All the Pokemens

[Aura]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Let's Go! Stormy Adventure Squad!

Before we continue with Blazing Adventure Squad, we're gonna switch things up with Stormy! Or, as the fan translation localizes it: Tempest!

Here is the splash screen for the localization. It's got some cute art!

As I mentioned before, these three games actually share save data, so you can load the same file between the three versions. We'll go over the advantages this can give you, but one of them is immediate. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying enough attention and skipped through the text boxes (I wasn't expecting anything special when I tested this feature out to make sure it would work smoothly on emulator). I'll try to get screenshots of it when I cover Light Adventure Squad next time. But I'm pretty sure one of the benefits was increased storage space at Kangaskhan Storage. Presumably to accomodate for the fact that you're storing items from three separate adventures.

Anyway, without further ado, let's jump right into the start of the second of three parallel adventures.

Right away, it's very clear that this game is almost identical to Blazing Adventure Squad. The hub's name this time is Pokemon Beach rather than Pokemon Village, but the layout is exactly the same. In fact, the only notable difference so far is that two of the residents, Numel and Sneasel, have been replaced with Turtwig and Floatzel respectively.

Other than that, the intro of the game is exactly one-to-one with Blazing Adventure Squad, just with a new coat of paint for the beach theme.

The first notable difference, however, is that, this time, Shuckle has disappeared into a dungeon called Dubious Hill rather than Dubious Forest.

And, as expected, we're picking from 9 pokemon. This time, we're choosing from pokemon that are predominently blue!

Following the logic from before, I decided to start with two pokemon we've never had a chance to start with in a Mystery Dungeon game before: Wooper and Azurill!

=============

 

New Recruits

--------------

Muddy (Wooper F); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Damp, Water Absorb | Moves: Water Gun, Tail Whip, Mud Sport

---------------

Bubbles (Azurill M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Thick Fat, Huge Power | Moves: Splash, Charm, Bubble

Bubble is actually a special egg move, I've only realized just now. Azurill normally only knows Charm and Splash at Lv. 5. Clearly, they wanted this pokemon to be capable of actually fighting early on. However, this isn't STAB Bubble, so it may be lacking a bit.

===========

Anyway, once we've decided on our team, Slowking leads us to Dubious Hill. Of course, it's out the same way.

Dubious Hill

Welcome to the Stormy Adventure Squad's first dungeon! Much like Dubious Forest, don't expect much in the way of danger here. It's another tutorial dungeon but, again, a new coat of paint and some new threats.

Items:  Poke,  Apples,  Big Apples,  Cheri,  Oran, and  Pecha Berries,  Blast,  Heal,  Reviver, and  Stun Seeds,  Geo Pebbles,  Blue,  Grass,  Orange, and  White Gummis,  Max Elixirs, and an assortment of  Wonder Orbs.

While it's possible that Bulbapedia simply doesn't have as comprehensive info on this game (I've already found a White Gummi in this dungeon which isn't listed on Bulbapedia) as with the more popular Mystery Dungeon games, it seems these dungeons aren't quite as copy-pasted as I expected. The items listed here are different, at the very least. 

----------------

Dubious Hill [1F - 2F]

Pokemon:  Natu,  Hoppip

In addition to the items being different, there's only two pokemon on the lowest floors. But right away, this dungeon seems a bit more difficult than Blazing Adventure Squad's. Hoppip is actually resistant to our water attacks!

One thing I realized I didn't show off before was the full list of IQ Skills. Outside of Everlasting which prevents the pokemon from evolving when turned on, the default IQ Skills seem to be the same as in Explorers of Sky. Though I don't know exactly how IQ works in this game. If I had to guess, it's probably lifted straight from Explorers, but I have no way of knowing at the moment.

On the second floor, I ran into a  Cheri Berri, and here's a  White Gummi, too! This is proof there may be items available in these dungeons that I don't list, so keep your eyes peeled if you're playing along! I'll try to make it a point to screenshot as many different pokemon and items on each floor as I can.

------------------

Dubious Hill [3F - 4F]

Pokemon:  Natu,  Hoppip,  Smoochum,  Budew

Smoochum and Budew join on the third floor. Thankfully, this is low-level so that Smoochum isn't one of those terrifying Perish Song users we've dreaded throughout Explorers. Though these girls do take quite the beating, so you may want to tread carefully. Depending on your starter, Budew might be genuinely pretty scary to run into. It'll go down pretty easily, but its Absorb will be STAB and super-effective to Water-types, quad-effective to Muddy! Yikes! But let's not psyche ourselves out. It's still an early-game dungeon and there are always Geo Pebbles you can fall back on if nothing else. Besides, Azurill's Bubble can attack from a range! So it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid any hits. I don't mean to frighten anyone with this over-analysis, it's just interesting to me this game would start you out against a pokemon that has such an obvious surface-level advantage over you. But of course, it's low enough level that it's not likely to survive much at all either way. Even if it gets a hit off, it's not likely to get much out of it.

On the fourth floor, Bubbles leveled up and learned Tail Whip!

-----------------

Dubious Hill [5F - 6F]

Pokemon:  Natu,  Hoppip,  Smoochum,  Budew,  Mime Jr.

Finally, for the last couple of floors, you might run into Mime Jr.! ...I didn't, though, so there's not much to say there.

============

In the end, we find Shuckle all the same.

And that's the end of the dungeon! Nothing really special to talk about, but you really can't expect much out of tutorial dungeons. There's just one more of these and then maybe we'll start getting into more interesting stuff? Who's to say, really.

==============

Of course, things play out all the same from here on out. We celebrate Shuckle's return, talk about the tasty food he was after, and then Slowking asks for us to start an Adventure Squad.

And with that, Team Nature is established in the world of Storm!

After being taught about the various facilities available at Pokemon Beach, we then unlock our second dungeon here: Lively Field! But next time, we've got just one more Adventure Squad to touch in on... see you soon for our introduction to Light Adventure Squad!

[Aura]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Go For It! Light Adventure Squad

And today we're introducing the third and final of this trio of Mystery Dungeon Games: Light Adventure Squad!

This time, I actually caught the screen that displays when you link up new save data. And yeah, it turns out I wasn't missing much. I haven't actually gotten into any item or team management, but it seems like not only does storage space increase to accommodate the items from each game, but the pokemon you have recruited will also be shared between versions. This was one of the reasons I didn't really want to play these games one after another. I figured I'd end up with a really overpowered team from the end-game of Blazing Adventure Squad and I wouldn't really want to use any of the pokemon from Stormy or Light. This way, I can raise up pokemon from all three squads! Time will have to tell how exactly I sort all this out, though.

This game is set in Pokemon Meadow...

Other than that, the story plays out the same. Though the variable residents this time are Glameow and Grumpig.

This time, Shuckle's gotten lost in Dubious Valley!

And then we have to choose from another set of starters! The link here is pretty straight-forward: They're all Yellow and/or electric types!

I ultimately went with these two for my first expedition. Say hello to Chipper and Wish!

============

 

Team Nature

-------------

Chipper (Pachirisu F); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Run Away, Pickup | Moves: Growl, Bide, Quick Attack

If I'm being honest, I had no idea Pachirisu had Run Away. If I did, I probably wouldn't have selected her...

-------------

Wish (Togepi M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Hustle, Serene Grace | Moves: Growl, Charm, Peck

Peck is a special egg move since Togepi is another pokemon that lacks harming attacks early on.

===========

Slowking leads us to the first dungeon as per usual and we make our way to Dubious Valley!

=============

Dubious Valley

Anybody else getting dejavu? Of course, we've never been here before, though!

Items:  Poke,  Geo Pebbles,  Oran, and  Pecha Berries,  Apples, and  Big Apples,  Max Elixirs,  Grass,  Green, and  Brown Gummis,  Heal,  Stun, and  Reviver Seeds, and some  Wonder Orbs.

I'll be honest, this dungeon actually proved to be a lot more difficult than the others, though I think it's mainly because of my starter choices. I didn't expect Pachirisu to be so fragile. I basically have to take advantage of Quick Attack's range to KO enemies without taking damage, and a miss or second pokemon can make things incredibly awkward. And then I found out the hard way that Pachirisu had Run Away when I tried to let Togepi take over and got ambushed from behind... Ugh, lots of terrible memories...

When we faint, we wake up back at the entrance of the dungeon. Slowking feels sorry for us a bit, but gives us a quick pep talk and sends us right back in. This is the sort of thing that typically happens when you fail the first exploration in a Mystery Dungeon game. Honestly, though, I was kind of expecting this game to give you a chance to choose a different pair, but it seems, at least for now, you're committed to the pair you chose. Thankfully, since this is the first dungeon in the game, we really don't have anything to lose.

===========

Dubious Valley [B1F - B4F]

Pokemon:  Pidgey,  Paras,  Bellsprout,  Bonsly

There are two major factors that led to a lot of my failed runs. The first is just bad luck with pokemon spawns (as depicted here, for example). The other is the deceptive bulk of these enemies. It seems like every enemy takes one or two more hits than I expect to go down. And that's bad when dealing with things like Bellsprout's deceptively strong STAB Vine Whip. Bonsly resisting all of our attacks also didn't help much.

One thing I noticed while exploring today is that individual seeds seem to have different models in this game! Here is a Stun Seed, for example. There was another kind of seed in the previous screenshot, too, though I don't know what kind of seed that was just yet. Keeping track of what certain seeds look like might save you the headache of going after seeds in awkward positions.

The biggest thing that helped me through to the end of the dungeon was Wish's Hustle ability which increases the damage he can deal at the cost of reduced accuracy. Unfortunately, having Hustle as the leader is where I quickly was made aware of Chipper's Run Away ability which is just as annoying here as it was in Explorers. Oh well. At least I was able to get another valuable lesson: Just like in the postgame in previous games, you don't get sent back home unless the current leader gets defeated. Since Wish here has a lot more bulk, he was the much safer choice.

In the end, I was able to make it to Shuckle, saving him from Dubious Valley!

And that's that for this dungeon!

=============

And we all know how things play out from here. We return to the village with Shuckle, find out he was looking for the rumored tasty food, and Slowking encourages us to form an Adventure Squad! Now we have access to all the starters!

And in the end, we unlock our next destination for this game: Sparkling Field! But now I'm wondering if I should continue from here and swing like a pendulum back toward Blazing Adventure Squad, or if I should this going as a cycle and return to Blazing Adventure Squad next? I think I might continue straight into Sparkling Field next time. Things will flow better that way, I feel. See you soon!

[Aura]

We're continuing with our coverage of Adventure Squad! This time, I want to start off by showing what the save file looks like once all three games have been registered. It's all pretty straightforward stuff, but you have the logo for the Blazing, Stormy, and Light Adventure Squads: A flame, cyclone, and a beacon. These same icons appear in the logos of the games as well as as a constellation in the sky during the intro.

Now that we have an Adventure Squad formed, here is what the main menu looks like. It seems that Wonder Mail and Friend Rescue is now exclusively tied to an online service, meaning it's no longer accessible at all. It doesn't seem like there are any passwords at all, so we won't be able to utilize this if we ever find ourselves in trouble.

Anyway, today is our first time progressing beyond the introduction to the game, so we're gonna take a moment to explore Pokemon Meadow.

This Bibarel here seems to get really drowsy and doses off on the regular... maybe he has narcolepsy? Maybe we should just leave him be...

Glameow here also seems to go out on adventures. But she admits her pace must not be quite fast enough at getting these jobs done to make enough of a dent in the board.

Chikorita and Rattata here explain to us that, indeed, evolution is not restricted in this game! You can evolve in dungeons! But Chikorita warns us that enemy pokemon can also evolve...

Grumpig seems to tease Farfetch'd a lot. In this interaction, the two share a back and forth. It seems Farfetch'd is a big gossip, though, so they might be a good source of information down the line...

Over here is a sleeping Munchlax who seems to be dreaming about food.

I do have plenty of food items in my inventory, but I don't see any way to give Munchlax any of them, so I'm guessing, at least for now, this is just flavor text...

This Politoed is kinda funny. He seems to mumble to himself some fairly rude things dismissing you as some nobody who fails to make an expression.

And, of course, we can find SHuckle and his friends over here, happy to be reunited.

Over here on the east side, there appears to be a shop that'll open later, themed around Gastrodon. Curious what this'll be...?

Regardless, it's time to start covering the facilities! First up, we have the Kecleon Shop which appears to only have one of the Kecleon Bros. running it. Either the purple Kecleon will show up later, or he just isn't in this game. Regardless, there's only one Kecleon here.

And his inventory seems pretty standard. But we don't really have much money to work with, so we can't really buy much of anything.

And then there's Kangaskhan Storage where we can store items. If I'm understanding how this works right, items stored here can be withdrawn in any of the linked save files, much like in the Special Episodes in Explorers of Sky.

A new feature here, though, is the Custom Set option which allows you to register your current inventory to store and withdraw those items easily all at once. It's actually a really cool feature I wish Explorers had! It could've saved a lot of time in setting up for every exploration.

And then we have Duskull Bank. We don't have much money, but we may as well deposit what we have. There's nothing special going on here.

Finally, we can talk with Slowking to adjust our party.

And this is where we can choose from all our starters.

The party I decided to go with ditched Pachirisu in favor of Pikachu who doesn't have Run Away to worry about.

============

   

Team Nature (Light)

------------

Spark (Pikachu F); Lv. 5

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderShock, Growl, Tail Whip

-------------

Shine (Meowth M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Pickup, Technician | Moves: Scratch, Growl

--------------

Wish (Togepi M); Lv. 7

Item: None

Abilities: Hustle, Serene Grace | Moves: Charm, Growl, Peck, Metronome

--------------

Stars (Psyduck F); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Damp, Cloud Nine | Moves: Water Sport, Scratch, Tail Whip

==========

Now let's finally turn our attention tot he Request Board. I probably don't need to explain this, it's the same as the Job Bulletin Board in Explorers. It doesn't look like there are outlaw jobs like in Explorers, so it's mostly just rescues and item hunts.

An annoying element of this, though, is that, without a second screen, you have to press A on the job to actually view the details, including the reward. Sometimes there can be important information hidden in this page that would make or break your willingness to accept the job.

Regardless, since we just unlocked Sparkling Field, let's get all the jobs set in that dungeon that we can! We can hold up to 8 jobs!

And once we're ready to go, we make our way to Sparkling Field from the exit to the Meadow.

============

Sparkling Field

This is our first "real" dungeon, in that it's the first time we're exploring with a full team! Unlike in Rescue Team or Explorers, you actually get quite a selection to choose from to make your team. So it feels a bit less like you have to take whatever the game gives you. Even still, most of these pokemon feel really lacking at Lv. 5. But hopefully it won't take too long for them to get their more useful attacks.

And this is also where it seems coverage of this game starts to fall apart. That's rough! I'll try to note all items that I stumble across going forward, but I can't guarantee a comprehensive list of items.

Items:  Poke,   Special Bands,  Wooden Spikes,  Blast,  Sleep,  Warp, and  X-Eye Seeds,  Clear,  Pink, and  Red Gummis,  Max Elixir,  Fire Blast,  Foe-Seal Orbs

 Wooden Spikes seem to be renamed Sticks from Explorers. Not technically a new item, but I figured I'd add a blurb here about it due to the name change.

Anyway, I had an awkward run this time where I ended up getting KO'd and losing pretty much everything useful, so I just reloaded my save after the run and started over. But here are some screenshots of the items I discovered my first attempt:

Here's a TM! You can't see it in the screenshot, but it's actually spinning in place which is kinda cool. I was surprised to pick this thing up and find out it had Fire Blast on it! It seems really early on to allow me to find a TM like that! I briefly considered teaching it to Wish, but I figured with the Hustle ability, this thing would be missing more often than landing any hits. Wish really needs high-accuracy attacks or attacks that can't miss.

Here's what the held items look like on the left part of the screen. They appear as golden scarves in this game. I wonder if their color changes depending on the version?

Here's the Pink Gummi,

And a Blast Seed, it's Brown.

Now, onto my real run:

---------------

Sparkling Field [1F - 11F]

Pokemon:  Mankey,  Magnemite,  Krabby,  Aipom,  Sunkern,  Snubbull,  Treecko,  Ralts,  Shroomish,  Baltoy

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let me talk about some problems I'm running into right now. This game definitely seems to be the most difficult of the three and that's partially because almost all of these pokemon resist Electric attacks and/or are strong against Normal types. Every Growl and Tail Whip is felt badly here. Magnemite in particular is especially scary because its Thundershock is strong and capable of paralyzing you. And most of my pokemon only know Scratch or some variation of it. It resists Pikachu's ThunderShock (which is also Pikachu's only harming move right now), so all I can really do to it is pray that Wish wants to cooperate and Magnitude will turn into attacks that will not only land, but do some sort of actual damage against these things. It's rough. Maybe bringing in pokemon from other playthroughs might not be such a bad idea...

