Electivire that outsped him.  That is an awful shame.  Sure, I knew that The Third was fragile, but he was a fighter.  He was an MVP, and proved his worth in the squad.  Rest in peace, buddy.  You served us well.

So...now what?  The Third was probably my best Ground type and I don't want to go diving into uncharted territory with five team members.  I think his time has come, ladies and gentlemen.  The Horn will be joining the team, and I will train him up along with everyone else when we prepare for Rainbow Rocket.  He'll just kinda be in the party for now.

Ok, so after that awful experience, let's move on, but standing in our way are a couple of unfamilar people who, to be honest, have zero purpose even being here.  Well, Looker is here, and he was irrelevant in this game, so now we meet a character who's entire role for existing got shafted when Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire didn't bring back the Battle Frontier, so now she just kinda exists, and she's part of the International Police, but honestly, who cares?  She has no real reason to exist anymore because Nintendo refuses to bring back the Battle Frontier, but...oh right, sorry.  I can't talk about that yet.  We'll be getting to that shortly.

(On a side note, Looker gave me a Red Card.)

Next up is Poni Coast, which has...Flying types to encounter and I believe the Thunderbolt TM is here too.  On a related note, the death toll this episode has now risen to two.  I found a double battle after picking up the Dark Pulse TM, and it was against two Exeggutors, one regular and one Alolan.  I switched Master Derp out for ultra overleveled Mother, not remembering her Special Defense sucks.  Both of them targeted her, and the second Leaf Storm was a critical hit because of course it was.  This game hates me, probably because I call it bad, and it is bad, but this is just getting stupid.  Where were all of these deaths back at Episode 14?!  Is this the salt episode or something?!  Like, seriously, I am so mad right now, I've avoided the urge to type in various amounts of bad language to keep a mildly PG-13 nuzlocke going on here.

The Horn instakilled the Alolan Exeggutor while Blue Shrimp finished off the Kantonian one.  End of story.  I'm too salty right now to make a decent summary of the battle.  Let's go put Mother in the box.

At this point, these deaths are just getting out of hand.  Crit Leaf Storm, being outsped by an Electivire.  What's next, Selfdestruct killing Styles?  Destiny Bond Gengar killing Shadow?  Scenarios like this is why I took an entended hiatus from touching this game after Episode 14, and why I was hesitant about touching postgame.  It looks like I was right to avoid postgame, but we're too deep in the soup now to go back.  I have to finish now.  I owe it to you, the readers, no matter how much more this game pisses me off, to finish this trainwreck of a game.  I apologize for my saltiness, but a game can only push someone so far with it's BS before you just get sick and tired of it and want to give up.  I'm not going to give up, though.  I said in the disclaimer that I'll do my Rubesty, and we're going to do it!  But first, now I need a replacement for Mother.

Thinking it over, I've opted to take The Bully, my Granbull.  She's not a Fire type, which was the best thing Mother brought to the table, but she'll have to do for now, and I'll grind her up before we start Rainbow Rocket stuff.  Let's finish our exploration since we never got an encounter yet.

Trying to avoid being caught in another double battle, I chose to come back for my Poni Coast encounter later and moved onto Poni Gauntlet, which is not an inviting name at all.  As you would expect, this is a battle heavy area, but it is on the way to the Battle Tree.  Of course, there's also grass to encounter things in, so we can score an encounter here.  I found myself a Lickitung, and if it has the right move, it can be evolved right away.  Let's hope it's nature is good, though, because I could put it on the team right away.  As for a name, let's go with The Tongue.  I don't even know anymore.

Neutral nature, but I'll have to Heart Scale on Rollout if I want to evolve her.  I guess I'll use her.  She's a decent enough level and I can always throw some TMs on her so she can be a bit viable until I evolve her.  Her low Speed will be an issue, though.

After surviving the dreaded gauntlet of trainers, including the last one, which is easily the worst because of Flame Body Magmorter getting the burn every possible chance it could with it's ability, we made it.  This is the Battle Tree.  We're not done with the fun, yet, though.  If we approach the area, we meet people who know us, but we don't know them.  This is Red and Blue, and you have to battle one of them.  Yes, you get no choice in the matter outside of which one you face.  I chose Red, but he has a team of six, leading with a Pikachu that is Lv. 74.  Of course, I get Static'd turn 1 after using Headbutt because this game needs to give me the middle finger some more.

