Chapter 1, Part 2g
BarnabusBarnabus
Something like spice and something like pine.
- Location
- A beach, limned in silver like the painted moon.
Well, that took longer than I thought. I fell asleep a bit too soon, and then had a bunch of stuff to do today. Sorry for the delay! Now, we were just stuffed in a hat by a very foppish man. Let's get back to that.
[The hat begins vibrating considerably faster - probably out of alarm.]
Mr. Luck: Oh, come now... Is there reason for this drama? It shall all be over soon, my child!
The bastard changed our sprite! He gave us a fade!
Mr. Luck: Nyehehe... Hope you like looking like that from now on! It's a permanent cosmetic change! Come again!
Sure that's not lore. Anyway, let's get on with this quest and get our face back.
Mr Luck: Whaaat? You don't like your new look? How hateful of you. And self-deprecating. What to do, what to do... You did sign a contract, after all. Hm... I think we can find a compromise we can both agree to? In that case, please follow me. Nyehaha.
[Luck walks to the back room of his house, and I follow.]
(Note the pokemon in cages in the back. That's upsetting.)
Mr. Luck: This is my business partner, Marshadow. I call it Doxie.
Doxie: Doox!
(Forgor that the game actually brings this up.)
Mr Luck: I know this looks bad, but I'm actually being a good person! These pokemon are dangerous. Prism Pokemon, I hear they're called. Have you ever encountered a pokemon with a rainbow aura around it? Those are Prism Pokemon. Not much is known about them except for the fact that they're known to carry gems called Black Prisms. The power inside of these gems is thought to be substantial. Power potent enough to change your form back to what it was.
Mr. Luck: I'm sort of a connossieur when it comes to these Black Prisms~... If you were to find a Prism Pokemon, capture them, harvest their prism, and bring it back to me...
Mr. Luck: Hyehehe... Good choice! Let's be business partners then! Bring me back [1] Black Prism and I'll change you back! (Can't guarantee you'd live through it a second time, though...)
I sign his new contract, give him the prism we got earlier, he puts us in the hat again (I don't have the image limit to show it all) and we get our face back. He's incredulous that we lived - tells his Marshadow to call the cops and tell them that the tent has mold if we come out a mound of flesh. He then informs us that the contract we sign obliges us to bring any and all Black Prisms we find to him, but he'll reward us for them - I'm tired of his bullshit though, so I'll just explain what we can get from him myself.
Black Prisms have two merchants; Doxie the Marshadow, and Luck himself. Doxie offers items, and Luck offers contracts. Doxie's items run the gamut of value - it offers a renewable source of Shards for 3 Prisms each, which are useful for move tutoring if we run out, a couple of cash items which just aren't worth buying because Prisms are rare as hell, and two special things. One we will be using extensively, and the other we will never be touching. The one we'll be buying a lot of is the Cell Imprint. Cell Imprints cost 10 Prisms, which seems like an insane price but for what they do; they act similar to Bottle Caps in mainline pokemon, maxing an IV. They're gonna be a necessity down the line for stuff like our starter, so I will be buying a lot of them. The other, costing a whopping 15 Prisms, is the Glitter Ball. It turns any pokemon it catches shiny. This cheapens the value of the shiny, so we won't be using them.
Luck's contracts are mostly either useless or cosmetic, but there are a couple of valuable ones. For 5 Prisms, he'll change your sprite to any of the six standard sprites you can pick at game start. For 3 Prisms, he'll give you one of several temporary effects which are both buffs and curses. The Technique Contract lowers catch rate for 20 battles, but those same mons have egg moves; the Wealth Contract removes all cash rewards from the next 10 battles, but doubles the prize money for the 10 after that; and the Shiny Contract makes shinies more likely for the next 20 battles, but also gives them the ability to run away. He'll also change your difficulty for free, change your sprite to the one with the fade from his quest for free, and there's a special final thing for 999 Prisms which I'll be getting much, much later. It's a lot of grinding, but it's apparently worth it. Anyway, back to other stuff - I forgot to do this earlier, but we can get the Old Rod now!
