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As a little bonus, there’s one more crazy thing Princey and Victory need to do.

Level 76 Weedle vs. Level 70 Mewtwo. WHO WILL WIN?

There’s definitely luck involved here. If Mewtwo decides to use Psychic before Princey can use two X Specials, Victory is OHKO’d. A critical hit from Psychic will also OHKO him. And Mewtwo has Recover with infinite uses, while even at max Attack level Victory can only do a sliver of damage.

Victory uses up all of String Shot’s PP and all but 20 or so of Poison Sting’s PP on random encounters prior to the battle. Princey manages to fully buff him, and the fight is on. The hope is to poison Mewtwo, get rid of the rest of Poison Sting’s uses, and try to struggle it to death.

Oddly, and luckily, this time, Mewtwo doesn’t try to use Recover until he’s been brought down to less than half HP; this happens twice, and then he’s whittled down to pretty low health by the time Victory fires off his last Poison Sting use. Then it’s Struggle time. And…

There you have it. Fuck all y’all, Weedle is best Pokémon.

BEST.

POKéMON.

Thanks everybody for letting me spam you with this. It’s been fun!

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Okay, moment of truth everybody. It’s Elite Four time. I use the two PP Ups I have on Poison Sting before going in. I have two Max Ethers and an Elixer to use; that’s it.

I tend to associate Bug-type weaknesses with Grass-type weaknesses, but Ice is actually not super effective against Bug. As a consequence, we get a great chance to set up, because Dewgong does this:

…over and over and over and over. Because Rest is a Psychic move, and Psychic beats Poison.

Now, this does mean that we need to use some X Attacks (I went ahead and used the max of 6), because Victory needs to be able to kill Dewgong in three hits. We also use 6 X Specials to minimize damage. But after setting up, Lorelei’s Pokémon fall like a house of cards, taking only 2-4 hits each. Princey doesn’t even have to use a Hyper Potion.

We charge forth and get ready to take on our second opponent.

This fight requires only a minor increase in strategy, and Victory is similarly in no danger. We start by loading up on X Attacks, mostly just to help preserve Poison Sting PP. Bruno doesn’t heal his Pokémon.

We head back to our tried-and-true “use up String Shot while the enemy dies a slow and painful death by poison” method on both of the Onixes, while Himonchan, Hitmonlee, and Machamp all fall easily to our X Attack-enhanced Poison Sting.

That’s how much damage one Poison Sting did. Piece of cake.

Two down! Next!

Ah Agatha. Agatha is by FAR the most difficult challenge in the Elite Four. Victory cannot poison any of her Pokémon. She has two Gengars, a Golbat, and a Haunter who can cause confusion (this is REALLY BAD, as I will explain in a moment). She also has an Arbok with Glare, which causes Paralysis, which due to the glitch involving the Speed reduction is something we don’t want to happen. Additionally, we need to beat her — or at least kill all her Ghost-types — before running out of Poison Sting uses because Struggle can’t hit them.

Given the minor damage done by Poison Sting due to it being ineffective plus the inability to poison any of her Pokémon, I need to use some X Attacks to up my damage output. However, there are two problems with this. One, Agatha’s Golbat has Haze, which nullifies all stat changes. Two, fully powered up with X Attacks, Victory is very close to capable of OHKO-ing himself when confused (close enough that an enemy attack in the same round can finish him off). Actually, I have to admit I don’t really understand the mechanics of confusion self-damage. Victory ended up doing way more damage to himself late in the battle than earlier on, despite no apparent difference in offensive or defensive capability. But whatever the cause, Victory lost several times on Agatha’s last Pokémon in this way, which was one of the most frustrating experience of this entire playthrough.

At least there are some status effects Princey knows how to deal with.

I had forgotten about this until I saw the Pokéflute in Princey’s inventory, but one toot’ll cure sleep status, which is quite handy, as two of Agatha’s Pokémon have Hypnosis.

