Pokemon BDSP: Play Like A Designer Episode 2 Priority Moves, Status Effects, and a Rival Fight!

[Music] Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only design show on the internet that isn't talking about Silkong today. But that's a paradox. My brain hurt Silk Song came out,
right? Okay, great. Excellent. Yeah, my shirt is completely unrelated. Uh we are um recording this on September 4th as Steam is slowly recovering from Silkong. I am your humble uh design host Will joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people Jeff.
Hi to the people Jeff. Hey everybody. Welcome to happy silk song day that recently took out a portion of the internet when it flipped itself live.
Yep. That's correct.
Getting reports in with outages now recovering and as Will said some casualties including a massive Dota tournament.
That's correct. Yes. Uh, the International is going on right now and the Dota back end is tied to the Steam

back end because why wouldn't you tie your back end to Steam's back end? It's Steam. It's not going to go down for anything, right? Certainly not a $20 indie game, right?
Speaking of that, Will, yes,
I'm throwing down the gauntlet.
Yeah. Indie even means anymore.
Yeah, we should do it next week. Yeah, I think so. So, we're telling you before we even get into Pokemon that next week's topic is going to be what the heck does indie mean?
Um, and
when I say that, because for a long time indie meant like a small underfunded team.
Yep.
Or a team separately, a team of like young and upand cominging devs. It could have meant basically a team without a publisher. There there's um it could almost mean a style or an aesthetic in some cases. There have been a whole bunch of things. But you take somebody like Silkong, which they have unlimited money for their team size. They have unlimited money. They've chosen to keep their team small.
Like are they indie?

Their last game was indie. Like it it's a whole thing and I want to talk about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Not right now because Will
Yes.
Oh, okay. I'm getting distracted by screen, too.
Yeah. Uh we
today Yeah,
we're back to play Pokemon.
Correct. A decidedly not indie title. Um, so, uh, we got a lot of comments, uh, about on the last one and I wanted to kind of lean in.
Walk me through because I have been finishing a Kickstarter and then going to packs. I did not actually read any comments.
Yeah. So, a lot of people were asking why I didn't give the short version of a bunch of stuff about stats. And the reason is um, or why I've like breezed through some stuff. Uh, the answer is we want to take time to have those conversations in fullness when we have them, right? I don't want to like super short change too many things and not have like the full complete conversation where we talk about like the catch rate formula which I have up on my other screen. It's a wonderful piece of mathematics, but it

is like it does require more discussion about the systems involved, right? And the same is true with IVs and Eevees and with natures and with uh if you're familiar the personality value which governs a Pokemon's gender, shiny status, and in some other cases size and letter if you're an unknown or a Magikarp. Fun fact. Um so we are trying to I am trying to do some amount of justice to this uh as we go through. when Jeff asks important questions. But I think all that having been said, we should we should get the game on screen and we should get started cuz we have
Let's do it.
Make me small. Will make me small.
Okay, I will make you [Music]
Damn it. Wrong rate.
All right, so uh
that don't worry about it. That's definitely not a giant Pokemon. It's fine. It's It's fine.
Look at the size of that thing. That's no good.
The chatter red.
It's a Pokemon.

Okay. So,
when we last left our heroes,
correct? So, when we last left off, we had two Pokémon, Chimmy Chonga, and the boy.
Mhm.
Um, and we are uh we have been told to go to Juba Life City. Uh, in our bag, let's see what we have. We have no medicine. We have some Pokeballs and Premier Balls.
Uh, and not a lot else. Do we have a map?
Because we have just started. We have been told it is okay that we stole our Pokémon and we can see it.
Mhm.
And we spotted some sort of beaver thing that Will immediately freaked out over and declared we had to go catch.
Yes, that's correct. We We found a bedoff. Bedoff is the boy and that is all. Uh, all right. So, let's let's begin moving and as and as we continue moving, we'll we'll we'll talk. Uh I believe
let's say we have been Is this a new

route or is this the same one we used to get to town?
This is the same route, but there's no other way out of town cuz this is our starting town, right? We just had our conversation with the professor.
We left off in starting town.
Yeah. Uh so, we're going to we're going to head out. Uh and we might
I have a question real quick. If you ran through grass for a while, would a Pokemon at some point appear?
Yes.
Okay. So, theoretically, I could be farming Pokemon if I wanted to.
Yeah, correct. And in fact, that's not uncommon.
Oh, Starly, [Music] and then we'll fade out so that we can see.
So, Chimchar just comes out. We don't get to choose which one.
Correct. That's a really great question. the first Pokemon in your lineup is always the one that comes out when you start a battle.
Okay.
And there are a bunch of reasons why that's very important to keep in mind, but that's a good question.
Um,
okay, Jeff.
So, I don't get to yell Chimch or Chimmy

Chim Chunga, I choose you. It's just Chim Chunga is chosen.
That That is correct by default. Um, do you want to try and catch this Pokemon or just faint it for XP? Ooh, actually, I didn't know that was an option. H
um what are the advantages to each?
Uh well, eventually in theory, if we had the desire to complete the Pokédex, we would want to catch a Starly. Um the advantage to fainting it and getting some XP is that we're only level six and we could be a higher level. That's really the big that's the most of it.
Gotcha. And if we catch him and we don't like him, we can always let him go. Correct.
Is there like do you not get XP for capturing him?
You know, I don't actually remember in this gen. I don't There are gens where you don't and there are gens where you do and I don't remember which one this is. I'll be totally honest.
Well, let's catch him and find out.

Okay. Uh, how am I going to do this without knocking him out? [Music] The boy.
The boy. Uh, if I did any if I did anything um with uh Chim Chunga, it would probably knock out the Starly.
Oh, okay.
Um, and we don't want that. We want it low, but not out because out is bad. Okay. So, it's gone into it's
gone to yellow.
It's whacking the boy.
It is. Uh we've Well, we've taken six of 17 and it's taken half, right? We talked briefly about the colors. Yellow means a half and red means it's either sub 25 or sub 10.
And we need it in yellow to capture or

red to capture. We don't strictly speaking
need it to be at a particular HP value to catch to capture based
just the lower it is the easier to catch.
Correct. Because the catch rate formula is a the first term of the catch rate formula and there are several is um the 3 * the max HP minus 2 * the current HP divided by three times the max HP. So the lower it is, the better off you are. Oh, that's right. There. They have a special button for this. [Music] By the way, I also discovered today that there is math on how many times it shakes. That that is that there is like a probability function that governs how

many time it is. Okay, we do gain experience points. Not a ton, but we do gain experience points.
Uh,
so we took some damage. We got a
a Starly. Actually, one of the things I should have asked before is, can you tell when you're looking at a Pokémon roughly how powerful it is, or do you have to catch it first?
There are ways to determine roughly how powerful it is, its level is a good indicator. You can also get a kind of barometer based on so um it got to go first because we switched. If we hadn't or it got to go, uh because we switched and it's faster than Bedoff, which isn't saying a lot. So you can kind of gauge its stats based on other things. There are also a couple of specific tells for specific break points. Um but those are like in the deep math section. Um do you want do you want to give it a a nickname or do you just want to keep
if we give it a name? We might get attached to it.
Okay, great. Uh so no nickname it is.
I assume we can change it later.

We can.
Okay.
Uh oh, great. Oh, more
more.
Since we already have a bedof, this one I'm fine just um
knocking out.
Yeah,
I'm sorry, buddy. It's for the good of the run.
Dude, we set a bedoff on fire.
It's not No, it's not on fire. It was attacked with an ember. There's a difference probably.
So, I noticed that attack is a different color. will.
Yes. That means that it is a fire type attack. They're color they're colorcoded to help uh tell them apart.
Okay. And all of our Pokémon are getting XP even though they didn't battle.
That's correct. There are some um there are some uh games in which only Pokemon that participate in the battle get XP. There are some in which only Pokemon that participate in the battle or are holding a particular item get XP.

