Part 18: The Black Market

These numbers just won't do. Those are rookie numbers!



So I spend $10,000 on a personal taxi man for the secret base. This will be used surprisingly often despite the pika car guy being in nearly every town in the game.





First off, everyone meet Boppo the Wynaut. Named for a clown punching bag because, let's be honest, that'll be his job.





For all the both good and bad this statement entails, he's a Wobbuffet. Now that we've met him, back onto the mantle he goes, waiting for the right time.



Now for the second trick... I need RealDoll and that Axew we caught at the TV Station.



For whatever reason the Axew doesn't get along well with her blow-up doll.



So while we wait (yes I know it's based on steps, shhhh) let's go shopping for clothes.

Hats

Headband
Miner's Helmet
Fedora
Poop Hat
Straw Hat
Beret
Beanie
Youngster Cap
Cat ears
Devil Horns
Silver Crown
Golden Crown

Shirts

Red Shirt
Blue Shirt
Green Shirt
Purple Shirt
Black Shirt
Orange Shirt
Pink Shirt
Yellow Shirt
Alt. Jumpsuit
Lords Suit

Pants

Blue Pants
Red Pants
Green Pants
Gray Pants
Alt. Jumppants
Lords Pants

Backpacks

Green Pack
Black Pack
Blue Pack
Green Pack (There really are two green packs)
Magenta Pack
Orange Pack
Red Pack
Yellow Pack

Hair Dye

Purple Dye
Blue Dye
Brown Dye
Black Dye
Red Dye
Blonde Dye
Green Dye
Pink Dye
Cyan Dye

I buy the Alt. Jumpsuit set and one of the green packs.



Buying clothes opens up another menu option on our backpack that lets us Wonder Woman into new clothes.



I like this new look. Amy finally is wearing some shoes... or at the very least socks. It also has the look of an adult's job uniform that's been scaled down for a little kid. Viewed from that angle, it's downright adorable.



A few minutes later...



Axew eggs take a very long time to hatch.



Now we can get the wizard duck at level 1!



Then in the worst case of bad timing ever, I hit the quicksave button right about here...



Then half a second later, this happened. The game decided that was the single best time to crash. Show of hands, who knows what happens when a game crashes while it's saving? If not, then I have some educational reading for you to peruse.

Unfortunately, RPG Maker and Pokemon Essentials productions have more sanity checking than Gen 2 games. So when the game crashes/is shut off during a save, the worst that happens isn't that we have to redo everything from the previous save with beneficial glitchy side-effects. No, in this case the save file data corrupts and is both unreadable and unrecoverable.



Thankfully, RPG Maker keeps 2 cycling backup saves. So we were able to recover and continue without losing basically any progress. I think I'm gonna start religiously backing up my save files because that's twice now inside of a month that the Curse has tried to fuck with this LP.





Level 1 for a level 1.







We can have a lot of fun with Magic Bounce. Also gotta love our wizard duck being named for an infamous boss from another JRPG.



Demyx will need a water stone to evolve, so let's grab one of those.





I can't overstate just how much I love this Audino trainer.



I elect to not get Water Spout because it only has 5 PP and Insurgence likes to make you fight long stretches of trainers in locations where it's inconvenient to leave and return.

45 minutes later...





Thundervolt is at a dangerous level. Our current badge cap is 50 and she's a traded pokemon. Her stats also seem mediocre for this point in the game, but she has yet to evolve.





Demyx is a special wall, but otherwise is kinda not good? His only psychic STAB hits physical defense, and he has fighting coverage in a team that, once we're past the flying gym, will have HenryDavid covering that niche nicely.





Cockatrice has been benched in favor of Dracolich. His move set really hasn't changed much, but the only one I would change at this point would be Screech. Physical defense down is not a great status move for a special attacker like we have here.





Fancy's Wide Lens lets her Rollout hit 100% of the time, and Defense Curl doubles its already impressive damage. Factor in Earthquake and this elephant is an unstoppable force.





Noel has all around high stats. Between Freeze Dry and Aurora Beam, he's just as dangerous as an electric type to the upcoming gym. Freeze Dry in particular lets him hit for 4x supereffective on 2/3 of the gym leader's team... including his ace.





