The Nuzlocke??

So, as my loyal readership can see, I have not made any updates, nor have I even been playing my copy of sapphire for a while. But just for a quick update

I was able to get to gym #4 (Norman –normal type) cleared out all the trainers, but I lost 2 numels getting there, one to random a trainer with explosion and another to a critical hit.  I battled Norman, and defeated his first slaking pretty handily, but in switched his vigoroth with vital spirit and before to long, two of my essential teammates had been KO’d.  I’m sorry to say that I ragequitted and have not picked up my Sapphire game since then, so I do not even remember who I currently have on my team.

In the mean time I was getting ready to make a massive trade over from my copy of diamond to soul silver.  This preparation included giving my good monsters in diamond items that I wanted transferred, and catching an equal number of dummy pokemon on soul silver to make the trades with.  I need give a big thank you to my brother-in-law for letting me borrow his DS so that I could transfer 3 boxes worth of pokemon (about 90 monsters) between my two games, a task that took about 2 ½ hours.

Since that was completed, I have been working on finishing off some teams that I dreamed up.  I’ll put them up as I finish them, I have already completed a hail team, and I just finished a more standardized team, and am working on a sun based team and another slightly unorthodox team that I just call my croteam.

I’ll post the one that I just finished:

My lead is a Swampert with ice beam, earthquake, protect and stealth rock. It is out there to get stealth rock and abuse it’s great resistances and type coverage, and act as a goto pokemon as the battle goes on.

Next I have a Magnezone with discharge, substitute, magnet rise and tri attack for hitting grounds, it acts as a steel trapper with magnet pull and can surprise a few opponents with magnet rise to avoid earthquakes.

I put a Dusknoir on this team as well, with pain split for healing; will-o-wisp, shadow sneak, and brick break from some coverage and screen breaking. This dusknoir lives to burn things and pick things off with STAB shadow sneak, and then to stick around by abusing pain split. 

Next is the Red Gyrados who takes the role of a bulky gyrados with taunt, dragon dance, waterfall and bounce for STAB.  This gyrados acts as a check for lots of things and stops stat boosters with taunt and has more defense and hit points to take hits.

I have a revenge killer with Flygon holding a choice scarf to boost its speed and hopefully make a killing with outrage, earthquake, stone edge, and scout with u-turn. With good typing and u-turn it will have many opportunities to come in and wreak havoc.

Just a note about the game: Revenge Killing.  In the game of Pokemon, if an opponent KO’s one of my monsters, on the following turn, I can switch in another monster on my team without it taking an attack (which is different from the standard switching in a battle). Because of this, many players have taken to crafting ‘Revenge killing’ pokemon to go on their teams.  These are typically very fast monsters with high [special] attack, and can typically be wearing a choice scarf to give them the extra speed to strike first. My fast Flygon can hopefully KO whatever is out, or scare it away, effectively preventing it from becoming a problem.  Other revenge killers have trapping abilities like Wobboffet (but its use it typically frowned upon) or Dugtrio or even Trapinch, or make use of the move pursuit to prevent their prey from escaping because it deals extra damage to monsters that switch out, these include Tyranitar or Weavile.  Flygon operates slightly differently, with the move u-turn, if I predict that the monster is not going to remain in to take a potential outrage or earthquake I can u-turn to deal a little damage, and then see what switches in to take the hit, so I can then select what to switch in, rather than just try to blindly out guess my opponent.

Finally the star of this team is a swords dance Lucario with close combat, extreme speed and crunch for coverage of ghosts and psychics.  The team exists to (hopefully) weaken or KO checks to Lucario so that it can perform a clean sweep of a weakened opposing team.

