Part 59: Holon Jungle

Hello everyone and welcome back. There's another expedition camp just past this loading zone, so let's get going.



Calling it Alfa and not Alpha is so weird.





Oh hey, 'sup?













This person is the next step in the trading sequence.







big Alder fan.



I had to look up who is meant to receive this. I could tell you, but you'd go "wait, who?" because it's one of the random trainers in a gym.











Delta Maractus is pure Steel-type. Its three abilities are Motor Drive (Boosts the Speed stat when it's hit by an Electric-type move), Clear Body (Prevents other Pokemon from lowering its stats), and Trace (Hidden; The Pokemon copies an opposing Pokemon's Ability).

Besides being a Maractus-bot, I'm not really sure what to make of this guy. It can learn Shift Gear, though its SpAtk is much higher than its regular Attack. And most of what it learns are classified as Status moves. Sure is cute, though!

Toxicroaks to leave the area.



A Toxicroak nest sounds intriguing. Too bad we can't visit it.



Holon is quite an interesting region. You have a jungle in the foothills of a snowy mountain, but just past that jungle is a lake. Down from the lake is a grassland and a marsh. Down from the grassland is a desert. Further muddying things is that when you're soaring, it's miles and miles of untouched forest in every direction. The layout of this place doesn't make any sense!







Before that shady TM dealer was added outside Amphitrite City, this was the only place to find Swords Dance. Such a useful TM being locked so late in the postgame is a bit rude. Anyway, I'm gonna head back to Torren real quick and train up ScubaSteve before we continue. There's a fire area coming up soon and I want him for it.



I had actually stopped recording and was on the way back to Torren when...













Delta Wailmer's line is Ice/Flying type. It's just found randomly while soaring in the Holon region. Their abilities are Wonder Skin (Makes status moves more likely to miss), Refrigerate (Normal-type moves become Ice-type moves), and Snow Warning (Hidden; The Pokemon summons a hailstorm when it enters a battle).

It's, uh, quite the sack of HP. Its 90 in Atk and SpAtk, plus the Refrigerate ability, lets it get STAB with both Return and Hyper Beam.





The only correct nickname for a flying Wailmer.



This is almost two hours later. After I got ScubaSteve trained up, it turned out that I'd accidentally made Anubis superfluous, so I benched him in favor of another request.





Glory is a bit of a murder machine. Once he gets off a few Swords Dances, he can abuse both STAB Outrage and STAB Extreme Speed/Return to one shot everything in his vicinity.



I also decided to give Ramses Brave Bird and some Leftovers. This will not last past the end of the update.





ScubaSteve is very good at what he does. I just wish he learned a worthwhile stat boosting move. Sadly, he can't learn either Nasty Plot or Calm Mind. Haze is of dubious usefulness, so I'll eventually replace it. Probably with Thunder Wave for lack of anything else worthwhile.

Also all three of his attacks are boosted by his Mega Launcher ability. So the advertised power is actually 50% higher.



While it looks like little hearts above him, I'm pretty sure this is just some dirty edits for Delta Arcanine's left-facing field sprite.



I got some extra Dream Mist, so let's show this off.





We'll pick Glory for this little experiment.



It's also a one-way trip, but that's fine. His hidden ability is nice anyway.





Now our Foo Dog has multiscale and a Muscle Band. Because he wasn't broken enough to begin with.



We're back in Holon now. While I'm thinking about it, there's another Delta we can grab right quick. Also I told you that the rest of the region was endless miles of untamed forests.



There's a small pond in the absolute middle of nowhere.



It's not even worth posting a map because this area is so tiny.



Some nice berries here.



And then there's this.











Delta Amaura's line is Grass/Water type. Its abilities are Friend Guard (Reduces damage done to allies) and Photroph (Hidden; Restores 1/16 of Max HP per turn; Restores 1/8 under sunlight/harsh sunligh).

After reading about it and realizing what I was looking at, I asked the PokeGoons discord about it. The general consensus was that this thing either needs to be one shot or it will outlast damn near everything you throw at it. Between Leftovers, Sunny Day, Aqua Ring, and Synthesis, it will just shrug off almost all damage that doesn't kill it outright because of how powerful its regenerative abilities are.





She's not quite the wall that Delta Snorlax was, but she still sounds pretty damn broken. She just, y'know, requires some setup first.



That strip of grass on the far left is just an error on the map. There's no way to land there.



Back to Settlement Alfa we go!







This place is very overgrown, and is really really annoying to navigate. All those clusters of trees you see? They're impenetrable. There's a bunch of tiny bushes you can't see behind the trees that block most routes through the area. Even better, see that awful maze at the bottom? There's only one route through it.