Anyway, not only are these pokemon resistant, I don't think any of them go down to a single one of my strongest attacks, even with neutral damage. So I'm basically guaranteed to receive damage or a debuff at every encounter. Some of these pokemon take several turns to KO. There is something that makes this game a lot rougher than typical PMD and I'm not quite sure what it is just yet. Perhaps the low number of dungeons per game means the difficulty spike will be a lot steeper. Regardless, it's a bit embarrassing that I'm this far in and still getting walled by the easiest dungeons in the game... this might be a bit of a grindy game whether I like that idea or not...

Also, what Chikorita warned us about turned out to be true! Some bad luck against a Sunkern led to it KOing Stars and evolving! It turns out, enemies will evolve if they KO a pokemon that isn't your active leader. KOing the active leader leads to an instant game over (which is what happened my first attempt).

I found a Red Gummi on the 5th floor.

Music: Dubious Forest

On the 6th floor, the tileset changes to this more forested layout. The music changes here as well.

I found a Clear Gummi down here,

I wound up rescuing PIdgey here!

And on the way to the next dungeon, I stumbled across a scary sight: Yes, we're already running into traps! This time it was just a Warp Trap, which is a lot less devastating when you can freely switch your leaders around, but if Warp Traps are here, you know that means we've got all sorts of other traps to worry about, too. I can't list out all the traps you could potentially find, either, so be extra careful! One step could ruin your entire run!

On the 7th floor, I think this red seed here was an X-Eye Seed.

Then, we rescued Paras.

On the next floor, it was Bonsly's turn for rescue,

This Green seed here is a Warp Seed.

Finally, we found a requested Pecha Berry,

And we rescued Bellsprout.

Finally, Shine learned both Bite and Fake Out during this adventure. Fake Out being an incredibly helpful asset as it actually gives us hope of dealing damage against ranged enemies beyond literal sticks and stones.

And that's it for Sparkling Field! Yeah, not a whole lot ended up happening, huh?

Regardless, as a reward for one of the jobs we've completed, we got a Bonsly to want to join our little club! Why not, right?

===========

Energy (Bonsly M); Lv. 1

Item: None

Abilities: Sturdy, Rock Head | Moves: Fake Tears, Copycat

===========

Another interesting item we got as a reward for a different quest was a  Team Elixir! This sounds like an incredibly useful item that restores the PP for all moves on all pokemon in the active party rather than just one! This can make PP management in long endurance dungeons far less stressful!

Upon clearing these jobs, we've gone form Normal Rank to Bronze Rank! And our reward now is a  Joy Seed!

=============

The next morning, Slowking meets with us to warn us that in the dungeons ahead, we're likely to face even tougher pokemon. To prepare us, he decides he's going to teach us a new technique: The Stack Attack.

Slowking leads us to a tutorial area where he created a Stack Spot: A hole in the ground that we'll typically find in dungeons.

To perform a Stack Attack, we'll have to form a Stack, first!

Slowking instructs Wish to jump into the hole first.

Then, he instructs Spark to climb on top of Wish. We can select spark from a menu here.

And with that, we've formed a stack! Pikachu is balancing precariously on Wish's head! By doing so, our collective HP is combined and we can move around as a single unit! Slowking explains that pokemon can stack based on their size. A pokemon can join a stack if they are smaller than all the pokemon currently in the stack, and the stack can only have one pokemon of the same size.

In Explorers, Pikachu and Togepi were the same size, so obviously, this uses a different source for the pokemon's size. I suspect the size might be an internal variable carried over from My Pokemon Ranch, as this Stack mechanic is one of the behaviors pokemon can exhibit at the ranch. Regardless, this does pose an unfortunate oddity that's going to plague me with party planning. It seems unintuitive to guess what pokemon is "larger" or "smaller". Like, obviously, a Wailord will be larger than a Rattata, but I would deifinitely think Togepi would be smaller than Pikachu, right? Yet apparently it's Pikachu who rides on top of Togepi. It seems like there's no way to know for sure who can stack on who without checking their summaries and comparing their sizes directly.

Now we get into the Stack Attack. When we go to select an attack, we'll instead select an attack from each pokemon in the stack.

And then, each pokemon will attack one after another! It seems this is this game's quirky answer to the Linked Moves from previous PMD games.

It seems we hit Slowking good!

Once we're done with the stack, we simply select Hop Down from the menu to get off.

And that's it! This seems like a weirdly convoluted system, but I'll have to wait and see how I feel about it. The biggest thing I'm worried about is how this is going to affect team composition... It's gonna be difficult planning teams that have varying sizes while also keeping a good balance of types and roles.

Once the tutorial is over, it seems we've sent Slowking flying into the air!

And he lands right on his face... When we rush over to his aid, though, he assures us he'll be fine.

Slowking then goes on to teach us a little more about Stack Attacks. It's a technique that's been passed down for generations and requires absolute faith in your teammates, but it's an incredibly powerful asset and an essential for Adventure Squads in these parts.

After a clever little title drop, we're given an odd fake-out end card... I've honestly gotta say, the humor doesn't really hit the same in this game. I'm not sure if it's just written by someone else, but it just kinda comes off as awkward more than anything else.

Slowking proceeds to explain that the Pokemon Stack will prevent your HP from recovering naturally, which I'd say is a reasonable downside and will frankly encourage me to use Oran Berries a bit more responsibly, too.

And with that, we've now unlocked our third dungeon, Shady Crag! But we're not going there just yet. Next time, we'll be catching up with the Stormy Adventure Squad! See you soon!

[Aura]

We're back with more Adventure Squad! This time, we're rejoining the Stormy Adventure Squad.

Right away, you might notice a curious detail: We're already Bronze Rank! Yes, as we're carrying over the same save file, that means our Rank is preserved from game to game as well! This should make the game a bit less of a grind than you might have if you tried to just play one version of the game. But it might also mean we're going into some of these dungeons lower level than intended... We'll just have to play things by ear for a while!

Poking around Pokemon Beach, of course, most of the NPCs are the same here, even the variable pokemon have the same roles. Turtwig occasionally does jobs from the board and Floatzel is teazing Farfetch'd.

I, of course, took the time to prepare a new party. I tried to keep in mind size differences for stacking in preparation this time, but all of the pokemon we got in Stormy Adventure Squad happen to all be the same size. In Light Adventure Squad, we do have Psyduck which is one size larger than everyone else. But other than that, we've got nothing. Regardless, let's meet our new teammates!

============

 

 

Team Nature (Stormy)

---------------

Muddy (Wooper F); Lv. 7

Item: None

Abilities: Damp, Water Absorb | Moves: Water Gun, Tail Whip, Mud Sport

--------------

Bubbles (Azurill M); Lv. 7

Item: None

Abilities: Thick Fat, Huge Power | Moves: Splash, Charm, Bubble, Tail Whip

-------------

Flow (Riolu M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Steadfast, Inner Focus | Moves: Endure, Quick Attack, Foresight

------------

Fountain (Squirtle M)

Item: None

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Tackle, Tail Whip

Yes, I'm aware the nickname is misspelled in-game. I'll try to fix that asap.

==========

With our team prepared, we went to gather all the jobs in the newest dungeon, Lively Field, and now we're ready to take it on!

=============

Lively Field

Here is Team Nature's Stormy division's first "real" adventure!

Items:  Poke,  Power,  Special, and  Twist Bands,  Apples,  Cheri, and  Oran Berries,  Blast,  Heal,  Reviver,  Sleep,  Stun,  Warp, and  X-Eye Seeds,  Wooden Spikes,  Black,  Blue,  Brown,  Gray,  Green,  Pink,  Royal,  Silver, and  Yellow Gummis,  Max Elixirs, and assorted  TMs and  Wonder Orbs

-----------

Lively Field [1F - 5F]

Pokemon:  Tangela,  Yanma,  Pineco,  Dunsparce,  Surskit,  Whismur,  Skitty,  Barboach

Many of the pokemon here are incredibly dangerous. Tangela's Sleep Powder and destroy you while Pineco's Protect can cause serious problems this early on, especially since I can't quite one-shot anything yet. It also knows SelfDestruct, but you've got some starters with Damp in this game, so that's not too much of a problem. Still, if you don't happen to have Wooper with you, then watch out! Then there's Skitty with both Attract and Cute Charm if you happen to be the opposite gender... Yanma  and Surskit can also hit from a range with Quick Attack and Bubble, so you'll need to be careful of that, too.

On the third floor, Flow leveled up and learned Counter. Without Bite as an Egg move like in Explorers of Sky, Flow might be relying on Counter to deal some extra damage to ease the burden on Quick Attack.

I wound up recruiting a Pineco!

===========

Torrent (Pineco M); Lv. 7

Item: None

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: Tackle, Protect, SelfDestruct

===========

On the fourth floor, Fountain learned Bubble! That's a great boon both for range and damage output since it's a STAB special attack!

On the 5th floor, we rescued Hoppip!

Wooper also learned Mud Shot! It's great to have some type variety! But we're still pretty vulnerable to Grass-types...

--------------

Lively Field [6F - 11F]

Pokemon:  Tangela,  Yanma,  Pineco,  Dunsparce,  Surskit,  Whismur,  Skitty,  Barboach,  Croagunk

Starting on the 6th floor, you can start running into Croagunk! Be careful not to use Water attacks against it! It has Dry Skin and will heal from them!

On the 7th floor, I stumbled across a Slumber Trap. Boy do I love these traps...

Thankfully, nothing too rough came from the trap and I was able to get through and rescue Natu!

Then came another Hoppip on the following floor...

On the 9th floor, I found my first Reviver Seed! They're golden, so they should stand out pretty well.

And our last pokemon to rescue is yet another Hoppip! Kind of odd that we've had so many repeat clients. I can only assume the pool that can be generated from is different based on your current rank or something.

And after 11 floors, we reach the end of the dungeon! This one did admittedly take a couple of runs. But we made it to the end! And we'll keep going strong, too!

From one of our missions, we received a Pecha Scarf as a reward! Very nice!

And then, of course, Slowking begins to teach the Stormy division about the Stack Attack.

With another title drop (Yes, it does get the title right. It says "Let's Go! Tempest Team Nature!" and then "Do your best, Tempest Team Nature!", I just unintentionally mashed through the first one), we're left to another fake ending and the game proceeds!

And with that, we've unlocked the third dungeon in Stormy Adventure Squad! But next time, we check in with Blazing Adventure Squad! Then we should have the chance to start playing with Stack Attacks! See you soon!

[Aura]

And once again we're back with more Adventure Squad! This time, we're taking our second look at the Blazing division of Team Nature.

Of course, as with the other two games, the variable pokemon are share the same dialogue.

Anyway, let's not waste any time in our coverage today and get right into our new squad!

===========

 

 

Team Nature (Blazing)

--------------

Moon (Teddiursa M); Lv. 7

Item: None

Abilities: Pickup, Quick Feet | Moves: Fake Tears, Lick, Scratch, Covet

--------------

Wildfire (Growlithe M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Abilities: Intimidate, Flash Fire | Moves: Bite, Roar

-------------

Blaze (Torchic F); Lv. 5

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Scratch, Growl

--------------

Cinder (Charmander M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Scratch, Growl

==========

There was actually only one job I wanted to do here. The others were item deliveries with items that are just too valuable for me at the moment.

So, off we go to Cheery Field!

===========

Cheery Field

It's time for the Blazing Division's second dungeon! It's very clear to me that, despite sharing naming conventions, there are more differences between these dungeons than merely aesthetic and the selection of pokemon. There appears to be variance among the available items and the pokemon spawns are a bit more complex in some than others.

Item:  Poke,  Apples,  Cheri,  Oran, and  Pecha Berries,  Clear,  Grass,  Gray,  Green,  Pink,  Red,  Silver,  Sky,  White, and  Yellow Gummis,,  Blast,  Heal,  Sleep,  Stun, and  Warp Seeds,  Wooden Thorns,  Power,  Special, and  Twist Bands,  Max Elixirs, and assorted  Wonder Orbs and  TMs.

-------------

Cheery Field [1F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Machop,  Ponyta,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Larvitar,  Nincada

This dungeon has a handful of significantly rare pokemon that might immediately catch your eye.

I've noticed a large amount of TMs on the first floor: Three in fact! This could just be a coincidence, but I do have to wonder if there's some hidden mechanic that randomly crates special floors with bonus rare items like these.

Regardless, I wound up using one of these TMs to teach Wildfire Fire Blast. Admittedly, this was entirely on accident as I meant to back out rather than select a pokemon, but once I got to this menu I couldn't get out of it. But hey, Wildfire has a Fire attack now! Good for him! Unfortunately, Fire Blast isn't a ranged attack like I thought it was and it misses quite a lot. So it's not ideal.

-------------

Cheerful Meadow [2F - 3F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Machop,  Ponyta,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Larvitar,  Nincada,  Kakuna

Kakuna joins on 2F. Why it was too good for 1F? I couldn't tell ya. But here it is.

An enemy I killed on this floor ended up dropping a  Deluxe Box! That's something we've yet to see... there must be an equivalent to Xatu's Appraisal back in Pokemon Village... I suppose we'll figure outwhat to do with this thing later on. But it's certainly worth holding onto.

The description says you need to bring it to Gastrodon, so I guess it's tied to that building with Gastrodon on it.

I also ended up finding a  Power Band! I decided to give it to Moon since he's got the most powerful physical attacks right now.

I also came across an Exeggcute that wanted to join the party! Frankly, support with Hypnosis could come in a lot of handy, so yeah, I brought her along!

===========

Kindle (Exeggcute F); Lv. 11

Item: None

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Uproar, Barrage, Hypnosis, Leech Seed

Kindle won't be doing much but putting pokemon to sleep for now, but I think she has potential with a little bit of development.

============

For now, I decided to swap her out in place of Blaze, since I think we've already got some really solid DPS with Moon.

Speaking of Moon, he learned Fury Swipes! I decided it was for the best to replace Fake Tears rather than Scratch, though, and it ultimately proved to be a good call. Fury Swipes seems to miss almost every attack for some reason. It must be disgustingly low accuracy.

After encountering a Larvitar, it used Sandstorm! I figured I'd share what a Sandstorm looks like in this game! Nothing fancy or anything.

---------------

Cheery Field [4F - 5F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Machop,  Ponyta,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Larvitar,  Nincada,  Kakuna,  Swinub

Swinub joins up on the 4th floor.

---------------

Cheery Field [6F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Machop,  Ponyta,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Nincada,  Kakuna,  Swinub

Larvitar takes its leave on the 6th floor.

On the sixth floor, I rescued Cherubi!

--------------

Cheery Field [7F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Machop,  Ponyta,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Nincada,  Swinub,  Beedrill,  Tyrogue

Kakuna is the next to go. In its place are Beedrill and Tyrogue!

On the 7th floor, the dungeon changes to a more flowery yellow color scheme.

-------------

Cheery Field [8F]

Pokemon:  Spearow,  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Swinub,  Beedrill,  Tyrogue

Ponyta, Machop, and Nincada take their leave next.

------------

Cheery Field [9F - 11F]

Pokemon:  Exeggcute,  Cubone,  Swinub,  Beedrill,  Tyrogue

Finally, Spearow is the last pokemon to leave.

---------------

And with that, we've cleared our second dungeon! Or, technically our sixth dungeon, depending on how you look at it.

=============

When we got back to the village, however, where I was expecting the Stack Attack tutorial like the other runs, I instead got a cutscene where Slowking asks if we know about the Gastrodon Shop. I'm assuming I got this scene because I picked up a Deluxe Box...

The in-universe reason for the shop's closure was due to the Gastrodon that run it going away on a trip.

But now they've returned, so the shop is open again! According to Slowking, there are unique items here, and you can also open treasure boxes here, too. I'm running on the assumption right now that this is essentially a single store that combines the Croagunk Swap Shop and Xatu Appraisal.

Unfortunately, there was something kinda... missing in that. Yeah, not only did we not get the Stack Attack tutorial, we also didn't unlock the next dungeon. It's looking like we're gonna have to go back and do some more jobs! Next time, we'll do just that to unlock the third dungeon in Blazing Adventure Squad! We'll see how things go! See you soon!

