Let's Play Pokemon Violet, Part 24: Paradoxes, Shinies & Decay Snails

HOLD UP YOUR HORSES, before we get to the post-game content, I got a surprise shiny! Here I was, minding my own business, walking around Area Zero and trying to catch the brand-new Paradox Pokemon, and... hey, what do you know, there's a casual bright blue and yellow Gible just hanging out with its four peasant red-bellied Gible brothers. So yeah, I got myself a Shiny Gible! 

I've actually been trying to try and look for shinies in the outbreaks, particularly with how so many people told me that it's easier to get shinies in Scarlet/Violet, but no such luck. At least they had the forethinking of realizing that the auto-battling feature will accidentally kill shinies and no one wants that, so your Pokemon won't actually attack wild Shiny Pokemon and auto-kill them. 

Well, this Shiny Gible will forever and ever remain a Shiny Gible, because Shiny Garchomp is only really different to regular Garchomp when you put them side-by-side and realize that one is grayish-blue and one is bluish-gray. Shiny MEGA Garchomp has a wonderful bright pink colouration that's hilarious, but they're not in this game.

So anyway, I've been going around exploring Area Zero to try and capture the Paradox Pokemon. Bit annoying that they don't have a map of Area Zero, but what are you going to do, I guess? Iron Moth, the Paradox Volcarona, and Iron Hands, the Paradox Hariyama, spawn a lot in the overworld. I guess there's an actual in-story reason for them to start walking around, because we blew the locks on the Zero Lab! Interestingly, while Iron Hands is the predictable Electric/Fighting, Iron Moth is Fire... and Poison? Okay, that's... that's a bit weird. And interesting. And cool!

I ventured deep into the deepest depths of Area Zero, and found... well, not the other missing Paradox Pokemon, but Miraidon #02! That jackass! He's just hovering smugly near the entrance of the laboratory. I... I guess it makes sense? I never really put too much thought into where this dude disappeared after our fight with him. Well, he sure got captured in a Timer Ball, after a couple dozen turns! I guess the idea is that my Miraidon keeps getting converted back into 'bike mode', which is a bit of an annoyance, so this is an alternate Miraidon if you want to use the jerk. If you forgot, this is the guy that murdered out Miraidon and killed the real Professor Turo, accidentally causing the chain of events that caused the time machine and the Paradox Paradise Protection Program or whatever to run rampant! Miraidon, more like MURDERaidon, am I right?

That's five out of the seven Paradox Pokemon, and I had to do a fair bit of running around to find Iron Thorns and Iron Valiant -- or Paradox Tyranitar and Paradox Gardevoir/Gallade. It's a bit harder to find them. I eventually managed to figure out that Iron Thorns hangs out around the huge rockslide, it's just that I have to beat up the Pokemon that spawn there to get him to spawn. He's Rock/Electric, and... okay, yeah, I guess I can see why they went a bit different with most of the Paradox Pokemon. It wouldn't be interesting to have everyone be just [one of their original types]/[Electric or Steel]. Which... raises some interesting questions about the past Paradox Pokemon in Scarlet, which I haven't met yet!

Iron Valiant was nearly impossible to me to find, until I looked up a guide online, which directed me to a small little opening leading to a secret cave which leads to a waterfall and a secret cave filled with Golducks and Sneasels and Dugtrios, and I have to keep beating them up until Iron Valiant pops up. And even then, the goddamn bitch refuses to stay in the Poke Balls I tossed at him. The Iron Valiant I captured wasted like almost 10 Dusk Balls, 20 Ultra Balls and 20 Timer Balls! Or thereabouts! It's more difficult to capture than the actual cover legendary!

What a jackass. It's a cool-looking jackass, though. It's Fairy/Fighting, which I guessed when I first fought A.I. Turo's Iron Valiant. 

At some point I also pulled out all the purple stakes on the South-East side of Paldea -- which I did during my wandering around. I finally decide to go to Grasswither Shrine (which explains the slightly-blighted bog nearby!) where the purple Chinese-looking seal has finally been broken. I touch it, and herein lies the Ruinous Tablets. These are the tablets that bring about ruinous knowledge according to my history teacher, and touching it unleashes... 

WO-CHIEN! Or "蜗简", snail-bamboo. 

It is a snail made up of detritus! Of masses of leaves and gunk and grime, with a shell made up of an orb with a spiral-shaped cone shell made out of a flat wooden surface. And those weird-looking eyes! Man, this thing... and its got fancy edgy blighted-creature moves like 'Ruination' and its ability 'Tablets of Ruin' lowers the ability of all Pokemon except for itself. 

Yeah, when they told me that there are four Chinese-inspired Pokemon on four sides of the map, I thought we were going with the Four Symbols -- the dragon, the bird, the tortoise and the tiger (which we kinda already did with the Forces of Nature kami) -- and I am so glad that what we got is something as bizarre as this Grass/Dark decaying snail of doom. This is like the antithesis of Xerneas -- a plant-based creature of rot and death and decay. 

