As with last time, I will be warning you. I will be spoiling this game. If you want to play through the game yourself, I recommend that you download the game at its wiki right here. And with that, let's go!
Last time, we managed to get the third Vesryn badge: The Diamond Badge. The Badge was given by Agassiz Town's Gym Leader, the Rock-type specialist Jonathan. With this third badge, I can now challenge the Gym back in Fianga City. There's still a little business to take care of in Agassiz, though. First, there's a little gap in the path leading to the Secret Base.
This opening allows you to take a path that goes through the mountains around the Town. It leads to a small area where an item can be found.
It's a Machete. Like the Dolly replaces the HM Strength, this can be used in place of the HM Cut. It honestly makes me wonder why these HMs are in the game when these items exist. Keeping the HMs around seems rather redundant to me. And honestly, I prefer having items like the Dolly and Machete to the HMs anyway. These objects don't force you to give a Pokémon a move that can't be removed later. I think the official games should do this.
There's also one other piece of business to tend to here. One of the houses is occupied by a person and a Linoone. The house has a TV that is seemingly broken, but actually contains an Ancient Tome.
I believe it's the...fourth Tome I found so far? I don't know, the game doesn't keep track for some reason. Why doesn't it? It doesn't really give the idea that these Tomes have any importance. Well, with the Tome collected and the Machete obtained, it's time to head back to Fianga City. On the way back, on Route 308.5. There's a tree in the way that I can cut own with my new machete.
The path leads to an area behind the closed-up Trick House.
It's an Ultra Ball. For those not in the know, Pokéballs can be actually rather varied. Some of them can be used in special situations to increase your chances of capturing Pokémon. For example, Dive Balls can increase your chances of capturing a Pokémon that live in water. Ultra Balls are just basically stronger versions of standard Pokéballs. They're the best version of the standard Pokéball. And with that out of the way, let's head back to Fianga City!
The last time we had visited Fianga, we had to clear out Team Olympus from the Pokéhadron Collider. But they're gone, and we'll hopefully never have to worry about them again oh, we're going to face Team Olympus again in the future, aren't we? Anyway, as was established earlier, the Fianga City's Gym Leader is rather unique...as it's a robot.
No, it doesn't look like that...that would be neat if it did. The robot, PK-096, is from the Orre Region. It's a "real" Region, as it's the setting of the Pokémon games Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. It's a very odd region for one reason: There are no wild Pokémon in it. The name of the region plays on the word ore, and many of the cities and towns there reference minerals in their names. It does make sense that the game would surmise that there are mines there.
It was originally built to provide security for the mines there, but a cave-in damaged it and gave it a lust for battle. So, instead of trying to repair or destroy the robot, they plopped it in Fianga and made it the town Gym Leader. I don't see this going horribly wrong in any way.
It's pretty clear that in the Pokémon universe, there are no equivalent to the Terminator films. Anyway, PK-096 specializes, appropriately enough, in Steel-type Pokémon. To counter him, I'll need to pack some Fighting and Fire-type Pokémon. Unfortunately, I...don't have a lot of options here. I only have like, two Fire Pokémon: Magmar and Ponyta. The only Fighting-type Pokémon I have is a Mankey. God, I'd kill to have a Tepig, Torchic, and Chimchar right now. They evolve into Fire/Fighting Pokémon, and they'd be great Steel-wreckers. Ah, well. Sometimes you just have to work with what you got. Mankey's going to be a pain to grind up as she's at level 5. Ponyta, not so much, as he's at level 17. Again, work with what you got.
Thankfully, grinding hasn't been that hard. I managed to get Mankey up to level 13 pretty quickly. To me, the game is pretty generous with experience points.
The Fianga Gym itself is, rather appropriate for a gym led by a kill-crazy robot, a bit high-tech.
At least, I thought it would be. Walkways over a black...floor? Bottomless pit? Is this Gym over a bottomless pit?!