Prior to the battle I use one of my two Max Ethers. I lead off with 6 X Attacks, hoping to do at least a decent amount of damage to the first Gengar and Golbat before Haze gets used. Oh yeah, Agatha randomly switches her Pokémon in and out. She appears to only switch between two Pokémon at a time, and it’s not especially annoying, just odd. Victory manages to get Gengar down pretty far and Golbat down to less than half health before Golbat uses Haze. He spends most of the battle in a confused stupor, occasionally smacking himself. Agatha also heals her Pokémon with Super Potions, so it’s slower going than it could be. But eventually Golbat falls, and Gengar #1 soon follows.

At this point I decide to use some more X Attacks. Instead of doing all six, I use only five (I intended to only use four and then my finger slipped, whoops) in the hopes of Victory maybe not stabbing himself to death this time. Haunter’s not bad — much less durable than Gengar. We get lucky with Arbok and it doesn’t use Glare at all. Gengar #2 avoids confusing us for most of its battle time in favor of using Toxic like an idiot, although Poison Sting does run out of PP at this point, requiring Princey to use up our last Max Ether. Finally it goes down, and Arbok, in red health, comes back out for Victory to smack one last time.

This one was really hard-won.

Okay, note that Gengar was okay with using Confuse Ray — a Ghost-type move — when it had Hypnosis and Dream Eater, both Psychic-type moves (which, remember, beats Poison). Similarly, Golbat had Wing Attack, which was super-effective, but didn’t spam it and was happy to use Supersonic, a Normal-type move, and Haze, an Ice-type move. What’s the deal, internet? Explain this to me!

Anyway, after Agatha is Lance.

Lance is a goddamn joke.

He leads with Gyarados, who starts using Dragon Rage and gives us plenty of time to beef up with X Specials and X Attacks. After that, Gyarados and the two Dragonairs each go down in a couple of hits. The only thing approaching a danger to Victory is Aerodactyl’s Hyper Beam, which doesn’t quite OHKO him and gives us a turn to heal and a turn to attack while Aerodactyl recovers. Dragonite spams Agility until it dies.

Of course, some jackass has beaten us here, and we have one more battle to deal with.

Jackass starts with Pigeot, which gives us a chance to X Special and X Attack Victory up. Pigeot now has Sky Attack, which is moderately dangerous to Victory, so I keep an eye out for it. Then the fun begins.

Pigeot and Alakazam are quickly trounced. Rhydon takes longer, especially since I don’t manage to poison it until it’s almost dead. It spends a lot of energy using Horn Drill, which can’t touch Victory. It also has both Leer and Tail Whip; I consider using a Guard Spec., but decide against bothering since I know the rest of Jackass’s Pokémon are Special-based. I don’t need it.

Arcanine dies. It doesn’t have a Fire-type attack any stronger than Ember, WTF? Gyarados dies too, Hydro Pump barely scratching Victory. In hindsight, if it had used Hyper Beam Victory probably would have died, and I would have been sure to use that Guard Spec. next time. But it doesn’t, and Jackass’s faithful starter comes out to play.

Grass is ineffective against Poison. Shame that the last Pokémon is such a lack of a challenge. Poison Sting finally runs out of PP, and rather than bother with the Elixer, Victory gives one big Struggle…

…and that’s the match.

Oak wanders in to congratulate Princey for the long way she’s come since leaving Pallet with ABSOLUTELY NO HELP FROM HIM WHATSOEVER.

Princey and Victory have something special, alright. And that something is immortalized forever in the Hall of Fame.

(that’s Weedle, Squirtle, Oddish, the Lapras I accidentally took from the guy in Silph Co., and a Rattata I used to catch Weedle [since Squirtle kept killing them] and released afterward, if you’re curious)

Way to go, Victory. You are truly king of Weedles — nay, king of Pokémon.

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Ugh, this douchebag again. If he’s supposed to be far enough ahead of us to have beaten the Elite Four when we get there, what is he doing harassing us out here?

The only thing of note is that Jackass has a Rhyhorn now, who is similarly terrible at hitting Victory with Horn Drill. I load up on X Specials while Pigeot’s out and cruise through the rest of the team.