As for, what I’m working on right now, I am training up a Slowbro for use on my croteam.  My croteam will finish before my sun team, due to the need to train up an Espeon up to 70’s to have it pass the move morning sun to an Archenine

Nuzlocke: day next

I belive this is day 2, the third time,

my team is still coming along smashingly, and I 've added a Whismer to my team, another whismer will probably be added today, and one of my cascoons' evloved into a dustox
so my team changes are:

Rollypoly, lvl 10 Dustox

Winston, lvl 7 Whismer


there will be some updates on Monday

How not to Nuzlocke

Tell me when the alarm bells go off for you that this might be a bad idea:

taking a rock type gym with only 1 effective attack on a team of 6 pokemon
taking on a rock gym with 4 rock weak pokemon
taking on that gym with all your pokemon lower than the gym leader's team

... well, my attampt to tackle the rustboro gym ended in disaster, I lost my whole team, I did have a zigzagoon left, but I decided it would be better to start over, rather than try to start from that point with only 1 pokemon.

so starting again:
Day 1 v3

given the problems of starting with torchick, I elected to start with mudkip, named Gilligan

I am currently about to leave the Petalburg woods (just before Rustboro)
and my team is:

Gilligan (mudkip) lvl 11

Rollypoly (Cascoon) lvl 8

Stiltskin (Cascoon) lvl 7

Highnesnes (Slackoth) lvl7

I'll try to keep doing small updates at least 3 times a week

Nuzlock: day 3

Today was kind of a boring day, I caught a new zigzagoon, and named him bandito, and caught a female tailow and named her Jane. Just more grinding today, but hopefully tomorrow I'll take on the rustboro gym. and I'll give a little update of my current team:

Dustox lv 10 named Poly
Torchic lv 12 named Blaine
Zigzagoon lv 11 named Bandit
Taillow lvl 11 named Jane
Zigzagoon lv 4 named Bandito
Beautifly lv 10 named Beautifly (will be changed to Rolly one I find the name rater)

perhaps I'll add pictures soon,

everyone is still alive, I had a few near death experiences, but hopefully we'll be ready for Rustboro gym soon, with all my rock-weak pokemon.

Nuzloke: day 1

So, I decided to start my Challenge by choosing a torchic (named Phoenix) and running through the introductory sections, and once I could get more monsters, the first thing I stumbled across was a lotad (named Jerry). and I considered myself lucky to have found one of those this early in the game, or at all.  I progressed in the intro sections, and toppled a few early trainers, and picked up a zigzagoon and named him Stardust (ya know, like Ziggy Stardust). but alas, day 1 was abruptly cut short by an early trainer with a taillow that landed two important critical hits with peck and quick attack and KO'd all 3 of my team members.  and that means that my run is over.

Alas, we had such high hopes, but I have learned something, beware of critical hits. I had foolishly given the taillow a chance to set up by not starting with my strongest team member, and for that mistake, my companions paid with their lives.

Well, with such a brief run, I was ready to be off again. so start again I did

Day 1 v2.

I started again with a torchic and named him Blane. Why torchic you ask? due to the lack of fire types in this game, it is possible to never find one, and a fire time will be too important in the final battles to do without. So I take this oppertunity to get one.

the first other monster that I caught was a wrumple, which I forgot to name (Do'h), but it has now evolved into a silcoon, which means I should expect a beautifly some time soon, and I'll have to give him a name once I come across the name rater, in a few towns, but for now I am still off.  I have not yet come to the point that I lost at last time, but I will get through it before I post again.

Will I fall to the same fate as before?
Or will I endure?

tune in tomorrow for the exciting update

Nuzlocke challange

Since I am at somewhat of a pause in many of my games, I decided to restart my Pokemon Sapphire game and try a Nuzlocke run.  If you have never heard of Nuzlocke, you can google it and look at some of the comics that people have made for it.  but if you don't want to even do that... a Nuzlocke challange is just playing through a pokemon with some extra self-imposed rules to make the game more difficult.  the extra rules are:

1. I can only catch the first pokemon that I meet in any area
2. If any pokemon faints, it cannot ever be used again (I will put them in a box marked as 'dead' and won't use them again)
3. Every Pokemon I capture must be named

those are the 3 strict rules, a few things are left to interpretation, so as extra rules
iv. the only items allowed to be purchased are pokeballs, or quest essential items
v. only found items may be used (items found on the ground) but never revives
vi. berries are allowed
vii. not allowed to skip any trainer battles by fancy walking (no avoiding trainer battles)


so with this going on, I'll post a little about what happens, since I do play each day. I'll try to update on my lunch breaks.