But the more recent ones give all Pokemon in the party some amount of XP.
I didn't see did the one did the active one get more.
I believe it did.
Okay. [Music]
Uh
is healing free?
Yes.
Okay.
Oh, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to put this back on screen now that we're not bothering anymore. Um, Arvach asks, "Have we discussed how Pokemon games in general share similarities around what kinds of Pokemon appear at various stages in the game?" No, but that's a really I mean, we did a little bit when we ran into Starly. That's a um that's a big part of sort of the genre conventions is that there will always be a Pokemon that serves the same role as Starly and the same role as Bedoff at this point in the game which is to say that it's some kind of rodent generally speaking or rodent that's sort of a throwback to Gen One where it was Rattata um and some kind of bird in the

in the initial beginning. Uh they are both uh exception I believe in Scarlet and Violet it's Leon who is a pig not a rose. Um but there's like a a cute a cute mammal and a cute bird that like are in the beginning of most of the games. Um and they are
oh sorry keep going. That just reminded me of a thing I had to tell you after this.
U and that is sort of like a genre convention because they're easy to catch and they're not very good but they will serve you well enough for the beginning of the game. It's a workhorse.
Yes, correct. Um, also, but one of the interesting things is that in games which care about hidden machines, aka sort of the overworld travel moves, Bedoff can learn a surprising number of them. So, you can keep Bedoff and replace its combat moves with utility moves that you'll use in the overworld. And that's okay. Hm. As having just come back from PAX West, Nintendo had a who

was almost nothing last year had a huge presence this year. They had two separate um floor spaces right next to each other.
One of which I believe was a football field in length as a rectangle and another was a huge square. They were showing Silk Song in the middle of the huge square. I think there was a total of four things playing it surrounded by a whole bunch of others. And it was a 2-hour line to get to a point where you could enter a lottery to maybe play at a different point.
Yeah, those are always wild to me. I I believe we go this way.
2011.
Well, this is 202.
Hey, let's go talk someone to talk to.
Yeah, that's correct. This is uh Dawn, who we met last time.
Oh, that's right, Jeff. If I haven't shown you how to catch a Pokemon, we already know how to catch a Pokemon. I'll demonstrate how to catch one, so just watch me. Okay, we already did this. But game, we already did this. It's fine. We sequence broke. She's also going to catch a

All right, so Don Don has Turwig, which is the Pokemon that's weak to ours.
Um, so she's doing all this. I'm not controlling any of this. So, she's showing that you you should whittle down the opposing Pokemon and then throw a Pokeball. Man of XP is determined by participation and level difference. Pokemon that participated spent even one turn on the field get 100% and everyone else gets 50%. Pokemon that are higher level and the Pokemon you fought get less. Pokemon that are lower level get more. Okay. Yeah, that's more or less what I was imagining. Oh, yeah, that's right. There's also a forest where there will be a bug early on.
They haven't patched the bug yet.
Ha. Silk song released and it's full of bugs.
See, isn't it neat? Actually, it's better to lower your targets HP more than I did. It's important to get the Pokemon's HP down as low as possible. A

healthy Pokemon is very difficult to catch. Oh, Pokemon also get easier to catch if you make them sleep or something by using a Pokemon's move. Okay, Jeff. To get you started, I'll give you some Pokéballs here. Okay, we already we did that. Okay, put the Pokéballs in your bag's Pokéballs pocket. You have lots of Pokémon with you. It'll be safer on long trips. Plus, it'll be a lot more fun having your Pokémon friends along. Okay, I need to get going. Bye now. Thanks, Don.
Don, it's so nice.
Don is very nice. That is kind of the role of the friend, like the the friend companion is generally just to be like moral support and to and to come along and uh um like tell you helpful things or give you a helpful item. Uh we're not going to go back on screen cuz I'm pretty sure that we're going to get in a fight with this guy. You're a Pokemon trainer. I happen to be a Pokemon trainer. Our eyes met. So battle we must. Okay, kid. This is kind of the part Yeah. This is the part that

always like makes me laugh, right? Is that there's a kid who's just like hanging out in the middle of a forest and he's like, "We're going to Pokemon battle and if you win, I'll give you my lunch money." Like I don't
actually will
having a kid who's five or six or seven somewhere in that age range.
Yeah.
I can tell you he thinks about battles all the time and having seen little bits of Pokémon like we build Legos to battle. Okay,
this is completely on brand for a kid.
Okay, that's fair.
I'm going to hang out in battle.
I'm hoping we get a burn at some point in here, though it's very unlikely.
What is a burn?
A burn is a status effect which Ember has a very small chance to inflict.
Um, I'm start fainted.
Yeah, it's a 10% chance for Ember. Your Pokemon gained experience points. Oh, dang. Chimmy Chonga grew to level seven.

Oo, that that was some serious XP there.
Correct. Yeah. Um, trained Pokemon, I believe, in general give more than untrained Pokemon. So, we will, but they're kind of a limited quantity in that for most trainers, you'll only battle them once. So, getting used to grinding on wild Pokemon is like reasonable. [Music] the boy gr four.
So, is it worth on things where you think you're going to where you're well ahead basically and since healing is free cycling through your Pokémon to try and get them all XP faster?
That's sort of a really great philosophical question. So, let's talk about that. So
uh number seven about target trainers you like to battle Pokemon grow stronger and stronger from battling. Okay
battle.
So

you can
Mhm.
There is a question at some point it is Pokemon is definitely firmly in the category of games that is possible to optimize all of the fun out of.
Right. Like if you
if you are trying to like unless that's your jam. If that's your jam, like more power to you. There are incredibly optimized like Nuzlocke kind of things where like there's a challenge run imposed by the community, but for the challenges presented by the game, it's not really worth it most of the time. The story mode for most Pokémon games isn't particularly difficult. Um, with maybe a couple of like weird exceptions. Um, which
so if I was playing on Iron Man or something, maybe. But
correct. Uh, and and it's also nice, by the way, nice piece of level design here. Um, I've been playing a lot of Elden Ring over on the Twitch channel. So, we've been talking a lot about level design. The uh this oneway run back, right? So, if we fight this and we have a Pokemon that's low, then we can easily

without going through uh too much tall grass, run back,
run back to town to heal up
and heal up before we go back in. Right. If we don't want to spend money, we can spend money on healing items that we can use in the field, but Mhm. You forgot to heal
game. No. Yeah, it did that weird thing where it didn't in out.
Oh,
yeah. Um I if if many people haven't gotten a Switch 2 by the time Pokemon Z comes out, I imagine that that will be one of the biggest drivers behind getting the new system, right? cuz DK uh I played I played Donkey Kong Bonanza. It's a good game. Uh I don't think it sells systems, right? I don't think Donkey Kong is a strong enough character to sell systems, but Pokemon ZA is a thing that a lot of people are incredibly excited for and will be a thing that sells systems. Uh there will
Oh, good.
There will be people that um buy a Switch 2 just to play the new Pokemon.

The football field longsized rectangle at PAX West was entirely Pokemon for Nintendo.
Yeah. Well, I mean, Pokemon,
there was huge display.
Yeah. It's the most valuable singular IP in the world,
right?
Really?
Yes. We've talked about this on Breakfast. If you if you consider it like one contiguous IP as opposed to like all of Marvel, right, which is a bunch of sub IPs, it's it's Yeah, it's huge. Um,
okay, let's uh fight whoever this is. This is last Natalie. Uh I now I get to check a thing. Uh cuz I think this is the first time we've had a trainer battle with two or more uh Pokemon.
Oh, okay. I see she has two Pokeballs up above her on the right. So, she has two Pokemon.
That's correct.

Uh like fights on a route. now.
Oh, critical hit.
Yeah. So, there's a small chance uh on each attack that you will get hit by a critical hit, which has a bunch of impacts. One of them is that it does more damage. And the other really important one is that it ignores all um like uh stat changes. So, like if you have a bunch of defense ups and your opponent has a bunch of attack downs and they crit, none of those stat changes matter for that hit. Ah, [Music]
now are we on set or switch?
Okay, so we're going to we're going to say no and we're going to explain that this is this choice and I'm going to turn this off afterwards so we don't get this every time. This choice is one of

the things that makes the game ext much much easier or much more difficult. Uh
oh. Because if it it takes an action to switch, I'm guessing from what I previously saw.
And if you switch now, your your new Pokemon will be in a straight speed off with the uh opponent's Pokemon and you know what their Pokemon is. And so it doesn't matter because we don't have anything that's super effective against Bedoff. But if our opponent was going to be like, I'm going to bring out my ground type. It knows all ground type moves. And we were like, I'm going to bring out this flying bird type that is immune to all of your ground type moves because it's a bird. It would be a different battle right now. In that case, that's kind of an extreme example, but um we're going to we're going to keep it here. And there is an option to change it. Um,
so my tactical decision to pick up a Starly was pretty good considering