It is at this point that I realize I don’t have Strength.

Fuck.

One trip to Fuschia City and several aggravating block puzzles later, we make it to the Indigo Plateau!

I think now is a decent time to go into some mechanical things from Gen I that have affected this playthrough. First of all, AI appears to be random, except if the opponent has an attack of a type that’s super-effective against your Pokémon, in which case they will spam it. They don’t actually care if the move can, you know, hurt you or not, though. Now, this is what the internet has told me. I’ve been poking at the Elite Four a little and there’s at least one place where this is obviously what is happening. However, there’s another place where there are Pokémon with a type advantage move or two definitely using their other attacks. I don’t know whether this is special Elite Four AI or if there’s some sort of special exception for status moves/moves with constant damage or if the internet is LYING TO ME.

Additionally, in Gen I enemy Pokémon do not have PP; they can continue using an attack indefinitely. This would be devastating if not for the AI’s stupidity. As it is, this programming quirk isn’t especially important.

Another thing I have discovered is that Gen I Struggle is Normal-type. Now, technically Struggle Normal-type in every generation, but in Gen I Struggle is treated as a regular Normal-type move — which means it’s not very effective against Rock and Ground types, and it can’t hit Ghost types at all. So a Struggle run of the Elite Four is out. And unfortunately, this makes a Caterpie solo run impossible in Gen I. Perhaps it’s possible in FireRed/LeafGreen?

Finally, Gen I does not have EVs the way Gen III and onwards have them. Instead Pokémon have Stat Experience, which functions similarly, but is not as limited. In a nutshell, by fighting enough Pokémon you can get an extra 63 points in every stat.

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Princey swims back to shore and makes a beeline for Viridian. We’ve got a date with Giovanni!

For a Ground-type Gym, there sure are a lot of trainers with nothing even resembling a Ground-type Pokémon. The first guy we encounter has an Arbok and a Tauros, and the second guy has a Machoke. From there it gets a little better, although there are several that use exclusively Fighting-types for some reason. Gen I is really bad at this type-theming thing.

Ugh, Giovanni is really awful this time. There are several reasons for this: one, there isn’t really a “safe” Pokémon to use up PP on anymore. He leads with Rhyhorn, who can Tail Whip me into pretty big trouble with Giovanni’s later Pokémon, and then he follows up with Dugtrio, who has Sand Attack. His third Pokémon is the Nidoqueen that I had so much trouble with before, followed by a Nidoking who presents basically the same problem, and he rounds off his team with Rhydon, who has Horn Drill for that extra “fuck you”; Failure managed to bludgeon his way all the way to Rhydon but got smashed by this damn OHKO attack. (Giovanni’s Rhyhorn also has Horn Drill but in all my attempts it never once hit me for some reason.)

I try using up all of String Shot’s PP and ten or so of Poison Sting’s uses on wild Pokémon before starting the battle, which gets me past Nidoqueen and Nidoking more easily, but the problem remains that I simply can’t kill Rhydon fast enough to avoid Horn Drill. So it’s time for a new strategy.

I make a moderately inconvenient trip back to the Celadon Department Store and buy a few Guard Spec.’s and a bunch of X Attacks. I lead off with a Guard Spec., and while Rhyhorn futilely attempts to Tail Whip me, I load up on X Attacks. The X Attacks don’t help a ton, but they do help noticeably, and the Guard Spec. makes a WORLD of difference. I don’t need to use up all my PP this time and take down both Nidoqueen and Nidoking with Poison Sting. All Rhydon takes is a standard “spam Poison Sting” strategy. It takes a couple of stabs at a Horn Drill, but they don’t affect me.

Awesome.

I looked up Horn Drill on Bulbapedia and apparently it won’t work on any Pokémon whose Speed stat is higher than the users, which explains why Rhyhorn’s Horn Drill never worked. Nidoqueen’s Body Slam had paralyzed me (repeatedly) in previous battles, which reduces Speed to 25% of its normal value, so that may have been the problem. Plus, the Bulbapedia article on Paralysis mentions that there’s a bug in curing Paralysis: “Rest, Full Heal, and Parlyz Heal cure the affliction, but do not fix the Speed reduction caused by it.” So that was probably the problem.