[Aura]

It has been a very long time since I've made an update on here! I apologize for the wait, life has gotten quite busy between my job and various avenues in life. With how long these posts can take to make, trying to squeeze regular updates into my schedule has been quite the ask. So I've been thinking on ways I could reduce the time investment these updates take to make, and I'm hoping this current solution will work out really well! I've decided to go ahead and start recording my experiences! Now you can watch what I do each session directly rather than relying on my memory to recount everything that's happened. Honestly, this is probably something I should've started doing a long time ago.

Anyway, last time, we left off at a rather awkward point where, rather than unlocking the next dungeon, we instead unlocked the Gastrodon Shop! At this store, we can open boxes just like at Xatu's Appraisal in Explorers. We've gathered a couple of boxes so far, but all I've gotten so far are Gold Ribbons and Gummis. Those are really nice items, but nothing particularly note-worthy in terms of uniqueness. The East Sea Gastrodon opens boxes for you while the West Sea Gastrodon sells you rare items like Wonder Orbs and TMs, the kinds of things the pink Kecleon would sell you in Explorers. We're probably gonna wanna check in with these two frequently throughout our adventures.

So, in between updates, I did go through and do a bunch of missions in Cheery Field, which was enough to bump us up to the Silver Rank. We also recruited Cubby the Cubone here, who will be taking Teddiursa's place. Of course, we also went through the same Stack Attack tutorial that we did in the other two games. And now all three save files are at the same point in the story! The most important detail is that we unlocked the new dungeon Sunset Crag. So, let's get into the nitty gritty!

=============

Sunset Crag [5:35]

Serebii | Bulbapedia

This is the first dungeon with Stack Spots which we can use to set up Stack Attacks. And now that we get a chance to actually play with them, I think I have a better understanding of how they work. In addition to the weaknesses listed in-game, it seems that you're allowed at least one pair of pokemon that are the same size to balance in the stack, hence why the tutorial was possible even with pokemon of the same size. Pokemon must be stacked with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on the top. You can't have a larger pokemon on top of a smaller pokemon. Size is determined by species. Most pokemon we currently have are only size 1, but Wildfire the Growlithe and Noodle the Ekans (who we recruit here) are both Size 2, so if either of them are at the bottom of the stack, I can still fit two more Size 1 pokemon on top of them.

Stacked pokemon can link moves together and, supposedly, can even learn egg moves by watching other pokemon use them. Though I suppose that's forbidden knowledge for now. We'll see if it ever comes up. Pokemon in a Stack do not recover HP passively, so Oran Berries will prove to be a lot more important. While in a Stack, you also cannot switch leaders, you *must* play as the stack. However, there are greater benefits beyond just linking moves together: The biggest boon is that moves used by pokemon higher up on the stack don't actually consume PP! So you can get away with using much more powerful attacks than you normally would! This should make all those misses far more bearable. The pokemon on the bottom must always use an attack, though, and they will always lose PP. So be sure to think carefully what moves your largest pokemon knows to ensure you never have to worry about running out of moves.

A bit more on the scary side, however, it seems that wild pokemon can also appear in stacks as well. This could lead to you being surprised with a barrage of dangerous attacks. But it can also potentially allow you to KO several pokemon at once if you hit them hard enough. This is the central gimmick this whole game is built around, and I'm a lot more sold on it now that I'm actually able to play around a bit. Still, I suspect it's gonna lead to a lot of nightmares in the later game.

Now that you can watch my video, I feel it's less important to detail the pokemon you can find here, but if you'd like more detail, you can always check the Serebii and Bulbapedia pages I've listed above. Listing out all the items and pokemon you can find on each floor is one of the most time-consuming parts of Mystery Dungeon that makes it so draining to cover. By omitting these details, which I was mostly just lifting off of these sites anyway, I hope this will be a much more pleasant experience going forward.

I should note, however, that Slowking did warn me about Monster Houses. So I suspect from here on we're going to start running into those. I didn't run into any myself, but I do urge anyone playing along to make sure you're bringing Spurn Orbs and other items to help with Monster Houses if/when they spring up.

At the 8th floor [16:11], the tileset and music change. On the early floors, nothing is particularly dangerous aside from the introduction of stacked enemies, but deeper in the dungeon, we start to run into Hitmonchan.

These guys can put up a bit of a fight. I first run into one on B10F. They can apparently know Agility which is a dangerous move in its own right, but they can soak up a lot of damage and, paired with stacks, Agility is even more dangerous. I'm not sure what kinds of other attacks these guys have without knowing what level they're at, but one of them used Feint, so I suppose that means either learnsets are different from Platinum or these things are as high as Lv. 21! Not that level means much in Mystery Dungeon, but it does provide an explanation for why these guys can take such a beating. But if it knows Feint, then it's probably not out of the question it knows Bullet Punch and Mach Punch, too, giving it some reach.

Regardless, after 15 floors, we reached the end of the dungeon no problem! Ironically, Wildfire was just about to run out of Belly so I was just dismounting the stack right at the end of the dungeon, unsure of how much further we had to go. So it looks like Cubby ended up stealing all the credit for the adventure. Sorry, Wildfire!

At the end, Slowking draws our attention to yet another new service added to Pokemon Village: Slaking's Dojo. But the way it's being described, it doesn't sound quite like a parallel to Marowak's or Makuhita's Dojo, but rather a parallel to Electivire's or Gulpin's Link Shop, just minus the linking service. We'll check it out next time!

Anyway, I hope you guys like the video format better! Or at the very least that it's an acceptable substitute! This is the best compromise I can come up with to keep these updates from taking up entire days at a time, especially as we get to the more complicated dungeons at the end of the game. I hope I can come up with better ways to improve this format in the future! But for now, things are still relatively uneventful. Regardless, next time, we'll be returning to Stormy Adventure Squad! See you soon!

[Aura]

We return with Stormy Adventure Squad! This time the audio is much higher, but I've now realized there's an odd aspect ratio issue I somehow failed to notice previously. Hopefully this problem should be fixed next time when we play Light Adventure Squad.

Anyway, I didn't notice it at first, but since we gained access to Slaking's Dojo on our shared save, all three games now have access to the dojo, same with Gastrodon's shop. So it seems we don't have to unlock these anymore and can play around with any moves we could potentially learn from Slaking right now!

Anyway, armed with knowledge of how Stacks work, I decided to swap Bubbles out for Stars the Psyduck, as Psyduck is a Size 2 pokemon. However, Stars is a little bit underleveled which gets us in a spot of trouble early on in our adventures this time around.

Anyway, after we make our preparations and take on a job, we head out to our next destination: Cloudy Crag!

=============

Cloudy Crag [7:03]

This is the Stormy Adventure Squad's first adventure with Stacking! I found myself a bit more afraid of potential threats this time around, but I think that's mainly due to Stars being underleveled. Toward the end, when he started to catch up, and he and Flow both got some solid standard moves, I felt a lot more confident.

I found Corphish to be a noteworthy danger early on, as it knows Bubble so it may be able to outrange you.

Burmy can also be a threat due to Protect, so watch out around them and try to KO them quickly!

At 16:55 I step on a Warp Trap, discovering that these traps affect each pokemon in the tower independently! All three pokemon were scattered to random parts of the map, making Warp Traps especially dangerous! With the ability to switch leaders, the danger is mitigated a little bit, but you could still end up in incredibly awkward situations, especially with enemy Stacks roaming around! You don't want to be caught on the ground against a Stack of enemies. A Rollcall Orb might be more important in this game than I initially thought. But, if nothing else, you should at least be able to knock over enemy Stacks with items like Sticks.

At 19:41, we reach the 8th floor where the tileset and music change.

At 21:50 I had an unfortunate run-in with a Slugma that proved these guys can be a lot more dangerous than I gave them credit. I was in a really difficult spot where Stars was in the front, but right behind him was Fountain who was low on HP. My best bet seemed to be to hope for the best and let Stars do his best. His best wasn't much and unfortunately lead to him being KO'd.

This KO not only led to a lost Reviver Seed, but also enabled Slugma to evolve into Magcargo! I didn't think too much of it at first and admittedly thought this technically made the fight easier since Water Gun would now be 4x effective! But I was dead wrong as this evolution must've given Slugma a massive boost in stats. It went from taking 30 damage to only 3! And it was using Amnesia to boost its Sp. Defense further! I ultimately won out by hitting it with a Stun Seed and moving Flow down to take him out with a physical Force Palm. But man, was that a scary encounter.

After that encounter, I stacked Muddly and Flow onto Stars while Fountain followed on the side to recover health slowly. The idea was to heal the whole stack with a single Oran Berry originally, but it turned out Stars's max HP was low enough that it didn't factor much into the Stack's overall HP, meaning the whole stack was doing solid.

At 27:36, I arrive at our first Kecleon Shop! I pawn off some items I don't foresee myself relying on in exchange for a Reviver Seed he was selling. As coverage of these games are fairly poor, don't expect very reliable sources on where special Kecleon stores might show up. But I'll do my best to seek them out!

And after 15 floors, we finally reach the end of the dungeon!

============

After the fact, I stop by Slaking to see if we can do anything with our current active party, but none of our team has any interesting moves they can learn. At least just yet. I'll bet we can get some interesting moves once some of our pokemon start to evolve! But that's it for now! Next time, we play around with Light Adventure Squad's first adventure with Stacks! See you soon!

[Aura]

We're back with more Mystery Dungeon: Light Adventure Squad!

   

Since we went ahead and put Stars on the Stormy Squad, we'll be replacing his position on the Light Squad with Mareep. Mareep is also a Size 2 pokemon, so I figured this should work a lot better overall.

Other than that, there's not really anything new in Pokemon Garden we haven't already covered, so let's jump right into today's dungeon!

===========

Shady Crag [3:13]

This dungeon quickly proved to be the most challenging of the three dungeons. There are a number of reasons why: First of all, Electrike has Lightningrod which makes our Electric attacks useless if one is in the room. Second, Drowzee has Forewarn. So it can dodge our attacks more easily, which isn't a good look considering I'm alreadys truggling getting Wish's attacks to connect thanks to Hustle. You can see in the video above just how much of a headache this proves to be. I'm not sure if it's bad luck or bad decision making, but I end up getting KO'd twice really early on with not much I could do to get out. I suppose I could've come in better prepared with better items, but I didn't think I'd be running into problems like this so early on! It feels like a waste to use useful items in a 15-floor dungeon. But I suppose that's the kind of stinginess that causes me to lose so much. Is that going to affect my decision making? Probably not!

The main stack I like to use with this build so far is Wish on Spark on Mareep (I really need to rename Mareep, don't I?) Wish tends to miss a lot thanks to Hustle, so it's good to have his attacks linked with other pokemon. Spark's Thundershock deals decent damage and Mareep doesn't contribute much at first due to its low level, but it's slowly catching up with the rest of the crew and learning moves! Even in the beggining, the extra chip damage from Tackle is definitely better than nothing.

At 7:38 I end up finding a  Special Band which I give to Spark to hold since he's the only one with a Special attack at the moment.

There really isn't too much else to say about this run-through. Wish ends up learning Sweet Kiss, Spark learns Thunder Wave and Mareep learns ThunderShock which are nice moves, for sure. They'll certainly help in picking off tricky enemies.

At 15:54 there was an odd period where Wish's Metronome caused it to use an... Orb? I suppose Orb effects are included in the random pool of moves Metronome can pull from. That's fascinating to me. I have to wonder what that Orb power would've done? I sure hop ethat doesn't mean Metronome could end up causing me to use an Escape Orb or something dangerous like that, though.

At 16:34 we arrive at the B8F, the lower part of the dungeon. There isn't too much to talk about here besides the small handful of close calls I have. I've gotta stop underestimating the danger these dungeons can present because it's getting me in a lot of trouble.

We do start to run into Rotom down here which is incredibly scary considering Rotom is a ghost-type meaning it can travel through walls! We all know how devastating that can be, especially early-game! Yikes! Tread carefully!

At the same time, you could be lucky enough to recruit a Rotom yourself, so try to look on the bright side and see if you can get one for your squad!

After 15 floors, we finally clear the dungeon!

===========

With Shady Crag cleared, we take one last lap around Pokemon Garden. I end up buying an  Insomniscope from the Kecleon Shop, so we've got that to work with going forward!

Next time, we'll check in with Blazing Adventure Squad again! I don't yet have our fourth dungeon unlocked to my knowledge, so it looks like we're gonna have to do some grinding. Hopefully it doesn't take too long. We'll have to see! See you soon!

[Aura]

So I've now fixed the aspect ratio issue! Hopefully there aren't too many other issues. Anyway, this time around, we didn't actually have any new dungeons available again, so for now the best idea I had was to just keep doing missions. After a bit of set-up, we gather up some missions from the bulletin board and go on another adventure through Sunset Crag to complete them!

The dungeon itself was significantly easier the second time around now that my pokemon are at better levels.

At 4:50, we actually stumble across a three-pokemon-tall tower! That's an especially scary sight! Luckily, we're well prepared with our own tower of pokemon well equipped for the battle!

At 5:36, we pick up a  Special Band which goes straight onto Cinder.

Once we return from our jobs, we unlock not one, but two dungeons! Marsh Valley and Ruby Lakeside! After a bit more prep work, we head out for today's dungeon, the first of those two: Marsh Valley!

============

Marsh Valley [11:50]

To unlock this dungeon, it seems like you just have to be at least Bronze Rank. If you don't have it yet, just keep completing missions and you'll get there eventually! It seems there's a minimum amount of in-game days you have to play through before you can unlock these as I've been Silver Rank for a while now.

Anyway, this dungeon is incredibly straight-forward. It only seems to have Magikarp and Kabuto, and it's also only 6 floors, making it the easiest dungeon in the game so far.

[12:23]: I found that you can only have a pokemon join a stack if they're in the same room. I suppose this only makes sense so that you can't just warp pokemon across the map for free, but it might trip you up in situations like this where one's still lagging behind in a hallway.

[15:53]: The sixth floor has a sandstorm! It seems that, at least when a Sandstorm initially blows through, pokemon stacks will get blown over! I can see this being a source of frustration in the long run.

[17:47]: Even after reforming the stack, I quickly realized there's another threat that makes Sandstorms that much more dangerous than in typical PMD games: Normally, weather damage is pretty negligible due to auto-healing. But since the Stack doesn't auto-heal, you'll need to be especially careful about hemorrhaging HP.

Anyway, after six floors, we clear the dungeon! There's really nothing to write home about here. Next time we come back around to Blazing Adventure Squad, we'll probably explore Ruby Lake! See you soon!

[Aura]

Joining back with the Stormy Adventure Squad, we've gotta make preparations to unlock our next dungeon! Of course, that means doing a few odd jobs along the way until we unlock our new dungeons! As expected, there's not much to talk about between here and there, though we did get a couple of  Pecha Scarves. I gave one to Stars and another to Flow.

In the end, we unlocked two new dungeons: Stream Forest and Jade Lakeside! For now, we're going to jump into the first of these!

=============

Steam Forest [6:56]

This dungeon is slightly more difficult than the one in Blazing Adventure Squad. It has a larger variety of enemies. But even still, there's really nothing too terribly threatening. It does turn out that, when building a stack, it's more than just being in the same room that matters. It seems only pokemon within a 2-tile radius of the Stack Spot can join the Stack. So make sure everyone you want to join is gathered around!

At 10:59 we finally run into one of the more potentially devastating traps in the game: a Grimy Trap! It seems like we only lost an  Apple in a very short dungeon, so no harm no foul, but this is one of those traps that can ruin your day if you step on it at a bad time.

At 14:22 we step on a Trip Trap! It turns out this trap is a bit more impactful in this version. Not only do you drop your held item, but it seems a pokemon can fall off your stack as well! This might mess with your stack order if you have a combo that relies on certain moves being used before others, so keep that in mind.

At 15:37, we arrive at the sixth floor. I'm pretty sure this floor is supposed to have a Sandstorm like the previous floor, but Stars's Cloud Nine ability clears the weather before it can start. So it's smooth sailing to the goal.

The exceedingly rare Feebas can be found here, but the Sandstorms will make it tough to find and recruit.

In the end, the dungeon is just like Marsh Valley, only six floors and it doesn't really put up a fight at all.

============

So that's it for this update! Nothing too terribly special, but there's just one more of these in Light Adventure Squad before we move onto the Lakeside dungeons! See you soon!