You have to go on these walkways that will take you to various platforms. Each of these platforms contains strategically placed rocks. It creates a puzzle that you have to solve to reach PK-096. You cant destroy the rocks to make the puzzle easier. You have to use the walkways and the rocks' placement to get to the robot. There no trainers to battle here in this gym. That's a bit of a shame, as it would have allowed me a little extra XP for my Mankey and Ponyta.
1st Pokémon: Klink (Lv. 28) - Defeated by Ponyta.
2nd Pokémon: Bronzor (Lv. 29) - Used Iron Defense heavily. PK used a Super Potion, and switched out with a Metang. PK used Full Restore to fully heal it after Metang was defeated. Defeated Ponyta. Defeated Mankey. Defeated by Magmar.
3rd Pokémon: Metang (Lv. 29) - Was brought in from Bronzor. Defeated by Ponyta.
4th Pokémon: Honedge (Lv. 29) - Defeated by Magmar.
5th Pokémon: Magneton (Lv. 31) - Defeated by Magmar.
And with that, PK-096 was defeated. Badge number four, the Android Badge, is mine.
I also got TM74 (Gyro Ball). And the robot appeared to have crashed. Should've gotten better programming...It's also a shame that all that time I put in when it came to training Mankey was for nothing. Frickin' Bronzor...
Anyway, I admit, after I beat the Gym, I was unsure where to go next. After all, there wasn't really anything left to do here. I could still get a Smeargle from Mr. Tempremental Artist. But I still don't have an extra Clefairy. But then I remembered something. Back at Agassiz Town, there was a cave in the town that we could not enter. Remember that cave from entry ? Well, maybe now that we have four badges, maybe we can go in. So, let's head there, shall we?
Man, I love the bicycle in this game. It's so delightfully fast. And yes, we can enter the cave! Hooray!
The cave is the entrance to Route 309, which can be a rather...confusing Route thanks to it having a ton of ladders. This route is the way to go to the next town in the game: Turkana Town. It's also the way to get to Route 310. I'm going to go straight to Route 310. How do we get through it? Well, it's simpler than you think. There's a ton of ladders everywhere. Avoid those for now. Travel around the route until you get to this point.
Don't worry about the rock and the item yet, we can't get it at this point. From there, we go upwards to a ladder. Go up this ladder. And you'll find yourself in a chamber with a Hiker in it.
Well, he's looking for some Heart Scales. He thinks they'll make a nice little gift for his girlfriend. Aww, that's nice. He's been trying to find some, but he's been having no luck in that. Hey, wait! Maybe we can help him. We'll be doing some traveling in this game, so maybe if we find some, we can give them to him. He'll give us Super Potions in return. Not a bad deal. We enter the cave right next to him, and it's the entrance to Route 310.
However, Route 309 is a branching place. It also leads to another town: Turkana Town. And yes, it's named after a lake. In this case, it's Lake Turkana in Kenya, and part of Ethiopia. How do we get there? Well, from the entrance to Route 309 from Agassiz City, you go straight down until you reach this ladder.
From there, you go left until you get to this point.
See that little cave entrance there? Go into it, and you're there. Easy peasy! Turkana Town is a nice sleepy little place. There is a Pokémon Center and a store. The main center of the Town is the Turkana Stone.
The area is clearly swarming with cops. They believe that Team Olympus may have plans to take the Stone or do something with it. That makes sense. It fits their MO. You see, the Turkana Stone indicates where Arceus stood when he created the world. At least, according to myth. It's also believed that a bit of the Pokémon world's version of God's essence still lies in the stone. Team Olympus's schemes have all involved legendary Pokémon in some form, so it makes sense they'd go after the Turkana Stone. Nice to see the cops here actually anticipating this.
One of the unique sights here is a seemingly ordinary house. However, inside...
It's a Wynaut zoo. Tons of them. Just wandering around. Why are all these Wynaut here? Well, Why not?! Heh heh heh heh...
Yeah okay, I apologize. In another house, a woman took one of the Wynauts and will offer it for a Maractus. Maractus can easily be found in Route 310, so this is not a hard trade to pull off. At the same house that you can make this trade, I was also given a Heavy Ball. It's a special Pokéball designed to help capture very big Pokémon, like Snorlax and Steelix.