Anyway, Princey now has all eight badges! She and Failure are now entitled to face the Elite Four! Did you ever think you’d see the day? That’s one hard-working Weedle. In fact, before we head up to Indigo Plateau, there’s one more thing I’d like to do.

You’ve earned it, little buddy.

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We head back to Vermillion and go east to take care of a little roadblock.

Snorlax is only level 30, and it is quickly slain.

The trip to Fuschia is uneventful (though long), and we head straight for the Gym. There sure are a lot of Psychic Pokémon in here for a Poison Gym :/

Koga has a Koffing, a Muk, another Koffing, and a Weezing. They seem to specialize in reducing accuracy and increasing evasion. This is mostly just annoying, and combined with the fact that Failure can’t poison them, he runs out of Poison Sting uses sometime in the middle of fighting the second Koffing. Koga’s not hard to handle as long as I pay attentilon and heal Failure when his health hits the danger zone. To cap the whole thing off, Weezing comes out and immediately Self-Destructs.

Failure scoffs at this petty damage.

I pop into the Safari Zone to grab Surf, and then Princey and Failure take a long trek back to Pallet Town so as to avoid the Seafoam Islands. Fuck the Seafoam Islands, man.

I get kind of turned around because apparently you can’t get back to Pewter from Cerulean; there’s an insurmountable waist-high ledge in the way. So I go back to Vermillion and go through Diglet Cave, and as for the little tree that flummoxed us before, Princey decides to just kinda… reach over there and…

Well, somehow they end of on the other side, just outside Viridian, and we make our way back to Pallet. Princey tucks Failure into her hat and bravely swims all the way to Cinnabar Island.

They arrive half-drowned and with seawater coming out of their ears, but alive! Unfortunately being soaked through isn’t going to help Failure deal with all the Fire-types around.

The Gym, of course, is locked. I’m getting pretty sick of these stupid detours. So Princey and Failure book it as fast as they can to pick up the key to the Gym that for God knows what reason is laying around in the basement of a burned-out mansion, and THEN it’s time for the Gym.

The trainers in this Gym are less trouble than in the Saffron Gym. Blaine himself is not much of a problem, despite the type advantage and his annoying tendency to use Super Potions (2 per Pokémon, I think)… until his Arcanine, which uses Fire Blast to brutally murder Failure. This looks like a job for X Special!

Sweet victory. Failure hits level 70 in the midst of this battle.

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I debate where I want to go next, and I end up sending Princey and Failure back to Lavender to do some ghost-busting.

Jackass shows up in Pokémon Tower.

Hey, you know what’s annoying? FUCKING SAND ATTACK IS ANNOYING. Jackass leads with Pigeotto, which gets Failure killed a few times via missing attacks against the rest of Jackass’s team. Once we manage to take down Pigeotto without the accuracy loss, though, his Gyarados, Growlithe, Kadabra, and Ivysaur all fall easily. Failure hits level 52 in the midst of this battle.

I’d seen this mentioned before but never actually played through it to take note of it: note that Jackass no longer has Raticate in his lineup. Now think about where we are. Poor Jackass. He came here to grieve and we just stomped all over his pathetic team with a Weedle :(

Hey, you know what’s an annoying status effect? ALL OF THEM. Holy shit, I regret complaining about Pigeotto, because past Jackass there are Mediums with Ghastly EVERYWHERE and they all have Confuse Ray, which is fucking awful, and also Lick, which sometimes paralyzes poor confused Failure, adding insult to injury. One at a time is fine, but two in a row is a problem. I finally cave and head over to the Saffrom Pokémart to see what they have in the way of healing items.

That’ll do for now.

