Part 5: Midna Town

Hello everyone and welcome back. Let's get started by exploring Midna Town!



Midna Town has 4 major areas connected to it: Route 1 to the southeast, Route 2 to the southwest, Narra Border to the north, and Midna Mine next to the large building with the green roof.

At the moment we can only go to Midna Mine and Route 1. Route 2 is blocked by some kid who won't let us pass, and Narra Border is full of level 60-70 fossil pokemon. Also it's blocked off by some one-way ledges and a Rock Climb wall.



The races are pretty fun whenever we get over to them.



This first house has an extremely bad deal. If you want a Gastly, go back to Shade Forest and catch one, don't trade something amazing for it.

discovered the Dark- and Steel-types!



Random townie NPCs aren't the best conversationalists in the world.



Free great ball upstairs.



Must be a coincidence!

Propaganda seems to be Jaern's strong suit.



Building on my earlier point, random townies break the fourth wall constantly and discuss meta-game information. This isn't even the worst offense in town!

Region!





Gym leader and ruler of the region! Sounds like the first Augur was quite a fellow!





Please don't call attention to this without offering an explanation. Just bringing it up isn't humor, it's just highlighting the inherent absurdity of the pokemon world. It's like making an NPC in a D&D-based game going "Well where's the SCIENCE behind magic?"

Also yadda yadda pokedex written by 11 year olds that have been drinking pixy stix. We get it.



Upstairs from the master of observational humor we find someone offering a really good trade. This is the only Elekid in the game, and Electibuzz can only be found in Friend Safaris. If you need a good electric type (hint, you do) then this is an amazing opportunity.







Pictured: the fourth wall.



Upstairs from the man discussing Unown's stats, we can steal a disposable power increase from one.



And this nice old lady in the same room is willing to give us one free evolution stone. I pick Thunder because I might want to evolve Janine at some point.



Trying to leave town to Route 2 has this kid refuse to let us pass because he can't do his job. Kid just let me step outside. I promise to come right back. There's a fisherman with an Old Rod to give away right there.





We can't get past him until we finish the story stuff here in town. Probably just as well, because there's trainers out there with stuff that's level 15-17. It's nothing we want to mess with just yet.



All the kids in town are excited about an upcoming tournament at the school.



Speaking of which... this is that school!







We can steal this Floatzel's free healing in another house.





We will be taking full advantage of this Broadcast Tower as soon as we can get there. Ohhh yes indeed.



You, sir, are a liar and liars burn in Hell.

moves.



Only one person to talk to in the pokecenter. This will be the start of a running theme when discussing Helios city.



Let's watch some TV to pass the time.



Starting in Midna Town and going for the entire rest of the game, you can randomly find a Rotom when you watch TV. They're available in infinite supply, but in order to keep things fair, they scale to the highest level in your party.





Probably not going to use it, but never hurts to catch it. You can't change Rotom's forms until the mid-late game. You actually need the 5th gym badge in order to access the area where you can do so.

Unfortunately, this marks the end of the interesting bit (for me) because the next 2 hours 16 minutes and 23 seconds of footage I have are level grinding. You get to skip over it and I get to develop carpal tunnel from mashing the "skip 25 frames forward" button for 4 straight hours.



Oh right. Up to the north of town, on that dirt path you no doubt saw on the full map, is this pikachu taxi.







free!



This guy will appear in every town in the game except for Telnor Town. He replaces Fly as a utility move. The HM is in the game somewhere, but why would you even bother if you have this guy? You only need to spend $7,500 in order to get the free pass. (500 x 15 = 7500)

I mentioned this before, but the Insurgence devs added lots of nice little quality of life features to the game. The only two HMs in the game are Fly and Surf, and you get both long, long after you've found another method to do the exact same thing.

You can shuffle large boulders around with the following moves:

Bulldoze
Steamroller
Ominous Wind
Icy Wind
Giga Impact
Slam
Whirlwind
Rock Throw
Heavy Slam
Barrage
Psychic
Headbutt.

You can also smash rocks with, according to the wiki, any fighting-type move. So Blueberry that knows Double Kick? She can smash rocks. But wait! It gets better! When you smash rocks, not only can you find any of those pokemon I listed in the previous update (all scaled to your team's level), but you can also get the following items:

Hard Stone (18%)
Soft Sand (14.5%)
Pearl (14.5%)
Heart Scale (11%)
Helix Fossil (3.5%) (Omanyte)
Dome Fossil (3.5%) (Kabuto)
Old Amber (3.5%) (Aerodactyl)
Root Fossil (3.5%) (Lileep)
Claw Fossil (3.5%) (Anorith)
Skull Fossil (3.5%) (Cranidos)
Armor Fossil (3.5%) (Shieldon)
Cover Fossil (3.5%) (Tirtouga)
Plume Fossil (3.5%) (Archen)
Jaw Fossil (3.5%) (Tyrunt)
Sail Fossil (3.5%) (Amaura)
IV Stone (3.5%) (Lets you set one IV of one pokemon to 31)

It will be a little bit before we can resurrect any fossils we might find, but it's not as long as you might think.

Anyway, all the other HM moves (Surf, Dive, Waterfall, Rock Climb, Flash) are replaced by key items that we get throughout the story. There is no Cut item OR move and I am eternally grateful to the devs for that fact.



For our next stop, let's actually head into the school.







The teacher is looking for somebody.



The locals are quite rude.





The teacher obviously isn't teaching, and yet Damian is just sitting in a seat staring at the front of the room. There isn't even a blackboard up there.



Yoink.



The front of the room has a small table that looks like a trainer battle arena.





Sure.





This is the business we can't leave Midna town without finishing. Once we wrap up the tournament arc, we'll be free to move on with our lives.





Okay we have a set of goals now: find Nora, then win a tournament. Also somewhere in there is "get our team more XP".