Yeah. I mean, you're every Pokemon you get is another option and you have not unlimited but functionally unlimited storage for Pokemon. So having more options to deal with more problems is good, right? It's if you think of it as uh if we removed the veneer of a creature collector from this, right? we would find a very crunchy elementally based RPG where you are essentially playing a West Marches campaign and bringing in different characters with different strengths for different particular missions in that West Marches campaign. And so having more people in your guild is good, right? And I think it helps people see that if we remove the Pokemon terminology from it because you think of a Pokemon as like a unique critter rather than as a class or as a tool set mo for most people who are approaching it for the first time. Um and I think that that that changing it into the mindset of um of you know I'm

going to use this for uh for its move set as a tank as a buff uh person even as a healer. There are Pokémon that act as healers both for themselves and others. They're rare and they're hard to get in a lot of cases and they're hard to use properly, but they do exist.
Um,
is it Chanley or um
Chansy?
Chanse.
Ch uh Chansy is uh one of them.
I've been watching through the original Pokemon series with my with my boy and we're like 20 episodes into Indigo. So, I'm getting introduced to the original 150.
Yeah.
Uh, yes.
There's a lot of kids in the forest.
Yeah. Well, and that's kind of that's also sort of par for a Pokémon game. Like, you're fighting other kids your own age sort of when you're starting and then later on you're like fighting crime syndicates. I'm not kidding. think that's like a

common recurring trope is that you, a 12-year-old protagonist with the power of Pokemon and friendship, are going to take down an international crime syndicate and their plans to take over the world. And this is just kind of a thing that happens, right? But the
I mean, Team Rocket from the original, I've already found out like Jesse and James have a big boss that they report to who has nefarious wide ranging plans.
Yes. And in Red and Blue, you fight that boss. Um, and and some people are talking a little bit more about crits. So, as we as we go through this, I'll I'll bring those up. So, uh, Dery's from
three balls,
uh, from YouTube chat says that in BDSP, the have damage from physical moves due to burn is not ignored. Okay, great. Awesome. We can talk about intimidate. Uh, and Fox also correctly points out over on Twitch that there are moves that negate critical hits and moves that will never or crit. Okay. So, what just happened to us is Shins uh has an

ability uh it's not a move, it's an ability called Intimidate. And intimidate says that whenever it switches in or a Pokemon switches into it, uh its physical attack is lowered. Now, fortunately for us, Ember is not a physical attack, so it doesn't matter. Only when it switches in. Thank you. Yeah. I I always feel like it's you shouldn't switch into intimidates, but you should
cuz it takes your intimidated Pokemon out. Oh, and it's electric.
Correct. Boogie boogie. Boogie boogie. Yes. Um, so here's a case where we don't care that our uh physical attack is lowered because we're using a non-physical attacking move. Um, and so we should be able to win this pretty easily. If we were relying on something like tackle or scratch or headbutt, uh, we might be in trouble. [Music] All right. Timmy Chong is level eight.

Okay. And can level up midfight.
Uh, yes, that's correct. When when when you gain the experience, you gain the experience when a Pokemon is KO'ed and all operations that proceed on that with one exception. You can't evolve midfight.
Um, processing.
Wait, that's not canon. Indigo very clearly about episode 12 had a Pokemon of or eight somewhere in there had a Pokemon evolve in the middle of a fight.
Correct. That is uh one of the um it's movie magic kind of things, right? It's kind of like how Yugi always has an impossible combo in his hand every time uh in Yu-Gi-Oh. Um
and that's why his other two Pokemon.
No, those were our three Pokemon. He only had one Shinx.
Oh, okay. I must have got it reversed. We had three. He had one. Yeah, Shinx is kind of strong for this uh bracket. Uh yes, that is correct. Foxhawk also correctly points out that switching out also resets stat modifications. Yes. Uh

stat modifications are not statuses and therefore stay uh status. Some most statuses stay when you get switched out, but um stat modifications all reset when you leave the field. So if you go into the ball and then come back, you're good. Um, but that does take two turns, right? One to switch in, one to switch out. Again, asterisk. There are moves that switch you in and out, and they're incredibly powerful.
So, you've also just introduced a new concept to me here,
which is that in addition to move, or what did you call it when it came in? It's an effect,
an ability. Okay. [Music] And so that's kind of so that's basically a onplay or on summon kind of thing like from magic or
Yes. It's an ETB effect. Yes. Or an enters effect. Um okay. So I'm going to get out my way. Um all Pokemon have an ability.

It's not it's not necessarily as obvious as intimidate what a Pokemon's ability is. And you can check wild. If you know what the options are, you can check to see which uh ability a wild Pokemon has by using certain moves against it. Um but in this case, Chim Chongas is Blaze. Um the boys is simple. Stat changes it receives are doubled and keen eye means that uh Starley's accuracy cannot be lowered.
Go back to bed or the boy. Is that positive and negative
stat change? In other words, would he have gotten a double um
yes
debuff?
There are plenty of these that are um
double-edged swords
kind of. Yeah. Uh so, um Yes. Yeah. So, we would have
We never checked out the stats of the

Starly and um we just got told it's a good Starly.
Is it a good Starly? Oh yeah, that's a pretty good start. It has a uh plus speed uh and minus special attack, but it probably doesn't care about special attack. Um and yeah, Jolly is a great nature for for Starly. Uh
how are we telling? Okay. Well, how do I know that's a good Starly? We haven't been here yet.
Experience. Um okay, so you remember when I said that uh it was like RPG classes?
Yes. In the same way that you want your cleric to have high wisdom and constitution.
Yep.
You want a Starly to have high speed to go first and do a thing, right? Um and it is it varies on a case by case. Some Pokemon have move sets that benefit greatly from having um
either a high attack or a high special attack. Some really benefit from being fast. There are Pokemon that re really really benefit from being slow because

there's a move called trick room that reverses the order of speed.
Okay,
so the slowest the Pokemon with the lowest speed stat goes first. So if you have a trick room team, you might want to have an incredibly tanky Pokemon with a rock bottom speed stat so that when trick room happens, it goes first as an example, right? Um, okay. So, the answer is unfortunately it depends and it's extremely situational, but fast Starly is pretty good.
Um, does that answer enough of that question or
Sure. And I mean, so that's just a if I've played a couple hundred more hours, I would know that fast Star League equals good.
Yeah. And then you would know at a glance that plus speed minus special attack is jolly as a nature. [Music] Hey, it's Jubil Life City.

Don.
Hi, Don. Hi, Jeff. Are you catching Pokémon? Um, I think you'd feel a lot safer if you were to catch some more. In Jubil Life City, there's the trainer school, which Well, you know, Jeff, you should visit it. You'll get some tips on Pokémon. Oh, yeah. Will went to the trainer school earlier. Okay, bye now. Thanks, Don. You're
Did we miss one final battle below on the left?
Mhm. Do you want to do that one now?
Oh, either way, I was just making sure on the route.
There are optional ones. Uh, some Pokemon only appear in the morning, some only come out at night. I'm going to keep waiting right here until I've seen every last one of them.
Okay. Uh, and then by the way, by going down to talk to this guy, we of course get the barely visible item on the very top left of the screen. And it's red, so it stands out among the green, unless you're red green color blind, of course. Uh, and so then you go and get it, right?
Mhm.
And we get a potion.
Oh, I thought that was a Pokéball,

actually.
Very great point. All items on the overworld, with very few exceptions historically speaking, look like Pokeballs. So, a Pokeball on the ground is just a key for this is an item. It could be a Pokeball. It could also be a potion. It could be a held item. It could be any number of things.
Also, a thing.
Yes.
Okay.
Uh, also a thing to note is that um less common I believe in current design, but there are cases where specific patches of grass have different spawn rates for different things. Uh, so there is a world where one could get lured into a particular patch of grass. Uh
oh, that would be particularly deadly.
Correct.
I love Starling.
Uh that's a great question. Uh yes. Uh this game is on the real life dayight cycle. So it uses the system clock to determine what time it is. Uh and the g the time in game mimics that.

So we will always be playing midday.
Correct. So number on your east coast. We'll always be playing early afternoon.
Correct. But generally speaking, it's only day or night. It doesn't get terribly much more granular than that. [Music]
So, I was going to say since we've been told Starly is a ace, I think Starly gets a name.
Okay. Uh yes, Starley now definitely gets a name. I forgot it learned quick attack. Uh cuz that's going to be a whole part of a conversation. Um so, let's get out of here. Oh, wait. Scarlet, when you level up, you heal.
Oh, no. Never mind. We just haven't used them.
Yeah, we haven't used it. Um, don't think I can do it here. I think I'll need to Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah, I'll need to do it someplace. Um, but let's real quick I want to I want to real quick do a thing. So, we're going to talk about something else.

This is a This is quick attack. Okay,
the user lunges up the target at a speed that makes it almost invisible and then it has some very interesting words.
This move always goes first. Quick attack is probably one of our first introductions specifically to a priority move. So,
okay, [Music]
I'm going to I'm going to put us on screen because this is going to be a bit of a conversation. I want to go heal while we do this. Um,
okay. I then if we're going on screen I'm gonna take out my snacks and I'm gonna listen.
Okay. Um so uh you're the fastest Pokemon doesn't always go first. It probably it goes first in a priority bracket. So there are brackets of priority and moves belong to that pri priority bracket. So in each bracket, it goes highest speed to lowest

speed, barring other effects like trick room or anything else. Um, and so if you want very badly to go first, a move like quick attack will put you in a higher priority bracket. And if you're extremely fast in a higher priority bracket, your opponent would both have to outspeed you and use another priority move in order for that to beat you. So, if you are trying to like finish off the last one HP on a Pokemon that's been like taking out your entire team, right, you swap in Starly Starly quick attacks and takes the last HP. Um, yeah.
How does that work though? Like, cuz you were selecting attacks,
correct?
How does it know you're not going to select another attack?
You pick uh it the order is after attacks are selected. So the the the phases of the turn are we both
Oh, I missed that. Okay. So both players select a move and then they are executed based on speed.

