Platinum Nuzlocke 2 - From Twinleaf to Oreburgh

Okay! Officially starting our journey, still with no Pokeballs, we pass through Sandgem town only to find Dawn waiting for us in some tall grass to show us how to catch Pokemon. After a brief tutorial shes gives us our first 5 pokeballs. We can now get our first encounter of the run.

So going back to route 201, our first is a Bidoof! A beaver looking favourite meme of a Pokemon which I named Jeff, after another meme. Then I returned to route 202, where I caught a Krikitot as my second encounter, naming it Mozart after it’s evolution’s musical inspiration.

Something I like to do is train all the Pokemon in my party evenly, so with Timothy being the highest level, I trained them all to level 7, then continued made my way through Route 202 to Jubilife City

I ran into Dawn for a second time immediately after entering the city. She said that a good place to stop is the Trainer School, but on the way there, we met a strange man named Looker, who said they are a member of the Elite International Police, who also gives us the VS Recorder. After asking us to inform him of anything suspicious we see out there, Dawn continues to take me to the Trainer school and leaves me to learn!

Entering the school, I see Barry at the chalkboard. I decide to talk to the other students before talking to him and that leads to an unexpected trainer battle. They were showing the use of X Attacks on their Starly and which brought Timothy to an uncomfortably low health. But he survived and we took a quick stop at the Pokemon Center to heal before any more surprise trainer encounters get the better of me.

After defeating the student next to the first and getting a potion as a reward, I talked to Barry at the chalkboard. He was boasting about how memorized the board and was off to Oreburgh City to fight the first gym leader. I opened to Town Map to find that Oreburgh City is directly east from Jubilife City, so I started to make my way in that direction. As I began to walk, I was approached by a man who was the CEO of the Poketch Company (short for Pokemon Watch). They were doing a campaign for a free watch and all I had to do was find the 3 clowns hiding around the city. They weren’t too hard to spot as they were wearing bright yellow suits, where they asked questions about Pokemon mechanics like STAB. Cool way to remind players old players and teach new players about that. I returned to CEO to recieve my Poketch and continued to Route 203 to Oreburgh City.

Not 10 steps into the route, Barry challenges me to a battle. I guess he forgot something in Jubilife and had to turn around? He challenges me with his Starly and Chimchar, where his strategy was to lower my stats by 4-5 stages before attacking. Too bad Mozart’s Bide isn’t based on my stats, so after being hit by 5 growls and 2 of Starly’s quick attacks, he was able to one shot it in return. Expecting a similar strategy with his Chimchar, I switched to Jeff to hit him with some Growls of my own before cleaning up with Timothy. As predicted he used about 5 Leers before starting to use scratch, so I was able to counter with 5 Growls before switching to Timothy. Timothy focused on attacking his opponent, while Chimchar switched back to using the Leer strategy. I was about to KO Chimchar with him only using 1 attacking move. Don’t be so tunnel visioned Barry!

After returning to the Jubilife Pokemon Center to heal up, I got my Route 203 encounter, a Starly named Cindy Lou. I asked my labmates for a girls name and they said Cindy Lou Who, which didn’t fit so I shortened to Cindy Lou. Then going through Oreburgh Gate, I caught a Geodude, whom my girlfriend named Cardi B.

It was a short tunnel to Orenburg where the gym seemed to be empty! The leader was down in the mines. While heading down there to remind him he had another job, I encountered a Zubat which I named Neo (shotout Matrix 3). Before actually fighting Roark, I trained the Timothy to level 12 and then proceed to sweeps Roark’s rock team.

One gym badge down!

Side note: I am taking a better effort to talk to the NPC’s and immerse myself in the world. This was a funny interaction!