It's also kind of a bitch to catch, but not as much of a bitch as Murderaidon or Iron Valiant. It's in my party now, and will stay there unless one of the Treasures of Ruin ends up being something far, far more bizarre.

I still haven't really done any of the other classes yet, and I think I do want to take a break from more serious legendary capturing (I do think I might just use a guide to hunt down those little demon-sealing stakes, just so I can get Violet over and switch to Scarlet) and just dick around and do some battles before I go back to cutscenes with the classes and the Academy tournament.

So I go around and start fighting the gym leaders, starting with the ones that I genuinely don't remember the most. I'll leave Ryme and Iono for last. 

Which means I go back to the farm town with the Bug-type gym leader lady. Katy! That's her name. She's so bamboozled that she doesn't even have anything ready -- she's even in the gym office building for handing out pastries! And... well, at this point her team is at a respectable even 65, but mine is at around 70-ish. And I'm confident I'll be able to sweep her team with my Fire-type starter.

So yeah. She has a Lokix, a Foretress, a Heracross, a Spidops and that dumbass completely not-a-bug Ursaring, who terastralizes with those two goofy-looking bug antennae which actually made me chuckle a bit. I take down her team with mostly one-shots, and the only one that slowed me down was the Forretress's Sturdy. What did the dumb metal bagworm do? Curse. Gah. 

I do like Katy's dialogue, where she reflects that she's been going too easy because all the students that go past her city tend to be total greenhorns, but she got so energized by the battle that she wants to go full-on ham on the next batch of challengers to truly test their worthiness. Um, okay, good luck, you guys with your level 20 Oinkolonges, I guess. 

Who else left a minimal impression on me? Right, Grusha. Another one that Skeledirge will one-shot, too. His story, at least, is a bit nicer. He talks about how he's happy to see me reach my goal, despite how the comment might come off as sarcasm, and later on reflects on how he's already lost snowboarding... and gym leading is the only thing he has left. And he really can't afford to lose the only thing that gives him meaning. 

His team is a lot less drastically different, since he's meant to be one of the later-game gyms. He adds a Weavile to his team of Frosmoth, Beartric, Cetitan and the Terastralized Altaria. 

I get Tulip out of the way, too, and her team is also not super different. A Gallade is added to her team of Farigiraf, Gardevoir, Espathra and Terasttralized Florges. She does have a fair amount of dialogue about being happy that she groomed a person of a talent into someone, and her dialogue about people with talent and skill and whatnot is kind of all right, I suppose. She talks about beauty and stuff and has a bit of cattiness towards La Primera. I just can't remember any of it now that I'm sitting down to write this paragraph. 

I also decide to finally start knocking off some of my classes (I had basically completed Clavell, Miriam and Raifort's storylines as much as I can prior), and basically blitzed through my Maths class with Tyme all the way to the end. If you think her maths class is any more interesting in classes 4-6... yeah, no. Even the game acknowledges this, I guess? It is just talking about things like STAB and move accuracy and whatnot, and while I understand these concepts, actually being made to count the numbers is not something I am willing to do at 2 a.m. in the morning. Sorry, Tyme, I press Flamethrower fire croc go brrrr.

Tyme's story isn't the most interesting thing either, where she's dealing with an 'intense glare' from a stalker. After a bit of hiding in the cafeteria kitchen to identify the identity of her stalker, she decides to confront her in an 'ambush', and turns out that stalker is just a fan-turned-student who wants to know why she quit being a gym leader.

Jacq's class, all the way to the end, really doesn't have anything all that interesting. He talks about evolution, Shiny Pokemon (OH HEY I GOT A SHINY GIBLE IT'S A ONE IN A 4000 CHANCE), regional forms and form changes. He really doesn't have much of a personality or a story, does he? Does he even have a character quirk or a character story?

Anyway, I think I'll try to slowly go through the post-game content in the next couple of days, alternating between gym leaders, stake-finding, classes and playing my copy of Scarlet.

Random Notes:

• So yeah, the Area Zero posts were all basically written up around the end of December, it's just that it took a while to proofread them and to make it into something presentable. The post-game ones are more closer to real-time, though. 
• Katy still doesn't have a Vivillon in her rematch. What was the point of showing her with those Vivillons in her original battle cutscene, then?
  
• So I guess Ursaluna just doesn't exist in Paldea, either?
• Tyme neatly sneaks in her role as a prior Rock-type gym leader when she brings up the debate between Rock Slide and Stone Edge as something she is very invested in when giving her class about move accuracy. 
• I caught an Applin at last (they fall from trees!) and the dex is kinda cheeky, noting that they will dehydrate and shrivel up if they're separated from the apple. Well, that explains why they never modelled Applin outside the apple, then!
• Jacq does have a brief hint about how Primeape evolves, so that's one bit of information about the super weird ways that some newer Pokemon evolve.