Yes.
So it's initiative.
Correct. And priority is a kind of surprise. Um there are abilities that affect priority. Certain moves belong to different priority uh groups. There are um moves that are slower but do weird things, etc., etc. Um there
why then is speed so important for Starly
if Starly also has a thing that always goes first?
Because Starly won't always use quick attack because as we saw here, quick attack's power is 40. It's not very good. It's not very strong.
Power can go as high as like 80, 120, right? There are some ridiculously powerful moves. This one isn't.
So this is peek. Peek is a different move. It's a flying type move, but yes, essentially it's a it's a move that serves a specific use. And if it's incredibly fast, then we won't need to use a weaker priority move. We can use a stronger move and

just outspeed them instead.
Gotcha. It gives
Or we could tackle, for example.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh okay.
All the things to learn.
Yeah. So many things to learn. Okay. Uh so there's a train. We just had a couple visitors pop in, by the way.
Yeah. Uh, raiders on Twitch, welcome on in. Hello, friends. Uh, that's Jeff. That's Jeff. I'm Will. I screwed up my size for the first time in a while. Today, we're playing some Pokemon uh Shining Pearl. We're we're going through and poking it with a stick like a designer
because also I have never played a non-Pokémon Go game. So, this is my
Yeah.
second stream foray into it.
Yeah.
Learning about the Z Pokemons.
Yeah. Uh Sammit over on YouTube also mentions that sometimes items on the overworld are in fact Pokeball shaped Pokemon that attack you. That is true.
Oh, so it's a mimic.
Yes, that's correct.
There are mimics.
So there are a lot of D and D analogies.

We have initiative, we have mimics.
Yeah, the the it's kind of
I should say RP I won't say generic because D and D isn't generic, but D&D being the most well-known RPG. Well, and if we go all of the way back, right, if we look at original Final Fantasy, have you played Final Fantasy 1, Jeff?
I have played some old Final Fantasies. I don't remember what my first one was.
Okay. So, Final Fantasy 1, which I've played a couple of times, is barely legally not D&D with the serial numbers very lightly filed off. like there are beholders and mind flares and you use a spell slot system that's a lot like D and D's spell slot system and you do a bunch of things that are a lot like D and D because it was such a strong influence at the beginning and then that influence has carried forward, right? It's kind of like looking at Star Wars and talking about science fantasy, right?
It's actually interesting you mentioned mind flares and boulders because I believe those are two of the only things

that Watsy has trademarks on.
That is correct. Uh, I believe that's correct. Um, oh, that's right.
Dragon designs.
Yeah. Uh, that's that's me. So, I'm going to go I'm going go talk.
Hey, Jeff. Did you
Did you come to study, too? I went ahead and memorized everything that was up on the blackboard. After all, it's the trainer's job to avoid having their precious Pokemon hurt in battle, right? That's unavoidable. There's no Well, it's possible to do a hitless run of this game, but it's incredibly weird and janky, and I don't recommend it. So, Jeff, what brings you here? You've got something for me. You delivered the parcel. That was why we were here. We were here to deliver Will a
I believe it was the McGuffin, but
Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's a mcguffin. So, what is this score? It's a town map. Huh? Why are there two in here? I like it a lot, but I don't need two. Here, Jeff, you take one. Thanks, Will's mom.
Well, according to the town map, I guess

Oraberg City is where I should be going next. There's a gym, so it'd be perfect for raising the Pokémon I just caught. Well, I'm on the road to becoming the greatest trainer of all time. See you around.
Oh, that reminds me, Will. Let's see. Can you Are since we're big for a second?
Yeah.
One of my favorite parts of wandering around packs um are the random street buskers. Yeah, for sure.
Um, hold on. Let's see if I can [Music]
The sound's not going to come through from here.
Oh,
yeah.
Street Busker playing the Pokemon theme song on his violin.
Yeah, you got to know your audience. It's huge. Yeah, it's incredibly important. So, here here's the map. This is the map. Um
Oh, okay.
Uh, important to note that uh each of these is generally themed after a place in like the real world. They're not
super creative when it comes to like where it's going to be. They'll like pick a place and be like, "It's here."

Like Sword and Shield was like, "This is legally not the UK." But it's totally the UK. Um,
I don't believe you can copyright a country.
Correct. But they don't want to say that it's the UK. They want to say like it, you know, it's an island nation.
Yeah. So, it was specifically Hkaido. Yes, that's correct. Uh, okay. So, he's suggesting we go to Orberg City, which is to the east.
East. Yeah.
What are the different colors? I was thinking like, what is the big orange thing above us?
That is a forest. That's a route. So, anything in orange is a route. Anything in gray is a town we haven't been to. This is our current location. And this is a town that we have been to.
Okay. So towns are tiny towns are blue or is it towns are blue and just red is your current location?
Believe red is your current location.
Okay.
But um you thought I said
your character's hat isn't red.
Yeah, it's true.

Uh okay. So we're exploring Jubil Life City.
Let's see.
You just became a trainer, did you? You should look up topics that you're not familiar with. Well, we have Bulipedia. So,
I was going to say, can we check out the blackboard to see what Will was memorizing?
Yeah, the blackboard list status changes that may affect Pokemon in battle. Which says would you like to read about? We have poison, paralyzed, asleep, burned, and frozen.
We got to read them all,
right? Exactly. If Pokemon is poisoned, it will steadily lose HP. The effects of poison remain after a battle. So, as we take steps after battle, the screen will flash and then every poisoned Pokemon in our party will take damage. Yellow poisoning using an antidote. Does poison eventually wear off
or is it just your when your Pokemon dies?
That's a really great question and I don't remember what the answer is. [Music]
Ah, Pider says towns are blue, cities are red, routes and wild areas are orange and non-visited is gray. Yeah, it does not. Yeah, that's what I thought, but I wasn't 100% sure.

Paralysis reduces speed and may prevent Pokemon from using any moves. You have to select a move and then it'll tell you whether or not you're paralyzed, by the way, which is infinitely frustrating.
Well, actually, that fits too since you're yelling at your Pokemon, "Go do a thing." And the Pokemon's like, "Ah, I'm paralyzed. Will, I can't feel my legs."
Is it Is it like our attack sinking into the swamp of sadness? Just like paralyzed and sing. All right. Anyway, also lingers after battle, so use a paralyzed heal to clean up its nasty effects. Okay, so some of these effect status effects sound like they're pretty brutal.
They are. Um, also, uh, Nova is correct. We're only one explanation and it's already lying. Uh, poisoned is two different effects that damage you at different rates. That's correct. Poison and badly poisoned are two different statuses that can't coincide, but do both exist.
Um, if the Pokemon falls asleep, it'll be unable to attack till it wakes. The

Pokemon may wake up on its own, but if the battle end first, then it will stay asleep. You can wake it up using an awakening.
Is it awakening a potion or something? It's not just you slapping it around.
That's correct. Burn lowers a Pokemon's attack. Now, worth noting. That's attack, not special attack, and steadily reduces HP. They linger even after battle. Cariburn's using a burn heal.
Rose. So pretty much this is all doing what I expected it to do except that it lingers. It continues after a battle.
Correct. If a Pokemon is frozen, it becomes completely helpless. It may thaw out on its own, but if the battle ends first, it will remain frozen afterward. You can th out using an ice heal.
So what I'm also understanding here is that they're basically your Pokemon and their poke pokeballs are like suspended in carbonite. They're time frozen because if they were on fire when you put them in, they're going to be on fire when you take them out.
Barring you doing something about it. Yes.
Mhm. So, this is also a little bit of

game design. Okay, time for me to call out a thing.
Yeah,
this is a subtle piece of design because hey, you could put statuses on other people, too. But all of those other NPCs don't matter because as soon as you leave the screen, it's not that you're going to see them again most likely. So statuses way matter way way more versus a player because they stick around after um than they do against an NPC.
Yeah.
Like the NPC doesn't have to go heal them up after
for a player getting a status on you. I'm guessing, tell me if I'm wrong, it is a more serious thing. You're like, "Oh crap, I have to use an expendable or something bad will continue to happen."
Or if or at least if this was a Souls game,
right? Okay, if you care about your Pokemon fainting, if you don't, then you just go back to like if you if you don't care about like needing to backtrack to heal or your Pokemon fainting, then you're less fussed about it um

for now. Later on, it'll matter a lot when there are places where you have to bring all of your healing with you and you don't get a full heal for free in between every battle. Um
which we could do here if we wanted to, right? We could go to a battle, backtrack to the center and so forth and so Right.
But at least from a design perspective, that is the situation they're setting up where they're still saying it's like, "Oh, look, everybody's using the same cards, the same moves, the same Pokémon, etc., whatever your game is." But it is a way to sneak in longerlasting effects that really only affect a player.
That's correct.
And up the stakes for them for things that happen after.
Correct. Uh and important to note um it got mentioned briefly in chat uh the main you there there are several uses right um
you can if you know that an enemy NPC trainer has an item using an item costs a turn and so if they have like a burn

