Text Play: Pokémon Xenoverse #6

Hello, and welcome back to the Eldiw region! This is the sixth entry in my Text Play of Pokémon Xenoverse!

As is tradition, I wish to warn you, I am going to spoil this game.

As such, if you wish to play the game for yourself, you can download the game for yourself right here. And now with that out of the way, let's go!

Well, we just defeated Ginger and won the Match Badge. The Badge kind of resembles an American football, which actually makes sense. I mean, Ginger is a college jock. A badge from that kind of guy would likely look like a sporting implement. 

I also have been going around town with my new hoverboard. Seeing what it can do, that kind of thing. This is so awesome. I love that this game allows you to have a hoverboard. As someone who grew up liking the Back to the Future movies, this is a dream come true. 

I hope the "official" Pokémon games give us a hoverboard. I would love to use one in Scarlet and Violet. But before we go further, I have to say something. I have criticized Newtron City as being a bit...barren, for a lack of a better word. But the thing is, I didn't realize back then that I did not explore the whole town. Whoops.

Yeah, that's my bad. So, I figured why not finish exploring the city while I'm here? Which part of the city did I fail to explore? Well, we have to get back to the courtyard. The one with the really neat small octagonal pool.

I like that pool. It's a neat pool. You see ,from here, I forgot to take the path that goes downwards.  From there, we find a quartet of houses.

The top left house has a woman who will give you a free Soda Pop. The top right has a bunch of guys in it who talk about partying, and one of them will give you an Awakening. It's the one dressed as an American football player.

The bottom left house has an Ultra Ball in its trash can. The bottom right house is the most interesting one, as it houses the Granbulls Corporation. The Granbull is the mascot of the town.

The inside seems to indicate that this place is a library/study center. A place where students can go to quietly bone up on the subjects they need to know to achieve mastery over their chosen majors and minors. The box next to the plant in the screenshot there contains some Energy Powder. It's a medicine that can restore 50 HP to a Pokémon. However, it's very bitter in taste, so don't be surprised if the Pokémon that you give it to will not be happy about it.

The building has two floors. The top floor has a bunch of beds in it.

Public dorms, it looks like. The blonde girl will give you a Super Potion if you talk to her. The old man remarks about our battle with A and B. He sees them as a couple of youths embracing the latest strange trend. Dude, THEY TRIED TO MAKE OFF WITH THE TERRESTIAL PLATE! They weren't being "trendy", they were criminals!

This building is weird. It's called the Granbulls Corporation, yet nothing inside indicated it was a business of any kind. It looked more like a library/study area/dorm. Maybe it was donated to the college? I mean, that does happen in the real world, buildings named after people and/or businesses that donate towards them being built. But what corporation would name themselves after a college mascot? Maybe the founders were fond of their time at the college.

Anyway, let's keep going downwards. 

Not much to see down here. Just a small beach area and a merchant named Damon. You can battle him if you want. The game does have an achievement for battling the merchants.

1st Pokémon: Kecleon (Lv. 18) - Defeated by Trishout
2nd Pokémon: Meowth (Lv. 20) - Defeated by Trishout

He'll give you a Revival Herb for defeating him. Like the name says, it can revive a fainted Pokémon and fully restore all their HP. But like a lot of other "natural" cures, it's bitter-tasing. Why is that? Why do all these herbs and spices for Pokémon taste bitter?! Do they hate these creatures or something?!

Anyway, the beach area is actually quite nice. I can imagine some students may want to come down here for some peace and quiet on occasion. The ship there is captained by a sailor named Luke. He's grateful for saving him and his fellow sailors from the X Sharpedo and its shiver of regular Sharpedo. As such, If I want to return to Hadwarf City from here, he'll happily take me back and forth. Well, that's awful nice of him. You do good towards others, and they do good towards you.

I'll have to take advantage of that at some point. Let's go forward. Since Ginger was defeated, the tunnel to Route 5 has been opened up. When we go in, though...

Yeah, there's totally nothing ominous about this. We do manage to get a look at this guy.

I did wonder if he's connected to Team Dimension, but his dialogue makes me question that. He is clearly interested in the Red Energy that allowed me to evolve Trishout when we faced A and B back in entry #3. The metal things on his face and his eyes make me wonder if this fellow is a cyborg. I get the feeling that we're going to be crossing paths with this man in the future, as he makes his intent of getting the Red Energy. Well, then! Come on down and come on get it, buddy!

But enough about him! Let's explore Route 5!

Route 5 is a grassy route, clearly meant to evoke the transition between Summer and Fall as we see that some of the trees have leaves that have turned brown and have fallen to the ground. There are trainers here to fight, as is tradition. At the beginning of the route, there is a box.