[Aura]

And now we've got the last of our Bronze-Rank dungeons. You're going to notice in this session I got a lot more experimental with my teammates. I'm starting to foresee a problem in raising four entirely separate squads of pokemon: It's going to be difficult to choose who gets what gummis when we get around to using those. So, I wanted to diversify as much as I possibly could. But I also want to make sure I choose pokemon that know really good moves and aren't going to start falling behind.

Ironically, the first pokemon I add here is Magnemite: A third Electric-type. My logic here was that I was getting kinda sick of Togepi's Hustle ability causing it to miss all the time. Magnemite could serve the tank role a lot better. Of course, I don't intend to have three party members of the same type in the long-run.

Beyond that, you can see that I had a rather awkward time with some of the missions we did today. I must've passed by that Krabby I was supposed to rescue while it was off in the water or something. I really hate when NPC's do that! You can see I start to explore the waters with Meta the Magnemite a little bit before Shine happens accross Krabby out in the open.

Anyway, once we get back from those jobs, we unlock two new dungeons: Frozen Mound and Mica Lakeside. So, of course, we set out for the first of these two dungeons.

=============

Frozen Mound [6:31]

You already know the story here. This is another 6-floor dungeon with a Sandstorm at the bottom. And all you need to unlock it is to reach Bronze Rank and spend a few more days doing regular old missions. This dungeon in particular is filled with a lot of Ice-types. You'll run into a lot of Spheal and Seel, though I suppose Seel is technically not an Ice-type... but obviously, you get the idea.

And speaking of Seel, this is actually where we recruit our next teammate: Steal the Seel! While technically a pure-water type which we already have on the Stormy Squad, it'll evolve into an Ice-type eventually. But more importantly in the now: It's a Size 2 pokemon!

That means that, paired with Mareep, we can finally have a full stack of all four pokemon! No more stragglers! At least for the immediate future. We'll see soon enough that things aren't quite so straight-forward. Anyway, a full stack of four pokemon is admittedly a bit overkill. Linking four moves together at once is often way more than you need and there might actually be situations where you would rather have teammates take up space to, say, trap an enemy in a corner.

Anyway, after six floors, we're finished with the dungeon! And that's it for these Bronze Rank dungeons! Next time, we'll be circling back around to the Blazing Squad and looking into the, presumably much tougher, Silver Rank dungeons! See you soon!

[Aura]

We're back with the Blazing Adventure Squad! This time, there's little mucking about. We jump straight into our next dungeon since we unlocked it at the same time as the previous one: Ruby Lakeside!

===========

Ruby Lakeside [0:50]

This dungeon is unlocked in a similar manner to Marsh Valley. You just have to be at least Silver Rank instead of Bronze Rank. I would consider this the first "real" dungeon in the game. Many floors have random weather conditions including Sandstorm and Hail. I do discover here that, if a single pokemon in the tower is immune to the weather, it seems the whole stack gains the immunity. I can only assume that extends to stat bonuses and abilities such as Sand Veil, too. In addition, it seems that, since the Stack counts as a single pokemon, the entire stack only takes 3 damage rather than 3 per individual pokemon. So far it seems like nearly everything in this game incentivizes you to have as many pokemon in a stack as possible at all times. The only downside I can see so far is that, in the early game, you lack moves that can target multiple enemies, so there may be times you wish you were more spread out to deal with a large number of enemies. But more often than not, you'll probably find yourself wishing you were in a Stack instead.

Anyway, speakin gof a large number of enemies, at 4:55 we spawn right smack-dab in the middle of our first Monster House! And it goes... incredibly poorly. It turns out, Totter Orbs aren't nearly as good insurance against Monster Houses in this game because the confused enemies will attack and KO each other. Which sounds good until you realize this enables them to evolve, giving them a large boost to their stats and making them even harder to defeat. You really don't want them to KO each other. But man, I wish I could evolve that easily. So yeah, this is definitely an instance where, if I wasn't using Save States, I'd just soft-reset and get the same result. But if I were truly determined not to give up, I'd use one of those Escape Orbs. I bring two every time for a reason, after all.

At B11F (starting at 24:32), we end up having a hell of a time trying to locate our rescue client. After searching all the rooms on the floor, Kabuto seems to be nowhere to be found. And shortly after triggering an Explosion Trap, or Big Blast Trap, apparently, causing our Stack to collapse, we have a really scary run-in with a tower of four pokemon! I probably could've done better in this fight by using some items or just playing more strategically, but I wasn't exactly looking forward to following such an encounter up with combing the entire floor top to bottom in search of our client, so I just gave that attempt up and started over from the top of the floor by loading my save state. This is where I'd concede my use of save states is technically cheating. As in a fully vanilla playthrough, I'd probably either use items more liberally to stay alive, or drop an Escape Orb here to start the whole dungeon from the top. Neither of those options are appealing, though, for a project such as this. Especially when we start getting into the late-game dungeons.

Anyway, we eventually do find our client and rescue him at 28:30. Also, worth noting, you can see that I was poisoned when I did this, but since I was out of Pecha Berries and Heal Seeds, I decided to wait it out. Our belly also empties out here, so it looks pretty dire, but I had an Oran Berry so I decided to maximize profit a bit by waiting until I was missing exactly, or close to, 100 HP before using an Oran Berry to fill my belly a little bit and fully heal my HP which can't naturally recover in a stack. I knew ahead of time I was approaching the end of the dungeon and could probably make it to the end without downing a whole Apple. 

And after 12 floors, we've cleared the dungeon!

=============

We're starting to get to the point where I think we're gonna have to start really planning out our teams and investing some Gummis. But for now, I'm still trying to avoid investing Gummis until I know exactly who I'm gonna keep around and who I'm gonna give the boot. It's a pretty tough choice. Anyway, it looks like we're going to have to do some grinding for our next dungeon, so let's hope we reach Gold Rank by the time we circle back around. But next up, it's the Stormy Adventure Squad's chance to explore a lakeside! See you soon!

[Aura]

We return to the Stormy Adventure Squad! But you might notice things look a little different. I've gone and done some homework to plan out the teams and I've decided on a set that I feel currently gives us the most variety that we can get. We aren't totally in the clear or anything just yet, but we've got some new interactions to play around with. It's going to take a little bit to get all of our pokemon passed around, but I did bring Cubby in from the Blazing Adventure Squad. You may also notice I also now have Mareep, who I've finally named Nimbus. Lastly, I'm starting to divvy out my Gummis now that I have a more solid idea of what my teams might start looking like and what pokemon I plan to stick around for a while.

Anyway, after feeding my Gummis to my pokemon, I finally move on toward our next dungeon!

============

Jade Lakeside [2:46]

Here we are at our next dungeon! I have Stars with me right now, so weather will disband thanks to Cloud Nine, but I can only assume the weather on each floor you hear that sound effect is random, just like in Ruby Lakeside. This dungeon is unlocked the same way as Ruby Lakeside, just reaching Silver Rank and reaching the point where these dungeons begin to open up. Overall, I found this dungeon to be a lot easier than Ruby Lakeside. The enemies were mostly generic Water types that could easily be KO'd. 

I haven't mentioned it yet, but in the last video we picked up a  Gravelyrock. It looks like Explorers of Sky's Lookalike items return in this game, too. Though without Spinda's Cafe, I suppose it's a bit harder to justify keeping them around.

 

 

 

 

I don't hesitate to stack my pokemon, initially with Nimbus on the bottom, but later on I swap Nimbus and Stars for the sake of variety with the elemental attacks higher in the Stack. I've gotta say it feels really good to have a full stack of four pokemon, even if it's overkill for most situations. And since we have Psyduck here, we don't have to worry about weather knocking the tower over, either!

At 10:56, we reach B7F where the music and aesthetic changes. The dungeon has a mysterious-looking autumn or coral-colored theme. It's somehow both pretty and murky. This is also the floor where I start really having bad luck with finding rooms. I found it happening a lot throughout this dungeon where I kept going the direction opposite the stairs and visit every single room I can before coming back to the room with the stairs that was right next to the spawning area all along.

Right at the end of the dungeon, at 12:49, we do run into a Masquerain. This wouldn't be so frightening on its own, but it used Ominous Wind to attack us! It missed, but this is a very scary move to be running into this early on. Granted, I suppose room-wide attacks are less scary if your whole squad is in a stack. But still, the range of these attacks alone can be deadly. So be careful in the later floors of this dungeon!

Just like Ruby Lakeside, this dungeon is only 12 floors long, so we don't have to worry about everything falling apart now. We'll be okay! Next time, we move on to the Light Adventure Squad to cover their story and update their squad! See you soon!

[Aura]

We're back to business with Radiant Adventure Squad! We've made adjustments to our squad once again. You'll notice this time we have Stars on the Radiant Squad, and we've also pulled Moon off the bench! For now, this is what our projected Radiant Adventure Squad will look like! Stars covers all weather with Cloud Nine, Meta provides solid mobility options, though he's liable to be replaced by a ghost if the opportunity arises, Spark should eventually learn the move Agility for some bonus fun, and Moon provides some powerful STAB Fury Swipes. I couldn't turn these guys down!

Anyway, we've only got one more Lakeside dungeon and it's this game's! So, off we go!

============

Mica Lakeside [1:43]

You know the drill by now. The dungeon is 12 floors long with random weather strewn about. I found this to be the easiest of the three since Electric types are prominent in Radiant Adventure Squad and this dungeon is filled with Water-types.

 

Perhaps the biggest threat that comes to mind in this dungeon are Volbeat and Illumise who know some pretty annoying attacks like Double Team. They didn't give me much trouble, but you may want to make sure to KO them before they can get the ball rolling.

My adventure through this dungeon was unfortunately rather uneventful, so there's not much else to really talk about. So, that's it for now!

============

That said, upon clearing the missions in today's adventure, we just barely reached Gold Rank! This should hopefully help us unlock our next dungeon soon! And peeking ahead just a bit, it looks like this will give us access to a whole bunch of dungeons back to back, so maybe we'll also start kicking off some plot if it exists? We'll just have to wait and see! I suspect it has something to do with the intro of the game!

Anyway, our promotion to the Gold Rank is rewarded with a  Joy Seed! Certainly nice, but I'll definitely wanna save it for later on, I was thankful I did that for Explorers of Sky, that's for sure.

Next time, it's back to Wildfire Adventure Squad where I guess we'll be doing more random missions until we unlock the next dungeon! See you soon!

[Aura]

Now that we return to the Wildfire Adventure Squad, it's time the game truly began! I'm honestly not confident I'm totally prepared for the difficulty to start rising, but whatever the case, we need to work toward unlocking our next dungeon.

So we spend a day doing some miscellaneous jobs, and at the end, we're treated to a cutscene this time! It seems like the "plot" is starting! Farfetch'd tells everyone that he's learned of the location of the super-tasty food Shuckle had been looking for at the start of the game! This food, the Amazing Chocolate, is apparently located in a dungeon called Chocolate Cliffs. However, it sounds like Chocolate Cliffs is going to be a difficult dungeon to navigate, so Slowking encourages us to be well prepared before we set out.

Everyone in the town, especially Shuckle, is curious about this Amazing Chocolate and wants to see it, so of course the Wildfire Adventure Squad offers to take up the task of going to retrieve it for the Village! Just like any major story event in Rescue Team or Explorers, all the townsfolk are talking about the Amazing Chocolate and how much they'd like to try some. I think I can already forsee some problems here, but for now, we should bring some back and figure the rest out later.

After a bit of preparation, we set out for this new dungeon!

===============

Chocolate Cliffs [7:36]

In a way, I suppose you might consider this the first "real" dungeon, as this is the first time since Dubious Woods we've had to actually clear a dungeon. There won't be any way forward until we reach the end of Chocolate Cliffs, so here we go!

 

Right away, we're faced with some significantly tougher pokemon. Happiny can add a lot of bulk to any Tower, and Porygon has always been a scary sight. Although I don't think we're quite at Agility and Discharge levels of danger like in Explorers, I'm not going to rule out the potential threat as I have no way of knowing what level these pokemon actually are.

We'll need to be very careful about the threat of being confused with the variety of pokemon throughout this tower, as we can also run into Solrock!

At 20:35 we arrive at 7F where the atmosphere changes. This seems to be where the name "chocolate" cliffs comes from, as it looks like the walls and floor are made of chocolate! But this isn't the Amazing Chocolate we're after, we're just gonna have to keep looking!

At 28:14 We reach another atmosphere change. The chocolate here looks much sweeter! But we've gotta keep climbing!

  

We start to run into tougher enemies like Hitmontop, Hitmonlee, and Chansey! Yikes! Some of these pokemon are larger in size, too, so that means we're running the risk of taller stacks, too!

At 33:51, we KO an enemy and Charmander levels up enough to evolve into Charmeleon! The evolution mechanic functions a bit differently in this game than in previous Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. These pokemon are no longer stuck in their base forms until we visit a special area in the postgame, pokemon can freely evolve as soon as they reach the necessary requirements. They can even evolve on the spot in a dungeon! Evolution is a one-way street, so you'll want to be extra careful and make sure you actually want to evolve your pokemon.

And this is where a problem arises that I actually don't currently have a solution to: As a pokemon evolves, its size tends to increase. And that can mess with your stacks. Not only will pokemon fall off of the tower if the stack sizes no longer work, but in this case, we can no longer stack our full team at once as we have three Size 2 pokemon! This is going to take some regrouping and I may have to say goodbye to Growlithe in favor of a Size 1 pokemon to make things work. But the question now is... who? I don't really have a solid replacement in mind just yet, but I'm sure we'll work something out sooner or later.

At 39:43, you can watch me make by far the biggest mistake of this whole playthrough so far. Faced with the terrifying trio of Hitmontop, Chansey, and Dodrio, I fail to notice the fact that Dorio set up with Pursuit before I engaged. And that was a huge problem because I over-committed to an attack with my Stack here. While Drain and Wildfire didn't happen to use any physical attacks, I had unfortuantely committed to a Bullet Seed with Kindle which meant a loot of counter damage would be eaten. Kindle ended up KOing himself and I had to use a Reviver Seed. Make sure to always have at least one in your pockets, kids!

And after 19 floors, at 44:00, we finally reach the top of Chocolate Cliffs, where we find the Amazing Chocolate in all of its glory! We quickly move in to retrieve the chocolate and bring the treasure home!

=============

As we return, everyone is in awe int he presence of the Amazing Chocolate. Since Shuckle was the one who was most curious about the food, the villagers reluctantly agree to let him have the chocolate. But as expected, this leads to trouble when Tauros gets jealous and decides he wants to steal the chocolate for himself! Seeing this, Farfetch'd tries to step in to swipe it instead! Sneasel tries to break up the fight, but then Bibarel slips in under all the chaos to steal the chocolate for himself! From here, all hell breaks loose as the whole village begins to fight over the chocolate! I can't exactly say I didn't expect this outcome, espeically with how little chocolate there was. There certainly isn't enough for everyone to share...

In the end, this occurrence seems to sour the atmosphere around Pokemon Village. Everyone is mad at each other and won't talk anymore. It's pretty sad to see considering how well everyone had gotten along previously. Well, okay, not everyone got along super well, but it certainly wasn't such an anxious place.

Aron asks Slowking if there's any way to improve the mood in the village, which gives Slowking an idea. Apparently, there's a faraway place called Treasure Valley where an incredible treasure can be found! But it's quite a perilous journey to get there. If we can bring the treasure back home, maybe we can improve the mood! So, we agree to go forth on the Path to Treasure Valley and see what challenges await us there!

As for right now, it seems like the mood in the village is troubled indeed. Even the shopkeepers are bothered! Perhaps the most hilarious example is the Gastrodon shop where the husband and wife are teetering on the edge of divorce over this chocolate! The funniest part of this is that the wife still reluctantly cheers her husband on when he's struggling to open boxes for you. It would be really wholesome if it wasn't for the fact that he immediately takes full credit leading to the two being cold with each other all over again. Hopefully they sort their differences out soon. It seems right now, though, that until we get that treasure from Treasure Valley, this is going to be the permanent state of Pokemon Village!

