Episode 11: Type Bugs (Not Bug Types)

We won't be able to make much progress through Route 11 yet due to (presumably) a Slobbix blocking the road, but we might as well check the tall grass and fight the trainers. The only new thing I found in the grass was Veilumber, who we saw in the gym, but the trainers did have a handful of new Beasts to show off.

Some viewers might remember that I said I would reevaluate whether I should teach Mr. Bungle Bubblebeam after "a couple more levels". Some skeptics may have thought that I simply forgot about this, and that I'd be stuck with Water Gun on both Beasts all the way until I got Surf. However, my grand plans have all come to fruition now, as Mr. Bungle learned Bubblebeam by level up.

This route's also home two Engineers, who are literally the only Engineers in the whole game. I like their sprite here though, the missing arm adds some fun character.

These two trainers have three new Beasts between them, so let's go through them all in order.

As I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know, Shocknroll is another Steel type! I feel like I'm going crazy. I guess they didn't really have that much choice in some of these, since they did come from a different game originally. But they could've easily made this thing just Electric and been done with it. They made this next Beast non-Steel even though it looks like it could've been, I would've appreciated them exercising that kind of restraint more.

The last Beast is, I think, actually the final form of Electrio going by its name. I initially thought it was the final evolution of Epilepsia, especially since it was weak to a Bite from Rowsdower, but checking the Stardex suggests that Convulsia is actually the final form there. Makes me even more glad that I took XMVSF off the team, I really dig this design but it wouldn't have even evolved into it. I would've just gotten my hopes up seeing it here.

The last thing of note on this route is another trade, looking for a Slasher and offering an Inoyu. Unlike the last one, I've actually seen both of those Starbies, so if I ever want an Inoyu I suppose I can come back from this after I get the Silph Scope and can catch a Slasher.

We don't get very far on Route 12 thanks to, indeed, Slobbix, so from here we've got to turn around and make for Rock Tunnel.

Route 9 gives us the Teleport TM. Gee, thanks. It also gives us this Canadian Hiker, which is at least a little more interesting.

Only a couple new Beasts on this Route, just from trainers. First is this little stinker, who my first experience with was Gen 1 Missing a Thunderbolt against it. A formidable foe indeed.

A new trainer is a Hiker that's fishing in the water just north of the Star Beast Center, who exists to give some hints about where to find some Beasts. He had a Cuppacaf on his team, and after the fight he meantions you can find "coffee n' slime monsters" in the water here by fishing with a Super Rod. This does confirm that the lady in Vermillion wasn't talking out of her ass when she mentioned pollution attracts slime monsters, so I'm glad there's still some good and helpful people in the world today.

Against one of the trainers on this route, I decided to actually scroll down to Cut in the menu for the first time, just for fun I guess. Looking at it is when I learned that it's apparently a Steel type move now.

I guess I really should've thought to check that they didn't buff the HMs, since that's a pretty classic ROM hack move. I wound up popping open the documentation for this one: Cut is 70 base power and has a 10% chance to paralyze the target. I guess because you like, cut a limb off? That's awfully grim, but that's a great move, and gives us yet another way to potentially spread paralysis for our Wrappers (albeit that's probably not going to come up very often). It's not so good that I want to teach it to more of my team than just Zorotl, but it's good to keep in mind either way.

Since we're about to head into Rock Tunnel, I decided to also check Flash's new effect. It's now an Electric-type attack, with 60 base power and a 30% chance to flinch. Not a great move, but synergizes pretty well with our paralysis support, and literally everyone on our team can learn it. I was just planning on stashing someone in the box for the trip so we can bring XMVSF along for Flash, but it looks like that won't be necessary. Mr. Bungle's got a pretty free slot on his moveset right now that's just being occupied by Leer, so he'll get to pick up some nice coverage for other Water types while we're at it. This also has the distinct benefit of making it so I never have to look at XMVSF's disappointing face ever again.

Last new critter before Rock Tunnel pretty soundly disproves my "Inozu evolves from Splashee" theory, but does live up to Splashee's weirdly incredibly good shading on its sprite. I don't love the design in a vacuum, but it's a good sprite.