After that detour, I’m immediately able to deal with the Medium giving me trouble without needing to use those Hyper Potions after all. Oh well, they’ll see use eventually. Princey and Failure deal with Medium after possessed Medium. You know, I think sending a herd of people receptive to spirits up into a giant Pokémon graveyard is just asking for this sort of thing to happen.

Damn, Haunter is freaky-looking in this game. All the ghosts in Gen I (Ghastly/Haunter/Gengar) are Ghost/Poison-type, which means Weedle’s attacks are less effective than usual, plus he can’t poison them, which, combined with the constant assault of status effects coming our way, makes this place exhausting. I am not looking forward to Agatha, let me tell you.

Finally! Man, after all that Ghastly/Haunter bullshit a level 30 Marowak is a freaking blessing. Plus, it has only one damaging move (Bone Club) and three non-damaging moves (Growl, Leer, and Focus Energy), which by the laws of AI idiocy means that Marowak only actually hurts Failure once in the entire battle.

We put the tortured soul to rest and get ready to run a Rocket gauntlet. Thankfully none of them have ghosts. Lots of Zubats, though, so the confusion problem doesn’t entirely go away, but Failure doesn’t have nearly as much of a problem with them.

Fuji rescued, Pokéflute obtained, back to Saffron. Guess I had to do the Tower first anyway, because finishing it appears to have moved the Rocket out of the Silph Co. doorway.

After a quick detour to utterly crush the Fighting Gym, we head inside.

Ugh, there are 11 freaking floors to this place? Goddammit.

FUCK CONFUSION.

Failure beats himself to death a zillion times trying to deal with one particularly irritating Golbat/Zubat/Zubat/Raticate/Zubat team until we finally get lucky enough to get around the confusion.

I start to think no one in the building is going to give me as much trouble as that ONE GUY on the second floor, and then Jackass shows up.

Jackass is an actual threat this time, enough of one that I need to start breaking out the X Specials. Pigeot now has Wing Attack, which is super effective against Weedle, although it doesn’t do a ton of damage anyway. His Gyarados now has Hydro Pump, which doesn’t have a type advantage but still does an alarming amount of damage. Growlithe shouldn’t be a problem yet with just Ember, but it manages to inflict a burn on me a weirdly high percentage of the time. And there’s Jackass’s Kadabra, which is now an Alakazam with the punch needed to really, really hurt Weedle. Critical hits kill me several times when I’m not cautious enough about healing.

I use six X Specials while Pigeot is out (it crits me like three times in a row which is so aggravating). Then as long as I heal when I’m at half-health I’m pretty okay. Gyarados’s Hydro Pump has been rendered impotent (except, again, on crits). Growlithe doesn’t manage to inflict a burn this time, I get a critical hit on Alakazam which means it’s that much faster to take it down, and then Venusaur basically can’t even hurt me.

It’s a trickier fight, but Failure gets the job done.

Giovanni is also pretty difficult. He’s got a Nidoqueen — Ground/Poison, which means our attacks are ineffective and we can’t inflict poison on her. Plus, after getting past Nidorino, Kangaskhan, and Rhyhorn, Failure’s pretty much out of Poison Sting uses. To cap it all off, Rhyhorn and Nidoqueen both have Tail Whip, and they take so long to beat they can really, really diminish Failure’s defensive capacity, so in the end Nidoqueen’s Body Slam can take off half of Failure’s health.

What I ended up doing was using up most of my String Shot PP (all but 10) on Nidorino, the least dangerous of Giovanni’s Pokémon, and then killing it, poisoning Kangaskhan and letting the poison mostly kill it off while I used up the remaining String Shot uses. Then I Poison Sting-spammed my way through Rhyhorn. I played it really cautiously with Nidoqueen, healing whenever I hit half-health and using up the last eight or so Poison Stings to get her down to just over half health. Then I used Struggle once — just once! — and that was enough to kill her! I’m starting to seriously contemplate a Struggle strategy for the Elite Four

Feels good, man.

Alright, it’s time for a Gym with a type advantage over us! We just saw how awesome that was with Jackass’s Alakazam.

