The Gaming Den

<-- This was frightening?

-Crissa

3rd generation had a really scary Nidorina. They're giving this "come hither" look that I never want to see from a Pokemon.

I googled 3rd generation Nidorina (I played 1st gen and 4th gen only, so I missed that)

I am going to agree with Koumei. That's just unpleasant. I do NOT want that... thing following me into any alleys or stairwells. Ever.

And this whole time I thought the little buggers were adorable and wanted to hug them (well, except for the venom and the spikes). The poison rabbits were another thing I got bitched at back when we had Pokemon Stadium tourneys back in the N64 days. Although they only managed to ban my Chansey.

I know, they used to be 1/2 cute, 1/2 awesomebeast.

Luckily 4th gen changed the sprite. Though that being said, check the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum sprite for Vulpix. Just as bad: http://serebii.net/pokedex-dp/037.shtml

Also, if I were a Pokemaster, I would want to just get cuddly Pokemon and unloved ones. So, NU-tier as well as "icky" things. I mean, I just bet, using Poke-logic, that if you used enough cleaning products on a Grimer or Muk, it would become pleasant-smelling. Likewise KOFFING.

Although having a Snorlax to use as a giant beanbag sounds awesome.

...in other words, I would totally be an NPC. Not even the kind you meet on the road who exists to curbstomp, the kind that sits at home and says one message related to how Pokemon make life easier.

Koumei wrote:I mean, I just bet, using Poke-logic, that if you used enough cleaning products on a Grimer or Muk, it would become pleasant-smelling.

Probably, yes. But the question is whether it would still be "alive" at that point.

...in other words, I would totally be an NPC. Not even the kind you meet on the road who exists to curbstomp, the kind that sits at home and says one message related to how Pokemon make life easier.

Don't sell yourself short, I'm sure you'd at *least* get to hand out antidotes to young protagonists who show up in your house uninvited.

I wish I had the drive to be good ad Pokemon again. I despise the EV system. I am aware it was around in 1st edition, but back then very few people know about it so it didn't come up. Now, to be competitive I have to do all this crap and grind out EXP on random-ass mobs that give almost no EXP and crap. I just don't have time for that sort of thing anymore.

if you truely cared, you could pick up an action replay and use the 1 hit KO cheat on it to save some time, it also has increased xp codes if you wanted to speed things up a bit more.

If you stick to stuff like that, your team shouldn't get disqualified from tournaments, but I don't know for certain.

Hell, if you properly make a legal pokemon in Pokesav and transfer it over to your cartridge you won't get disqualified.

Jilocasin wrote:Hell, if you properly make a legal pokemon in Pokesav and transfer it over to your cartridge you won't get disqualified.

that may be, but there are a significant number of things to be "proper" about in pokesav.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I wish I had the drive to be good ad Pokemon again. I despise the EV system. I am aware it was around in 1st edition, but back then very few people know about it so it didn't come up. Now, to be competitive I have to do all this crap and grind out EXP on random-ass mobs that give almost no EXP and crap. I just don't have time for that sort of thing anymore.

It's way worse now than it was first generation -- in first gen you could just max every stat (+63 to each), now you're forced to split up 128 extra points between stats.

Plus the first generation had a working gameshark so no need to grind tons of mobs!

If you're interested in doing it fast, there's some guys on the versus finder that specifically train a single stat. Using one of the EV-boosting items, you can easily get 6 per kill and have it done in no time. EV training is nothing compared to RNG-manipulating perfect pokemon.

Surgo wrote: Plus the first generation had a working gameshark so no need to grind tons of mobs!

Huh? Isn't the Gameshark just another cheating device like the Action Replay? The AR works just fine on 4th gen, and presumably 3rd as well.

I am playing Diablo 2 for the first time. Being a necromancer is pretty cool, I've got a bunch of skeletons plus a merc following me around. I am enjoying it so far.

Picked up a DSi XL and DQ9 today. Any suggestions on min-maxing your characters in the game? My friends have indicated that buffed-up melee classes are the way to go, but I'm interested to know how the folks here are playing through the game.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I am playing Diablo 2 for the first time. Being a necromancer is pretty cool, I've got a bunch of skeletons plus a merc following me around. I am enjoying it so far.

I re-installed it last month and I got a headache because of the huge blocks of pixels in my face. It looks great back in those days, not now.

DQ IX was a lot of fun. I took my first party from Dragon Warrior III: the hero, a martial artist, a cleric and a mage. Pump the two melee dudes up -- max out their weapon skills and level in multiple classes to grab as many bonuses to their physical attributes as possible. Then have a cleric to drop down healing spells and leveling up in the Faith skill, I think it was called. That will allow your multi-heal spell which only heals 100 damage normally pump up to over 200 at least. The mage is going to level up in staves because they get extra MP just for doing so and eventually can regenerate MP every turn for no good reason.

I set most battles to "Show no Mercy" and absolutely flew through the game. It's really quite nice to be able to just avoid combat if I want to.

