Izzy’s KnowledgeSilver Quest: Table of Contents

I managed to migrate over all of my vignettes of my “play Pokémon SoulSilver as if I was Koushiro “Izzy” Izumi” challenge to here from where they’ve been in my Facebook notes. I did most of the challenge back in March when I bought the game, and then got distracted by a few other DS games after Jasmine. I’m playing again to pass the time before I get sucked into Pokémon Black around mid-September (pre-ordered the Japanese version). All of the previous posts are backdated to their original post dates.

You can also click on the “KnowledgeSilver” tab to find them all, but here is a list in order of Gym Leader.

Rules of the Challenge -> [Go!]

Vs. Falkner -> [Go!]

Vs. Bugsy -> [Go!]

Vs. Whitney -> [Go!]

Vs. Morty -> [Go!]

Vs. Chuck -> [Go!]

Vs. Jasmine -> [Go!]

Vs. Pryce -> [Go!]

Vs. Clair -> [Go!]

Goofusmon and Gallantmon

Because I always like making Digimon image macros…
Tyler and I got into a conversation about Goofus and Gallant last night and it didn’t take very long to have this come out of it. I credit him with the second image caption.

Whatever Taichi’s doing isn’t obvious. He has all these times where he’s reckless and flirts with danger, and none of it ever looks obvious when it’s screencapped. Oh well, hopefully it’s vaguely apparent enough that he’s basically running toward a large monster with a stick, here. The other option I was looking at was in the SkullGreymon episode, but even though it’s obvious he’s holding a rock (after he threw one at the enemy Greymon), it’s not obvious that 1) He just threw a rock and 2) The Greymon in the background is NOT the Greymon that is his friend. I mean, sure, there’s even that whole episode where he does a bunch of stupid things because he has the “I’m just data like in a video game so nothing bad will happen to me right?” mentality, but without captions of what’s being said nothing really shows what’s going on. All rather unfortunate.

More of These

I should go into the Bobblehead Doll business.

Thursday Night PENCILS EVERYWHERE

Some sketchy-doos

I like this style. It’s harder to do for a character facing to the right, though… (Is it because I’m right-handed?)

My Highly Detailed Hunter in her transmogrification set (Which is primarily a re-colored Judgement Set for mail-wearers, with Rift Stalker-esque shoulders for flair).
Armor is a pain to draw. This took 3 hours. :[

The Little Snail that Doesn’t Wanna

That snail really tried, he did.           gloooorp.

Coleoptera are beetles. You know… ladybugs, kabutomushi, atlas beetles, hercules beetles … they also have hard exoskeletons! No wonder Izzy got confused! But snails are mollusks, not insects. Also, beetles are way more mobile.

We Apologize for the Inconvenience…

…while we go rescue Izzy from the Documentation Aliens.

(I continue the trend of drawing fantastic super duper Digimon fanart)

I was bit by the documentation bug, so not only am I spending my days at the office updating whatever procedures I can think of (and if I’m not doing that, I’m organizing whatever we already have in our Procedures folders), but I’m outlining a future World of Warcraft Beast Mastery Hunter guide. That’s right, soon this blog will be home to Neilaren’s Beast Mastery Dojo for people who can’t be-a-beast-master good (and wanna learn to do other stuff good too). I’m working very hard to have it stay organized and not become a rambling mess, hence the need for an outline. It will be simple, but informative!

Again with the Spreadsheets

Once again I have a Pokédex going on a spreadsheet, but this time it’s to keep track of my collection in the 5th Generation. I’m also keeping tabs on the various Pokédexes of my 4th Generation games: Pearl, Platinum, and SoulSilver. While I have Diamond, it’s Japanese and I never beat the Elite 4, thus I don’t have a National dex to work on. It can’t see the event Pokémon I’ve traded to it, so I don’t feel the need to complete it. I got really close to at least seeing every Pokémon in Platinum, though, so I still want to complete it.

In the same vein, I have Pokémon Black, but I’ll only be working on filling the National dex in White. My copy of Black has the advantage of having everything evolved on it (since I worked so hard for information to transcribe over to my fauxkédex), so I can trade evolutions over to White without having to raise my own creatures again / waste elemental stones for dex completion. It also had Zekrom / Tornadus / Snivy-family.

As of this typing, I’m at a meager 207 obtained in White. I’ve been trying to pull focus back onto my SoulSilver team. I have another spreadsheet going of my likely team, their natures, roles, EVs, move sets, weaknesses, and coverage, because I’m starting to have an addiction to spreadsheets, I think. That one is going to stay on Numbers, though.

This Pokédex spreadsheet has been exported as an Excel file from my Numbers program and imported into Google Docs. Numbers has the list presented as a set of check boxes I can click on or off at will, but Excel strips that down to TRUE/FALSE when I export it. I’m just very visual, so I don’t like that as much. The Excel at my office can take those values and output an equivalent graphic, but it’s Excel 97 and I’m sure Google Docs doesn’t have that sort of functionality at all, so.

I’m spending hours and hours making pretty spreadsheets at work with dynamically updating information and formulas, too. Pretty soon I’m going to have to make a spreadsheets tag. SPREADSHEETS.

(anyway, the permanent link for this new spreadsheet is http://tinyurl.com/gen5dex .)