So yeah, I've mentioned before that I don't have high hopes for the narrative of this game. I imagine if it were even half as good as Rescue Team or Explorers, the fandom would be rallying for an official localization, but I barely ever hear this game being talked about. And it is just a WiiWare game released not long after Explorers of Sky, so I can't imagine too much effort was put into the story or characters. That said, this game does have its charms and can get a laugh out of me every once in a while. However, I also feel like the humor often really overstays its welcome and gets drawn out far too long. Like, that fight over the chocolate was funny at first, but it felt like it should've faded to black after everyone chased Numel offscreen. Regardless, I suspect that things will play out the same across the other three versions, just swapping out some dungeon titles, pokemon, and the hub world. So we won't focus on the story beats as much next time and instead focus on the other games' Chocolate dungeons. See you soon!

[Aura]

It's the Stormy Adventure Squad's turn to look for the Amazing Chocolate! But of course, we have to give the story beat the chance to actually happen. So the start of the video is going to be completing missions once again.

We've already detailed the story events but I'm leaving the cutscenes in the video just because of the slight differences. But we're still looking for the same Amazing Chocolate. This time, though, it's in a dungeon called Chocolate Isles! And that's our heading for today!

===========

Chocolate Isles [3:48]

This is the second required dungeon for the Stormy Adventure Squad! To unlock it, you'll need to reach Gold Rank and wait a little bit before Farfetch'd hears the rumor about the Amazing Chocolate. I found this dungeon to be significantly tougher than Blazing Adventure Squad's Chocolate Cliffs.

Before we get into too much detail, I want to note that I was a bit drowsy while playing here, and that'll become evident with a lot of my questionable decisions and, most significantly, my biggest blunder yet. We'll get there, don't you worry.

 

Early on, the most obnoxious enemy we'll dealing with is Delcatty. Between Sing, Fake Out, Attract, Double Slap, and its Cute Charm ability, Delcatty is a menace to have to contend with. Cute Charm, Attract, and Sing can all stop you in your place. Fake Out can hit you from a range, and Double Slap is a multi-hit move, so it can hit you for lots of damage if you're unlucky. You'll also need to be careful around Gloom. While not quite as dangerous, Gloom can still get pretty nasty with its Stun Spore.

At around 8:33, Nimbus gains enough experience to evolve into Flaaffy! This evolution doesn't actually increase Nimbus's size at all, and so the Stack doesn't topple once I allow that evolution. Unfortunately, this also means Flaaffy can't help carry the rest of the squad once everyone's evolved. Ah well, we can't win 'em all.

At the 7th floor [15:21], the atmosphere of the dungeon changes to a more grassy field.

On the 9th floor, we can start running into Vileplume. Which, of course, is just a tougher version of Gloom. It's pretty straight-forward.

And on the 10th floor, you can start to find Onix which used to be rather useless in previous PMD games because of its size causing it to not permit a full party and just not being worth the space it takes up, But in this game, I've already come to learn that there is no size limit to your party! The only place size is relevant is for the sake of Towers. Which means that every squad ideally wants one or two Size 4 pokemon! This boosts Onix much higher up on the priority list and he's now one of the most useful pokemon to have! I'm not sure if Size 4 is quite as rare in this game as it is in previous PMD games, but regardless, I can't imagine I'd have to worry about evolution much at all if I had this guy on my squad.

Starting on 11F, you start to run into Lunatone. And this is one of those pokemon that really took advantage of my drowsiness during this session. I found myself completely forgetting about Lunatone's Levitate ability so many times throughout this session, and so many more times offscreen, that I'd sometimes have Cubone attack with Bone Club twice before realizing what was going on. Make sure you attack Lunatone with pretty much anything except Ground.

Around 21:50, I actually get lucky enough to recruit an Onix for myself! This should at least temporarily patch the holes in one of my squads for a while. I'm gonna have to do some planning to figure out where I can squeeze 'ol Nyx, though.

At 13F [22:26], we're now in the chocolate cave part of the islands! We must be getting close!

 

And it's 14F where the difficulty really starts showing its head. We've got Graveler and Misdreavus! Graveler is scary because of SelfDestruct, of course, which is even more irritating in this game because it can cause your Stack to topple in addition to all the inconveniences from before. Misdreavus likely needs no introduction. As a Ghost-type, she can simply phase through walls and attack us from total safety. But the most irritating part is Misdreavus's tendency to use the move Spite. I wasn't expecting this to be too terrible of an issue since pokemon in Stacks don't lose PP when they attack, so it's not like I'd be PP starved anytime soon. At least, so I thought. Due to how Stacks work, Spite will only ever seem to hit the pokemon on the bottom of the Stack. And if you recall, pokemon on the bottom of the Stack have to attack or the whole stack can't attack. So even though you can get as many Fire Blasts and Blizzards as you want out of the pokemon higher in the stack, if the pokemon on the bottom of the stack is running low on PP out of Spite, the whole Stack will suffer for it and you'll likely be better of toppling the tower yourself.

At 28:24, Fountain gained enough Exp to evolve into Wartortle! I allowed this evolution to take place even though I knew it would compromise the synergy with my squad. It just feels wrong to keep any team member unevolved.

On the 18th floor, we've got one final devastating enemy: Medicham! Medicham's Huge Power essentially doubles the damage it's gonna deal to you. So while it can go down fairly easily, you don't wanna miss. Its attacks are devastating and are likely to OHKO whatever they land on. But it's a glass canon, so prey on its fragility and pray you don't miss.

And at 42:58, we finally arrive at the big blunder I alluded to at the beginning of this post. We arrive at a Monster House, but unlike last time, I'm properly prepared here and I used a Spurn Orb to scatter the foes around the floor to make it easier to pick the enemies off one by one. But even with that advantage, a fatal misinput at 44:32 led me to accidentally use a standard attack when I meant to go back into the item menu. You can tell pretty much immediately how devastating the realization of this mistake was, because I pretty much stopped trying to salvage the run right there. Even though I'm confident I could've recovered from it, I was tired and incredibly frustrated, so I didn't ocnsider using an item like a Stun Seed to give myself an edge.

So instead, I use an Escape Orb to return to Pokemon Beach safely without losing any of the valuable items or teammates I've obtained along the way. I'm not going to be making any adjustments to my squad right now, but I'll definitely keep the idea that Onix could help with our group that look like they'd like. Misdreavus should also be able to provide a new air of mobility that the other squads currently lack. But unfortunately, giving up here meant climbing alllll the way back here.

During my second attempt, I run into another Monster house at 46:40! But this time, no input errors mess me up. I'm extra careful to make sure I plan out each move. Well, okay, that's not quite accurate. My real goal was just to get tot he staircase to move onto the next floor, so I used a Foe-Hold Orb to petrify all the enemies on the floor so that I'd have to deal with as few as possible. Then I zeroed in on the Stack that happened to be blocking the stairs. Unfortuantely, you remember how I mentioned that I frequently forgot about Lunatone's Levitate? Well, guess what ended up making this Monster House that much scarier than it needed to be? Yup, I didn't quite KO the stack and the whole stack suddenly toppled over, meaning there were now three pokemon awakened from the Petrified status, so I had to hurry and KO them so I could finally step on those stairs. What a nightmare!

At 48:33, we were able to get revenge on Medicham by challenging it with our whole squad in much better conditions! The most devastating realization about my failed attempt was the fact that there was only one more floor to explore after that one before we'd have reached the end! That means I essentially had to complete the dungeon twice! God, I hate Mystery Dungeon sometimes! Anyway, that's it for now!

=============

After clearing the dungeon, we finally discover the Amazing Chocolate and take it back to the Beach. Just as expected, all hell breaks loose as the pokemon fight over wanting to eat the chocolate! This sours the mood at the Beach and Slowking then tells us about a place called Treasure Mountain where we can supposedly find a treasure that should make eveyrone at the beach happy again! And so, it sounds like the Stormy Adventure Squad has its heading! That's it for now, next time we're off to catch up with the Light Adventure Squad, ready to see how they're holding up as they head into their own Chocolate Dungeon! See you soon!

[Aura]

It's the Light Adventure Squad's turn to take a whack at their Chocolate Dungeon!

Before we get into that, though, I decided to swap Mistress out for Magnemite on the Light Squad. It's always nice to have a Ghost on the squad.

Anyway, after a few missions in Shady Crag, still hoping to recruit a Rotom to no avail, but afterwards, we're treated to the same cutscene again. This time, the Amazing Chocolate is found in a place called the Chocolate Plains! We all know where this is going, so off we go!

==========

Chocolate Plains [5:18]

This is probably the middleground of the three Chocolate dungeons. The Blazing Squad's Chocolate Cliffs was a bit more straightforward overall, but the Stormy Squad's Chocolate Valley definitely had the most dangerous enemies. Chocolate Plains here does have some dangerous enemies, but it's overall a lot more straightforward. You're definitely gonna wanna make sure to bring Insomniscopes though! A lot of pokemon can put you to sleep here and that can get real ugly real fast.

On the earlier floors, Stantler is probably the scariest enemy you can run into. It can confuse you and put you to sleep, plus its STAB normal attacks can do a number on you, too. Normal types can be deadly in Mystery Dungeon! You can see that by the sheer numbers Moon gets out over the other pokemon.

On the 7th floor, we reach a cave area.

At 23:40, we arrive at another Monster House! I swear these things just follow me around. But we have a Spurn Orb this time, so it's easy to clear the crowd!

On the 13th floor, we reach the chocolate part of the caves! We're getting closer! But this is also where some of the more dangerous pokemon start to come into play.

 

Gastly can attack from the walls. But more to the point, Parasect has Spore to potentially put you to sleep from the far side of the room! Monster Houses here can be deadly, so tread carefully and make sure you're well prepared for any challenges you take on! Use an Escape Orb if you have to!

At 37:52, we do run into another Monster House, but I happen to have a Foe-Fear Orb to scatter most of the inhabitants. I guess I don't fully understand how the Fear status condition works, though, because some of the pokemon here recovered from it really quickly and started fighting back anyway. It was an unexpected hiccup, but I was able to use an All-Mach Orb to gather up the remaining loot and then retreat through the stairs.

After 19 floors, we reach the summit and find the Amazing Chocolate!

===========

And, as expected, when we bring the Amazing Chocolate to Pokemon Meadow, everyone starts to fight over it and then we find ourselves tasked with seeking a treasure to cheer everyone up. This time, that treasure is found in a place called Treasure Island. So, it looks like we've got our heading for all three games now! Next time, we return to Blazing Adventure Squad to kick off our next adventure! See you soon!

[Aura]

It's the Blazing Adventure Squad's chance to explore the Path to Treasure Valley in search of the legendary treasure that should be able to restore the mood of the pokemon in Pokemon Village!

But before we get too far ahead, I'm bringing Nyx the Onyx this time around. With her, we should be able to carry a full stack of four pokemon again!

Other than that, there isn't much prepwork that's necessary, so let's jump right in!

===========

Path to Treasure Valley [0:53]

I didn't know this at the time, but it turns out Path to Treasure Valley is the final dungeon of the main story here in Blazing Adventure Squad! So this is the toughest challenge prior to the postgame. Watch out for traps and monster houses! They're quite prevalent! Unlocking this dungeon requires clearing Chocolate Cliffs.

 

There isn't too much that's particularly dangerous in the early floors, but Sentret can be really annoying because its Follow Me can turn it into a Decoy that can block your path in a hallway. Nidoqueen was generally pretty scary to see in Explorers because of Earth Power, but these seem much lower level so I don't think Earth Power is a concern. They're actually pretty easy to deal with all things considered.

At 9:44, we reach B6F where the first atmosphere change occurs! The path passes through an autumn forest here.

 

On the 8th floor, you can start to encounter Marowak and Kabutops. I don't think I ever got into a scuffle with a Kabutops where it was able to get any attacks off, but they were pretty annoying in Explorers because of Aqua Jet, so I'd be careful around them. Marowak's Bonemerang, though, is where you should really be watching your back. A deadly two-hit STAB attack you don't want to be on the receiving end of.

And on the 9th floor, we get to deal with Cacnea whose Pin Missile can be deadly, especially to a pokemon like Kindle. Speaking off...

Around 13:33 we see a really unfortunate encounter that sadly plays into one of the biggest changes enemy stacks make to this game. There's a sleeping Shelgon with a Cacnea standing on top of it. In the other PMD games, any sleeping pokemon could just be slipped right by as long as you avoided attacking it or stepping adjacent to it. But in this game, if the pokemon is in a stack, the other pokemon in the stack are not necessarily also asleep. So even though the pokemon is still moving, every turn the other pokemon in the stack can still attack! That proves to be dangerous with pokemon like Cacnea with long-range attacks that can really catch you off guard! This one ends up sniping Kindle as I try to slip by and taking away a Reviver Seed early! Thankfully, Kindle doesn't get KO'd twice, but he nearly does!

B10F is where things start to get particularly rough. It looks at first like these floors are covered in Sandstorms, but it's just Hippopotas's Sand Stream ability taking effect. As long as you're on the same floor as Hippopotas, you can basically expect sandstorms all the way. And that's rough because so many pokemon already are Ground-types, Rock-types, and/or have abilities that benefit from the sand! Get ready to miss a lot of attacks if you're not prepared. But, keep in mind, as long as you have a pokemon that is immune to damage from Sandstorm in a Stack, the whole Stack will be protected. So Sandstorms aren't quite as intrusive on your HP as they were in previous PMD games.

At 16:00, we run into the most fatal mistake I've made yet. I came "prepared" for a Monster House, but the item I'd chosen to bring was the Foe-Seal Orb which only pauses enemies for a couple of turns rather than petrify them until they're attacked. I commonly mistake these two effects and this is the first time it's truly bit me in the butt. And right when I'm about to drop an Escape Orb to preserve my progress, I'm dogpiled by nearly every enemy in the whole room! I could've potentially broken through to the other side, but unfortunately Gabite's Sand Veil made it difficult to hit in the sandstorm and, consequently, I couldn't take him out in time.

So, after that failure, I reload and exchange my Foe-Seal Orb with a Foe-Hold Orb instead. It was upsetting to lose that initial run because I really enjoyed Kindle knowing Psychic, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Also, apparently I accidentally forgot to cut the B5F floor footage. That's my bad.

Along the way, this time around I decided to use a TM to teach Kindle the move Light Screen figuring it might potentially help protect me from stray Water or Grass attacks since Nyx is quite vulnerable to them. And it ultimately led to an unexpected encounter with a Stack mechanic I've yet to discuss!

At 21:37, Kindle uses Light Screen and Drain, who was in the same Stack while he used it, watched the move be performed and learned to use it herself! Dratini can't typically learn Light Screen by TM or Level up, but it can be inherited as an Egg move! As it turns out, Egg Moves can be inherited in this game by having them used enough times in a Stack with the pokemon who wants to learn it! In this case, I'd used Light Screen with Kindle enough for Drain to learn the egg move.

Just a bit further along, I wind up stumbling across not one, but two Flamethrower TMs! I use these both to teach Drain and Cinder Flamethrower, adding a lot more reach and fire power (pun intended, of course) to our team!

At B13F, the atmosphere changes again to a brighter spring field! Though the transition is somewhat masked by the Sandstorms that still plague the dungeon from Hippopotas's Sand Stream.

Once we reach B15F, though, this is where the most frustrating run-ender comes into play: Drifloon. We all already know how annoying Drifloon is in Explorers thanks to its Aftermath ability, but in this game, Explosions can also knock pokemon off your stack! If you encounter a Drifloon at a really bad time, you might end up running into a dangerous stack immediately after having your own crippled! I definitely advise bringing plenty of items to get rid of dangerous enemies without KOing them, or at least doing your best to KO these assholes from afar.

At B21F, the atmosphere changes yet again and we're now in what appears to be the depths of a volcano! If you have a flying or hovering pokemon like Misdreavus or Magnemite, keep in mind they'll get burned if they pass over the lava tiles! Try to avoid this!

I was very close to avoiding using my Reviver Seed at all throughout the dungeon, but unfortunately, a fateful encounter with a Piloswine right at 54:51 cut that dream short. B24F is the final floor of the dungeon, by the way. Thankfully, we're pretty well equipped to deal with Piloswine. THough I do beg the question of what Piloswine is doing in a volcanic area... Anyway, thankfully, there's a Stack Spot not too far ahead, so we don't end up too vulnerable for too long. I've found one of the scariest things in this game is how rapidly bad things can snowball because of your stack toppling.

Anyway, after 24 floors, we finally reach Treasure Valley at the 25th floor! This is it! The legendary treasure that can improve the mood of the village! Inside the chest, it's... cookies? More food? Granted, there's several cookies this time, so I suppose they'll be easier to share. They're called Compassion Cookies, so maybe there's some special property to them? It's dangerous to imagine what kinds of chaos will unfold when we bring these back, just like the Amazing Chocolate. But I suppose we have nothing to lose. We gather up the treasure and head home!