First floor of the Aqua Building, which is incidentally the HQ of the people who run the S.S. Oceana, that ship that we were on that sank. They are not having a good time right now.
Now, we're at the Chrisola Hotel. We came to the outside of this a while back, to get our first TM - Infestation, if you remember - but now we're going in. There are two floors which have any interest to us right now, but first...
Receptionist: If you're looking for a reservation, let me just make this simple for you. There's no way a child like you would ever be able to afford our extremely opulent services. So please, do me a favour and-
???: Weeeeeeeee!!!
[A baggage trolley comes from the left of the screen and slams into us. The screen goes black.]
???: Owie powie kazowie, lowie! That hurt!
Receptionist: How many times do I have to tell you not to use the trolleys in such a barbaric manner! And now you've gone and hit this hooligan with it! I pray to Arceus they don't file a lawsuit.
???: Aw, quit worrying so much! They don't even have a scratch on them. Besides, they got in the way of my trolley first! I should sue for damages myself, hehe! But for real, sorry for slamming my trolley into you like that. It was an accident... really! The name's-
Receptionist: Ms. Blakeory, stop wasting your time with this street rat! The helicopter you requested is waiting for you on the roof as we speak!
???: [!] Oh CRUD! I forgot I requested that... I haven't even packed yet, hah. Val will kill me if I'm late again! Oh darn, what a bother! Eh, who needs to pack when the world is your oyster. Because, well, you know what they say!
Receptionist: ... Ms. Blakeory, what do they say?
???: Huh? I don't know what they say. I was asking you that? Anyway, I gotta go, but it was nice crashing into you!
[Ms. Blakeory dashes offscreen.]
Receptionist: ...Sigh...
Well, I'm sure we'll never see her again. Anyway, there are two important floors in the Chrisola Hotel at this stage of the game; 2F, and the Rooftop. There's also a TM in the first room of the right-hand corridor, floor 1; Whirlpool. Not bad. (We've got a quest here too, but as I recall it involves a battle we aren't entirely prepared for.)
This is the second floor; the casino. We can't play here yet, as we don't have the coin case, but this place is the bane of my fucking life. (You get the coin case from the sewer - you talk to a woman in here who quits gambling by flushing her coin case down the toilet, and can find it later.) It also contains the AP Center, where we can cash in our Achievement Points - I'll explain what we can get from the casino and the AP Center now.
The casino offers two TMs - Flash for 1000C and Hidden Power for 5000C - and four pokemon. All of them can be obtained elsewhere, but much, much later - I'd consider it not worth it to get them if a couple of them weren't so damned useful. You can get a Seel for 1000C, a Spoink for 4000C, a Maractus for 5000C and a Helioptile for 6500C. This is a total of 22500C. If you purchase your coins outright, this is equivalent to £450000, which is obviously unfeasible, and so we turn to Voltorb Flip. I'll be delaying this for a while, because I hate Voltorb Flip. (Also a guy lies to you about Maractus - he says you can't get it elsewhere. You can, it's just so lategame I'd never heard of the place before I saw it on Maractus' wiki page.)