Future possible updates:

– Finishing putting all of the names in.

– Adding locations in-game for whatever I’m missing, or who I need to trade with (of who I know has things: friends and my own other games)

– A sheet that can be edited (if it’s possible to protect one sheet and let another be editable on the same doc) where people can add Friend Codes and possible Trading Opportunities. For the record though, I’m not going to trade any of my event-only or one-time Pokémon willy-nilly over wi-fi.

 

UPDATE: I haven’t been playing much anymore, and Nintendo/TPC/whatever are being pretty slow about releasing those Gen.5 Event guys… I almost missed out on some C-Gear skins because I forgot to keep up with Bulbanews! (I missed out on actually MEETING my Leafeon I played that stupid game to unlock, too. But I played the Dream World so many times and never saw it, so whatever.) I updated the spreadsheet with my current standings, because I apparently got like 30 more things since I had first published it. Well, I usually start playing again around this time of year, so we’ll see!

Shiny Pokémon and PAX East 2011

I now own Pokémon White (to go with Japanese Black) and am close to the end of the main storyline. It’s that last little grind before the Elite 4. My team has a very special member:

Shiny Deino! And he is a great nature too, at least for his final form. I really lucked out!

Yesterday I was browing smogon to see if they have any strategies up for the new generation yet. I’m not a competitive battler at all, but I like to know recommended natures for things so I can have a little edge. I happened upon articles upon articles about abusing the random number generator to guarantee shinies and good IVs and all of that crazy stuff using outside seed generating programs and step-by-step processes and… really?I hatched about 15 eggs and got a decent shiny, my first legit shiny since the Bagon I had on my Emerald ROM (that was eaten by a corrupted battery save, RIP Micah!… isn’t that weird, both of my shinies have been dragons? I really like dragons!), and people are capable of running perfect-shiny-mills? I feel like that’s cheating. Well, it makes my success all the more awesome.

Anyway, Atramedes has a backstory, and it has to do with the other topic of discussion. I went to PAX East March 11-13. To be honest I hadn’t remembered about it coming up, even though I enjoyed PAX East last year, not as many people that I knew seemed to be going, and I wasn’t certain that I’d enjoy myself. So, heavily into White for 3 days at this point, I developed a cunning plan. Since I bred a Snivy and a Deino from Black and traded it over to White anyway (because I’m tired of playing Pokémon as if it’s brand new every time…bring on the traded exp boost and the end game creatures!), I decided to breed several more Deinos with the full intention of trading them to other people during PAX as a conversation starter, or just to be slightly memorable. I bred 15 Deinos, and the very last one was a happy bouncing baby shiny, which I named Atramedes (everyone’s favorite blind WoW dragon, who dropped Themios the Darkbringer for me tonight, FINALLY…) and claimed for myself, in the name of all of Izzydom. I mean, my first shiny that will not promptly die because of flash memory mishaps, is actually on a cart game, easily shown off to others… It’s so exciting! I wasn’t expecting it, even while fully aware of the Masuda Method. At least, I wasn’t expecting it after just 15 eggs… (The egg, it already hatched… no, not that egg!)

Friday I didn’t get any trading accomplished, thanks to the very limited capabilities of what you can say in C-Gear, and the fact that no one’s looking at their C-Gear list anyway. I also didn’t spend a lot of time in the Handheld Lounge, where most of the Pokémon players were probably piling. It was pretty late when I went there, too. So, with burning determination the next day, I sat down at the hotel’s bar, eating my clam chowder and sketching out a board that I’d hang around my neck.

I remember the summers I’d just sit with my binder of Pokémon cards, using each as reference to redraw the images. I haven’t really done that in a while, but drawing a Deino onto my sign with only my Pokédex handy didn’t prove too taxing. I just wish I had anything blue to color it with.

The premise was simple: Trade me absolutely anything, and I give you an adorable little pseudo-legendary in return. The only caveat was that this level 1 hatched creature would take a full 64 levels to reach its highest potential. The sign proved very successful. I got 2 traders at the expo hall (while waiting in lines, no less, which made things hectic). One of them was a gym leader from the PAX Pokémon League! And almost fittingly so, the Dark type leader. He told me to seek him out at the Handheld Lounge later, where I could pick up a gym badge for my generosity.

Within the lounge business was slow, at first, but after I made at least one trade, word spread fast. Many people were just starting their 5th generation games and were thrilled that I was fine taking their wasteful Lillipups in exchange, and some lamented not bringing their copies. I traded so many Deinos that I had to stop and breed more! I think I gave away close to 25 Deinos by the end of Sunday, with 2 leftover. One has already gone across the GTS, and the other has since caught Pokérus… I should save her for something good. >:)

I also did get my gym badge, as promised. My anecdote is that I earned it “the Ash Ketchum Way”.

My signature Izzy pin got a lot of positive attention too. I’m mostly surprised that it was not only recognized, but lauded in a Pokémon gathering. The only thing I find better than an awesome conversation is an awesome conversation about Digimon.

I also found my way into an impromptu dance party on Saturday night, which killed my legs, but was still tons of fun. All in all, PAX East 2011 was a big success! I’m already looking forward to hanging out with some of my new Pokémon friends next weekend, and I’m even planning on making the trek to Washington for PAX Prime! We’ll see, though. I’m not very fond of airplane rides.