But he’s a bug, you say! Type advantages are somewhat different for attack and defense. Bug attacks are good against Psychic Pokémon! Great, but this is Gen I so we don’t have any of those. Bugs take neutral damage from Psychic attacks, however, and Psychic is super effective against Poison, Weedle’s other type. So yeah, Failure’s got an uphill slog ahead of him.

Fortunately, a number of the trainers have Pokémon who either don’t have or don’t feel like using their Psychic-type attacks. Unfortunately, there are three fucking Ghost trainers in here WTF. GHOST IS NOT PSYCHIC. Ghosts are still assholes to beat, btw.

Time for Sabrina.

Sabrina has a Kadabra, a Mr. Mime, a Venomoth, and an Alakazam. The Kadabra has Psychic, which can do about 3/4 of Failure’s health in damage… and also has a chance to lower Special. If this happens twice, Kadabra can OHKO Failure. I lead with an X Special and pray for luck. I manage to get two X Specials off; Psychic lowers Special once. Then I’m able to carefully heal and use another 3 or 4 X Specials without Kadabra lowering Failure’s Special again. After that, I switch to spamming Poison Sting, healing when I go below half-health, and all Sabrina’s Pokémon go down easily.

I get way too into the battle to actually screenshot any of this (which is why I’d consider this more of a pseudo-LP than a real one).

At the end of the battle, Failure is level 63. Onward to Fuschia City!

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So now we head toward Vermillion City. The Rocket behind the house in Cerulean very nearly kills Failure with Drowzee’s super-effective attacks, but he toughs it out and squeaks by. The rest of the trip is uneventful. On to the S. S. Anne!

There are several trainers with Growlithe on board, but fortunately for us, none of them actually have any Fire-type moves.

At some point on the ship I run out of item space, so I head to the Mart and sell off all my TMs. Weedle can’t use them, after all.

And then, of course, our favorite asshole shows up.

Lineup’s not too bad. His Pigeotto still is a serious irritation with Sand Attack, he’s got a Raticate with Hyper Fang, a Kadabra which will become a real problem in the future but for now went down pretty easily, and Ivysaur, who was uneventful. Kind of sad that his starter Pokémon is the one that’s the easiest to beat.

Anyway, we take him down and the captain of the S. S. Anne gives us HM01: Cut! Which would be super if we had a Pokémon that could actually use it.

Now that we’re going to need HMs to get anywhere, things are going to get annoying :/ But onward, to the Vermillion Gym!

Princey just yanks the damn tree out by its roots and they move on.

(Okay, yeah, I had to catch an Oddish here as an HM slave. I killed it off on wild Pokémon before I fought Surge, though. From now on, just assume I brought something along to use the HM moves. Weedle’s still soloing all the fights, though.)

The minor trainers are no trouble. Against Lt. Surge, however, Failure lives up to his name several times because Raichu is a total asshole. Eventually there is success, barely.

Paralysis suuuuucks. Failure hit level 38 during the battle. Consistently over-leveled, yes. Now we’re off to Celadon in the most roundabout way possible!

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As expected, the trainers on the other side of the annoying kid who wouldn’t let us leave until we faced Brock are a complete breeze, and the only reason I don’t marathon them all in one go is that Poison Sting runs out of PP. Onward to Mt. Moon!

Mt. Moon is basically this over and over again, but everyone knows that already.

I am very concerned about Hikers, though, because they come with Rock and Ground Pokémon, and fuck those. This guy has two Geodudes and an Onix. One more Pokémon than Brock, but they’re lower levels and the Hiker doesn’t cure their poison constantly, which is the real plus. However, I don’t have any potions this time (Princey is cheap cheap cheap), so it’s a close call.

No one else gives me any trouble. I’m a little alarmed by one Rocket’s level 16 Raticate, but Failure deals with it just fine. After the misery of Pewter City it’s really nice to see him breezing along.

And we’ve made it to scenic Cerulean City!

Failure is also able to deal with Misty’s flunkies with no trouble at all. Misty herself, however, is a no-go at the moment. Staryu’s no trouble, but her Starmie Bubblebeams the fuck out of Failure and he goes down in two hits. His Special is notably lower than his other stats. So let’s go deal with Jackass instead!

Sand Attack continues to be a problem, leading to Failure’s… failure, when he can’t hit the broad side of a barn, thus allowing Rattata to slowly whittle him down to nothing. Princey gives it a second try, though, and Failure sweeps Jackass’s team with no trouble. Fuck yeah.

Nugget bridge is similarly breezy. On the route above there are several Hikers and a Youngster with a really irritating Slowpoke, necessitating a number of returns to the Cerulean Pokémon Center. One guy has three Geodudes and a Machop, which leads to a seriously close call.

By the time I de-Pokéfy Bill, Weedle’s level 32, so I figure I’ll give Misty another go.

It goes well!

Interestingly enough, Misty doesn’t use any Full Heals at all. When Brock did it I figured it was a Gym Leader thing, but apparently it’s just a Brock thing!

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Interminable Pidgeys later (thank god for this emulator’s fast-forward function)…

This asshole shows up.

Failure attempts to do what Weedle do best, which is spam Poison Sting over and over until something dies (that something generally being Weedle). Playing with Weedle and Weedle alone is not an exercise in clever strategy. Weedle is not a clever Pokémon. No, it is an exercise in brute force and luck: overlevelling like hell and hoping the AI is feeling especially dumb that day. Weedle does also have String Shot but there is pretty much zero reason to bother with it.

Eventually Failure manages to take down a Bulbasaur and a Pidgey despite the EXTREME annoyance of Sand Attack (sure wish Weedle got Sand Attack instead of String Shot…). Jackass blathers on for a bit and wanders off. Princey is pleased at this victory, but hungry and broke from all that losing she and Failure were doing earlier. Also really fucking sick of Pidgeys. Nothing for it but to head on to Pewter City and throw a bug at a rock over and over until one of them is bludgeoned to death.

The Pewter City Gym is a complete wall. Failure is level 18 by the time he can squeak past the Jr. Trainer, and even then it’s largely due to Sandshrew’s idiotic spamming of Sand Attack (actually a boon this time, since Failure poisoned it and just had to sit around waiting for it to die). Incidentally, the Jr. Trainer in the Rock-type gym only has Ground-type Pokemon. N00b.

So I poke at Brock a few times at various levels but end up levelling Failure to level 25 to seriously take him on. These levels are ground out of level 3/4/5 Pidgeys, Rattatas and Weedles, btw, and it takes for-fucking-ever. So here we go!

Welp.

Brock takes several tries and, in the end, actually something of a strategy to beat! Poison Sting is a low-damage move, and it only has 35 PP — which is a pretty good amount of PP, if it’s not your sole damage-dealing move. So poison damage counts for a lot here. Unfortunately, Brock will use FIVE Full Heals to get rid of poison on a Pokémon before giving up and letting it die a slow death. This counter resets when a new Pokémon comes out. I do not have enough PP to finish off both Geodude and Onix.

So what I ended up doing was using Poison Sting on Geodude until it got poisoned for the sixth time and then switched to using String Shot (to help use up its PP in preparation for Struggle and to try to conserve enough Poison Sting uses to be able to poison Onix six times), while Geodude got poisoned to death. Onix came out. I started using Poison Sting again, switching to String Shot when it used Bide to further deplete String Shot uses, since using a non-damaging move during Bide means Bide won’t do any damage to me. I didn’t manage to poison Onix enough times for it to stick, but I had managed to get its health down far enough to Struggle it to death.

Holy hell that was annoying. I did have to use one Potion. I’m trying to be conservative with my money in preparation for the really difficult fights ahead, where I’m going to need a lot of healing items and X Specials. Luckily there shouldn’t, as far as I can remember, be any more choke points this bad until we have to deal with Sabrina. Slinging the dazed and exhausted Failure over her shoulder, Princey saunters back to the Pokémon Center in high spirits. Onward ho! I guess. If we have to.

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