The AP Center has quite a few more things. Firstly, it offers Nature Mints - 3AP a pop. I'm told you get one of each free across the game, but getting more of them is good. Bear in mind, however, that AP (unlike Black Prisms) is a limited resource - best to use these on stuff like shinies, event mons and your starter, and just grind or breed anything else. The same goes for the Ability Capsule, also for 3AP. PP Up is also available here, for 6AP, but I consider this a trap. You can just cycle TMs or the Move Reminder to regain PP between battles, if it comes to it - they're unlimited-use. No single battle lasts that long. Another thing I consider a trap - purchasing convenience with a limited resource - is the Golden Items. Each of them allows you to use a HM without a pokemon in your party, but you can remove HMs without needing a Move Deleter so it's honestly a waste of AP. They cost a huge amount, too - they range from 10AP to 20AP. The EXP All falls under the same category; 30AP for something you can just use EXP Candies (which are readily available) for? No thanks. What I will be buying, however, are the EV Training Cards. There are EV training rooms in the Gearen Lab, and it costs 10AP to buy a keycard for each one. This drastically speeds up your EV grind, and the rooms also have the Power items for their respective stats in them to speed it up even more. (Some might say this is buying convenience with a limited resource; I say there's a balance, and this falls on the "worth it" side.) When I get the time, I'm gonna be grinding out the AP to get hold of all of these.
And now, we're on the rooftop. This place has a couple of very useful things; a few new pokemon (Skitty, Glameow, Meowth, Caterpie, Weedle) and the Audino trainer for this city. The Audino trainer is here to grind on; she gives EXP Candies every time you beat her, and she's not hard once you have any levelcapped Fighting type. She's also an excellent source of cash - $450 per win. She has an Audino, a Purrloin and a Skitty, all level 15. And talking of that Purrloin -
See this background? The Purrloin used Pursuit, which is one of the three moves that turn the City field (the field that the battle starts on by default) to the Backalley field.
The Backalley field increases the power of physical Dark moves by x1.5, all Poison, Bug and Steel moves by x1.3 and decreases all Fairy moves to x0.5. This is nearly identical to the City field - it changes the major buff from physical Normal to physical Dark and increases the debuff on Fairy moves, but the minor buffs are the same. The random auxiliary moves and abilities that it buffs are all switched up, though - please consult the Field Chart informational post for more info, when I get it sorted.
Now, I'm pretty sure that this is everything I wanted to get done before the next bit of story, done! I'm gonna get started on the story soon, but thanks for your engagement if you've got this far - I know this is an obscure game, so any readers is a lot to ask. See you soon!
Postscript; as per the suggestion of NotYourParents in the thread, our Pachirisu has been named Se-Jun after one of the species' most dedicated advocates. Thanks for the suggestion!
[The hat begins vibrating considerably faster - probably out of alarm.]
Mr. Luck: Oh, come now... Is there reason for this drama? It shall all be over soon, my child!
The bastard changed our sprite! He gave us a fade!
Mr. Luck: Nyehehe... Hope you like looking like that from now on! It's a permanent cosmetic change! Come again!
Sure that's not lore. Anyway, let's get on with this quest and get our face back.
Mr Luck: Whaaat? You don't like your new look? How hateful of you. And self-deprecating. What to do, what to do... You did sign a contract, after all. Hm... I think we can find a compromise we can both agree to? In that case, please follow me. Nyehaha.
[Luck walks to the back room of his house, and I follow.]
(Note the pokemon in cages in the back. That's upsetting.)
Mr. Luck: This is my business partner, Marshadow. I call it Doxie.
Doxie: Doox!
(Forgor that the game actually brings this up.)
Mr Luck: I know this looks bad, but I'm actually being a good person! These pokemon are dangerous. Prism Pokemon, I hear they're called. Have you ever encountered a pokemon with a rainbow aura around it? Those are Prism Pokemon. Not much is known about them except for the fact that they're known to carry gems called Black Prisms. The power inside of these gems is thought to be substantial. Power potent enough to change your form back to what it was.
Mr. Luck: I'm sort of a connossieur when it comes to these Black Prisms~... If you were to find a Prism Pokemon, capture them, harvest their prism, and bring it back to me...
Mr. Luck: Hyehehe... Good choice! Let's be business partners then! Bring me back [1] Black Prism and I'll change you back! (Can't guarantee you'd live through it a second time, though...)