heal and you have a move that guarantees a burn and you want them to waste a turn and that item you can burn their Pokemon so that they are inclined to use that item. So, there's an NPC element to it. And uh the thing that got mentioned in chat is that uh using offensive status conditions against wild Pokemon does make it easier for them to catch. Um which is sort of a intuitive thing. Uh remember when I said the first term of the catch equation, uh there's actually four terms in the catch equation and only one of them is HP. One of them is the inherent rate of the Pokemon. One of them is other external factors like uh status effects and one of them is the effect of which Pokeball you're using kind of key factors.
Um
okay so we just went and healed up our pokes.
Uh correct. And now we have to explore this is this is one of the the bummers. We just have to explore Jubilife City. Uh so you know we go to all of the

places we might normally go. Did I actually heal or am I hallucinating? Okay, great. We did we did actually heal.
Um, so we're going to wander around and see what we're supposed to find in Jubil Life City. Probably this. Just past here is the GWS, which stands for the Global Wonder Station. Oh, you don't have any gym badges. Uh, the GWS is off limits if you haven't heard gym badge yet. Sorry. Um, that is uh a global randomized trade system, which we'll get into when we get there. [Music] Oh, you are a Pokemon trainer, but you don't have any uh you don't have a Pokeetch yet. Pokeet is short for Pokemon Watch. [Music] Okay. You see, I invented a N manufacturer Pokeetches. Not Not only that, I'm now conducting the Pokeetch

promotional campaign. All you have to do is find three clowns in Jubilife City. Well, why why are we finding clowns?
Let's see if he tells us.
If we can find them, I'll give your very own pokeet.
Oh,
okay. So, now surveillance state system. He's basically getting children to go do his labor.
That's Well, no. It's it's a promotion, Jeff. This is for social media.
Hi, I'm a Poke campaign clown. Let's roll out my question. Does a Pokemon grow by defeating others and gaining experience points? Yeah, ding ding. You're absolutely correct. Pokemon grow stronger by defeating other Pokemon in battle. Some Pokemon even change into a different Pokemon through a process known as evolution. Also, a reminder, this is mandatory tutorialization because, and this is a thing that like it's very easy to lose when people know so much about a franchise, right, as Pokemon. Every Pokemon game, no exceptions, is someone's first Pokémon game. All of

this may seem boring and pointless to you who knows all of these things, but they really need to cement a lot of these things because again, the target audience is children and everyone has to be uh designed so it's their first as if it's their first. Here you go. Your pokeet coupon one. Oh, what's the blue store again?
Uh, I believe that's the Pokemon. Can you go in there? [Music]
Wait, it's bigger on the inside than on the out. [Music]
It's camera tricks. [Music]
Oh, buy and sell. Okay. Oh, so you can sell.
Yes, you can sell items you have. Yes. So, this is kind of an interesting one. So, for a hundred extra poker dollars,
we could buy heal balls. It's a hundred extra dollars over a Pokeball, right? And if we were out for a long time, this would give us the ability to catch a Pokémon and have it immediately

heal to full and have its status conditions removed, thus making it immediately usable. And sort of an interesting idea. Um,
that sounds like a fairly useful thing if Yeah. If you're going out into the out into the wilds and not coming back. Okay.
Correct. Um,
actually anti- status effects are cheaper than I thought they were going to be considering the amount of money we had.
Yeah,
which is also a balance thing as well. Like that those could also easily have an extra zero.
That's correct.
Uh, yeah, and there that is correct. Nova is correct. There are uh items whose only purpose is to be sold. Crown Joker asks, "Have Eevee been explained in loosely?" We're going to probably take a chunk of an episode that probably won't be this one and do the full this is what I are. Here's this is what Ivies are. This is what Eevees are. Here are the charts. Here's all the math. But that is a lot of math that I don't want to do today. We're not going to um
but we will get there. There will be an

episode where we do it.
Yep. So, uh we could sell some stuff. We can't sell key items obviously. Um but treasures generally. Can I sell Pokémon? Is the big question.
No, you can't sell Pokémon.
Oh, okay.
Good try.
I can't go farm Starley's and beds and come back and sell them.
That's correct.
Okay. Um, [Music]
two more two more clowns. So, I'm going to go find us some clowns. [Music]
I assume that's Persal asking for attention.
It is. Come here.
Hi, I'm a Pokeet campaign clown. Let's roll out my question. Just like Pokemon, do the moves in Pokemon also have types? Yes.
Ding ding. You're absolutely correct. If a Pokemon's type matches the type of a move it uses, that move is made much more powerful. This is uh this is how it explains stab. Same type attack bonus.

Um, I believe we talked about this briefly a bit ago, but the short version is if I have a fire Pokemon using a fire move, that move will be more powerful solely because it's a fire type and a fire type than if that firet type Pokemon uses a normal type move or a normal type Pokemon uses that fire type move, even if all other stats are identical. So basically, it's almost always advantageous to try and learn learn elemental move or move learn moves that match your type.
Yes. Exception.
I'm sure there's exceptions, but like
exceptions.
General knowledge of what they're trying to imply through this tutorial is
yes,
try and match your types.
Yes.
You obtained coupon 2.
What store is that behind you?
Looks like store Bioshock. [Music] You can be sure I'll keep developing Pokeet apps just like Pokemon. My Pokeetch is something that evolves. Oh,

okay. I have no idea. That felt like I was like middle of a conversation. Welcome to the Pokeet Company. Oh, this is the company. We're actually a family-un business, so we're not very impressive. Wow. Okay. What a what a weird intro. All right. Oh, and then uh also important to know um it might
vending machine. Yeah. So, sometimes vending machines are actually vending machines and sometimes they're set dressing. Um, [Music] oh, and this one's in front of the gym. That's great. Hi, I'm a Pokeet campaign clown. Let's roll out my question. Can a Pokemon hold an item? Yep. It's got hands, don't it? Ding ding. You're absolutely correct. A Pokemon may hold a single item. Some items become effective as soon as they are held by a Pokemon. Berries are eaten by Pokemon as necessary during battle. Here you go. Your Pokeet coupon.
That's also a new concept. I didn't know that one.
Yeah, you put coupon three in your bag's

key item pocket. I don't think we've had a holdable yet, like even a berry, otherwise it would have come up.
Uh, okay. And then we got to talk to this guy. Okay, let me count your coupons. We'll just pass the my pull out my Pokeet here. And one, two. Okay. Is that is the implication there that he needed a a watch to count to three?
Because I feel I feel like that's the strong implication.
Maybe he was validating the authenticity of your coupons checking for forgeries.
Yeah, I too as a 12-year-old forged coupons for limited time promotional events in large cities run by people who hire clowns to talk to children. Anyway, I love I love how that's your happy place. I love how some of these like plots when like you say all of these words out loud, you're like, "What? Huh? Okay. All right. 1 2 3. Bravo." I said, "Bravo." In return for these coupons, I present you with this Pokemon watch or poke for short. You received

Pokeet. You can add apps to your Pokeet to make it even more versatile. Please press the R button and try it out. Press the R button to use a podcast control by using the touch. Okay, that's an interesting one. So, the Switch does have a touchcreen, but I'm not using a touch screen. I'm using a Pro Controller. So, I'm wondering what the affordance here is for that.
Let's find out. Let's hit R. I want to see what this thing does. [Music]
It's a clock.
Oh, I get a little finger.
Oh, I have a calculator. I have a step counter that actually matters a lot. By the way, this is like a little a little version of my current team.
Okay, so here's why this matters a lot.
That's right.
If you care and a lot I I think it's much harder now. In older games, it was much easier to do this. It's harder than it used to be because older games were

more strictly tilebased and RNG only incremented when you moved between tiles. You could use your step count to determine what RNG you were on and then set based on specific world events to know exactly where you were to cause certain things to happen during specific speedruns. Wild but step counter. Um yeah, speed run the speed.
What actual effect does it have is it supposed to have on your game?
It's a it's just a little
count. Okay. And
it's just a little it's a little counter counts the thing. Yeah. I mean, like it it super matters for some stuff. It doesn't matter at all on a casual playthrough, and when it really matters, it super matters. Um,
I see egg hatching in stream.
Yeah. Uh, eggs hatch after a certain number of steps.
Oh, well. Oh, so that actually matches Pokémon Go.
Yes, that's actually one of the places where it aligns pretty well. Um, he is there.