Styles managed to take the Volt Tackle from an overleveled Pikachu and finished it off with another Headbutt.  Next up is Charizard, which is Level 70.  What the hell is this?!  Of course, with Air Slash, I get hax'd to death, so rip Blue Shrimp.  After that, I stopped caring completely.  I will abuse X items to win this unfair battle against overleveled mons.  Meanwhile, Red will never miss Focus Blast because of course not.  Ok, he missed one, but he also hax'd my Gyarados to death, so this game can still go screw itself for suddenly forcing Level 70s on you.  This area is unlocked and you don't have to do Rainbow Rocket to unlock it, so this is purely a fault on the game designers, so if they want to pull this BS freely like this, I'll use megas and X items and not care anymore about fairness, because the game sure doesn't care about fairness.

So after hardcore setup and heal spamming, the Charizard is finally dead.  We're not even close to done yet, though, because next is a Venusaur.  Leech Seed is a major annoyance, especially since the bots will never, ever hurt themselves in confusion, leading to even more heal spamming because of course.  After healing the burn, dealing with Venusaur became easier.  Next up, though, is a Lapras that is not Level 70, but Level 69.  Even at +6, Shadow doesn't even do half to this Lapras.  Surprisingly, it missed two Blizzards, but still died because Toxic is Shadow's best move without question.  Next up, Blastoise, another Level 70 Kanto starter that will take several turns to kill.

With Blastoise, I used the same strategy I used on the Lapras.  Stall it with Toxic with Payback uses to stack on damage.  Finally, we reach the end, his Snorlax.  It probably has Immunity because of course, so I didn't bother with Toxic.  I took my chances with Confuse Ray, but naturally, it does nothing because this is Gen 7.  It also snapped out after one turn because of course.  So, meanwhile, after getting paralyzed by Body Slam, I proceeded to get hax'd even more.  Isn't this game just great?  Allow me to show you an accurate image of how I feel right now.

Yup, this is fine.  Totally not dying inside or anything.  Nope, everything is just peachy.  Anyway, I ran out of PP for Payback, so I had to use a Roto PP Restore, making this already drawn out fight take even longer.  Thanks to a Dire Hit and two crits, this nightmare is over, and all it cost me is most of my sanity and my Gyarados.  Then again, I played all of Sonic '06 and did a 100% playthrough of Super Mario Sunshine in a single stream.  My sanity died a long time ago.

So you want to know what you get for that trainwreck?  Nothing.  Actually nothing.  You have access to the Battle Tree, but even that feels like a middle finger.  I need to unleash my rage, so allow me to do so by going on a lengthy, rage filled rant about the Battle Tree and why it's the biggest piece of trash this game has to offer.

Ever since Pokemon Crystal, there's been a building known as the Battle Tower.  Simple, straightforward, stuff and things.  Gen 3 also had it...well, at least until Emerald mixed it up with the creation of the Battle Frontier.  Sure, the Battle Frontier still had the Battle Tower, but at least there were other fun facilities to play.  Gen 4, or more specifically, Platinum, Heartgold, and Soulsilver, also had a Battle Frontier.  Gen 5 didn't have one at all and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire should've had one, but they shafted us hard and gave us a Battle Tower clone.

"But this doesn't explain at all why you hate the Battle Tree so much" is what you're probably wondering.  The short version is that, like Mantine Surfing, the Battle Tree is very samey and the opponents love, love, love to hax you to oblivion.  It is a nightmare trying to grind Battle Tree, not to mention very boring.  Mantine Surfing sucks too, and it's boring too, because it's very samey.

Also, rage.

Why is it that either Elite Four survivors or an overleveled team member died today?  I was planning on calling this episode Ultra Postgame, but after all of this, I'm officially changing the title to Ultra Disaster, because that is exactly what our Poni Island exploration turned into.  Now, once again, I apologize for my extreme saltiness, but once again, the sheer amount of BS this episode pushed me over the line.  I'll be grinding up a team to about Level 70 and getting a Mega Stone.  Our postgame misadventure isn't over yet, boys and girls, because there's one final place to go.

We have to pay a visit to Aether Paradise, so next time, that's what we'll be doing.  For those who stuck around even after I started getting salty, thanks for sticking with the run even when I'm not at my best.  Next episode, let's take our frustration out on the best part of these games, the Rainbow Rocket Episode.