BTW: the original Nuzlocke was just 'hard mode' but got named by the first guy to make a comic about  them that was littered with 'Lost' references. you can find his comics if you search for them.

I'll report on my first disasterous day later

The future of this blog

so, to my loyal readership, I'm not sure the direction that this blog is going to take, it is mostly just a fun project, so it might start to include some things that may not quite fit the mo(u)ld that I previously set, anyone is still welcome to visit the site and make comments, and posting may become even more scarce, but that is the way of things.

Even though very few people read this blog, it feels nice to get these thoughts out, I might write some stories, or just pontificate about random things, who knows what will be going on, but it might be something

Chrono Trigger!!

Today I'm going to talk about Chrono Trigger (if you couldn't tell from the title) I remember buying this game from a friend of mine who sold me his old Super Nintendo. From my first play through the game, I was hooked.  This game has a lot of things going for it that I still like, and I'll go through them in no particular order. 
The Story: Starting out as a bunch of curious kids trying to do the right thing that by rescuing a princess trapped in time, into an epic story to (of course) save the world from certain destruction.  One of the things that I still like about this story is that it does not get so caught up with weird metaphysical things going on (no villain escapes to the dreamshpere to destroy all existence), you just need to kill Lavos, and you need to be strong enough to do it, some things happen to you on the way of that quest, but pure and simple that is the task, because if you don't, He will bring about mass destruction.  This was one way that the sequel, Chrono Cross disappointed me.  In that game, I needed to stop an evil cat man, run across frozen waves, battle dragons to collect their flames, swap realities, swap bodies, all while Chrono, Marle and Lucca make cameo appearances as child spirits... and then you kill Lavos at the end of the game (again).  I had no idea what I was doing by the end of the game, I was just killing things to get them to spew mountians of text at me that spun the game into even more confusion. But not so with Chrono Trigger, just kill Lavos.
     The characters themselves were also interesting to me,they each had a back story that was either thrown in the limelight (like Frog and Magus), or could be discovered with a little probing (Marle, Lucca, Robo) and it made them feel a bit more human, which is quite a feat for little 2-D animated sprites who spend most of their time smashing or slicing things.

The Gameplay: This was another aspect that I really enjoyed.  The battles do not occur randomly, they occur (for the most part) when you walk into the next enemy. Some minor battles could be avoided with clever walking, and made it nice that you could get rewarded by skipping battles for good control of the characters.  For instance, the sewers in the future, I would always skip them when you had the first chance to go into them, and then return later, but if you return later, the battles are very easy, but several can be skipped if you are "quiet" and don't disturb the monsters down there. 
  Then there are the battles themselves.  These were very well done, team members could team up for attacks to do extra damage or have extra effects (team healing, confusing the enemy...) , and also some attacks were based on the location of the players and the enemies, such as the falcon hit, (Chrono and Ayla) that hits all enemies in a horizontal line across the middle of the screen, or Robo's area bomb attack that damages all enemies directly around him. It would have been cool if you could move around during a battle, to reposition for the different attacks, but there was such a variety of attacks that you never need to move the characters for maximum effect, but it would be a cool feature.  Supposedly Chrono Cross allowed you to use double attacks, but I was never able to get any of them. 
  One instance of the gameplay that did not bother me when I first played the game, but would like to see changed, is the limit of only 3 characters in the party at a time.  I am sure that the limit of three was more a hardware/software limitation of the Super Nintendo rather than a story choice, but it would be cool to undertake the later areas of the game as a large group and be able to use multiple double and triple attacks in large battles.  And again, the fact that this appeared in Chrono Trigger did not bother me so much, it is just that three in a party seems to be the magic number that every party in every role-playing game can have.  I was not too surprised that Final Fantasy games (7 and 8) and Crono Cross only allowed three in a party, but when I finally played Knights of the Old Republic, I was sorely saddened that I could only take three of my party members out at once, and the rest had to sit at home base and twiddle their thumbs (maybe the sequel has addressed this?).  Again, this is not a major hang up that I have with the game, but if I could do it again, I'd throw that rule out.