I'm pretty sure Sparky has the highest stat out of any member of the team. 156 is an insane special attack. His moves could use some work. Dazzling Gleam, in particular, should be Moonblast by this point. Thanks to my fuckup last time, that won't be happening.

So with our team of level 50 badasses, let's go into the sewers.



Down into the basement of the department store...



Around the box maze...



And then down the memory hole.



Let me just quote the wiki here. From here at the fan go straight up..



Right



Down



And then left.







Oh that is so much better. You can also find this immediately by just following the age old advice for mazes: "just hug the wall to your right."

So now that we have the flashlight, let's pull up the map.



S - Store (Entrance)
F - Flashlight
Musical Note - Meloetta Tile Puzzle (Requires Strength and Rock Smash)
B - Black Market (Exit)

There's also a bunch of minor items like potions, repels, rare candies, and the Recycle TM. I'm not getting those because fuck that.



So instead let's skip to the end of the maze. I don't have anyone on the team who has a Strength equivelent move currently, so we can't get finish the second tile puzzle. I'm beside myself with disappointment.





We probably don't need a map but...



: This Black Market is creepy as heck. I'm glad you found your way down here too.

into the Jade Tower.





We're not in so big a hurry that we can't poke around here first. There's some really nice stuff down here!





TLDR: She lets us get trade evolutions. For free!







Meh. After some of the other powerhouses on the team, Electivire doesn't really impress.



Uh... ok.



When we have Dive we can use this little pool to get back to the surface quickly.



This guy is a Move Tutor that can teach any pokemon a move called Custom Move. For $500 we can teach the move to any pokemon we want. The only catch is that all users of Custom Move on our team get that same type.

Custom Move is a 15PP 70BP 100Accuracy physical move. You can change its name and type for free. Basically think of it as the physical Hidden Power, but there's no fuckery involved in getting the coverage type you want.

So if you like, come up with a name for the move and a type, and I'll teach it to Fancy or HenryDavid for coverage purposes.



This super nerd will, for $2000, give us another box in our PC. Handy if, for some reason, you want a living dex or a complete dex.



Northwest Vendor

MooMoo Milk - $500
Light Ball - $100
Black Sludge - $200
Shock Drive - $10,000
King's Rock - $100
Whipped Dream - $200

Southwest Vendor

Big Root $200
Heal Powder - $550
Timer Ball - $1,000
Chill Drive - $10,000
Satchet - $2,000
Stick - $200

Northeast Vendor

Rock Gem - $200
Exp. Share - $3,000
Ultra Ball - $1,200
Super Rod - $0 (Only 1)
Burn Drive - $10,000
Energy Root - $800
Thick Club - $500

Southeast Vendor

Skull Fossil - $1,000
Ice Heal - $250
Oval Charm - $7,000 (Increases likelihood of eggs at daycare) (Only 1)
Dusk Ball - $1,000
Douse Drive - $10,000
Energy Powder - $500
Old Amber - $1,000

Some nice finds in here. I pick up the Super Rod, but I'll hold off on discussing what opens up with it until we have the next badge.



Edgy. The Black Market has pokemon cockfighting. As opposed to the usual pokemon battling.



This game is so much better when it isn't trying to be all adult and shit.



I'd like to point out that from this point until we clear the events in the Jade Tower, if we want to leave and heal, we need to walk back out through this building here, out through the black market, back through the sewer maze, up and out of the department store, and then into the pokecenter.



This building is mercifully a linear path.







This is Taen. You remember... stupid bowl haircut, mocked a lonely child for having an imaginary friend. One that he then tried to steal.

: Oh... it's you.





: Get out of here, now! You-



: Sir...?
: I suppose you two don't remember me, huh?



: We've met each other in Telnor Town, back in Sylvan's Lab. Remember? The Delta Species Pokemon I offered you?

with a trainer.



immediately.



So Sylvan specifically asked Reukra to not kill us. That's... nice of her.... I think?

: Well, we don't really want to interfere with anything. We just want to get through! We heard there was a way into the Jade Tower from here. We need to see the Augur!

: ...and why would you two want to do that?