============

When we return, Slowking seems to share the same concern, but as we pass the Compassion Cookies around, pokemon who were bickering with each other surprisingly start to share with each other! We go out of our way to share cookies with everyone in Pokemon Village and, before we know it, everyone truly is happy and sharing! The village is full of friends! Arguably, things are even better than how they started!

And then... the credits roll! Wow, I genuinely wasn't expecting that. I kinda figured there'd at least be a final boss fight before we saw the credits. What, no pokemon guarding the Compassion Cookies? Well, I can't say I'm disappointed there wasn't a final boss. If something like that came along to wipe my squad out now, I don't know how I'd react. Anyway, that's it!

Anyway, that's it! After the credits roll, the game automatically saves and we're booted back to the title screen! Going back to our save file shows a golden flame icon indicating we've completed the main story!

As expected, the story is very barebones compared to Rescue Team and Explorers. There are only three required dungeons in the main story after all! Nine if you're counting all three games! But the story is clearly not the main focus. I have to say that the Stack mechanic was a lot more engaging than I thought it would be! Though it actually opens up the way for some incredibly powerful strategies as I'm about to show off in our next update. It's an interesting mechanic, and one that acutally makes team building very different. In some ways, it's more complex because you now have to factor in pokemon size far more than ever before, but more simplistic because things like weather are far easier to protect against! PP is less of an issue because only the bottom pokemon's PP really matters, so you don't have to load up on four Max Elixirs to make sure your party members don't get stuck starved of PP when trying to defend themselves against an unexpected attacker. The removal of autoheal while in a stack places much more importance on Oran Berries while the combined HP in the Stack makes Oran Berries a lot less effective at fully healing you, so you're actually incentivized to use more powerful healing items... not that it would ever be worth wasting an entire Sitrus Berry on healing 200HP. Enemy Stacks also make dungeons a lot more dangerous, surprisingly. You used to only have to worry about enemies being able to make multiple moves if they had boosted their speed or dropped yours. But here, regular enemies can stack on top of each other and deliver several attacks in one turn! One wrong move and you could be toast! But you do always have the option to throw a Spike or a Rock and topple their whole stack. But even that comes with a tradeoff because now you're dealing with 2-4 separate units rather than one tough enemy, so you end up using more PP eliminating them. It creates an interesting risk vs reward that incentivizes you to take chances trying to take out the entire stack at once.

While the aesthetic of the Stack is kind of silly, I do kind of wish future PMD games would utilize some sort of pair-up mechanic to combine several pokemon into one unit in a similar manner to this.

But of course, this is a Mystery Dungeon game. You know we're not even close to done with Blazing Adventure Squad. Of course, there is a postgame here. As far as I can tell, it's not quite as involved as Rescue Team or Explorers. And, heck, evolution has been available from the very beginning so they clearly aren't holding out on us in that department. I have to say a part of me is curious what the postgame is like. And next time we return to Blazing Adventure Squad, we'll be exploring just that! Who knows? Maybe there'll actually be a true story? Eh, probably not. I imagine it's just gonna be something like Slowking telling us there's more areas to explore or something. Anyway, that's it for now! We've still got two more games to finish up! So next time, we'll explore the Path to Treasure Mountain! See you soon!

[Aura]

Well, we've already finished the Blazing Adventure Squad's main story and viewed the credits, so let's do the same for the Stormy Adventure Squad! First of all, I once again shuffled around my squad since our last arrangement with Nimbus left us with three Size 2 pokemon. So I temporarily brought Meta back into the limelight!

Other than that, we don't hesitate to get right into the dungeon. We've gotta get that legendary treasure to restore the mood of Pokemon Beach!

============

Path to Treasure Mountain [0:24]

Path to Treasure Mountain is the Stormy Adventure Squad's Treasure Path dungeon! These are unlocked simply by clearing the game's preceding Chocolate dungeon. They serve as the "ultimate" challenges of the main "story." Note the heavy use of quotes there, because we all know Mystery Dungeon is capable of so much more cruelty, and there's an absurd degree of cruelty this particular game is capable of. I'm terrified of the notion of 4-pokemon stacks that spam Perish Song or Agility. But we're not there yet so let's not bother giving ourselves anxiety over it just yet. (But as always, when we get around to postgame, definitely expect Savestate abuse to increase tenfold.

Anyway, this dungeon in particular has less of an emphasis on Sandstorms and Sand Veil, and more just focuses on send you on wild goose chases through large floors looking for the staircase while ghosts pester you from the walls. But hey, there's no Drifloon here, so that's one major plus already!

On the 6th floor [7:07] The atmosphere changes from a marshy swap to a craggy-ish area.

  

On the 8th floor, you start to run into some of the biggest dangers of the dungeon: Sableye Shuppet and Mismagius. You already know the many reasons these pokemon can be irritating, but they're pretty prominent here and both appear together. So really watch your back. Sableye isn't quite as annoying as the others, but it's still a ghost that can be a rotten surprise at a bad time.

At 16:16, we had a bit of a scare with a Warp Trap. Steal happened to land close to the stairs, which isn't quite as close to a guarantee as you might think, but Meta, my weakest party member by far, happened to land right next to a stack of four pokemon! Two Mismagius and a Shuppet! Yikes! Thankfully, a SuperSonic was all it took to get the bastard off my back. I was able to slip one in thankfully without the pokemon higher on the tower countering. In retrospect, I really should've used a Warp Seed or something. But from there, I was able to get Meta away from the tower of terror with a the Get Away From Here tactic while Steal made her way to the stairs.

At the 13th floor [13:44], the atmosphere changes once again. Now to a swampy forest.

   

On the 15th floor, the ghosts are replaced with some new dangers! Scyther has access to Agility and we all know how terrifying that is, especially with the prevalent threat of Monster Houses. Jumpluff are deceptively weak-looking but capable of causing a lot of problems with their status moves, especially in towers on pokemon like Tangrowth who soaks up a lot of damage and dishes out a lot of pain. Don't get too close to these guys if you can avoid it. Roserade is a step up from Jumpluff as it can pack quite a bunch in addition to the annoying status conditions. And if these pokemon are in a stack together, especially if they get the drop on you around a corner, you might get stun locked into oblivion. So you definitely want to be careful here.

At 22:51, Steal levels up and learns the move Rest! And while this move is only so useful in most PMD games, I would soon find out that this is by far one of the most broken moves in this game thanks to the way Stacks work. It's demonstrated more later on in the video, so I'll put a pin in that. But you can probably already guess where this is going. Long story short, you'll definitely want Rest somewhere on your squad and you'll basically never need another Oran Berry.

At the 21st floor [27:57], the atmosphere changes yet again to that of a blue crystal cave. Very pretty!

At 28:28, we step on a Warp Tile which scatters our squad again! This time, just like I alluded to before, none of our teammates landed near the stairs. That's where things can get real scary! I was kinda under the assumption my teammates weren't in any immediate danger, so I got sloppy with setting up tactics thinking I'd be able to change leaders on the fly and take over wherever needed. Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out as intended. Cubby ended up picking a fight with Tangrowth from a range, and Tangrowth chose to take his anger out on Meta who happened to be closer! Before I knew it, Meta had already been one-shotted and a Reviver Seed had been wasted. It really sucks to lose these so frequently.

Honestly, in retrospect, I'm not sure why I handled this interaction the way I did. It's like I completely forgot I could switch leaders on the fly while I wasn't in a stack. I guess it was a bit of the Explorers mindset still in me. But when Fountain found himself getting in trouble, too, I had to think more critically and ultimately had Meta use a Rollcall Orb to save everyone else's lives! The last thing I wanted was to lose a party member now! ...cough cough.

Interesting quirk about the way the Rollcall Orb seems to work in this game, though, it looks as though pokemon that are capable of stacking on top of you will, or at least can land on your head with no Stack Spot necessary! That might make these much more useful than they already were!

At 31:25, we end up recruiting a Scyther! It turns out Scyther is a Size 3 pokemon with the move Agility! This would've been a godsend! But unfortunately, it's a rather bittersweet memory. You can probably piece together what ended up happening here by the way I'm solemnly describing these events.

Unfortunately, in all the chaos of that encounter, a Tangrowth snuck up behind us and KO'd Fountain under the cover of the hallways darkness! This was felt hard because now I was limited to a Stack of 3 pokemon and Meta is still a rather shallow replacement for Nimbus.

And then, at 36:39... well, that happened. Say hello to bullshit. I get caught off guard by a Tangrowth sneaking up under the cover of the darkness (again), it gets an AncientPower boost on me, topples my Stack, then the Jumpluff riding on its head hit me with Sleep Powder. I'd completely forgotten this squad didn't have an Insomniscope, too! This 1000% would've been an Escape Orb moment if Steal was just wearing the Insomniscope she should've had. Regardless, cue climbing all the way back up through this dungeon a second time.

At 37:34, armed with knowledge from my previous run, I decided to topple my stack to put Fountain higher in the stack so that his Bite would have unlimited PP to make those ghosts a lot less annoying. Humorously, I end up stepping on an Explosion Trap immediately afterward and having to regroup my Stack anyway.

At 39:07, Steal has learned Rest again and I now demonstrate the first reason it's far more useful in this game than the previous ones. Previously, if you used Rest, it would only benefit the one pokemon. So it wasn't like it could just outright replace Oran Berries because there was no way to ensure only your tank was taking damage. But here, since your entire team can be in a Stack together, that 100 HP Rest for only sitting still for a couple of turns completely turns now benefits everyone in the Stack because everyone's HP is unified! Oh, but this is far from the only reason you're going to want Rest on your team.

At 39:40, you get another demonstration of how else Rest can be useful. Like any other move, it can be linked together in a combo with other pokemon in the Stack. So, as long as I'm confident the rest of my Stack can take out the target, I can have Steal rest up and heal off any damage the stack has taken.

But once we finally find another Stack Spot on the 18th floor [41:39], we finally get the chance to demonstrate the aspect of Rest that truly makes it overpowered in this game. Because now, Steal is no longer on the bottom of the Stack. And you know what that means, right? Well, if not, we get a lovely demonstration from a really scary surprise encounter at 42:04. After a constant assault of status moves from these enemies, I finally get an opening to hit Tangrowth with a sleep seed and step away for a chance to return fire. And at 43:52, I finally KO the enemy stack, but I'm left with really low HP. So I use Fountain's Tail Whip to gain access to Rest which has infinite PP since it's being linked as part of a Stack Attack. And this is where I finally make the realization: Not only does Rest have infinite PP, but only Steal goes to sleep. Meaning all of my other pokemon in the Stack can still freely attack and even move around while Steal rests up to recover HP! Shortly after this encounter, I run into another Stack as a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how this completely changes the way you might go about a battle like this. Steal can rest off any damage while the rest of my teammates can pile on their own damage freely. It's incredible!

At 45:55, I run into a Water Pulse TM which I immediately use to teach Water Pulse to Fountain over Bubble, giving him a stronger ranged attack.

=============

And finally, after 24 floors [51:08], we reach the depths of Treasure Mountain where we recover the Compassion Cookies! We already know how this plays out, of course. We bring the cookies back and Slowking is initially concerned that more food will only make the problem worse, but after we share the cookies, they seem to lead everyone to want to share the cookies as well. And before long, the friendly, cheerful mood of Pokemon Beach is restored!

I hope you don't mind too much that I skipped over the credits this time, outside of the title, I'm pretty sure the credits are identical between the three versions, so there's no need to show it all. Once it's all said and done, the game saves and we get yet another icon added to our save screen indicating we've completed the main story of Stormy Adventure Squad. But there's still one more squad who needs to get their Compassion Cookies, so next time we'll finish up with the Radiant Adventure Squad before beginning the postgame! See you soon!

[Aura]

Alright! We've got one last squad who needs to retrieve the Compassion Cookies, so the Light Adventure Squad makes their way down the Path to Treasure Island!

=============

Path to Treasure Island [0:05]

This is the final dungeon of Light Adventure Squad's main story! Like the others, it's 25 floors. Judging by the selection of pokemon here, I wouldn't be surprised if there were sandstorms throughout these earlier floors, but I have Stars the Psyduck with me so I can't say for certain.

Right off the bat we have a terrifying jumpscare where a Skorupi nearly KO's Mistress from across the starting room with Pin Missile! What a lovely omen. Skorupi is probably the most dangerous pokemon you can find down here because of this alone. But they're not really so bad to pick off.

The other big danger is Haunter, so you'll need to watch out for them as well.

And, while it wasn't much of a danger in my expereince, it seemed quite delicate, do be careful around Jolteon: It has Volt Absorb so Electric attacks will be absorbed by it.

I end up picking up a TM for ThunderBolt and, around 5:54, decide to teach it to Mistress. I briefly considered teaching it to Spark, but Spark will eventually learn it on his own. It gives Misdreavus a better Special attack, and more attack range since it attacks in a circle around her.

As you reach the 6th floor [8:36], the atmosphere changes to a swampy wetland.

On the 7th floor, we start to run into Aerodactyl. Pressure is a much less irritating ability in this game because you can often avoid using PP on them altogether thanks to your Stack. I was briefly worried that Pressure would cause the Stack's moves to use 1PP each, but that doesn't appear to be the case at all!

On the 8th floor, tensions start to rise. You start to run into Hypno! These guys are incredibly frustrating thanks to Forewarn. Even Moon's Faint Attack isn't guaranteed to hit them! (Frankly, I think that's bullshit, but okay.. I think I recall having a similar issue with missing Hypno in Explorers, too.)

At 13:36, it seems that teaching ThunderBolt to Mistress is already paying off! Spark is already trying to learn ThunderBolt by observation! It seems that TM moves can be inherited this way as well! Nice!

 

Starting on the 9th floor, you can begin to find Kingler and Magmar. I'm not sure if Kingler has Bubble or BubbleBeam, but Krabby and Kingler have always been obnoxious with these so I can only assume they do. Watch out if one's approaching you from a distance! Magmar's Flame Body can be a real nuisance for Stacks, too.

Manectric begins to appear on the 10th floor, and that means all Electric Attacks are useless the moment they step into the room. Tread carefully!

Starting on B12F, you're likely to see a lot of hail because of Snover's Snow Warning! The only reason I don't run into any is because of Stars' Cloud Nine ability.

We reach the 13th floor at 17:32 where the atmosphere changes to an autumn forest.

Starting on B15F, you can run into Grovyle! It's always a bit funny to see pokemon that were major NPC's before just out and about in the wild. Maybe this guy's still looking for the Time Gears?

Now, at 21:59, we have an incredibly unfortunate series of events. I get caught off guard by a Hypno and put to sleep with Nightmare. But this should be impossible, I thought! I had an Insomniscope, didn't I? As I would soon find out, a pokemon had used Knock-Off on me previously in the dungeon and I simply forgot to equip Stars with the Insomniscope after picking it up. Oh. My. God. Because I was put to sleep with this move, there was no waking out of it. This is the end of the road for my first run. I do get KO'd but, hey, this is my first time showing off the effect of a Reviser seed! It temporarily revives you just long enough for you to realize your mistake. How cruel.

This is also my first time showing off what happens when you actually get KO'd. You have a brief chance to send a Rescue Request out online but... well, yeah, that doesn't exactly work anymore. And with no Password system, there's no way I can rescue myself or request one of you to rescue me either, so everything I lose here is permanently lost. Fortunately, I didn't really bring anything particularly valuable into the dungeon I hadn't already made use of. So most of the valuable stuff I did lose were found in the dungeon. This is why it's usually a habit to reset, and why I even reset last time when I really should've just kept the loss and kept the Scyther I'd recruited. Oh well, I've hopefully learned from my mistakes. This time, I didn't reset because I wanted to keep the Gligar I'd recruited. It's a Size 2 pokemon and I need another Size 2 on my squad! This isn't quite the type of pokemon I had in mind, but I'll make it work!

I went ahead and taught Scar Aerial Ace by TM to ensure it had a solid STAB move (It can learn that now in Gen IV, by the way! /cough) and thanks to Slaking's Dojo, I can also teach him Quick Attack for a little bit more range!

My second attempt is rather plagued with on-again-off-again luck. I forgot to bring a Heal Seed, so I got stuck exploring the rest of a huge floor while burned from a Magmar, which meant an Oran Berry already wasted really early in the dungeon. Then, I end up stepping on a Warp Trap, splitting up my Stack, and immediately after run into a stack of four pokemon.