What else is there... the music I guess.  I enjoyed the music from the game, it got in my head, and there was a good deal of it, for all the different areas, times, moods and the like. the music does float around in my brain with other classic video game music like metroid and zelda music. Now that I think about it, most new games have music that is much less memorable, except perhaps for every Star Wars game that was ever made, I cannot think of the music, perhaps they do not want it to be a distracting (or perhaps memorable) part of the game, and it is really just there to add to the mood, and not take away from the action. 

Replayability... well, I still like to play the game because it is so classic, there is no multiplayer (I hear the new remake of the game did add a multiplayer section).  The New Game Plus option was nice, and gave you a chance to take your high level characters through the game again, and I guess discover some of the alternate endings.  Again, if I were doing it again, I would add a "master quest" type challenge with much harder puzzles and battles to take on with your high level characters, but I certainly can't complain too much, the game was a challenge all the way through, which I feel is the way a game like this should be. 

The remake:  Chrono Trigger was released again on the Gameboy DS not too long ago as a nearly direct port, with some extra features added on at the end, according to reviews I have read.  I have not picked up a copy of the game, but I have thought about it.  I wish they had done more than just do a simple port of the old game, I guess it was a good money-making move, which is after all what all these companies exist for, but I would have wanted something more.  Think like the change from Super Metroid to Metroid Prime, or Zelda: Link to the past to Zelda; Ocarina of Time.  A transition like those games got was what I was hoping for with Chrono Cross, but what I got, I feel was a game loosely organized around some ideas that sprang out of some one thinking about Chrono Trigger.  I know that they say Chrono Cross is based off of some other materials that were made by that same group, and it was a good game in it's own right, but it just lacked the magic that made Chrono Trigger great. 

So there are some of my thoughts about one of my favorite games. Chime in with your thoughts about the game, or any of my remarks.

My latest obsession

If you have looked at the list of games on the side, you note that there are 2 Pokemon games listed.  It is true. I do play pokemon.

I first played Red/Blue on the original Gameboy, and despite what I said around my friends, I actually enjoyed the game more than my little brother whose games they were.  Then for a while they faded into obscurity, and that was nearly that. but I did have a gameboy advance, and through twist of fate, I got my hands on a copy of Pokemon Sapphire, that was saved from being thrown away.  I whizzed through Hoenn with my trusty Swampert and blew through the gyms and elite four and captured Kyogre.  At that point, I started looking for something more.

My fist Internet searches took me mostly to serebii.net to glean more information about breeding mechanics, damage calculation, EV's, IV's and natures, but everyone kept talking about different tiers, and I kept trying to find out how the different monsters were graded (or assigned to tiers) and I eventually got to Smogon.com, and I thought I had found what I was looking for. While Smogon does have lots of good strategy and tips, there are a few things that I do not like about their site, but that is a post for another day.

I occasionally reward myself at the end of semesters, and at one time I decided I should get one of the gen 4 games, Diamond and Pearl had been out for a while at this time. So, once again with my little brother's gameboy DS, I bought a used copy of Pokemon Diamond. I selected Diamond because it did not provide redundant access to monsters I could get in Sapphire (like Salamence). I started with Chimchar, and smashed my way through the game, I collected my signature legendary (to this day I can't remember which is which, or which I have), and took down the elite four with the help of my (now) infernape, a gyrados and riachu as the high level champs of my game, from beating the elite 4 multiple times for money/experience.

As a gift I received Pokemon Soul Silver, and have just recently defeated the elite four, and traveled across to Kanto, and taken on a few gyms there, but my adventure is ongoing. 

I have taken some stabs at the battle tower in my Sapphire and Diamond games, Ill put up my battle tower teams, justt for fun (that is what this is all about, right)

Sapphire Battle Tower

Lead with Starmie with surf, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt and Recover. EV'ed to be fast and Ko stuff before it can set up. This guy wins many BT matches by himself

 Medicham was my 2nd choice for my physical attacker, I originally had a rhydon, but it was simply an under performer. medicham knows: Brick Break, Shadow Ball, Fake Out, and Psych Up. was a backup if Starmie couldn't kill it

Weezing was the staller/wall. It used Sludge Bomb, Flamethrower, Haze, and Explosion, and carried leftovers. Only psychics could normally beat it, and it was a swichin for grass types that threatened starmie.