Also the area is large enough that I can't fit it all in one screen in RPG Maker. There's even more above the top of the image, but none of it is important. Oh and on top of the three we've already covered in this update, there's five more Deltas to be found in here.





I get it!



TV here must suck is all that they air are terrible cartoons from the 60s.



Oh hey! We'll need this in a moment.

three years!







This is the fire that's supposedly been burning for years.



Let's put it out!



Turns out fire can't get oxygen with a large rock sitting on top of it. That's why Rock is supereffective against Fire attacks. Also a cave opened.













Delta Croagunk's line is pure fire type. Both have Magma Armor (Prevents the Pokemon from becoming frozen), Blaze (Powers up Fire-type moves when the Pokemon is in trouble), and Hustle (Hidden; Boosts the Attack stat, but lowers accuracy) for abilities.

This guy here is a pretty decent attacker. He's got decent stats and learns some nice and powerful attacks. What more can you ask for? If he wasn't postgame only, I would definitely have used him during the main run.





Secret of Mana was such a good series.



In the middle of the jungle is a weird place to find the mega stone for that desert bunny.



The good thing about the jungle is that all the Deltas are found in relation to one another. Croagunk was due north from Foongus here.





Amy scared away the mushrooms.



My first time here, I found this by accident. One square in the middle of the clearing is impassable



Because the Delta was hiding there.











Delta Foongus' line is Dark/Ghost. Both have Prankster and Intimidate (Hidden) for abilities.

Fittingly, it learns a lot of status moves to make good use of Prankster. It doesn't learn a lot of actual attacks by level up, but it can learn a bunch of TMs.





I googled "umbrella oni" and this was the first result, so I went with that. It's probably wrong but







The middle of an untamed jungle is the last place that I expected to see a middle aged dad and his toddler-aged child.



Brave Bird's 50% recoil is a bit much.



The directions between Deltas on the wiki are pretty precise.



Probably unnecessarily so, when the destination is the only unique thing in the southern end of the zone.





This is what the tunnels in the second gym looked like. Just, y'know, dark.













Delta Darumaka's line is also Dark/Ghost type. We've actually seen Delta Darmanitan before. Taen used one during the battle first featuring Mewtwo, and he will use one again the next time we meet him. The line's abilities are Unnerve (Unnerves opposing Pokemon and makes them unable to eat Berries) and Wonder Skin.

Darmanitan has a frankly absurd amount of attack (140 base!), but doesn't learn very many good Dark moves to take advantage. The best physical it gets is probably Beat Up, while it, for some uknown reason, learns Dark Pulse, because it's gonna want to put its 30 base SpAtk to use. However, you can also teach it some really nice physical moves from other types.



With a mouth full of teeth like that, you'd think it would learn Bite or Crunch. But nope.



My nicknames were not on point for this update.



There's a very precise set of directions to the next Delta. We gotta keep going south and west until...













Delta Kabuto is Bug/Dark type. Both of them have Swarm, Unnerve, and Tough Claws (Hidden; Powers up moves that make direct contact) for abilities.

Delta Kabutops, unlike Darmanitan, actually gets to put its typing to use. It can learn all sorts of nice, powerful, physical moves to put those stats and that hidden ability to good use.







Far northeast of Kabuto we find this lady looking for it. It's mine now!







Oh hey, there's the last Delta now!





Gotta heart swap to get to it.



Not as cute as Gateau, but still pretty cute.









Delta Dwebble and Crustle 2 are Grass/Poison type. They have Harvest (May create another Berry after one is used), Leaf Guard (Prevents status conditions in sunny weather), and Chlorophyll (Boosts the Pokemon's Speed stat in sunshine) for abilities.

Unlike Gateau, Delta Crustle (Berry) actually learns some good physical moves from both of its types. It also gets a pretty good variety of TMs and tutor moves. So if you don't want Leaf Blade, you can also learn Seed Bomb, for instance. It can even learn Bug Bite to fuck with predatory Psychic-types.





The long-awaited third member of the berry trio. First we had Strawberry and Blueberry, now we have Raspberry too.



For once, we found all the Deltas in an area before we fought all the trainers. So now we need to find them.







After some wandering we finally find the first guy.









And eventually we stumble across the last trainer.





Uh-huh.



Let's get the hell outta here. Though I am surprised there weren't any Victreebell in here.



Before we close out, let's teach Ramses Acrobatics once more. It's only 10 less power, and he doesn't take a fuckton of damage when he uses it.



And that's enough for now! Eight Deltas in a single update was kinda crazy, yeah?

NEXT TIME: Holon Mountain