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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

The item isn’t even all that useful. The 10% flinch chance is nice, but most of the time playing Pokemon I’ve only ever sought this thing because I wanted a Politoed or Slowking and the vast majority of these games give the impression there’s only one in the game.

Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

At least not for years. Black 2 and White 2 would allow you to randomly open an antique shop
In the mini mall you manage (just go with it) but you can’t force that encounter. It wouldn’t be until Scarlet and Violet that you can just go and buy one.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

The notion of it being rarely on wild Pokemon would stay constant across the franchise as a whole but most kids don’t catch the same Pokemon 20 times so without a guide, they wouldn’t know how to farm the item.

And after the gen 2 remakes, the mainline series wouldn’t revisit a purchasable rock.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

This item in particular would be a one and done kind of item for a very long time. Coliseum and Gale of Darkness would allow you to spend your hard earned coupons on them, but speaking in terms of mainline games, this item wouldn’t become something repeatedly acquirable until the gen 2 remakes.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

So from the perspective of an average kid who doesnt have internet access (a very common thing from back when Crystal came out) you the player will get a single king’s rock in a game where two pokemon use it to evolve.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

In Pokémon Crystal only, a trainer who you can get the phone number of will have his Kingler hold the rock starting with your second rematch of him. You then go into the fight with a Pokémon who knows the move Thief and steal it.

There is absolutely no way to know either of these naturally.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

There are two other ways to get the item. Slowpoke and Poliwhirl in the wild have a 2% chance to hold them when caught. Given this is a 1/50 chance and even for a Pokémon game this is a very slow process, you might wanna know where the other rock might be.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

The King’s Rock is an interesting little hold item that causes the holder’s moves to cause occasional flinching.

It’s also how you get the new evolutions for Poliwhirl and Slowpoke.

The only issue is the game only has one regularly obtainable King’s Rock in Slowpoke Well.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 1d

I’m replaying Pokemon Crystal on the 3DS Virtual Console for absurdly stupid reasons and this game.

This fucking game.

It has the nerve to introduce several items for Pokemon evolution, which isn’t a sin in and of itself.

However, the moronic stupidity of how scarce they are is maddening.

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Reposted by Z-Rune

Yam @yambam.bsky.social · 2d

It's another Halloween weirdo- Dead Body, the tipsy zombie! Watch your back, because there may be more than one of them...

Drawn with ink, markers, color pencils, and a gel pen on a 6x7 inch piece of illustration board. #yamart #art

Dead Body, a creepy zombie man from Gregory Horror Show. He's busted out of the ground in front of the graveyard, and is enjoying a glass of wine under a full moon.

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Reposted by Z-Rune

Yam @yambam.bsky.social · 2d

Happy Halloween! Hell's Chef has made some special candy for you. Drawn with ink, markers, and gel pen on a small piece of illustration board. #yamart #art

Hell's Chef from Gregory Horror Show, standing in a pool of blood in front of two jack-o-lanterns. He's holding his large kitchen knife and a big bowl of wrapped candies. The text says "trick or treat"

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

This accidentally makes moves like Block and Mean Look amazing.

Just don't use them on Raikou or Entei since them using Roar will bypass the block and permanently despawn the beasts from your game.

Yeah... I think Pokemon has always been a janky mess. It just looks nicer now.

Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

Now, what I just said is true, but I left out a key detail. See, due to a glitch, the Fast Ball only works on Pokemon who have a 10% chance to run which is unfortunately just three.

Those three being Magnemite, Grimer and Tangela.

This is sadly something all Apricorn balls get in Gen 2.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

The game had a solution in mind. See, each Pokeball has a catch rate modifier. Your standard Pokeball has a modifier of x1 meaning the catch rate is unchanged. The Great Ball's modifier is x1.5 and the Ultra Ball is x2.

But the Fast Ball has a staggering x4, but only if the Pokemon can run away.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

What made this even more frustrating was Crystal had reworked a lot of the routes to have rare encounters and many of those encounters were the ones that turn tail and run. You can get a Phanpy before the first gym. A Teddiursa, too! They show up 5% of the time and run 50% of the time. Delightful.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

To clarify, these Pokemon have a thing where every single turn the game will check if the Pokemon runs and if they do, they get out of there before they do their attack. Some have a low threshold of 10% but others can have as much as 50% which means catching them is a nightmare.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

You might be thinking about roaming Pokemon, otherwise known as the frustrating legendaries that run away and jump to a new area after a single turn of battle. Those guys are a pain but not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about some 20-ish Pokemon in the game that are programmed to escape.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 5d

You may not know this, especially since the game I'm about to talk about is nearly 30 years old, but moves like Block and Mean Look in Pokemon had a much more useful... uh... use, I guess, when they first happened onto the scene.

Pokemon used to run away from you and it was super annoying.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 7d

The mode is fun. The chaos of the game invalidates some (but not all) of standard Pokémon’s need to adhere to metagaming to even pretend to compete well. Two fully evolved Pokemon and one who is mega-capable should at least carry you to the coveted rank K.

Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 7d

Observation the third:

I have no idea if things just step up a lot on the upper ranks or if people finally cracked the meta but I found myself getting dominated by the same five pokemon. Getting from Z to K took less than an hour, going from H to E took two and a half non-consecutively.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 7d

Observation the second:

Getting to rank K was beyond easy. I was able to basically fly there. I got first in a single match and this catapulted me up some six ranks. Much like what everyone says, it took less than an hour.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 7d

I managed to claw my way to ZA’s rank E in competitive and I’ve come to three major observations.

Observation the first:

Contrary to common sense, I’ve found Emboar is the one of the best counters to Greninja as he’s too fragile to withstand a Close Combat.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 9d

Honestly, I hope Spin continues to come back in Jojolands because it was used in such a cool way in part 8.

Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 9d

It’d have absolutely been boring to have had our only opponents across the next four parts be vampires or something similar.

This is why I think Araki deliberately wrote Spin to be effective against anyone in either a healing or hurting regard.

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Z-Rune @zrune.bsky.social · 9d

Hamon is life energy. Hamon is the sun. As a result, unless it’s super super super intense, it’s just not lethal to living people. It’s really only effective against vampires and vampire-like people and our last vampire popped like a balloon at the end of part 3.

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