Strategy against bosses is pretty standard here. Get the Mage to cast Oomph on the melee guys, doubling their attack power. The melee guys then spam abilities that grant them extra attacks such as the sword ability Falcon Slash or the claw ability Hardclaw. Afterward, the Mage goes on with any other buffs -- I like Accelerate because if you have slow members of your party they can actually act before the enemy -- and then throws down weak damage spells. The cleric's job is to heal, always and without exception. The only time they are not healing is to throw up Buff to negate damage or Insulate to protect against breath weapons or something.

The Coup de Grace mechanic was sort of dumb. I haven't played with all the vocations, but the ones I did use had pathetic ones. You get to trade away your action for the current turn to buff up or perform a special action. Minstrel gives you a high dodge and counterattack rate. Martial Artist can scare your enemies into inaction during the next turn and increases his tension slightly (which gives extra damage for the next attack). Cleric gives a weak 100 HP heal which didn't look like it was affected by their Magical Mending stat so that's pretty shitty. Mage gives 0 cost casting for a few turns.

The problem with any of that stuff is that really most spells and abilities are just better than them. The minstrel one is kind of cool, except you're not doing your job and killing the enemy. Martial artist's can be great against a large group of enemies because they just don't get their next turn, but a boss typically gets two actions to your team's one so you will only stop one of them. Cleric's was weak as I mentioned. The Mage never had much of a problem tossing down (admittedly) weak damage spells for quite a while in the dungeon so trading a turn away for free casting was sort of pointless.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I am playing Diablo 2 for the first time.

What a coincidence -- me too. It's okay. Not as good as later evolutions like Dark Alliance and Champions of Norath, but it helps pass the time. Makes me want to play D&D again.

Man, Diablo 2. Brings back memories. Once you get past that first chapter... that game was nearly as much fun as that time I drowned.

I started playing Sengoku Rance recently. It's too difficult for my liking. I think I'd prefer if it were an animu with short-yet-awesome fight scenes, toning the sex scenes down a bit and keeping the story and comedy elements.

Diablo 2 isn't that bad after the first Chapter. It gets bad when you reach Nightmare and Hell mode .

Also, Starcraft 2 I'm impressed with so far. Trying the Single Player Campaign again on hard.

That might be why I have such fond memories of Diablo 2. I never really got into Nightmare/Hell. I'd play a character, win, and decide it was time to try a new character. Once I'd gotten those 30th level skills, I felt the character was complete and didn't see the point in adding MOAR skill points.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I am playing Diablo 2 for the first time. Being a necromancer is pretty cool, I've got a bunch of skeletons plus a merc following me around. I am enjoying it so far.

I always had fun with necromancers. The only downside to skeletons is later in the game, they die too fast to be useful. Start working on a golem when you get the points.

RobbyPants wrote:I always had fun with necromancers. The only downside to skeletons is later in the game, they die too fast to be useful. Start working on a golem when you get the points.

This is terrible advice. Golems are always going to be absolute shit. It would be akin to a high-level druid ignoring her best spells and wildshape in order to pump up her animal companion. You can do it, but it will only slow you down.

If you max out your skeletons and sink some points the most useful curses, you'll be in decent shape up to (but not including) hell mode.

Even in normal mode? I've always had good luck with the golems in normal mode.

Also, it's not akin to abandoning your best spells. I didn't say anything about ignoring spells. I said stop with skeletons.

They adjusted the balance of skeletons at some point after release. You get less of them now, but they are beefier. From what I've read, Skellies will work even in Hell difficulty, but if you are coming in with anything less than level 20 skellies and 20 points in skeleton mastery, don't bother, stick to golems.

From what I read, most golems are kind of assey. Iron Golems are pretty cool if you have a decent weapon in inventory.

Zinegata wrote:Also, Starcraft 2 I'm impressed with so far. Trying the Single Player Campaign again on hard.

I played through the campaign on hard the first time, with the exceptions of two missions; the last level and the protoss mission that's basically the same as the last level. I just did not have the patience to grind through all those zerg on hard.

Incidentally, if you want to play a round sometime, I'm Gelare.678

Current-patch Diablo 2 has a specific number of viable builds per class that can solo all the way to Hell. Paladins for instance have Hammerdins and Zealadins.

Necromancers though... it's generally agreed the only viable solo Hell build is the skelly-using Necro with Corpse Explosion. Bone Spearing also works in theory - from what I understand it works really well... but only if you have the right enhancing gear (which you won't get single-player, because trading isn't available to you).

But again, I don't suggest going beyond Nightmare really. Or Normal even. Pretty much everything works on Normal, even a Sorceress designed to win by meleeing Diablo.

Awkward Map wrote:Strategy against bosses is pretty standard here. Get the Mage to cast Oomph on the melee guys, doubling their attack power. The melee guys then spam abilities that grant them extra attacks such as the sword ability Falcon Slash or the claw ability Hardclaw. Afterward, the Mage goes on with any other buffs -- I like Accelerate because if you have slow members of your party they can actually act before the enemy -- and then throws down weak damage spells. The cleric's job is to heal, always and without exception. The only time they are not healing is to throw up Buff to negate damage or Insulate to protect against breath weapons or something.

Yeah, a lot of the people that I've talked to have said that the best way to play through DQ9 is "buff fighters, heal as needed, murder everyone", but I wonder if there's an equally viable all-caster strategy. I guess I'm going to find out soon enough!