Home in Time for Christmas - a Pokemon Red "nuzlocke" challenge report

[Seperallis]

5

I had to take a minute to consider what had even happened with the loss of Birb, before “I” came out to mop up, winning both the battle and Deontay the Hitmonchan for our team. Life goes on, an ASMRdeus the Drowzee was called up from the reserves to fill the open sport Birb left on the team.

The only thing doing was to take on Team Rocket. Going floor to floor clearing Silph Co. of the buggers took most of my evening but wasn’t too much of a challenge, even after WHAT’s ambush that I definitely saw coming yet definitely completely forgot about 5 minutes later. Trap and Patrick made short work of Giovanni minutes later, finally freeing the building and the city from the clutches of Team Rocket and ending my preparations to face the next gym. Picking up Lusitania the Lapras from the grateful Silph employees, we left town.

Flying back to Fuchsia City, I immediately barrelled through the gym with “I” leading the charge and Backpack carrying the rest. Reaching Koga, “I” did what he could to thin the herd, and Backpack came in to finish the job. After receiving a thrashing, Koga’s final pokemon Weezing hung on with a sliver of health and struck back in revenge with a kamikaze self-destruct attack; Backpack took the X-Attack boosted damage, but couldn’t handle the critical hit on top of it that brought him to his knees from nearly full health. We won, but it was a pyrrhic victory to lose Backpack, whose Horn Drill shenanigans I’d planned to carry the team through the Elite Four.

Maybe, in retrospect, I should have used them here.



It took about half an hour to discover the answer to how I would fill this now-empty spot on the team, and get over the blow to morale. I eventually decided on Yeet the Cubone before going to bed.

* * *

Do you know how long it takes to pull up pokemon from reserves to your main team? A long-ass time. Starting at level 9, ASMRdeus had a jump-start by being the lead pokemon through Silph Co, but it still took 6 trips to the Fuchsia PokeCenter to refill a 25-use Confusion and 15-use Headbutt, all to bring him up to level with the rest of the team.

I’ll leave you to the math, and how many Oddish and Venonats were murdered.

Yeet took less time, getting better experience at the power plant and needing only four trips to the PokeCenter. At least my morning wasn’t a complete loss when Morty the Magneton decided to tag along.

I realized at this point that I had yet to get the Surf and Strength HMs, so I made a trip into the Fuchsia City Safari Zone, scooping up a plethora of items and Slab the Rhyhorn.

Fully kitted out and ready to roll, I returned to Saffron City. The psychic gym can be a bit of a nightmare, but Trap and ASMRdeus breezed through to the leader, Sabrina. Trap did well to tank through most of Sabrina’s team, but tagged out with Yeet, whose strong physical attack worked well against the weaker physical defenses of psychic pokemon. Unfortunately, I also forgot about his own weak special defenses, and Sabrina’s Alakazam nearly one-shot my morning of work with a Psybeam that sent Yeet into the red; Yeet pulled through with a vengeance, busting through the Alakazam’s reflect screens with a critical-hitting Strength attack and winning our sixth badge.

It was finally time to get out of this place, and on to the final leg of our journey.