Part 8: Suntouched City

Hello everyone and welcome back. We have a lot to do today, so let's not waste any time!





The two rooms we couldn't get in thanks to the cultists have some goodies. Dracolich gets the Spell Tag in case he wants to ever use Shadow Sneak.



The roadblock is gone now that that Lucario has gone super saiyan.



It stinks!

Just past the roadblock is this laid off miner.





What's really funny about Brock is that Pikachu would have been an okay choice against him. It's just the preponderance of Rock/Ground types in Gen 1 that made electric mice a poor choice.





The only reason Janine here didn't one shot the Roggenrola is because it had Sturdy. Also I grab Thunder Wave and get rid of Play Nice. We'll be putting this move to such good use throughout the game.





These battles are barely worth mentioning.



It will be an extremely long time before we make our way around to Hekate Town. If I'm not mistaken, that's between the 5th and 6th gym. So this poor guy is gonna be jobless for a long time.



In the cave, we have another grinding zone. Nurse Joy is right there, so if you have the patience you can grab a few levels. We need to get our team up to around 24-25, however the XP given plummets here around 20. At that you earn ~100 per battle and you need a few thousand per level.

I've mentioned it a few times, but the upcoming gym leader's ace is 25. The rest of his team is between 23 and 24. The other trainers in his gym are 20. There's another grinding zone on the other side of the upcoming town, but it has basically the same encounter table as Cyan Cavern here, at the same levels.

What I'm getting at is this section of the game fucking sucks. So please excuse me as I skip through the next hour of footage in basically no time.

Also that TM is locked off by Rock Climb. So we can't get it until the postgame. It's Iron Tail, for whatever that's worth.







The local trainers have some interesting team members.











I'm still taking requests, but my team is pretty much locked until I reach the town after the next one. Metchi Town is just a single route past Suntouched City and it's where the game finally eases up on the godawful grinding.



Wow. Pancham is a 1% encounter and I just tripped across one!





Fight me.





Just after catching Taran Zhu, I swap out Chompy Boy for someone else because Chompy Boy takes hits like wet paper.





Taran Zhu is pretty okay.



Gremlin is interesting. I don't have a shot of her stats, sadly.



Tightlips has the potential to be a really dangerous Huntail.



Anyway, I grab Anatomy to give her a spin.



This won't last long. Icicle Spear is a terrible move and will make grinding her up a pain in the ass.





A Whismur is always welcome. I put one to really good use in a recent run of Alpha Sapphire. Never hurts to have the option!



And the team is finally finalized. This Staryu is gonna be one of my secret weapons against the upcoming gym.



It also gets a decent early game STAB move.



And a move with perfect accuracy!



Then a few levels later, Water Gun gets a really powerful upgrade.





Magnemite is being held back for a rainy day. I'm gonna keep Janine for a while. Also we can't fully evolve it to Magnezone until level 55 or so.



Fuckin' seriously!?

Insurgence has the same problem that all Essentials productions do... NPCs are allowed to wander. In this case, that Ace Trainer we fought over near the wall has wandered directly in front of the path I've been following. This will be a constant annoyance throughout the game.



By the way, I wasn't kidding about the XP dropping. Whismur is probably the most common encounter in here and this is how much XP it gives. Shuckle and Sableye give more, but they're harder to find.





Yeah, let me just use this move that removes the STAB bonus on Bubble Beam. That's an amazing idea.



10 minutes later...



5 minutes later...

Pity too, because I don't believe I've ever used a Hariyama.



This Onix won't let me escape even after KOing Artix.



The first... the first... the first fucking ball!





Some day I will look back at the box and wonder why I named an Onix "Fuck You"



Moving on, this sounds like a decent idea.



So I get rid of Encore for it. I'll probably never use Rest but hey... why not?



Just imagine each screenshot is taken between 3 and 5 minutes apart to get the idea for how much I'm skipping over here.





Between updates, people in the thread started talking about Zoroark and its relationship with Lucario. I thought it was funny you guys brought it up.



Is it weird that I can't play the game at a speed slower than this?

Anyway, this is a thing the game likes to occasionally do. I have to admit, I kinda enjoy when it does. Just random Zorua and Zoroarks are great gotcha moments. They show up just infrequently enough that you always forget about them too.

Anyway, after the Zorua fakeout, this rude old man only has a Cubone and a Grimer.



Never lost? I somehow doubt that.