Sadly this team never it made to more than about 50ish wins, and it has now been transferred to my Diamond game, where they can sit around collecting PC dust. Starmie is still useful after the transfer, but the other 2 are lackluster after the physical/special split.

My Diamond BT Team. This team was built to beat the BT leader the first time for the purpose of collecting battle points

My lead is a Choice Banded Staraptor, it knows Brave Bird, Close Combat, U-turn and Return. It lives to KO, until it is no longer useful, but can be saved to hit things with intimdate for later

I figured I needed a Steel type if I ever wanted to switch in, and Metagross has not disappointed.  It is a fairly standard Agiligross with a Life orb. It knows: Agility(big surprise), Meteor Mash, Zen Headbutt, and Earthquake, and the killing power has not disappointed, he does not even miss that often

Lanturn is my last member, and is in because it can be impossible to KO, with Resistance to water and ice, and immunity to electric attacks and huge HP and recovery, it carries leftovers and runs the set of: Surf, Ice beam, Discharge and Aqua ring for stalling.

I have a normal battle team that has been made, and another one that is just starting, as well as a few stand alone monsters, and an alternative Diamond BT team that are all ready to go, but those will wait for another day

The Namesake

I though I should put a first post on this blog about the game that the blog's name comes from. Diablo 2.  I purchased Diablo 2 some time after it came out (like I do with most of my games) so I had seen much of it before I played it at friends houses.  I obtained the game not by buying it, but by trading a copy of Giants: Citizen Kabuto for it, and it was a good trade in my eyes. 
After looking over the classes somewhat, I decided to try my hand with the Paladin. Paladins have a mix of offensive and defensive skills, and it was not too long before I was zealing monsters to death with scepters and shields.  I eventually wised up and learned a bit more about the game mechanics and built a smiting blessed hammer paladin, with max concentrate.  Blessed hammer let me deal big damage to monster mobs, and smite let me stun lock single powerful monsters.  With this build I felt invincible, until it was nerfed when the expansion came out. 
the expansion pack did not disconcert me too much, many of my old characters became obsolete, but the new content made up for it in my mind.  I eventually made a brickadin (super high defenses and resists, so I never got hit and never took damage) This was best for fighting the Lag monster, that would always strike as I played online.  I also made a throwing paladin, ninja star assassin, dual wielding barbarian, blaze sorceress, and a few other unconventional characters. 
But mostly I remember the clicking, shift clicking, pressing alt and tab, (and only occasionally switching out of the game when I did not mean to) and the eternal hunt for better items.  I also remember the hunts for waypoints and stairwells, so that certain areas could just be passed through on the way to more lucrative areas. 

As for the current state of my Diablo 2 playing, I just reinstalled the vanilla version onto my new computer and it works great, but alas, there is no expansion pack for me to use, since it belonged to my little brother, and he is using it far far away from where I currently reside, I am also too cheap to buy my own copy, which is still $20 for a 10 year old product that is not a full game.  I do like that they added the reset skills and attributes ability to the NPC, so you can rebuild your character with the click of a button.

What does the future hold as far as Diablo 2 is concerned, I might be tinkering around it a bit longer, but will not pick up Diablo 3 for a long time, if ever, but that is a rant for another day.  feel free to make any remarks about Diablo 2 memories, comments or predictions.

Welcome to the Mouldy Tome

You have arrived at the Mouldy Tome. This is just a little blog I have started to talk about some video games that I like to play.  I'll just make a few points as we begin:

• This blog will talk about old games, not super old school games like pong and things like that, I'm talking about games that were played a few years ago on the PC and game systems. 
• There will be little contructive discussion about World of Warcraft discussed on this blog.  If you came here looking for help with WoW quests you'd best leave now. I understand that the moldy tome is a quest name from WoW, but I took the name from the same place WoW got it, from Diablo 2, which is something this blog might be about.
• While comments and disscussion are welcome from readers (I hope I get at least 1), I will be moderating all comments, and anything that is not decent (family friendly) will not be tolerated.