Yep. All right. So, we're going That's right. We're going this way. We're going east, not north.
Have we seen everything that is interesting in town? Let's see. Okay, hold on for a sec for me, Will. So, we have hospitals to heal up my Pokedex Pokemon.
Mhm.
Stores to buy gear.
Mhm.
Are those the only two shops or things we I know there's a gym? The clown stand in front of it.
We don't care about the gym yet, but we will later.
Mhm. Um, yeah, there might be like a in each individual town, there might be a um like a special NPC who might do something special for you, like someone who helps you forget moves or rename Pokémon or evaluate your Pokemon or whatever. And you can um you can see this.
So, you can see it's behind. Hold on. Let me get get rid of us. No, not that. this
Pokemon Center Pokemon

trainers. Okay, so there's a couple things we haven't seen yet.
Correct. But some of them uh are probably inaccessible.
Mhm.
Um for right now, that's generally how it works because we're going to retread here because we can't get to the gym and we know that we're going to retread because we can't get to the gym. Um but we can look around.
Why can't we get to the gym?
Uh because it's blocked by a clown. So, this is the Global Wonder Station, and you can't do that because of the gym thing. I'm kind of doing this methodically. Uh, that's the trainer school. We went there. That's the Pokemon Center. [Music] Um, and then we have uh the shop. And then nothing else in this row. And then we have the gym. And over here we have the Poke Edge Company. Yeah, clowns are in fact the eternal menace. Uh, and then we have this, which is the Jubilife condominiums. I suppose we could become a homeowner, I guess. I don't know. Uh, and then this is the way out of town.

Yeah. So, there were two ways out. And we want this one cuz it goes
This might be Jubilife TV. That's true. Uh, good call, Zarith. Yeah, this is Jubilife TV. What does that make Mr. Mime uh the worst Pokemon ever? Fight me.
So, the is the gym open then or is there also here. That's my bad. I I normally expect there to be one early, but that's that's Jubilee TV.
So, do we not immediately head to a gym?
We can. The first gym is uh that we're supposed to go to is over here.
Oh, okay. It's not in that town.
It's not in this town.
Gotcha.
Didn't you say there was a gym in town?
No, there is no gym in this town. Oh,
okay. I misread the or misremembered the map then.
Yeah. Um, hey you. Yes, you with that cool scarf. You should have seen the boy who came running by early. He ran past me so quickly that I couldn't even manage a hello. Okay, that's probably
probably will.
Okay. Oh, hey, look.

Hey, Jeff, tell me you got a little tougher. Me? Do you even need to ask? Of course I got tougher. Come on, let's battle it out. Oh my god. All right, welcome to our first uh our our first rival encounter. Um, I have no idea how this is going to go. So, let's find out.
I assume we're going to kick his ass.
That is not a safe assumption. Uh, because his Starley's level seven and reminder, he has a water type. [Music] Yes. Ah, 10%. All right. So that's that's the 10% chance to burn. And you will notice that that did very little for it being a level seven Starly. That is because uh that burn has its physical attack. Um and uh does damage, so

[Music] it's great.
Ah, here we go. Quick attack goes first, but does nothing because it's Yep. [Music] Um, I'm thinking too hard. I'm thinking too hard. I click Ember. Starly fainted.
Starly goes poof.
Everyone gain experience points.
Any experience points.
Starly is gaining faster than the boy.
Uh, correct. cuz it just passed it. It is now level six and the boy is still five.
That is correct. I don't remember why that is. [Music] All right. I'm sorry, Piplup. So, uh, we have a choice here, Jeff. And this is why set versus switch matters,

right? Because our Pokemon is weak to our opponent's Pokemon. So, if we had been on switch, I would have gotten a free switch out
to whatever I pick, right? which kind of makes it really easy. But now if I switch in, if I switch into another Pokemon, whatever Piplop was going to do is still going to hit but hit the incoming Pokemon. So if it tries to use a water move and I switch in Bedoff, Bedoff's just going to eat that water move. Um, which is one of the reasons why it's incredibly important uh to like acknowledge the difference between those that one setting and how much it changes the difficulty of the game,
right? Cuz yeah, that feels like it's equivalently going to up it. I'll just call it a whole level of difficulty. Like turns a normal game into a hard game.
Yeah. Oh, okay. Different Pokemon have different XP gains. I'd forgotten that. Or more likely blocked it away because I have feelings about that. Uh

so let's let's try this and see how bad it is. Oh, we outspeed. So that's nice. Okay, not very effective. I was hoping for the burn. Okay, the growl is going to lower our attack, but here because uh our opponent can't swap out and we know we outspeed, it might be good for us to lear. Lear is a move which uh lowers our opponent's defense stat. Uh and both of our remaining uh Pokemon have uh physical attack moves. So this way we're guaranteeing that we'll do additional damage later down the road. [Music]
Wow.
Also, it's really funny because uh our primary attack move
we're not we're already not doing damage. Like what are you going to do? Make us do more not damage. [Music]

Okay, so chat is saying and I'm getting this from multiple sources that there are multiple bands of XP growth and that stronger Pokemon Pokemon which are stronger have stronger moves are like legendaries or dragons or something really cool typically um will belong to slower XP groups whereas common Pokemon like uh Starly or Bedoff will belong to faster ones.
Um, and uh, the reason that I probably haven't noticed is that it's really most visible when you are comparing two Pokémon that receive experience simultaneously in this format. So, when multiple things are um, uh,
it's funny, I've noticed that a little bit of Pokémon Go with the walking mechanic, when you walk a buddy, when you walk a buddy, they find candy, which you use to power them up.
Yep. The more legend or the basically

the rarer the Pokemon, the slower it finds candy. The more common the Pokemon, the faster it finds candy.
Yeah.
Which is equivalently a level up mechanic. I'm still I, by the way, I'm still burn fishing chat cuz it's just got pound. Otherwise, it would have uh [Music] the way the AI works, it will if it has a super effective move, it will generally use it. And we'll talk more in probably a later episode about how important it is to understand what moves your opponents have and when to switch out. [Music] My Pokemon's HP is low. This could be a bit tight. I still have two on the bench, buddy. I don't know.

Is Chimmy Chong just having a hard time hitting or is it harder to hit a water with with a fire?
It's harder to hit a water with a fire. So, we can swap out. Um, let's do that. We'll we'll swap out to uh Sure. Let's Let's swap out to Oh, we don't want to swap into the boy because simple means that the uh growl will immediately make his tackle completely worthless. So, let's swap into Starling. Although I believe even with the the half damage, Ember would likely do more um than uh Scratch because of how many times it crowled. We can
get him, Starly.
We can check um

pretty sure. Oh no, it outspeeds us. Okay. Oh, it has like no HP. All right. So, this is an example of a case where quick attack's good, right? Because our opponent might growl again and lower our attack. But if we quick attack, [Music] actually, I don't know if growl goes first. Some of the status moves, some of the um stat affecting moves have uh different priority bands. Not all of them, but some of them. There's a lot of I don't know if you've noticed this yet, Jeeoff, but like there's a lot of exceptions. Pokemon is sort of a an entire genre based on exceptions. There are lots of very good general rules. And then there are lots of excepts which are very interesting and those exceptions really do build for interesting encounters and um like Pokemon and teams, right? Like faster thing goes first except for trick room,

right? So people build entire teams around trick room because if you're set up for trick room and your opponent isn't, then it's incredibly powerful, right? [Music] All right, Chim Jong learned taunt. Cool.
An incredibly I think that's the one I'm thinking of. What just happened? I lost. You got a thousand poke dollars for winning.
Well, was loaded.
What? What do you mean I lost? Well, that's it. That's the last time I'll ever lose. I'm going to be the world's toughest trainer, and you know it. The first thing to do is take on the Orberg City Pokemon gym. I'm going to toughen up for that. Totally. Maybe I'm thinking of maybe Nova. Maybe what I'm thinking of is um Prankster. Prankster. The ability that gives priority to all nonattack moves.