At this point, there's really not much else to do in Turkana. You can also obtain a Farfetch'd by training a Dodrio, but I don't have an extra Dodrio to trade. The Turkana Stone itself will be more significant later in the game, but for right now, we can just head to Route 310 and continue on our way to the fifth Gym...and hand Team Olympus another whuppin' if they need one. I get the feeling they're not going to leave the Turkana Stone alone...
Yeah, there's really no point to staying here much longer. Let's move on. After traveling through Route 310, we arrive at Kivu Town. And yes, it's named after a body of water. In this case, it's named after another one of the African Great Lakes: Lake Kivu, which is on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The town if home to the game's fifth Gym. It's run by someone named Graham, and it specializes in Ghost-type Pokémon. Graham is an 11-year-old boy.
I am not kidding. Evidently they'll literally let anyone or anything be a Gym Leader here in Vesryn. I mean, the last Gym we went to was led by a malfunctioning mining robot! The Pokémon League here must be incredibly dumb, incredibly corrupt, or incredibly dumb AND corrupt. Why does that feel rather relatable now?
Anyway, Graham is supposed to be some kind of child prodigy, a brilliant trainer of Ghost-type Pokémon. As such, we need a good Dark-type to take him on. Luckily, there's a house near the Poké Mart that has such a Pokémon.
The trainer inside will accept any Pokémon for his Absol. That's a refreshing change. One of the main features of this place is that it's the home of the Ranger Club, Pokémon Rangers' HQ.
We've seen Rangers through out the game, and this is where they get recruited and where they mainly work, helping abused Pokémon and the like. Yes, your character can join the Rangers. Pretty cool, huh? I love this. I like that the Rangers are shown to have a variety of Pokémon. It makes sense. Each Ranger probably has their own personal favorite Pokémon to use in their Ranger duties. Although I think they would have a standard Pokémon or two they use in their duties. If you talk to one of the female Rangers in the building, she'll ask you if you're a Ranger yourself. Say yes, as she's not going to fact-check it. She'll give you HM02 (Fly).
Fly makes backtracking a lot easier as you can literally just fly back to previous cities and towns you visited. However, there is something that makes me frown. Remember when we got the Machete in and the Dolly in ? Well, those two items quickly rendered the (respectively) Cut and Strength Hidden Machines rather obsolete. Why give us these HMs if we can get items that can easily replace them? I'm just saying, I won't be surprised if we get a jetpack or a hang glider soon. I think I've said this before, but items instead of HMs is something I think Game Freak should have done a long time ago.
I said we can join the Rangers, right? Well, of course! "But how do we do that," you ask? Easy. We talk to the head Ranger in the building. She's standing between a couch and a computer. She will give us missions. Well, we basically do missions for them. The first is that there's a machine in the area that Team Olympus is using to hypnotize the wild Pokémon. Gotta shut it down.
A word of warning, though. If you start these Ranger missions, you cannot go back to the Pokémon Center to heal between battles with Team Olympus goons. So before you get your assignment, make sure you hit the Poké Mart and get some supplies. Get some Potions, healing items, and the like. For the first mission, it's also recommended by the game's wiki that you bring a team of Pokémon between 26 and 35. At this point, my main team of Pokémon are well within that range, levels 28-29. As such, I could take on this mission. So, why not?
And that is where I think I'll end this entry. Next time, join me as we do some grinding and take on our first Ranger mission! As well as prepare for the ghostly Graham! See you then! Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, spread it around! Take care of yourself, and each other! Stay home, stay safe, and wash your hands often!
Pokémon Obtained:
Route 309
- Solrock
- Lunatone (100th Pokémon! Woot!)
- Durant (Zeta exclusive, Omicron counterpart is Joltik)
- Meditite
Route 310
- Maractus
- Roselia
- Charmeleon
Turkana Town
- Wynaut (obtained by trading a Maractus)
Kivu Town
- Absol (obtained by trading a Charmeleon)
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