Well, no points in guessing where we'll find Nora. So let's start preparing!





First up is a Phanpy.





I might use her in the future. Good ground types are always welcome!



No map of the area yet. I'll show them when we actually progress through here in earnest. Until then it's a lot of running around.



Naturally no cave is complete without local jerks standing around waiting for battle.





Even wounded, HaryPotery should be more than a match for this Timburr.



Given he's an Ace Trainer, you'd think he'd have been pressing his HP advantage and kept using Low Kick.



Why does it always seem like Blueberry is being drawn into extended "lower the enemy's stats" fights? Oh well, that was the only notable thing that happened in the fight.



Approximately 35 Phanpys and Nosepasses later...









You guys seriously have no idea how many Phanpys there are in this cave. How many fights I've cut out while searching for requested teammates. They're like Zubats in Mt. Moon.







Artix is going to be a valued member of the team. Look at those stats at level 10!



Even her potential is amazing.



Morocco mole isn't too terrible, though I bet he could be a pretty nasty Earthquake sweeper with the Sandstorm move.



This moveset is dire, though. Tackle or even Scratch would be so much better than Rapid Spin and Fury Swipes. I much prefer moves with 100 Accuracy and slightly lower power than the showstoppers with terrible accuracy. There's a fight I'll skip over later on where Morocco here uses 12 of the 15 charges on Fury Swipes to take out something 3 levels lower than he is. Thinking back, I'm not even sure he's ultimately successful.



The trainers in Midna Mine are pretty nasty. Route 1's offerings might be more our speed...



Let's give Artix a chance to strut her stuff. Well, as much as a rock-bound worm creature can strut.





I've never used a Shuckle before, but given this moveset I can work out what I need to do.

By the way I really want to complain about the UI design here. Take a wild guess which move is selected here. It's -------Wrap. Look closely. All the moves are normally dark colored, and the selection box is ever-so-slightly lighter.



We are now officially Whitney, except our Miltank is a nigh-indestructable rock worm!



Who gets a bunch of defense and sp. def per level!

What's funny is, by the end of this update she won't even be the most broken thing on our team by a long shot.



The bug catcher boy can't stop the Rollout train.

so I'll always win!

Rich Kid class trainers can't stop talking about how much money they have. Most of them repeat a variant on this claim.





Porygon is one of those pokemon that I never quite know how to handle. I mean, here it's just gonna fall to the unrelenting march of Artix's rollout. But just in general.



Struggle Bug replaces Bide, by the way. A 50 power STAB move that lets us clown on Grass, Dark, and Psychic types all day? Yes please! Don't forget, Insurgence uses Gen VI numbers and movesets. Bug types are not only good, but downright amazing.



His last 'mon was a Buizel. You can find those in Midna Town by fishing... or surfing. I forget which. Point is, it's not hard to find.







We will be back for this trade. We'll be able to catch wild Totodile in the grass on Route 2, and this trade gets us access to the first Fairy-type (that isn't fey Bulbasaur) that we can find for a while yet.









This Hiker's rarest pokemon is a Delta Dwebble (Cake). It's the same level as the Totodile we'll eventually trade over. It's a Fairy/Normal type, and its 3 abilities are Scrappy (Normal and Fighting moves can damage Ghost types), Own Tempo (No confusion), and Simple (Stat changes are doubled).

It's actually not the only Delta Dwebble in the game. There's another in the postgame with a different typing and appearance. I'll cover it much, much later.





This is Dark Cave. It's surprisingly not dark. It's just a room with a giant pond in the middle. This is probably the best grinding spot in the area. You'll see why in a second.



But first...





Zucchini the Abra will join our team in a while.



Just through the door on the other end of the Dark Cave is Midna Garden. This is a cute little hangout spot with some friendly people.







It's visible in this screenshot. Can you spot it before I blatantly point it out?



This kid is talking about the tournaments at the trainer school. Once we find Nora, it sounds like we'll have quite the fight on our hands. Good. I'm looking forward to it!



Nurse Joy here is the reason why Dark Cave is the best grinding spot near Midna Town. It takes next to no time to pop in for a quick heal and then back out for more leveling.



Time's up! The hidden grotto is right in front of Amy. You can juuust see the little shadow between the trees. Usually these things have rare pokemon or items inside. Each one has a different list of what items can show up, but we're never going to be interested in those. Instead, we're after the pokemon! In this case, multiple people asked for a Durant. So just gonna quicksave and then start praying...



Heatmor...



Exeggcute...



An item...



Stunky...

You know what, let me just start keeping track.

Heatmor: IIIII I
Exeggcute: III
Stunky: III
Item: IIIII I



Fucking desire sensor. Count 'em up above. This is the 19th reset. If I'd been doing this legit and just coming back once every 12 hours, this would have taken 9 and a half real time days. This would be noon next Saturday.



It's all worth it, though. Durant is something special. It originally wasn't available until apparently Victory Road in BW.



Look at that BST. This fucker is stronger than the entire rest of the team by a wide margin. It's functionally a fully evolved pokemon and we have it at level 10. Sure it falls over to a spark from a bonfire, but... ahahahahahah.

It's completely immune to poison, it gets STAB bug and steel moves, and it learns dark type attacks by level up.





Welcome to the team duranduran.





Potential isn't great, but at least there aren't any zeroes. It also has arguably the more useful ability.



Team makeup has changed too. The Roggenrola and Blueberry were benched in favor of Morocco and duranduran. At the time my thinking was that I was already going to be doing enough grinding and that Zucchini was going to be actual dead weight until 16, which was approximately where I planned on stopping anyway.

I also think that's a pretty good spot to stop for now.

NEXT TIME: Getting everyone to 16, finding Nora, and the Midna Trainer School Tournament!