The box contains a Great Ball. Those are always handy. The lady there isn't a trainer. She just warns you to be careful of wild Pokémon. The baseball player in the screenshot will give you TM56 (Fling) if you talk to him. The end of the route (just go straight to the right) takes us to a forest. When we enter the forest, we meet Aster again.

How have you been doing, buddy? He has something special to show us.

Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with the game. This "glitching" is intentional. The tree is glitching out because it's full of energy from the Xenoverse, the place all the X Pokémon we've encountered so far are from. This tree was on a location where a dimensional rift had opened up. It did close quickly, but not before filling the tree with energy. These rifts are how X Pokémon have managed to make their way into this dimension. Hmmm, maybe the rift that was here is how the X Elekid and X Sharpedo we've captured got here? 

The "glitching" looks cool, but it can cause problems. Aster claims these rifts can mess with the "planetary balance". I'm guessing that this means that somehow, the rifts can screw up the molecular stability of the planet. Eldiw has many of these rifts, but they start spreading to other regions...yeah. That'll be a problem. Might make the planet go...well, kablooie.

Aster tells me to be careful around these rifts. He also gives me some more Xeno Balls as a precaution. My guess is he's worried some X Pokémon maybe wandering around this tree, and Xeno Balls are the only things that can catch them. Remember when we caught that X Elekid in entry #1 and the X Sharpedo in entry #2? On the bright side, you can get Xenolith in places like this. Xenolith is an evolutionary stone for some varieties of X Pokémon. Like an Eevee needs a Fire Stone to become Flareon, for example. And with that, he pulls a Batman and vanishes.

I think you can find X Spiritomb here hanging around the tree. They are very rare, though. Maybe that's where Basil got his. But who gave him a Xeno Ball? Aster? One of his fellow scientists at the lab? Batman?

You can also find an Eden Berry next to the tree. The item's description implies that like the X Pokémon, Eden Berries come from the Xenoverse. I do wonder what they do? Do they work like regular berries for regular Pokémon? Also, what if you gave them to a non-Xenoverse native Pokémon? Yeah, I'd rather not test that. Let's just move forward. We go up and to the right across this path that is lined with logs...

As you can see, there are a couple boxes here. The red-topped one contains a Repel. This area of the Route is a lot more maze-like. I'm not kidding. According to the game's wiki entry on this Route, there are tons of items you can find in boxes scattered throughout the area. Unfortunately, the entry does not include a map of this part of the route. That's frustrating to me.

I hate not knowing what I'm getting into here. In fact, I've been playing most of this game "blind" to this point. So, there might be plenty of stuff I've missed here in this game so far. The wiki is...not very full (Wikis like this are made by fans. As such, they aren't always going to have the content and information a person is going to need). But...yeah. Remember that yellow-topped box in the previous screenshot?

Yeah, that one. It contains TM40 (Aerial Ace). Moving around the forest reveals item boxes all throughout the area.

This box contains an Oran Berry. We head right from here and battle a Hiker and a schoolgirl who think we're littering.

This box contains a Leaf Stone. There's a ledge above the box, so we can't go upwards. We have to go left and upwards.

The box over there contains a Persim Berry. If you go right, you'll see a...fork, for lack of better terms.

That box contains a Quick Ball. The box is a dead end, so you have to head on the upper right, and the way out is there to meet you.

This path takes you to Stellato Town. Keeping with the space theme, I can imagine the town's name is a reference to the word stellar, which is a word used to refer to stars. As in the big balls of gas, not famous people. 

One of the first things we encounter coming into is a fish market that is...not doing so well. The fisherman the shop's owner hired to get the fish to be sold is a bit of a lazy punk. As such, the shop has no fish to sell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the start of a side quest. That's fine by me, as I don't think we've gotten any fishing rods yet. That has always bugged me. Why do we not get those early on? I mean, most bodies of water in Pokémon regions have Pokémon in them, 

A woman nearby says she's here to try the Star Sider. Evidently, it's a famous bit of local cuisine. I can't help but wonder if this is a goof-up in spelling and it's meant to be a Star Slider. Mmm, sliders...

Eh heh, yeah. Anyway, traveling though the Route 5 forest can give a team of Pokémon quite a bit of wear and tear. As such, we should hit the Pokémon Center to get them healed up.

The house on the left of it has a resident who is looking for a Grimer. If you give him one, he'll give you an Alolan variant Grimer. As in from the Sun and Moon games. I did use one of those on my team in those games for a while. It was a beast of a Pokémon, so I'll have to remember this place.