You know, he's not wrong.

: I... don't know. I just thought you would-



: I have a little project you can help with.







Villain monologue, so pressing fast forward.





TLDR: Dracolich was part of a failed experiment to create the perfect pokemon. After Deltas weren't perfect, Reukra moved on to Mega Evolution. Now I've saved you a good 20 text boxes of him monologuing.





Ah, good old Battle Data.











This is a one sided battle.



Our team is all level 50. This part of one of those "gotchas" that Insurgence fucking loves to pull. I leveled the team to be on par with the upcoming gym leader and the boss fight immediately after.



Noel is Ice/Fairy type, which means that he takes basically no damage from Ice Beam and can't even be hit by Dragon Breath. So all this Kyurem can do is slash at him and make his speed fall.



Pyroar looks so goofy. Anyway, Fancy uses STAB supereffective Earthquake to make the fire type faint in a single blow.



I'm sure this is meant to be another "gotcha" moment because Mega Stunfisk.



Well, kinda. I forgot about that water move.



Then for reasons I can't guess at, Taen withdraws Stunfisk from a guaranteed two-turn KO on Demyx.



I legitimately don't get it. Grumpig here doesn't have anything supereffective against Demyx. Instead it walked the psychic pig into Dracolich's Shadow Ball.



And then Noel hits Mega Stunfisk with Freeze Dry and puts this farce to an end.

















Sure, whatever. Shine on with your battle data, you crazy idiot.







That's an item we can't get until extremely deep in the postgame.



However, the real prize is here! Now Dracolich can Mega Evolve!

In fact... let's meet the three starters nice and proper. Buckle in because this will take a while.





Female Delta Bulbasaur.





Female Delta Ivysaur.





Female Delta Venusaur.





















Delta Bulbasaur is Fairy/Psychic type and is extremely powerful. It not only has an extremely good move pool, but the stats to make those moves work. The female one starts off really cute with the little flower by her ear, but then she evolves and

For abilities, it has Psycho Call (Powers up psychic moves in a pinch) and Regenerator (Hidden; Restores HP when withdrawn from battle). Mega Delta Venusaur has Hubris (Boosts Special Attack after knocking out). It's as broken as it sounds like.

This is a really good Delta. I don't have anything bad to say except it's kinda really goddamned ugly once it evolves. A solid choice all around, and a solid workhorse of a starter.

















For reasons he doesn't even understand, Leavemywife felt the sudden urge to click on this thread.

Anyway, Delta Squirtle isn't nearly as dire as I initially thought. The devs apparently were on their A-game for the starters, because Blastoise learns a lot of special moves and has the stats to do both attacks and special attacks merely okay. Honestly I still maintain that if you want a Dark/Fighting type, then you can spend 20 minutes looking for a Pancham who is physical-focused and puts the moves to better use than Blastoise here.

For abilities, Squirtle's line gets Shadow Call (Powers up dark moves in a pinch) and Shadow Dance (Hidden; Boosts the Speed stat when the New Moon is active). Mega Delta Blastoise retains its Mega Launcher ability. (Powers up aura and pulse moves)

I know I went out of order, but I want to finish off on...

















You know it, you love it... Delta Charmander! Minus the past couple updates, Dracolich has been with us for much of the entire game so far. I don't need to talk about how good he is, because I've show that off pretty adequately. I do want to point out that when he mega evolves, he gets a base SpAtk of 159.

Charmander's line here gets Spirit Call (Powers up ghost moves in a pinch) and Dark Aura (Hidden; Dark Aura increases the damage dealt by Dark-type attacks by 33% for all Pokemon on the field) for abilities. The hidden ability there, I should point out, is Yveltal's signature ability.

Finally Mega Delta Charizard gets the Noctem ability. (The Pokemon summons darkness and blots out the sky as it enters the battle) You remember that New Moon status I was talking about a few updates ago? Noctem causes that. Even better, Charizard learns a dark type move that's Basically Solarbeam But For Dark.

Anyway, that's all for now!

NEXT TIME: Betrayal from within! The Gym Battle! The plot kicks into gear! It's an action packed finale to Helios City, so don't miss it!