I did find a TM for Brick Break and decided to use it on Stars. Honestly, I'm not sure this is the best thing I could've done, but it's another attack type under my belt.

I do catch up to where I was KO'd before, but on the very next floor, I run into even more trouble.

  

Starting on B17F, you begin to run into some more troublemakers! Breloom of course has Effect Spore and I'm sure can know its status powders, too. It probably also has access to Counter. Metang takes forever and a half to KO, and Ambipom can dish out a ton of pain with its Double Hit. It can also know Agility! So be careful!

I end up getting walled by a stack of four pokemon that clearly had a lot more bulk than I was expecting. As I'm stuck dealing with them, another Stack approaches from behind and the Ambipom there nearly knocks me out. I tried to rely on ThunderBolt to do some chip damage both enemies, but it only worked so well. I took a lot of risks to KO this Stack of pokemon, but by the end I realized I was doomed. There was no way I was making it to the end of the dungeon like this. So, I decided to cut my losses yet again, and try again. This time, I'm using an Escape Orb to avoid losing anything else.

And so, we make our third attempt! Nothing too crazy happens this time around. We catch up to where we were KO'd last time and continue beyond!

At B21F, the atmosphere changes to what appears to be a desert. I suppose it's meant to be a beach, though?

We start to run into Gengar down here, so you'll want to watch your back!

And after clearing 24 floors, we finally reach the depths of Treasure Island and open the treasure chest to reveal the Compassion Cookies inside! We take them home to share!

=============

And you know the rest from there! Yeah, I'm kind of baffled that dungeon gave me so many problems. On the surface, it didn't look too terribly dangerous. But the pokemon around B17F were incredibly strong. Coupled with some bad luck, I found myself getting really frustrated!

Anyway, that's it for the last of the three Adventure Squad Games' main story! It wasn't much but we now have the gold icons of all three games on our save file! Next time, we're gonna have to start looking at what the postgame has in store for us! See you soon!

[Aura]

We've finished the main story of all three Adventure Squad games! So now it's time to see what the postgame has to offer! When we load up the game, it seems pretty clear that there's not going to be any sort of postgame story. The whole village is happily reflecting on the experience sharing the Compassion Cookies, and that's about it. It should be expected, it's not like there are any lingering mysteries from the main story or anything. Nobody's been turned into a pokemon, nobody's been pulled from another time period, we're just a bunch of pokepals going on adventures!

Now that we're in the postgame, though, it seems new items are available to us. At the Gastrodon Shop, I found White Chocolate, which is a food item that grants Experience to the pokemon who eats it! I find this much preferrable for the immediate benefit over something like a Joy Seed which feels like a waste at low levels. Granting a static amount of Exp means you'll actually see more benefit out of the item the earlier you use it, rather than the later. So these aren't just gonna sit in your storage the whole game until you're just trying to power level your way up to that last move you want.

On my way to check the dungeons that are now available to us, I was shocked to find an Entei waiting for us there! I figured this must be the start of a plot involving the Legendary Beasts, but, no. Entei just automatically wanted to join us! He's a Size 3 pokemon which means he's an easy fit onto our squad. So, welcome aboard, Entei! He is a second Fire type which is a bit of a nuisance, but we'll make it work out. He'll be replacing Onix.

Anyway, several dungeons have been unlocked for us after having cleared Path to Treasure Valley. In fact, nearly every postgame dungeon is available to you right out the gate! There are a couple we still need to unlock, but for now, this is what we have to work with. I accepted a job in the new dungeon we're doing today, so let's get ready for the rescue!

==============

Wildfire Highland [6:45]

This is the first of many postgame dungeons! I'm gonna sound like a broken record for a while, but the next several dungeons we'll be exploring are unlocked together upon saving after viewing the credits. As soon as you load up your save again, you'll have access to these dungeons.

As is typical with the postgame, we can now start to run into starter pokemon as enemies in the wild! But the difficulty also spikes significantly and things are only heating up right now. I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to be shamelessly abusing savestates for the postgame. I don't really have to justify it, but I feel the need to bring it up whenever it's relevant because I know it's probably disappointing to a certain subset of people that I would play the game this way. I just get way too stressed out over losing valauble items and time spent, and the game stops being enjoyable to me. A lot of people really love difficult Mystery Dungoen, but I don't think I'm one of those people.

For the first few floors, there isn't really anything particularly dangerous. Just watch out for the pokemon with Flash Fire who will absorb your Fire attacks. I strongly recommend stopping by with Slaking if you want to bring Entei with you. I didn't think about it at the time, but he can get Bite or Stomp there. Otherwise, he only has Fire attacks and it can be a bit awkward around the Flash Fire pokemon that are present throughout this dungeon.

After a Rain Dance topples my stack, I rush to the nearest green icon on the map to what I thought was a Stack Spot. When I reached it at 15:48, I was surprised to find a new tile marked by the same mark on the map. A decoy of a Stack Spot called a Stack Platform. Curious, I stepped onto the platform to discover that this is a new mechanic only available in the postgame for some reason. If you step onto a Stack Platform, you can hop onto a larger ally. But this isn't a typical stack, however. While riding on an ally, the ally will move and act on their own!

I... can't possibly fathom why this mechanic exists at all. The last thing I'd ever want is to trust the horrendous AI to play the game for me. That sounds like a punishment! I didn't experiment much with this mechanic, but it seems like there are supposed to be alternative strategies from the tactics menu. Perhaps you'll unlock more than "seek the stairs" if you make a lot of use of this mechanic, probably things like "hunt for items" or "KO enemies." I'll bet this might be good for AFK grinding, but even then, it seems incredibly dangerous to rely on. I'm not sure how you would go about expanding the list of commands either. Maybe it's tied to spending a lot of time riding other pokemon, maybe it's dependent on your level or IQ, I can't really say, but trusting the AI to handle navigation for me is a major no-go. I want to be in control of as much as possible, please, and this is the exact opposite.

Throughout the dungeon, you frequently run into single floors with Snow followed by single floors with Sandstorms. The Snow doens't make any sense because nothing on these floors benefit from Snow. I can only assume they mistook Snow for Hail. But hey, I won't complain!

On 9F [18:40], it's hard to see because of the weather, but the tileset changes from a greener color scheme to a bluer one. The difference is more clearly visible on the 11th floor [20:39].

   

Floor 16 is where we start to get into some of the real dangerous baddies. Just look at these fuckers, you already know they're up to no good. Ursaring has scary STAB attacks, you already know from our encounters with him in Rescue Team. Skuntank has Aftermath, everyone's favorite. Arcanine's just scary all-around, and Lopunny can really mess you up with Baton Pass.

On floor 17 [29:35], the tileset changes to the autumn forest theme.

    

At 21F, we've got some real heavy hitters joining the fray. I'm willing to bet I'm probably a bit underleveled for these dungeons, but Slowking's Water Pulse does a ton to Entei! It can nearly two-shot our stack, even! Tread very carefully! Ninetails also causes a lot of mischief with its Confuse Ray. Dugtrio has a scary source of damage in Earth Power. While it's less dangerous thanks to the Stack mechanic, it's still got that room-wide range you have to be wary of. And major damage can topple your stack, too! So keep that in mind. Lastly, Weezing's Double Hit can do some serious damage, too. And I can only imagine it has Explosion. But I never actually saw one use that, so I suppose I can't say for certain. Infernape's Close Combat can tear right through your HP as well with a sudden and powerful smack.

On 24F [43:04], we're back to the Volcanic Cave theme.

After a really shitty experience on the 26th floor shortly after making a savestate, I decide to load state and try again. This saves me from a wasted Reviver Seed and an Apple lost to a Grime Trap I had no business walking past in the first place. This time, I much more easily find my way to the stairs, avoiding a lot of conflict.

At 55:10, I run into a nasty encounter with a stack of Infernape, Crobat, and two Dugtrio. They KO my stack and nearly KO my leader a second time.

But what really confuses me here is what happens when I return after loading a state at 57:43. I approach and preemptively fire a bunch of projectiles down the hall to KO the stack early. As you watch, pay close attention to the message box. I KO Infernape's Stack as expected, and the projectiles continue onward to start hitting Typhlosion's Stack. So far, everything's going as expected. As Typhlosion's Stack approaches me, I use Roar to send him flying backward and continue zoning him out with ranged attacks. But what he ends up hitting isn't... a wall... and it's not exactly a normal pokemon, either.

That's right, there just so happened to be a Kecleon Shop right behind the Typhlosion Stack, just offscreen. And who would be lined up right in the way of the entrance from the hall but Kecleon himself? Mind you, now, that you can't normally attack Kecleon. Any direct attacks you aim his way are generally ignored as long as he's in "NPC Mode." But as it turns out, there seems to be a bug that sets Kecleon to "Enemy mode" even if you haven't stolen from him. If Kecleon manages to receive damage, he will begin to act like a normal enemy. This is most easily accomplished through environmental damage such as an Explosion Trap near Kecleon that manages to avoid destroying any merchandise (if inventory is destroyed in the explosion, you're labeled a thief and that whole debacle will play out. But apparently, another way this can be accomplished, and one that seems much easier IMO, is to use Roar, or another similar move, and knock an enemy backward into Kecleon. This will do five damage to that pokemon and 5 damage to Kecleon.

And this is not a good situation to be in. Because now I've got an angry shopkeeper on my tail. And we all know how that's going to end.

The third time is the charm! This time I'm able to clear out the two dangerous Stacks and even clear out Kecleon's inventory (legally). I sell him a bunch of the items I'd amassed and walk away with a new Reviver Seed and another Apple and Oran Berry.

Finally, not long after that awkward encounter, we reach the stairs on 29F. We're at the end of the dungeon! Except, things aren't quite so simple. Because, for the first time in this game, we have a boss!

As we reach the 30th floor, we run into Groudon! And he's ready to take on our challenge! So let's give it our all!

If I had a nickel for every time Groudon was a boss in a Mystery Dungeon game, I'd have four nickles. Which isn't a lot, but man, do they love this guy.

=============

   

 

Wildfire Adventure Squad

---------------

Cinder (Charmeleon M); Lv. 20

Item:  Special Band

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Smokescreen, Dragon Rage, Flamethrower, Brick Break

----------------

Kindle (Exeggcute F); Lv. 23

Item:  Zinc Band

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Bullet Seed, Light Screen, Sludge Bomb, Sleep Powder

---------------

Drain (Dratini F); Lv. 19

Item:  Pecha Scarf

Ability: Shed Skin | Moves: Twister, Light Screen, Flamethrower, Water Pulse

---------------

Scorch (Entei); Lv. 35

Item:  Insomniscope

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Leer, Ember, Roar, Fire Spin

============

Vs. Groudon [1:04:23]

This is our first boss fight here in Adventure Squad! I was honestly expecting boss fights to play with Stacks in this game, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I also thought it was a given that this game would automatically heal you after a custscene like Explorers was kind enough to do but, surprisingly, no! Boss fights in this game seem to be handled the way they were in Rescue Team! And that's a little unnerving because I wasn't quite as prepared for this fight as I probably should've been. Regardless, we've got all the pieces we really need for the fight!

It's a little unfortunate we can't use a Stack to combine our attacks together the way our squad is designed to fight, but between Cinder's SmokeScreen and Kindle's Sleep Powder, I think we're good to go. Plus, Groudon's Drought ability seems to benefit us far more than it does him! Our victory is in the bag! Chlorophyll Bullet Seed, by the way, is an incredibly terrifying combination. Especially STAB against a pokemon week to Grass. That's a minimum of 4 attacks and a maximum of 10 in one turn from a single pokemon! And that's not to mention the STAB sun-powered Flamethrowers coming from Cinder and the Embers from Scorch. An easy victory here for sure!

Groudon is so impressed by our skill, in fact, that he offers to join our squad. And of couse we'll happily bring him along! Free Sun on every floor? Hell yeah! And he's, of course, a Size 4 pokemon. He doesn't even need good moves to be worthwhile, yet of course he has those, too! Anyway, we return home with our new friend!

===========

After we return home, we bring Earth the Groudon on board our active team, taking the place of Drain. We bring him and Scortch to Slaking to learn Earthquake and Bite (in retrospect, I definitely should've chosen Stomp) respectively. I'm kinda baffled that Groudon didn't already know Earthquake during the boss fight. Maybe the moves are chosen randomly and I just got lucky? Or maybe the devs figured Groudon having Earthquake was far too dangerous for a first boss. Who knows? Regardless, we've got Earthquake Groudon now! And that's it for Wildifire's initiation! It's the Tempest Adventure Squad next! See you soon!

[Aura]

It's time for the Tempest Adventure Squad to begin its postgame adventure next!

Just like with Wildfire, we ran into a Legendary Beast who's come to visit Pokemon Beach! It seems it wasn't just crazy luck, but a scripted event to recruit a Legendary Beast for free. It's kind of crazy they'd just give one away like this, but I suppose it makes sense to ensure you can get a decent stack for the much more difficult postgame dungeons. Speaking of, this time we're marching straight into the first postgame dungeon of Tempest Adventure Squad: Tempest Island!

===========

Tempest Island [2:26]

The first of many postgame dungeons here! This dungeon is of course the same story as Wildfire Highland, but catered to the themes of Tempest instead. 29 floors where you'll be running into a lot of the starters here as well as their evolutions, and weather fluctuating between snow and sandstorms. There's also a lot of pokemon with Water Absorb, so be careful with pokemon that know Water attacks! There isn't anything too terribly dangerous for a while in this dungeon, and ironically, Stunky and Skuntank as well as Koffing and Weezing are all significantly less dangerous than they usually are because of the abundance of Damp pokemon. For that matter, SelfDestruct and Explosion Traps aren't likely to actually trigger, either! But that doesn't mean this dungeon is totally free. The enemies get tougher as you go deeper, of course, and those 4 Stacks by the end can get real nasty!

As I expected, this is where my frustrations with the Stack mechanic is starting to become apparent. I'm still not entirely certain what dictates when a Stack topples and when it doesn't. And your Stack toppling at bad times can really put you in really shitty situations. I know you can topple enemy stacks from a distance by hitting them with a throwable, but they can stack freely together anyway and, frankly, they're easier to deal with as one stack rather than four individual enemies that all attack from different angles. You can go from a perfectly fortified position bottlenecking the enemies in front of you to becoming completely surrounded and boxed in because your attack didn't quite KO the stack in front of you but did cause it to topple all around you. It's happened a few times to me so far, but I found it happening a lot here. You'll notice a lot more save state usage already. And I'm not apologizing for that anytime soon.

It definitely feels like Monster Houses in this dungeon are significantly more common, and that's probably going to persist.

With all that pessimism out of the way, I do want to draw attention to the beautiful synergy this squad has as a Stack. Suicune can set up Rain Dance for Drain's Thunder. It also powers up Fountain's Water attacks, even further if we're in danger thanks to Torrent, and all the while Cubone at the top protects us from the potential threat of Electric pokemon with his LightningRod ability.

On the 9th floor [20:17], the atmosphere changes to a tropical island theme.

At 29:54, I cut away to a point in a failed run where I discover the fact that, apparently, when the pokemon on the bottom of the tower runs out of PP for all of their moves, it's not just that you can't do Stack Attacks anymore, but the entire Stack topples immediately! That's... kinda fucked, not gonna lie. This is immediately followed later by a precise example at 30:33 of exactly what I was talking about before with Stacks toppling around you unexpectedly!

Anyway, getting back to the "canon" run, at 31:46, we come across a Kecleon Shop selling lots of Chocolates and even a Team Elixir! I decided to pawn off a lot of my spare held items and TMs to buy the lot! There was just enough money going around that I could afford everything! Well, everything except the Chestnuts. Really? Why would I ever want to buy a Chestnut? I went ahead and stuffed Drain and Fountain's faces with the chocolate to give them boosts of Exp and some levels.

At B17F [36:19], the atmosphere changes again to an icy cave. I did have prior knowledge of where the stairs were in this layout, but I honestly forgot they were in the monster house, so I did my best to avoid stepping into the monster house altogether only to realize that's where I ultimately had to go. I suppose you could say it was a form of greed I deserved to be punished for.