The woman earlier told us about the Star Sider, and I admit, I want to try one. So, where can we get one? Well, if we follow the path the Pokemon Center is all the way to the right, then we reach a kiosk that sells it. On the way, we pass a boy named Arthur. He's playing hide-and-seek with a friend, and he wants to know if we've seen them. Unfortunately, no. We'll have to keep an eye out. Anyway, here's the kiosk!

It turns out that I was wrong about the Star Sider. It's not something you eat. It's a drink. 

Nearby, we find a man fishing.

As shown in the screenshot, there's a box near the man. It contains a PP Up. Get your mind out of the gutter. This increases the number of Power Points. Anyway, the man is a fisherman. Remember that fish market that we saw earlier? The one that wasn't doing too well? Well, this guy is supposed to be catching the fish for the fishmonger to sell. The fisherman actually doesn't really care about fishing. He' actually after something in the bottom of the body of water he's fishing at: A Golden Magikarp statue.

(Huh)

If we give him 500 PokeDollars, we can try fishing for it ourselves. Sure, why not? The fisherman gives up a Special Rod. Get your mind out of the gutter, it's a fishing rod! Using it here will trigger a mini-game in which we dodge rocks and seaweed. I like mini-games in Pokemon games. They're a nice little change of pace. A good way to take a break from exploring and grinding and Pokemon catching.

If we head back to the Pokemon Center, we can find a path going downwards.

The house to the left there is the Name Rater's home. If you want your Pokémon renamed, there you go. The little girl there in the screenshot is named Kelly, and she's the friend that Arthur is playing hide and seek with. If you tell Arthur you've seen her, he calls you a snitch.

Kids. That's pretty much it for Stellato Town, so let us head further downwards...

Who is this guy?

Yeah, this was the cyborg-looking guy that watched us enter Route 5! He wants to know if we're the guys who took down A & B of Team Dimension. Yeah, we were the ones who took down those Daft Punk-wannabes. The cyborg introduces himself as Trey, and the Pokemon that is with him is named Sabolt. Not that it's any of our business. Wait, if Trey thinks it doesn't matter if we know his name, why did he tell us?

He watched us fight A & B. The Terrestrial Power that was unleashed at that battle fascinated him, and he wants to see it up close and personal? How? With a Pokémon battle!

1st Pokémon: Sabolt (Lv. 26) - Defeated by Trishout (Used Fire Fang, got a critical hit).

Trey gets cocky. He admits our beating him wasn't bad, but it won't be enough. Then the cyborg vanishes. My guess is that he's planning to face me again in the future...and he'll bring some more Pokémon with him. We'll have to prepare for that. But that's for the future. We heed down through the tunnel, and we enter...the String Forest.

The String Forest is...unusual. It's snowy, yet the forest is green. Which is weird. The trees here do not look like fir trees. They look like leafy trees, and leafy trees lose the leaves in the leadup to winter. Pokémon games are weeeeeeird. Anyway, you see that box next to the entrance of the forest in the screenshot? It contains a Pecha Berry. I wish we could grow Berries. Or at the very least, have Berry Pots like in HeartGold/SoulSilver, I believe. There is a path through the forest. We go downwards.

The box next to that gnarled-up tree is frozen. And no, you can't summon any Fire-type Pokémon you have (Or any Pokémon that knows a Fire-type move) to thaw it out. It's weird. Why would the game do this? Maybe we're supposed to get an item that allows thawing out of frozen boxes? You'll find another frozen box nearby if we go to the left.

From here, we go to the right.

This is an entrance to a swamp. We'll have to head back the Pokémon Center in Stellato Town and stock up on some Antidotes. I already have around 15, but some more will definitely not hurt. Why? Well, this swamp can really poison your Pokémon badly. I also stocked up on some Pokéballs and Potions. For obvious reasons. If you enter the dark green area, a purple bar starts to appear. You can't run through it. But if you can get to the light green areas and stay there, the bar will go downwards. 

Don't worry, though. It's not that hard or that scary. It's very possible to get through this dark green area without getting poisoned. We have to head downwards, and to the right. Nearby, I found this building with some strange-looking Joltik.

I'm guessing these are variants of Joltik native to the region like the Meowth we encountered earlier. Maybe this building is somehow responsible for the hail in the forest? We continue downwards and to the right, and hey, a Porygon Center!

That's handy! I've grumbled in the past about how they cost money to use, but out here in a forest like this, they can be a godsend.

And I think that's where we'll stop for now. Join me next time as I make my way further through the String Forest. Wish me luck! Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home, wash your hands often, wear a mask, and get your vaccine/boosters. See you next time!

Pokemon Obtained
(Route 5)
- Beefle
- Yanma
- Combee
- Snubbull
- Drowzee
- Audino
- Meowth (Eldiw variant)
(String Forest)
- Ekans
- Sewaddle