I somehow don't think that dialogue is supposed to be here.



Just on the other side the path curls down in on itself in a spiral. There's a hiker down here.





Yeah, probably.







I appreciate that Insurgence lets trainers have all sorts of pokemon. It prevents battles from getting too bogged down in Nidorans and Rattatas.



Artix continues her rampage across the early parts of the game unabated.



The last couple trainers are found down here, as well as some useful items.









He had the three Gen 1 Eeveelutions. No idea why he doesn't like ice types.



A magnet!



Yoink.



This is also the point where I said "fuck it" to grinding and decided to move on.







Mark is the last trainer in the cave, and these are his only two pokemon.



The lower floor is a smaller loop. This ladder up is on the far side of the wall from where we came down.



And that's Cyan Cavern. Let's never speak of it again.



Suntouched City is the first big town in the game. There's a lot of houses that I'm not going to show off with a bunch of people making terrible jokes.





The gym is up on the upper level of the city.





Multiple NPCs have talked about how Orion uses multiple types. This guy says he uses Fire and something else. The teacher at the trainer school says Fire and Grass types. Can you guess what Orion's gimmick is? It's pretty obvious if you think about it.



Oh... we will. We very much will.



You might notice this pokecenter is kinda spacious. That's because it has multiple floors!





The three painted lines take you to the three types of shops. The blue line takes you to the pokemart where there's always NPCs waiting in line who all make the same joke that you're cutting in front of them. All of them. In. Every. Goddamn. Big. Pokecenter. It makes you smile the first time. Then it just gets old.



The purple line takes you to the hair stylist. Female characters have two hair types: long and short. Right now Amy's hair is long. Males get "bald" and "has hair."





If you have the wrong hair dye in and the wrong type of hair, when your character does their run animation, the hair stays in place while their head goes forward. The customization system is not well thought out.





Speaking of which, the candy cane line goes to the clothing shop. There's nothing worth buying there. The customization barely shows up in the overworld and looks terrible on the trainer card. It's also just recolors of the same pants and shirt. There are no skirts or dresses or sweaters or anything like that.

On the one hand I'm impressed that they included customization at all. On the other I'm disappointed at how limited it is.

If there's interest, I'll go through and show off what the clothing shop has for sale. Otherwise I probably won't interact with it much.

have a theme.



strategies!

I completely forgot an NPC said this.



The back of the upper floor has the name rater and move deleter and usually an old man who gives you something nice.



In this case he doesn't.



The north of Suntouched has a huge golden statue of Jaern.





She'll give us a couple Heart Scales. Decent, but meh.



Shiny Stone. We can buy these in infinite quantities once we get to the capital city.



Yes... yes they are.



This is the start of a quest for another Delta Pokemon. We can't really do it until we clear the first gym, however. Long story short, something is messing up his flower garden and he wants our help to take care of it. I'll cover the Delta in question when we can catch it. It's not very far away at all!





Free moon stone!





We haven't seen it yet, but there's a pond in the middle of the cave to the south. We can't leave until we can surf, and we can't surf until we clear the gym.







Wish I could rescue this poor Machop from its awful trainer.



Next door we can rob a Skitty of its gem.



Orion is a young child and a gym leader. So he has an imaginary friend.





So yeah, in the capital city there's an NPC who just sells a service that lets you get trade evolutions without actually having to trade. They're a pain in the ass to get to but it's oh-so-worth it.





This is an obtuse reference to the Relic Song quest. You know, that ability we can't learn until the postgame.





NPCs are really generous!







More postgame stuff.





Complete dead end down here. There's like... one new pokemon to catch in here, a Timburr. There's also a trade on the upper level (that we'll see next time) where you can trade a Butterfree for a Natu.

Otherwise, there's literally nothing new to see here.



The Suntouched Exitway has the same encounter levels as Cyan Cavern. So it's not even a good grinding spot.



Let's end the update on a good note, however.



I accidentally forget Metal Sound here instead of Vice Grip. So for the time being, duranduran has 4 attack moves. I'll take care of that eventually.





Anyway, that's enough for now.

NEXT TIME: I'm going to "find" about 17 rare candies in order to get everyone up to level 24. Then I'm going to go confront the gym leader so we can be forever done with soul destroying grinding.

All that's between us and that glorious day is one gym leader, one route with a few scattered trainers, one mandatory battle, and $5000. I'm excited and you should be too!