I sign his new contract, give him the prism we got earlier, he puts us in the hat again (I don't have the image limit to show it all) and we get our face back. He's incredulous that we lived - tells his Marshadow to call the cops and tell them that the tent has mold if we come out a mound of flesh. He then informs us that the contract we sign obliges us to bring any and all Black Prisms we find to him, but he'll reward us for them - I'm tired of his bullshit though, so I'll just explain what we can get from him myself.
Black Prisms have two merchants; Doxie the Marshadow, and Luck himself. Doxie offers items, and Luck offers contracts. Doxie's items run the gamut of value - it offers a renewable source of Shards for 3 Prisms each, which are useful for move tutoring if we run out, a couple of cash items which just aren't worth buying because Prisms are rare as hell, and two special things. One we will be using extensively, and the other we will never be touching. The one we'll be buying a lot of is the Cell Imprint. Cell Imprints cost 10 Prisms, which seems like an insane price but for what they do; they act similar to Bottle Caps in mainline pokemon, maxing an IV. They're gonna be a necessity down the line for stuff like our starter, so I will be buying a lot of them. The other, costing a whopping 15 Prisms, is the Glitter Ball. It turns any pokemon it catches shiny. This cheapens the value of the shiny, so we won't be using them.
Luck's contracts are mostly either useless or cosmetic, but there are a couple of valuable ones. For 5 Prisms, he'll change your sprite to any of the six standard sprites you can pick at game start. For 3 Prisms, he'll give you one of several temporary effects which are both buffs and curses. The Technique Contract lowers catch rate for 20 battles, but those same mons have egg moves; the Wealth Contract removes all cash rewards from the next 10 battles, but doubles the prize money for the 10 after that; and the Shiny Contract makes shinies more likely for the next 20 battles, but also gives them the ability to run away. He'll also change your difficulty for free, change your sprite to the one with the fade from his quest for free, and there's a special final thing for 999 Prisms which I'll be getting much, much later. It's a lot of grinding, but it's apparently worth it. Anyway, back to other stuff - I forgot to do this earlier, but we can get the Old Rod now!
First floor of the Aqua Building, which is incidentally the HQ of the people who run the S.S. Oceana, that ship that we were on that sank. They are not having a good time right now.
Now, we're at the Chrisola Hotel. We came to the outside of this a while back, to get our first TM - Infestation, if you remember - but now we're going in. There are two floors which have any interest to us right now, but first...
Receptionist: If you're looking for a reservation, let me just make this simple for you. There's no way a child like you would ever be able to afford our extremely opulent services. So please, do me a favour and-
???: Weeeeeeeee!!!
[A baggage trolley comes from the left of the screen and slams into us. The screen goes black.]
???: Owie powie kazowie, lowie! That hurt!
Receptionist: How many times do I have to tell you not to use the trolleys in such a barbaric manner! And now you've gone and hit this hooligan with it! I pray to Arceus they don't file a lawsuit.
???: Aw, quit worrying so much! They don't even have a scratch on them. Besides, they got in the way of my trolley first! I should sue for damages myself, hehe! But for real, sorry for slamming my trolley into you like that. It was an accident... really! The name's-
Receptionist: Ms. Blakeory, stop wasting your time with this street rat! The helicopter you requested is waiting for you on the roof as we speak!
???: [!] Oh CRUD! I forgot I requested that... I haven't even packed yet, hah. Val will kill me if I'm late again! Oh darn, what a bother! Eh, who needs to pack when the world is your oyster. Because, well, you know what they say!
Receptionist: ... Ms. Blakeory, what do they say?
???: Huh? I don't know what they say. I was asking you that? Anyway, I gotta go, but it was nice crashing into you!
[Ms. Blakeory dashes offscreen.]
Receptionist: ...Sigh...
Well, I'm sure we'll never see her again. Anyway, there are two important floors in the Chrisola Hotel at this stage of the game; 2F, and the Rooftop. There's also a TM in the first room of the right-hand corridor, floor 1; Whirlpool. Not bad. (We've got a quest here too, but as I recall it involves a battle we aren't entirely prepared for.)