[Music] Uh I wanted to look at something and make sure that I am thinking of the right move while we go heal cuz brain is full of not this. Yeah. Okay. So target haunted range allows to allows it to only use attack moves for three turns. So, this is a this is not a status effect in the same way as burn or a statffecting thing. This is another way that we can interact with combat, which is a taunt means that you can't do any weird status effect moves. It also means that you can't use some really powerful setup moves. So, if uh Chim Chunga is going first and we know our opponent's trying to set up something like barrier, light screen, baton pass, uh whatever the momento that faints you and gives the next Pokemon a huge stat boost, whatever that is. Um

[Music] we can uh we can interrupt that. [Music]
Char is cute doing his little dance there.
Yeah. or trick room by the way as an example cuz we're talking about trick room as like kind of one of the big like weird exceptions. Okay, let's go heal cuz we got the tar knocked out of us.
Will, you put up a good fight.
I did. I'm also getting lost.
So, we're getting some pretty serious XP here. Like, we've done a couple of level ups really quick. So, I'm also guessing that means there's a lot of level ups.
Correct. Every Pokemon can go to level 100. Huh? Okay.
Yeah. [Music]
Yeah. A taunt is extremely important in competitive play and less in normal play. Uh, actually chat preemptive query. Does is there a NPC fight towards

the end of this one like the champ that uses the better AI? Okay, so here we are on another route. We can go catch Pokemon. We can go fight stuff. Uh, which do you want to do first? Do you want to go try and fight items and make our way to Orberg, or do you want to go catch Pokemon?
Uh, let's let's do one catch since we're right near a patch of grass.
This is the ritual Pokemon summoning dance.
What do we get?
It's just it pretty is it ever worth capturing more than one? So I guess we could look and see how good was the bedoff we caught.
Correct. And uh importantly the answer also depends. So for instance, remember we were talking about abilities, right? There are some Pokemon that have multiple abilities and for the role that you want them to occupy in your team, one of them is better. For instance, uh there's a move uh chat's going to help

me out with this one. There's a move that some Pokemon can get that negates lightning attacks and it's incredibly powerful because you can use it to do a complicated coverage swap during nuzlocks um thunder rod. Thank you. Yeah. And mudsport um as an example. Right. So those are incredibly uh powerful uh abilities. And if we catch one that doesn't have that, we might want to go continue to catch one until it does. But when we're looking for those when we're looking for that catch, um, we might instead take a lightning type or take a take an electric type and use electric moves because if the wild Pokemon is immune to the electric move, then it's got the ability that we want and that'll save us some time and money. [Music]

So, there's not a lot of Pokemon we can encounter right now, are there?
Uh, I will look up the route charts for this um for these routes. [Music] I see these some Pokemon can evolve into multiple things. So that can also be a
Yes.
Or from chat.
That is correct. [Music]
It's also interesting to me that once you start a battle, it you have to decide beforehand if you're catching or not. You were saying, right?
No, you can you can decide right away. I just approach the battle differently.
Ah, okay.
Right. Like I will approach it differently. Like I will debuff it and then whittle it down and swap out to a different Pokemon who's less likely to accidentally knock it out. And I'll do

some extra work. [Music]
Ooh, Abra. [Music]
Let's catch this one, Will.
Okay. Well,
we're going to try actually [Music] Okay. So, um the problem is that Abra knows a move called teleport and it will teleport away on its first turn.
So, what I'm trying to remember,
it's just going to run.
Correct. However,
Mhm.
we can taunt it. And I think that's the right move here. So, we're going to try and taunt it to lock it out of teleporting. It may be faster and teleport may have some amount of priority. Um, but this is a try to get two throws instead of one.

Okay. Come get some. [Music] [Laughter] If we have two more things, is it worth hitting it once to weaken it, or do we think we have a higher chance by throwing two Pokeballs?
Uh, we could That's a really great question. Um, we could I don't know that we don't just knock it out with Scratch. That's the problem. It's pretty fragile physically, and so I'm worried about just knocking it out. But now that we know it's here, we could grind for it and taunt instead and like try again.
Oh, is this cumulative? If we taunt it a second time, does it then have five moves or does it just reset it to three?
I believe it resets it to three, but I'm not 100% sure. And the other thing to know is that using weird weird status

effects like taunt multiple times in a row gives it a chance to fail,
right? Um, I think we should just try and catch it. Let's just throw a Pokeball. And chat, I need all of your luck. I'm taking it all.
Hit it in the head. Throw it on the head. Come on. Bean it. Knock it out. Which bridge.
Yeah, let's go. All right.
I believe.
Look at that.
All right. So, we didn't actually need the taunt, but it was nice to like demonstrate the usefulness of taunt.
Yeah. No, that was actually I enjoyed learning about like that was a perfect use of taunt for
the thing.
Yeah. Uh oh.
Plus, we now have an uninjured one.
I thought Nova, what it is is it does it always fall for the taunt? I thought it got a fail chance under some circumstances,

but I could be wrong. Okay. Do we want to give Abra a nickname?
Um, I think the general rule will is up until we decide if it's a long-term keeper, it doesn't get a name.
Okay. Well, we are going to have uh we're going to need to find the person who renames things. Chat, where's that person?
Um,
if it is tricky, then let's give Abra a nickname. Um, let's see. It's a psychic and it is it a psychic or a magician? Uh if okay there's a very long explanation to that. It is a psychic magician that bends spoons and that's one of the reasons that Kadabra hasn't had a Pokémon card in like a dog's age. It's a very weird complicated situation legally speaking.
There was a spoon bending psychic magician who sued the Pokemon company over likeness rights over the Pokemon that this Pokemon evolves into. I'm not

making a word of that up, by the way. That is all 100% actual factual like words that are true.
Does that mean we can ever then get to an Alakazam?
Yeah, that's actually the Abraadabra. Alakazam.
Yeah. Oh, I know. I
Yeah,
I actually know this evolution line. That's why I was
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we can get there.
Yeah.
Um Oh, do names carry over?
Yes.
Okay. So, this is psychic and magician.
Well, it's a psychic, right? There's not a there's not a it is thematically a magician, but there's no magician type.
Well, okay. I'm going to name it hoping it's strong. Well, I think this has to be Constantine.
I like it. Okay. Uh, can I can I name it? Uh,

chat, I can't spell today. Someone type the word Constantine.
C O N S T A N T I N E
I N E. Great. Awesome. Uh,
or as Lucifer would say, Constantine.
Oh, yeah. That's such a good movie. God, I I hope that gets the sequel. Anyway, um [Music] uh Okay, so uh that's our catch. Um and now let's take a look at it real quick. I'm also keeping an eye on the time so we don't run too far over. Oh, that's right. Uh, we can also teleport's a great example of Yeah, it only has teleport. Teleport's a great example of um a move that we can use anywhere. So, uh you see that I get it here right on the main menu. And if we go look at it, um if you use it in the overworld, you warp

to the last Pokemon center.
Ooh, you can also use it to switch with another Pokemon in the party. Um, so it's like a switch that happens at on your turn, which actually super matters for some occurrences, right? Sometimes you want Abra to take the hit and then swap into something that will be faster but fragile as an example.
But a go home teleport is nice.
Mhm. Yep. Uh, and then synchronize. Um, the attacker will receive the same condition if uh it inflicts a burn, poison, or paralysis on this Pokemon is its ability.
So, it's kind of a reflect.
Yes.
Okay. Um, we haven't really used any resources, so maybe we go and get into a battle.
Boy, with the blue cap.
Yeah, I'm full of energy cuz I get power from my Pokemon. Also from this caffeine I found. Watch me drink a whole bunch

and chase it with a pixie stick. Ah. Ah, I mean, he has two Pokemon.
Yeah, he's got two Pokemon. Uh, so let's get out of here.
Gangster Michael. Oh, youngster Michael.
Youngster Michael.
You were blocking the first part, so I was just I was getting out the way. I was getting out the way. [Music]
There's a lot of bedoffs around here. All these kids have been capturing local.
I mean, they're not exactly going to go anywhere else, right? They're kids. And yes, derpies, we're going to talk about all of that later. I know um for some people who are coming in, uh you may be wondering why I'm not mentioning stuff that comes later or why we're sort of pacing it this way. Um, a huge part of that is because I want to take our time and I don't want to
uh one of the problems that uh it's very possible to get into with um uh specifically with

uh with Pokemon is that there is too much information. There's just too much. It is actually one of my biggest criticisms of Pokemon is that there is just too much information. So by pacing it and taking our time rather than focusing on all the things like where we can get encounters later or what we're doing later is like and focusing on the stuff in front of us is to avoid that overload. All right, Constine grew level five and no move.
My poor
take his lunch money.
My poor bed. You got his lunch money for winning. Oh, I have a question, Will. Um, just look at how fast the um Aberate leveled up, is it, for example, 20 XP per level or is like level one 20, level two, 21, level three? In other words, does it scale? So the and the reason I asked that is that would mean for example if you're leveling a level say you we have a we catch a new Pokemon and

it's level five and our main one is level 50 and the time it takes us to go from 50 to 51 that other level five may like get up to level 15 or is it basically roughly the same amount per meaning catching a low-level Pokemon
your levels are bigger.
Okay.
Yeah. So that's also, by the way, in especially in a game like this, it's almost a catch-up mechanic
because otherwise it might be like, "Oh, we found a level five Pokémon. There is nowhere you can fight safely with it for a long time." Because all the other Pokemon are so highly leveled.
Exactly. So, did you know the first Pokemon to appear in a battle is the one at the top of your team list? A question Jeff asked earlier. [Music] I don't even know how that happened. Trainer tips. Pokemon use energy called powerp points or PP for short. Replenish PP. Head for any Pokemon center. And that's the number that we see.

Or drink a drink.
Yeah. Or drink a drink. We're always together. I'll show you how we've bonded by making this Pokemon fight until it gets knocked out. All right.
Wait, have we seen this? We've seen that boy before, right? No, it's it there's only one model, right? This is this is a pretty common uh trope is that there's only one model for like a kid.
Oh, actually I've bumped into that because there's only one nurse, one police woman,
correct,
etc. in um Indigo.
In fact, they joke about it.
Yeah, correct. They're all sisters, I believe.
Sisters and cousins. Starly level nine. Constantine level six. Wing attack.
We'll look at that in a second. Um, and I saw someone earlier mentioned shinies. That's the reason we're not talking about shinies cuz that's like a whole other thing that we'll get to at some point when we're not trying to

cover fundamentals is we'll talk about shinies. Um, wing attack [Music] is a physical flying move.
And this is one of the reasons why we want Starly to be fast, right? Because quick attack is cool, but is less powerful and also a normal move. So, if we have if we're fighting a bug or a grass or something else to speak to flying, right? This will let us go first and do much more damage
because it's power 60 instead of 30.
60 instead of 40. Yes.
Oh, 40. Okay.
Also, I believe it's flying normal, unless I'm completely losing my mind.
It is flying normal. So, it's getting stabbed on both. This is also not uncommon to go up a go up the stairs and you'll find a thing. I found a trainer while looking for some

Pokémon. She has three,
but one of them is a bedoff, so not really a Pokemon. Does stab work on normal moves? I believe so. I don't think normal is an exception to stab. Uh, but chat can also correct me if I'm wrong about that one. [Music] So,
does that status effect stay between fights or is that that Oh, that's not a status. That's a
That is a stat change and that only applies as long as uh Chimchar is out.
Okay. Uh you see uh Dispunk you think the basic mechanics of shiny are short, but the the the short blurb is there are shiny Pokémon. And then we get into why are Pokemon shiny, how are Pokemon shiny, and how

are Pokemon uh how how do you determine uh whether or not a Pokemon is shiny on the back end? And those are all much bigger conversations. Um
man, Char Jim Charstone didn't get low on his fire.
Hey Will, can we bring out Constantine for one?
Uh yeah, we can swap. Assuming
I just I want to see him in action.
Yeah, I mean it's a bed. It's not going to [Music] So, switch always goes first and then attacks. So, here we can teleport. Yeah, we can't even have the part of the conversation about shinies till we talk about IVs. That's correct. Unstein

acquired. Insomnia. [Music] And then we get a free sweatshin. Right. But Constantine took the absorb hit. I'm actually going to swap to Starly here. Um cuz we'll
Does Constantine never attack?
Uh not yet. Not yet. Teleport's the only move he knows. This is not uncommon. Some Pokemon that get extremely powerful later, Abra and Magikarp are two great Gen One examples, are absolutely useless in battle when they start. Uh it was quite a challenge originally to like level a Magikarp up to the point where it turned into a Gyarados and then became incredibly powerful. Um Abra by the same token doesn't do anything until it learns a psychic attack move. [Music]
So currently Abra is just a trickster.
Uh yeah, correct.
Okay. So Constantine was a good name.
Yeah. Uh so uh Chad Chad's also correct.

Uh, Zerith correctly points out that because Constantine was in the battle against that bed, he will get more experience, right? So, Constantine, Starly, and Chim Chonga were all in combat when the bed was out. So, they will get more experience than the boy will
as we can see.
One of the other reasons I wanted to sub him in.
Yeah, I'm seeing grew to level seven. Oh, she looks so sad. [Music]
Uh
oh. What's the sign say? Oh, never mind. That's
I can't get to the sign. It's It's up It's up a knee high wall, Jeff. I can't get to it. Um here's another great example. Uh oh. [Music]

If it runs away, do we still get XP?
That's a great question. I think the answer is no.
Let's find out.
Okay. I mean, we'll see if I can just knock it out in one shot.
Yeah.
But, nope. And then it's going to teleport and run away. This is This is what would have happened, right?
Okay. So, no XP.
Yeah, no X. Uh, no. We We might chat saying that they're worried that um Constantine won't become an Alakazam. I don't know where y'all are getting that idea from. Uh, we can absolutely make that happen. Uh, I have I have I assure you I have no end of volunteers in the mod crew alone who will let me trade and trade back. Um, let's try scratching it. Don't think this will knock out.
Does he later get an ability called

sniff?
Uh, I don't know. Um, a second one because that did 50%. A second one would knock it out. Let's change to the boy and then we're going to tackle it once and then do the thingy. [Music] And that's why we didn't switch to Starley, cuz it would be out.
All right, perfect.
Ooh, nice. And this will be Well, this would be good except the first gym's a rock gym, so not great. Yeah, Nova says, "My switch to my copy of Brilliant Diamond is literally 8 ft away right now." Correct.
You were in fact one of the mods I was thinking of. [Music]
So, does a teleport bring count on

bringing him in as an enter effect? [Music]
That's a really great question. The answer is yes, because it's a switch. So theoretically, Kadabra can absorb a hit to bring in the guy who does does the debuff. Okay,
correct. Do we want a nickname?
Um,
let's see. We could we could He's a Sphinx, so the answer it could be man,
which would be the answer to his riddle.
I like it.
Okay. I like how we're getting like weird deep cut uh philosophy jokes and like um mythology references. Uh I think though that as weird as this is, we've got we don't have terribly much time left. We should start looking at

wrapping up. Uh because
is that a tunnel?
Yes, it is. Oh,
this is actually the way to Orberg cuz remember Orberg's to the east.
So, let's see. Well, if we want it, we do have Kadabra can just take us back to town.
That's true. We can do that. [Music]
I like the fact that Pokemon have like extra non-combat effects. like,
yeah,
that's a nice touch I hadn't realized was in or even thought about being in the game.
Yeah. Uh, fly in particular is a very um has a bunch of specific in like specific use cases as a combat move and uh has a the ability to fly. And surf is similar. Surf is a very big water attack that hits both Pokemon in doubles, but is

also the ability to surf.
Okay, so we just we're fully healed. We've caught multiple new Pokemon.
I've learned about leveling up. I've learned about special attacks. I've learned about the on enter battlefield attack abilities. Yeah,
I've learned that Pokémon can have abilities that are non-combat and can do used for things such as travel.
Yeah,
we got to watch.
This is the other ability for Shins. So, we may need to go get we may need to go get an intimidate shanks cuz this one's not good. Um, okay.
This one becomes competitive and deals more damage to Pokemon of the same gender, but less damage to Pokemon of the opposite gender. Uh, which is not predictable or good. So, we may need to This Shins is not a good Shinx.
They don't always have the same ability.
They don't There are multiple possible abilities per Pokemon. And also, uh, its primary cool attack is a special attack, and it has lowered, uh, No, it does have

increased special attack, but has lowered speed, which is not good for electric types. So, this is a bad Shins. Um,
okay.
Well, maybe we'll have the man.
Uh, well, Jeff and I will talk off stream. Um, I may go get us a better Shins before next stream rather than making chat sit through us like hunt for a specific Pokemon. That's not fun or interesting. I
I think Will that is perfectly fine for the playthrough is to be like, "Cool, we've caught a Sphinx. We want a better one. We'll just do that off. We're going to go get a better one. A good one. A better one." That's one. Uh, but that dear friends is going to be it today. As I said, just kind of looking through what I learned, and I know there is a lot, but like we're doing the slow roll of abilities.
Absolutely.
I'm sorry. Slow roll of learning.
Correct. There there is. Um and that that I think is one of the reasons that Pokemon has endured as such an interesting and um sort of beloved franchise is that it is both a mile wide

and in some cases a mile deep, right? You can just get like you can have a team of just horses. Like you could have a team that's all horses from different generations and just you could you could have a team that's all horses. It would be difficult to put together, but you could have a team that's all horses.
I think I read an article about it. Somebody was opining about their equin.
Okay, great. Um, but also you can go deep into like nature and abilities and uh Eevees and Ivies, which we'll get to at some point, and shinies and eggs and all these other things that like really enable the game to have more depth if you want to go there. Um, and it's kind of interesting to me that a lot of this has been kind of in the game since Red and Blue. Um, and it it's just sort of gotten deeper and deeper and different and weirder the further from the origination it's gone.
I think part of what this is telling me too is that this adds to the replayability. Yes. Because depending

upon the first actually there's less variability on the initial things you catch it looks like. But if there was there looks like there'll be enough variability as we go that your run starts branching out on the things you could have. Like right now there's only a limited amount of stuff we could have in our roster. Correct.
Yeah, exactly. Um, and that's actually one of the appealing things about Nuzlocke is that it forces you
to accept that RNG rather than trying to craft the best team. It's the best team with the things that you've gotten, right? And that's a very big difference for some people.
So again, next week we're going to talk about uh what is an indie anyway. Please come uh for design club next week when we'll talk about that. Um
and we'll be back in a couple of weeks at some point with part three or part four, chapter three.
Yeah, chapter three, part Yeah, exactly. Uh of this
of our playthrough.
Yeah. Uh all right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining. Uh I think all is left is for you to say bye to the

people, Jeff.
Bye to the people, Jeff. Thanks, everybody.
See, I'm going to remember to change this this time. See? Watch. [Music]