Let's Play! Pokémon SoulSilver "Shiny" Poison-Type Celebration! ("Cancelled"?)

[bdt2002]

(Not my own image)

Hello, everyone. It is so, so nice to be back on the Forums after months of inactivity. The truth is, I've been working on and waiting for the release date of a special project of mine. Without further ado, I'm happy to announce my first ever (first that wasn't cancelled at least) public Let's Play project. Starting on April 3rd, 2021, I'll be playing Pokémon SoulSilver and provide live updates to the thread I plan on making (assuming all of this is okay with the moderators of course, I wish to be a rule follower) using only Poison-Type Pokémon. Things will be a bit different in this play-through than a normal Monotype run, though, and that's because I'll be collecting and using every single Poison-Type Pokémon available in the game and rotating my team members throughout the entire journey.

Again, assuming the moderators are okay with all of this, I'd be happy to provide more details as to the ways I'm making this Let's Play more special than your average session. In the meantime, allow me to share some background on why I'm doing this. In late 2018 going into 2019, I had started a series of now cancelled play-throughs of DS Pokémon games in my free time where I was going to try and truly 100% complete each game. These runs were cancelled for reasons I'd rather not go into, but that's beside the point. In my run for this series of Pokémon SoulSilver, one of my favorite main series games by the way, I had ran into a Shiny Ekans right after the first Gym battle. This was in January of 2019, not long after a similar run-in with a Shinx in Pokémon Pearl. I had quite a few gaps in between my play sessions, which actually was one of the reasons I cancelled these runs, due to my procrastination alone.

But then, on April 3rd, 2019, something incredible happened. I had just beaten the fourth Gym battle (that would be Morty's in case you're wondering) and gotten access to using Surf in the overworld. I had to backtrack around the region for some Pokémon in the PokéDex I needed to catch. Nothing too crazy. I even failed an encounter with a Wobbuffet at one point that was pretty funny. I made my way back to that point in the back room of Dark Cave, when there it was. Full odds Shiny Zubat. I had already found and caught an Ekans at this point, and there was barely any play-through space between each of these random Shinies. And... well, that's the day my "Poison-Type Shiny fetish" was born, as I like to call it. Two full odds Shinies, only four Gym badges in, same type, and they were even the same level! (Zubat was with Arbok at the time, I should say, each at Lv. 23.)

Since then, I've had numerous people tell me I should do a Monotype run in this game for the Poison-Type to celebrate this, so I quickly got working on the idea. I had initially planned this for 2020, but... yeah that year was Trubbish, and I had moving to college to worry about on top of everything else to boot. I decided to move the release date to a two-year anniversary celebration of Shiny Zubat's appearance. Yes, I will make sure to transfer my stuff to another game before restarting. But... yep, that just about wraps up everything I wanted to announce. I'm so excited for this, and hopefully this will be the push I needed to revive my interest in play-throughs as a whole. 2018-19 was very draining for me.

Let me know in this thread if you have any questions or concerns. Once again, it's great to be back, and I hope I'm not breaking any rules with this project of mine. Have a wonderful rest of your day, everyone!

 

[bdt2002]

Good morning, everyone. Before I begin on today's update, I would like to once again acknowledge that I wish to follow the rules of these threads and forums, and as such I will accept any feedback on if double posting in this case is in violation with Smogon Forums policy. Okay, we good now? Great.

The date today is April 2nd. I enjoy this date for two different reasons. This year I can add a third reason to that list, because the big day of starting this Let's Play is the very next day. So in other words, tomorrow. So without further ado, let's dive into the updates I wish to go over.

1. It has came to my attention that this is going to be a pretty busy weekend for me coming up, so I need to acknowledge the possibility of the April 3rd release date being pushed back. At this age, you never know when a wrench could be thrown into your schedule. I'm not letting that stop me, though.

2. Some time over this weekend, I'll be starting the Let's Play in a separate thread alongside a list of every eligible Pokémon for this event that I can use for reference. Once the Let's Play begins, I'll likely see if I can close or delete this thread to avoid any confusion between the announcement and the actual play-through. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know.

3. This last one is more of a statement than an update, but it's still worth mentioning. In the past, I've been against the ideas I've had because I was afraid not a lot of people would care. This time, things have changed. I'm confirming here and now that I'm doing this for fun regardless of any sort of view, like, or follow counts. I do not support this commonplace social media practice. While it might sound like I'm asking for attention here, I am really only saying this to confirm that this Let's Play isn't being cancelled like other ideas I have had in the past. Have I made myself clear? Good.

I look forward to starting this project for all of you to celebrate one of my most memorable moments as a Pokémon fan. I'll see you all then! Take care!

 

[bdt2002]

(Not my image)

Good afternoon, everyone. At long last, the adventure we've been waiting for is beginning. I announced this Let's Play project of mine a week ago, and will be providing a link to the announcement thread once I'm finished typing this up. Feel free to view that thread here (The link will be where these words are currently) for more details on this project. In the meantime, allow me to go over some notes on what this thread is for.

-First and foremost, I'll be updating this thread as the Let's Play continues on in "chapters" of sorts. I can't make any promises as to when these updates will be released, unfortunately.

-This is my first time ever doing a Monotype play-through of a Pokémon game, and to celebrate that, I'm going to be doing something a bit different. I'll be going after every single Pokémon in the Johto regional PokéDex of my chosen type being Poison, for reasons that you can find in the announcement thread. I'll be rotating my team members all throughout this adventure.