Rock Tunnel has led me to a surprising revelation: I don't think Duhzlugg is actually a Rock type. I assumed it was, since it looked like one and it was in Mt. Moon, but I think it might actually just be a pure Psychic type? Odd, but I guess it being a crystal almost makes sense for that? Bubblebeam did normal damage, Bite was super effective, and it learns Psywave as previously established. So that's my best guess at this juncture. Wild Mosstons also show up here, and one Hiker comments that they're "tough as hell"! Which I'm inclined to agree with, although luckily when they're wild they're easy to run from. As for new Starbies, the only wild creature we haven't seen yet looks to be a pre-evolved form of that coal guy we saw on the route earlier.

Rock Tunnel was otherwise pretty uneventful. One of the Collectors explained to me what Cosplay is, one of the Lasses said "My God" after she lost which means she's going to hell for taking the Lord's name in vain. Toby Kebel got hit by an Embrain's Hypnosis, slept for 5 turns, and then immediately got hit by another one. That trainer also had a Malevolos, and they were the same color, which kind of tricked me into thinking Malevolos was the evolved form of Embrain. It's not, after checking the Dex it's Kremate which makes a lot of sense in hindsight. There was also one last new Starbie on a trainer's team, though: the evolution of Aspiro.

The real biggest news of Rock Tunnel isn't actually related to the dungeon itself, it's a confirmation of a mechanical oddity with this game which I'm not sure if it's a bug or just a really weird gameplay decision. I've noticed, throughout the playthrough, that sometimes moves that I thought would deal normal damage would instead say they were not very effective. Using Wing Attack on a Cromag for example, it's a Rock/Fighting type, so the damage should even out to being neutral. Instead, it would say it was not very effective. This made me doubt a lot of type matchups that I thought I knew pretty well (for example, Cromag I just assumed was just a Rock type, even though I thought I remembered Confusion being super effective). This has happened a good handful of times, some that I mentioned bit a lot more that I didn't. I was able to confirm that something is up here in this dungeon with two test cases: Wing Attack on Weedimp was not very effective even though I'm confident it's a Grass type, and a wild Manhandla's Mach Punch on Zorotl, who I know for a fact is Normal/Flying. Both of these moves were displayed as being not very effective.

Is this just a visual bug, or does it actually affect damage calculations? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think it might actually affect damage, but it's hard to know the damage these moves actually would've done in a lot of cases since I don't know the stats on these critters. I'll have to see if I can find a place to test this. I'm guessing this is a bug, since it would be a very odd thing to want to change on purpose, but maybe these devs just have some very odd ideas about balancing? Or maybe it's a reference to Shi Kong Xing Shou, who knows. In any case, it's something I'll have to keep in mind going forward.

By the end of this dungeon, I was really feeling the Wrap PP blues. Wrap is great for cheesing strong battles, but it's really bad for dungeons since you have to use so many of them to get anything done, and a larger sample size of fights gives your opponents more chances to win the miss chances and get potshots on you. The good news is there's not actually a ton of capital d Dungeons left in the game, especially not with a bunch of wild encounters that make it annoying to leave and heal your PP. There's one bright spot at the end of the tunnel though, since I found a wild Inoyu.

Doubt I'll actually use this thing, but it was pretty scary in the gym fight, and I hate to say it but Mr. Bungle might wind up getting cut from the team if the Ground weakness becomes too much of a liability.

Just outside Rock Tunnel is something actually notably new!

The full text of the sign reveals that this guy's full name is "DJ Master Double Cut Slice 'Em Up Dice 'Em Up", but that he's mostly just known as "DJ Double Cut".

This might be the only RBY overworld sprite I've ever seen with an identifiable mouth. Oh, and if you guessed this dude said "Mon" a lot, you'd be correct. Apparently he's raising two of these "yetis" because they're an endangered species, but he wants to give one of them away to an experienced trainer. He sees that we beat Eleksi (maybe he knows them because they've worked together in the past? who's to say) and offers to give us a yeti. And who am I to say no to a free yeti.

I've noticed this is the second Ice type that we've seen as a gift Star Beast and not in the wild. I wonder if they had a lot of Ice types they wanted to include in the game, but wanted some of them to be available before the Seafoam Islands which is really the only Ice-themed area in RBY. Although I guess Bladeberus probably wanted to be special for other reasons.

Comments