At 44:53, we get another vision from a failed attempt where I stepped on a Summon Trap at a bad time. And all hell breaks loose. I fail to KO the Stack thanks to a miss from Suicune, so Empoleon gets a Torrent-boosted critical hit that nearly KO's me on top of Crobat confusing me with SuperSonic. FML. In the moment, I thought the damage was just because Empoleon was ridiculously strong and thought I was in a desperate situation, so I used a Warp Seed to send the stack away. But as I tried to flee from the Feraligatr stack that followed after, the Rain started by Azumarill boosted its strength to the point where I couldn't survive a Water Gun.

At 49:55, yet another vision of a failed run where, again, my Stack toppling unexpectedly caused far too many problems for my liking.

On the 24th floor [52:48], the atmosphere changes back to the tropical island theme. We're at the final stretch here but that doesn't mean you can rest easy!

At 59:45, I decided to take my chances with a Trawl Orb to see if I couldn't nab an Oran Berry and wouldn't ya fuckin' know it, there just happens to be a Kecleon Shop I end up stealing from this way. There isn't even any good merch, dammit!

At 1:04:14, Cubby winds up gaining enough Exp to evolve into Marowak! It topples our Stack and we can no longer have a full stack of four, but it's fine becuase we're very close to the end of the dungeon anyway and I know now that the Stack doesn't carry over into the boss fight at the end.

And finally, after 29 floors, we prepare for our boss fight!

And at the depths of the dungeon, it couldn't be more obvious who we'd run into but Kyogre! 

===========

   

Tempest Adventure Squad

--------------

Fountain (Wartortle M); Lv. 24

Item:  Pecha Scarf

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Water Gun, Bite, Water Pulse, Protect

-------------

Cubby (Marowak M); Lv. 28

Item:  Persim Band

Ability: Rock Head, LightningRod | Moves: Bone Club, Headbutt, Focus Energy, Bonemerang

-------------

Drain (Dratini F); Lv. 24

Item:  Special Band

Ability: Shed Skin | Moves: Twister, Light Screen, Flamethrower, Thunder

-------------

Aurora (Suicune); Lv. 36

Item:  Insomniscope

Ability: Pressure | Moves: BubbleBeam, Rain Dance, Aurora Beam, Bite

============

Vs. Kyogre [1:08:01]

This battle is a total joke. Since my entire team is incredibly well equipped to battle in the rain, this was more a punishment for Kyogre's bad behavior than anything else. Between an X-Eye Seed and the majority of my squad being able to chase him down in the water he retreats to, it was like he never existed.

And in the end, Kyogre begs to join our team. And hey, as much of a pushover as that battle was, he'll definitely make a great addition to our squad! Free rain wherever we go? I'll take it! After quite a lot of deliberation, I ultimately decided to swap him out for Fountain. There's just not much of a need for a generic Water-type when I've got a pokemon like Kyogre! And it's gonna be rare to be able to effortlessly squeeze a pokemon as big as Kyogre onto a Mystery Dungeon squad the way I am here, so I wanna make it happen even if it means all the gummis that have gone to Fountain are wasted. I'm not particularly attached to my starters in this game. Not even the game really seems to be. They give you every excuse to swap them out ASAP, frankly.

I do take Kyogre to visit Slaking and learn the move AncientPower over Calm Mind. I think, in general, it'll be a more useful move.

And that's it! Next time, we'll be checking in on the Radiant Adventure Squad as they take their turn starting their postgame adventure! See you soon!

[Aura]

It's the Radiant Adventure Squad's turn!

Of course, it stands to reason that we'd get the Legendary Beast Raikou in this version! This should help us even more going forward! He'll be taking Scar's short-lived place on the squad. Before departing for our dungeon today, I stopped by Slacking to teach Thunder the Raikou here the moves Bite and Spark. Then, it's off we go to the dungeon!

This time, we had a job on the bulletin board that took place in our first dungeon, so we get to have a little more fun!

=============

Radiant Summit [2:23]

It's the first dungeon of Radiant Adventure Squad's postgame! Once again, that's 29 floors filled with the ol' story: Many enemies that are shared between the other versions alongside the starters of this game and their evolutions. I'm sure there are floors with sandstorms followed by floors with snow, too, but Stars here negates those conditions so I never run into them. Be sure to come prepared!

Also just like the other dungeons, the first several floors are pretty uneventful as they're filled with low-level enemies. But as we get deeper, the enemies begin to get really tough! Nearly everything I have to complain about here returns from the other dungeons. So just be mindful of the enemies here.

The most prevalent threat throughout this dungeon is that many pokemon have the Static ability, so you'll probably get paralyzed a lot. There aren't so many pokemon with Motor Drive. Throughout the early parts of this dungeon, I thought Elekid and Electabuzz did, but it turns out only Electivire has Motor Drive. So make sure to avoid using Electric attacks around them!

At B9F [15:10], the atmosphere changes to the island theme. Small tangent here, I'm finding that these games seem to be severely lacking in dungeon themes. I suppose you can only expect so much out of WiiWare titles, especially ones with fully 3D environments, but I wish they'd at least change up the colors more.

At B17F, the atmosphere changes to the jungle theme. I had some pretty rotten luck down here where I'd just barely fail to KO enemies and then accidentally KO them with the damage from Roar which, unfortunately, doesn't give you credit for the KO, meaning you don't get Exp for it. It's treated like the pokemon was KO'd by an environmental hazard instead.

Around 37:34, I make an incredibly frustrating mistake that makes the rest of the dungeon a lot more stressful than it needed to be: I take an unnecessary extra step and it happens to be right onto a Grime Trap that takes away both of my Apples leaving me with no stable source of food for the rest of the dungeon. Not a position you ever want to find yourself in. If you've ever watched these videos and wondered why I walk in the odd patterns that I do, it's mainly because I'm trying my best to optimize my movement and minimize the amounts of steps I have to take in open rooms, minimizing the risk of triggering a dangerous trap like this. It's also why I zig-zag near entrances and hallways: The tile at the entrance or exit of a room is always completely safe. This can actually be visualized with Kecleon Shops. If a Kecleon Shop is generated near the entrance of a hallway, the tile in front of the hallway will still be normal ground instead of a part of the shop. Anyway, we'll be feeling this particular Grime Trap for the rest of the dungeon. It's the source of a lot of frustrations going forward.

At 39:02, we have a vision from my first reload here, shortly after I'd previously saved, thankfully. In this case, Mistress gets sniped from an incredible distance by a Poliwhirl's BubbleBeam! it KOs her, and while I expect things to be fine if I just kept going, it seemed Mistress wanted to fight back, which unfortunately only caused her to take a second Bubble Beam which was enough to KO her even at full health after being revived by a Reviver Seed, leading to her being KO'd again. God I hate the AI in this game.

 

As we get into the deeper parts of the dungeon, you'll need to watch out for some of the tougher enemies here: Ampharos and Electivire both have access to Discharge! I'm sure there are others, too, but these are the ones I know for sure have it! Watch out!

At the 24th floor [50:04], we arrive at the final stretch of the dungeon, which of course is the most dangerous. And we don't hesitate to run right into a Monster House! I use a Warp Seed and Rollcall Orb to try and get away, but I'm ultimately caught off guard by a Stack with a Luxray that uses Swagger to confuse me. Combined with the rest of their combo to KO me, and the fact that I'm out of Oran Berries to heal off the massive damage I just took, I decided to rewind and try again. This time I just kept going and ran into the stairs effortlessly.

We manage to make it all the way to the 29th floor when bad luck leads us on a wild goose chase all over the map only to ultimately land on a Summon Trap at the very tail end of it all. I don't even bother trying to fight my way out of it because I already know I'm so low on food, I'd even already resorted to eating the Grimy Food, that I just would rather start the floor over and go to where I already know the stairs are. So, I load state and make my way right back there again. Sure enough, the stairs are directly south of my starting area. Fuck my life.

At the very end, on the 30th floor, who would be waiting for us but-- Zapdos?! What kinda bullshit--!

So yeah, I was obviously expecting to run into Rayquaza here at Radiant Summit considering we got Groudon and Kyogre from the corresponding dungeons in the other games, and Zapdos is a significantly weaker legendary. But I suppose Rayquaza does have that "secret final boss" status like Mewtwo and Giratina, so I guess it makes sense that I'd run into him later. Especially considering he was the final boss of Rescue Team. But even still, Zapdos just doesn't seem like a fair trade in the slightest. I figured the Legendary Birds would be the bosses of their own trio of dungeons, but apparently not. Oh well, we'll just have to see what these dungeons are hiding!

============

   

Radiant Adventure Squad

--------------

Spark (Pikachu F); Lv. 22

Item:  Persim Band

Ability: Static | Moves: Thunder Wave, Quick Attack, ThunderBolt, Double Team

--------------

Stars (Psyduck F); Lv. 24

Item:  Special Band

Abilities: Damp, Cloud Nine | Moves: Tail Whip, Confusion, Brick Break, Water Pulse

--------------

Mistress (Misdreavus M); Lv. 24

Item:  Special Band

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Confuse Ray, ThunderBolt, Shadow Ball, Psybeam

---------------

Thunder (Raikou); Lv. 35

Item:  Insomniscope

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Roar, Quick Attack, Bite, Spark

============

Vs. Zapdos [1:01:20]

At the start of the fight, Zapdos manages to evade my first X-Eye Seed, but not my second! After that, it's just a matter of surrounding him and letting loose! We fire everything we have at this guy while making sure there's nothing he can do to fight back! It's as straightforward as a Mystery Dungeon bossfight can get. And in the end, we recruit Zapdos!

After a bit of deliberation, I ultimately decided to have Zapdos take Pikachu's place on the squad. It kinda feels bad since we've already invested so many resources into Pikachu, but Zapdos should be able to get Agility and Discharge both much faster than Pikachu could. Unfortunately, Zapdos is only a Size 3 rather than the Size 4 legendary we got in the other two games, but I can't say I expected Zapdos to be large enough for a Groudon to ride on top of it. That size difference is reasonable enough. And thankfully, the smaller size doesn't change the fact that Zapdos can still carry my squad just as nicely!

And that's it for now! Next time, we're moving on to the second postgame dungeon! Hopefully we'll just burn right through the rest of the game! See you soon!

[Aura]

We've finally introduced all the squads to the postgame, so now we're just focused on digging through that list of dungeons in each game! There's not much setup to discuss this time around, so let's jump right in!

============

Rippling Seas [0:19]

As you can probably guess from the name alone, this dungeon is filled with Water-type pokemon! That can be quite dangerous for the Wildfire crew, but thankfully Groudon's Drought can help protect you from the super-effective STAB water attacks you'll be taking throughout. And our team is built to take really nice advantage of sunlight, too! We've got Kindle with Chlorophyll, Cinder and Scorch with some powerful Fire-type moves, and Earth is here to bring the sun at all times. I'm not sure if Drought is capable of overriding natural weather or not, but this is definitely a solid boon for our boys. The biggest boon we have on our side, though, is Earth's Earthquake. I was worried for a while that Earthquake would topple your stack, it just seemed like something that this game might add to such a move, but that proved not to be the case! That makes Earthquake much more useable here in Adventure Squad than any other PMD game yet! With a room-wide attack under our belt, we can finally start tearing through Monster Houses with much less fear! It's not quite fool-proof yet as we can't freely use Earthquake if we're not in a stack, but we're definitely far better equipped than ever before!

Anyway, there is actually a scrapped recording of this dungeon because I kept getting really rotten luck in the first few floors for some reason. Between constantly stepping on terrible traps, bad enemy encounters, and stepping into Monster Houses at really bad times, it felt like I just couldn't catch a break! That's why it takes me a bit longer than normal to eat the gummis I'd brought into the dungeon. I kinda forgot about them for a while. I was left feeling quite intimidated by this dungeon as a result of my terrible luck, but in retrospect, I think this dungeon is overall much easier than the last couple dungeons we've done. Mainly because it's notably shorter, being only 17 floors. But that doesn't mean you can just underestimate your foes!

As always, the deeper we get, the tougher the enemies get. And while most enemies in this dungeon are consistent throughout, starting on B14F the real danger is introduced: Lapras. We all know how scary Lapras can be from Rescue Team and Explorers and sure enough, I have a close call with Perish Song here, too [28:05]. I was lucky enough to evade the attack with my whole team, but remember that Perish Song is essentially a room-wide instant KO. With bad enough luck, your whole party could be wiped in one move! There is a delay for the instant KO as you have to wait for your Perish Count to drop to 0, but to my knowledge the only way to remove the Perish Count in Mystery Dungeon is to get to the stairs.

   

The majority of the dungeon goes off without too much to talk about. In the end, we arrive at a treasure room on B18F! Here, there are four Deluxe Boxes! When I get around to opening them, two of them contained  IQ Boosters! That alone makes the dungeon worth it, but the others contained an  Iron and a  Joy Seed.

Judging by the items I received, I'm willing to bet you can also get  Protein,  Carbos, and  Zinc as well as probably  Sitrus Berries and  Life Seeds. Maybe you can even find  Wonder Gummis here, too? Either way, I think these prizes might make this dungeon out to be a solid choice to grind out if you want to train up a new recruit. I'm not sure if there'll be a better contender in the near future, it's possible there's a counterpart to Marine Resort in these games, but only time will tell!

Anyway, there's really not much more to say here. This was a pretty open and shut dungeon. Next time, it's the Tempest Adventure Squad's turn to explore the seas! See you soon!

[Aura]

It's the Tempest Adventure Squad's turn to explore the seas!

But before we get into that, we're going to take some time to set up Rail, the Dragonair we recruited in Wildfire, to take Drain's place. We're just going to be missing out on the move Flamethrower which isn't too big of a loss all things considered. In its place, Dragonair will now know the move Agility! I don't think I need to explain to you why that's an incredibly useful move.

We've got a couple of missions set up ahead of time from this dungeon, so let's make a splash!

===========

Storming Seas [1:25]

This dungeon has a lot in common with Wildfire's Sea dungeon, but with a different selection of water-type pokemon. This time, we're looking at more deepsea pokemon. The dungeon itself I found to be significantly easier than Wildfire's, perhaps because of just overall better luck, but also perhaps because my team is quite well resistant to Water rather than weak to it. Sea's Drizzle does trigger Swift Swim for a lot of the pokemon down here, but it's really not too big of a deal all things considered.

Having a Stack with an Agility user is a very interesting experience. Because now, not only do I get free turn after turn to layer four Agility back to back, but I also get to string three other attacks along with it! Often by the time my speed is maxed out, most of the enemies in the room are already KO'd! Just another example of just how powerful these Stack Attacks can really be. Now just wait until Suicune gets Blizzard...

For the most part, nothing of particular interest happens throughout this dungeon. But just like in Rippling Seas, Lapras begins to appear on the lower floors, so make sure to watch your back!

As we reach the depths of the sea, though, I was defintiely caught off guard running into a boss fight! Lugia awaits us in the dungeon's depths!

===========

   

Tempest Adventure Squad

--------------

Cubby (Marowak M); Lv. 29

Item:  Zinc Band

Ability: Rock Head, LightningRod | Moves: Bone Club, Headbutt, Focus Energy, Bonemerang

--------------

Aurora (Suicune); Lv. 36

Item:  IQ Booster

Ability: Pressure | Moves: BubbleBeam, Rain Dance, Aurora Beam, Bite

--------------

Sea (Kyogre); Lv. 42

Item:  Insomniscope

Ability: Drizzle | Moves: Water Pulse, Scary Face, Ice Beam, AncientPower

---------------

Rail (Dragonair F); Lv. 31

Item:  Special Band

Ability: Shed Skin | Moves: Agility, Thunder Wave, Twister, Thunder

=============

Vs. Lugia [25:56]

This bossfight is even more tragic for the boss than any other yet. Between four layers of Agility plus a Thunder Wave with Rail, Lugia almost had no hope. I say almost because he was granted an opportunity when Sea accidentally froze him with Ice Beam. The Frozen status condition is probably one of the more annoying to afflict on an enemy because it doesn't actually benefit you much at all and just wastes several turns. The main reason being that you can't actually damage a pokemon while they're frozen. It does buy you some time to set up, but in cases like this, it really just helps them to stall out the setup moves you've already used. Thankfully, he only gets one hit off before we're back up to speed.

And upon his defeat, Hurricane the Lugia is the next to join our crew!

And on return to Pokemon Beach, for completing the two missions we did here, we've been promoted to Platinum Rank!

This promotion is rewarded with a  Wonder Gummi as well as access to a new dungeon: Unown Resort! There's always gotta be an Unown dungeon, doesn't there? Well, we're gonna put this one off for now and continue working our way down this list of dungeons we've already had available to us. See you soon!