-Finally, this last note depends on what I'm allowed to do depending on forum rules. I want to host a poll to vote for my "starter Pokémon", although the only impact this will have will be for rival battles. As such, any clarification from the moderators on what I can and can't do is appreciated. (This note will be updated after a solution is found.)

I can't think of much else to say, so how about we just dive right in? Lugia pun completely intended. I'll see you all soon with Chapter 1: "A Very Toxic Beginning" later this week!

 

[DHR-107]

Please keep to one single thread.

 

[bdt2002]

Please keep to one single thread.

I never figured out how to delete the other thread. That being said, I’ll do whatever you want with this one. Heck, you can even delete this one if you want.

Edit: Wait a second... did someone (probably you if I had to guess) actually merge these for me already? Hey, thanks! How did I not notice this until just now...?

 

[bdt2002]

(Author's Note: I've been more busy with school life during the month of April as expected, and while I haven't been able to upload as much as I wanted to, I'm hoping that I can continue to do so once the next week or two passes by.)

Chapter 1: “A Very Toxic Beginning”

As it turns out, I had indeed overslept a bit, only to find this random dude named Prof. Oak stalking me before he tells me all about the world of Pokémon. He shows me an example of a Pokémon, being a Marill, and proceeds to assume my gender despite me standing right in front of him at the current moment. I introduced myself as “bdt2002” and proceeded to dive into the land of Johto.

Once in my bedroom, I head downstairs and see my mom who says that this Prof. Elm dude wants to see me. Before getting to his laboratory, I was stopped by a Marill and this Lyra girl I’ve never heard of. I make it to the lab, listen to Prof. Elm talk about his friend, and get myself a Chikorita that I named Flora. There’s a few reasons I picked her (got a female one by coincidence) over my usual Totodile choice, the main one being that I knew my rival would get Cyndaquil, who has an overall better matchup spread against the most Poison-Types for some added challenge.

Me and Flora battled some wild Pokémon and train up a bit on Route 29 after we finally managed to get a break from the professor. In the next town over, me and Flora run into this guy who teaches me how to run and tells me what a Pokémon Center is, even though my sarcastic face has played Pokémon since around 2010. We made it through Route 30 and trained some more and even stopped by some guy’s house who tells us about Apricorns, finally reaching Mr. Pokémon’s house, that friend of Prof. Elm’s that I mentioned earlier.

Can we just talk about how his last name is “Pokémon” for a second? Anyway, the guy gives us a Pokémon egg to deliver back to Prof. Elm, and I also get my PokéDex from Prof. Oak, the guy who had to stalk us in our sleep earlier. On the way out, we get a call from Elm that something terrible has happened. On the way back we encounter our rival for the first time, whose Cyndaquil makes him very clearly look like a house robber. At least I stole his trainer card at one point.

Back in our hometown, we found that someone, oh gee I wonder who, committed some grand theft Spearow in Elm’s lab and stole a starter Pokémon. Once me and Lyra prove we are not the impostors at the emergency meeting, she takes me and Flora out to teach us how to catch Pokémon once Elm tells me to collect eight gym badges.

Me and Flora met up with Lyra and watched her catch a Rattata, but I mashed the A button like a mad lad through her dialogue for the same reason this thread post is so long: because I just wanna get started already.

Chapter 2 coming soon, hopefully not long like this was. I’m sorry.

 

[bdt2002]

Okay, so it's been almost a month now without me providing any updates. I've been meaning to get to this eventually, so allow me to explain why I haven't been paying much attention to this project.

The first and foremost issue was that my week following the Chapter 1 post was very busy for me. It was my final exam week, to be more specific, and while I still wish I could do better on the occasional assignment, it's not like I did horrible either. That's not important right now, though. Last time I checked, this thread wasn't for school review. My point is, I couldn't play at all that week, and I had hoped that following the 23rd (the day I moved back home), I would have more free time and motivation to play. Free time? I absolutely have that, but motivation? Not so much.

The second most prominent issue is how I wasn't expecting the earlygame to be this boring. I'll just lay it to you guys straight: there's only so much a Trainer can do when they are specifically limited to a Weedle with Poison Sting in a Mono-Poison run. By my ruleset, I couldn't switch train my Weedle with Flora's help, and any other encounters were locked behind two Trainer battles on Route 30 I knew I couldn't win even with lucky RNG rolls. So what did I do? I went back to Route 29 and spammed the crap out of Poison Sting against wild Pokémon at every chance I had.

Long story short: this process of spamming and constantly healing at the Pokémon Center after every single wild battle quickly became far too boring for me, and that's when I noticed the entire playthrough would be like this with low Base Power moves, such as Vine Whips, Absorbs, Leech Lifes, and in this case, Poison Sting. Even when I finally got the motivation to try and evolve this Weedle under my ruleset, its Attack stat was actually lowered when Weedle evolved into Kakuna, which sealed the deal for me.

So here's the deal. I'm not quitting this playthrough. I've already went over that in my previous posts here. But due to this absolute joke of a grinding method taking far too long to where I can't update this thread, I'll be abandoning this thread completely. I'll still be playing in my free time if I absolutely feel like wasting time, but I won't be updating this thread. In fact, if a moderator wants to delete this whole thing, by all means go ahead and do it. It'll make the OI less cluttered if you do.