This is the second floor; the casino. We can't play here yet, as we don't have the coin case, but this place is the bane of my fucking life. (You get the coin case from the sewer - you talk to a woman in here who quits gambling by flushing her coin case down the toilet, and can find it later.) It also contains the AP Center, where we can cash in our Achievement Points - I'll explain what we can get from the casino and the AP Center now.
The casino offers two TMs - Flash for 1000C and Hidden Power for 5000C - and four pokemon. All of them can be obtained elsewhere, but much, much later - I'd consider it not worth it to get them if a couple of them weren't so damned useful. You can get a Seel for 1000C, a Spoink for 4000C, a Maractus for 5000C and a Helioptile for 6500C. This is a total of 22500C. If you purchase your coins outright, this is equivalent to £450000, which is obviously unfeasible, and so we turn to Voltorb Flip. I'll be delaying this for a while, because I hate Voltorb Flip. (Also a guy lies to you about Maractus - he says you can't get it elsewhere. You can, it's just so lategame I'd never heard of the place before I saw it on Maractus' wiki page.)
The AP Center has quite a few more things. Firstly, it offers Nature Mints - 3AP a pop. I'm told you get one of each free across the game, but getting more of them is good. Bear in mind, however, that AP (unlike Black Prisms) is a limited resource - best to use these on stuff like shinies, event mons and your starter, and just grind or breed anything else. The same goes for the Ability Capsule, also for 3AP. PP Up is also available here, for 6AP, but I consider this a trap. You can just cycle TMs or the Move Reminder to regain PP between battles, if it comes to it - they're unlimited-use. No single battle lasts that long. Another thing I consider a trap - purchasing convenience with a limited resource - is the Golden Items. Each of them allows you to use a HM without a pokemon in your party, but you can remove HMs without needing a Move Deleter so it's honestly a waste of AP. They cost a huge amount, too - they range from 10AP to 20AP. The EXP All falls under the same category; 30AP for something you can just use EXP Candies (which are readily available) for? No thanks. What I will be buying, however, are the EV Training Cards. There are EV training rooms in the Gearen Lab, and it costs 10AP to buy a keycard for each one. This drastically speeds up your EV grind, and the rooms also have the Power items for their respective stats in them to speed it up even more. (Some might say this is buying convenience with a limited resource; I say there's a balance, and this falls on the "worth it" side.) When I get the time, I'm gonna be grinding out the AP to get hold of all of these.
And now, we're on the rooftop. This place has a couple of very useful things; a few new pokemon (Skitty, Glameow, Meowth, Caterpie, Weedle) and the Audino trainer for this city. The Audino trainer is here to grind on; she gives EXP Candies every time you beat her, and she's not hard once you have any levelcapped Fighting type. She's also an excellent source of cash - $450 per win. She has an Audino, a Purrloin and a Skitty, all level 15. And talking of that Purrloin -
See this background? The Purrloin used Pursuit, which is one of the three moves that turn the City field (the field that the battle starts on by default) to the Backalley field.
The Backalley field increases the power of physical Dark moves by x1.5, all Poison, Bug and Steel moves by x1.3 and decreases all Fairy moves to x0.5. This is nearly identical to the City field - it changes the major buff from physical Normal to physical Dark and increases the debuff on Fairy moves, but the minor buffs are the same. The random auxiliary moves and abilities that it buffs are all switched up, though - please consult the Field Chart informational post for more info, when I get it sorted.
Now, I'm pretty sure that this is everything I wanted to get done before the next bit of story, done! I'm gonna get started on the story soon, but thanks for your engagement if you've got this far - I know this is an obscure game, so any readers is a lot to ask. See you soon!
Postscript; as per the suggestion of NotYourParents in the thread, our Pachirisu has been named Se-Jun after one of the species' most dedicated advocates. Thanks for the suggestion!
Last edited: