#grasstypes

To their credit, Game Freak are aware that they’ve put Morelull and Shiinotic in a difficult position, forced to live up to the legacy of multiple generations of other mushroom Pokémon, and have tried to turn the overlap between their designs into an in-universe rivalry.  Sun and Moon set up the new Pokémon as counterparts to Paras and Parasect in a day-night pairing, with Morelull being found in the wild only at night and Paras only during the day (a similar pairing exists between Araquanid and Ariados), and references in the Pokédex to territorial disputes between the two species that can leave great swathes of forest covered in spores.  We’re also told, interestingly, that Paras and Parasect are somehow weaker in the Alolan environment (the Pokédex doesn’t know why, exactly, but suggests both a lack of water and a lack of nutrients); their mushrooms grow poorly and their spores are less potent.  Perhaps we’re supposed to infer that Paras would outcompete Morelull in any other part of the world, but there’s something about the Alolan climate that they are poorly adapted to, making it impossible for them to completely overtake the native mushroom Pokémon.  On the other hand, Paras and Parasect’s stunted development in Alola could be Morelull’s doing.  We learn from the Sun and Moon website that Morelull, like Oddish, are known for behaving like normal stationary plants during the day and uprooting themselves at night to wander around on their root-feet, but unlike Oddish, Morelull are given a specific motive for this behaviour: if they stay in one place for too long, they drain the soil of nutrients and cause plants around them to wither and die (the Pokédex says that they attach to tree roots and drain them directly – it could be they do both, deriving different nutrients from each).  Since we know that Paras compete for territory with Morelull, it could be that Morelull systematically exhaust the plants whose roots are fed on by Paras and Parasect, keeping them from becoming successful.  That would also neatly explain why the two are rivals, even though they have different feeding behaviours and are active at different times of the day.

Morelull and Shiinotic’s most striking feature is the eerie, hypnotic glow of their spores.  Glowing mushrooms are a staple of dungeon-delving fantasy, but there are several species in the real world as well, all of which emit light through the action of a family of specialised enzymes called luciferases (a reference not to the Devil, but to the original meaning of his Latin name – “lightbringer”).  In European folklore the blue-green glow of these fungi is known as foxfire (probably from the French faux, false, rather than any reference to actual foxes) or fairy fire, and is part of the association between mushrooms and the fairy creatures of the world of magic.  Like fae beings, Shiinotic is known for leading mortals astray, and Alolan folklore holds that following her glowing lights at night, like the lights of the ethereal will’o’wisp, will lead you to become lost in the forest, never to return.  Similarly, so-called fairy rings – circular formations of mushrooms, especially the Scotch bonnet Marasmius oreades – are held to be traps set by fae creatures to curse or imprison unwary mortals who step inside their boundaries.  This is what provides the justification for Shiinotic’s Fairy-type powers, and I have to say, it’s refreshing to have more Fairy Pokémon whose nature is informed by the sinister side of fairy lore.  The other aspect of what makes Morelull and Shiinotic dangerous is simply what they are, because mushrooms and other fungi, unlike plants, cannot photosynthesise to acquire energy from the light of the sun, and therefore have to extract nutrients from dead and decaying things.  We’ve already seen that Morelull drain and exhaust the plants and soil around them, a little like real mushrooms, but Shiinotic takes it a step further and can supernaturally drain life force with her very touch – or, if necessary, transfer excess life force to another living Shiinotic.  It’s not clear how this is supposed to be different from the variety of draining abilities possessed by other Grass Pokémon – few of them make it an important point of their design, but most Grass-types can learn Leech Seed, Giga Drain or both.  It could have something to do with Game Freak’s desire to make the Fairy type the one that’s most closely associated with the Pokémon world’s concept of life force – whether for benign or sinister ends.  Of course, in spite of all this, tourists in Alola love to visit the enchantingly luminous forests where Morelull and Shiinotic live at night, because tourists are entitled morons.

Finally, I would like to share with you some of the bizarre trivia I inevitably stumble across in my day-to-day duties as an ostensibly sane Pokémon blogger.  During the course of what I generously like to call “research” for writing these things, I have adopted the practice of just periodically Googling “Hawai’i + x” (x being mongoose, or stag beetle, or woodpecker, or whatever the Pokémon I’m writing about seems to be based on), just in case something interesting pops up within the first page or so.  Aside from learning that there is apparently a thriving trade in psychedelic mushrooms on the Hawaiian islands (and, well – pretty glowing lights, altered states of mind, memory loss… Shiinotic knows something we don’t; that’s all I’m saying), the most striking thing I found on the first page of Google hits was a surprising number of articles about a rare Hawaiian mushroom whose scent is rumoured to cause spontaneous female orgasms.  Because, y’know, of course.  Before you get too excited and dash off to Hawai’i to start collecting these things, I’m going to let you down and spoil the story by saying that the whole idea is almost certainly pseudoscientific dreck, but this account of one woman’s quest to discover the truth about the elusive mushroom is a well-written and genuinely fascinating read, as well as a reassuring reminder that my own predilection for random obscure biological trivia is downright normal compared to the lengths some responsible adult humans will go to in search of weird mushroom facts.

If you feel like putting Shiinotic on your team, what you’ll be getting is fundamentally a sort of support-oriented tank with a nasty primary attack, potent self-healing capabilities, and strong disruptive techniques, but very poor speed and little flexibility.  Grass/Fairy leaves Shiinotic with a lot of weaknesses (including a double weakness to Poison) and a lot of resistances, with some important types in both categories, as well as immunity to Dragon attacks.  It also gets her access to Moonblast, which is one of the best moves in the game to have as your only attack, since nothing is immune to it and relatively little resists it.  You can also take a Grass attack for diversity, probably Giga Drain for the incidental healing, but there really aren’t that many Pokémon who take a lot more damage from Giga Drain than Moonblast (since almost everything that resists Fairy also resists Grass).  And that’s… well, that’s about it for Shiinotic’s offensive movepool.  Sludge Bomb is there if you really hate other Grass-types or Fairy-types.  Signal Beam is too weak to bother with most of the time, but will be your best option against a small selection of dual-type Steel Pokémon.  The meat of Shiinotic’s movepool is in her support options, and to begin with, we have to talk about her signature move, since it’s one of her stronger selling points.

Shiinotic’s signature move is Strength Sap.  Strength Sap is a draining move, but unlike, say, Giga Drain, it doesn’t drain HP – it drains attack, healing the user for an amount equal to the target’s attack stat, while reducing the target’s attack stat.  The disadvantage to Strength Sap, of course, is that it does no damage.  Its healing will also become less effective every time you use it, because the target’s attack has already been lowered (although, if they’re doing less damage to you as a result, you may not care).  The advantage is that, at least on the first use of the move, you’re likely to heal for substantially more than you would from Giga Drain – probably more than half of your own health – and the healing will not be affected by resistance to Grass attacks.  Unless an attack can outright one-shot Shiinotic, the healing she gets from Strength Sap will scale with the power of anything attacking her physically, allowing her to mitigate an awful lot of damage while simultaneously weakening the aggressor, potentially forcing them to either change tack or switch out.  If you try to string it out too long, you’ll run into problems because Strength Sap will stop healing you once the target’s attack bottoms out at -6 levels, and you’ll eventually suffer a critical hit (which will ignore the attack reductions).  However, it should at least give you plenty of time to cause havoc with your other moves, like Spore.  Spore itself is as fantastic as ever – as with the other mushroom Pokémon, a 100% accurate sleep-inducing move is so powerful that there’s really no good reason to use Shiinotic without it.  In fact, having Spore is almost, but not quite, a good reason to use Dream Eater.

Aside from Strength Sap and Spore, Shiinotic has the usual gamut of support moves we expect from a Grass-type.  Leech Seed is good for gradual healing and will encourage your opponents to switch out.  Paralysis isn’t essential on Shiinotic, because Spore is usually better, but if you want it, she actually gets Thunder Wave, which is more accurate than the Stun Spore available to most Grass-types.  Shiinotic can learn other healing moves, most easily Moonlight, but unlike most support Pokémon she sort of doesn’t need them; most of the time, Strength Sap will be quite enough.  Ingrain is adorable and just bad.  If you want Shiinotic to do something to support the team, Light Screen is on her list, and complements Strength Sap by slowing down special attackers.  Finally, we should probably talk about Spotlight, since only four other Pokémon (Lanturn, Clefable, Spinda and Starmie) get it.  It works a little like Follow Me, but instead of forcing opponents to target the user, Spotlight draws attacks towards a partner.  This is inherently less useful, because Follow Me sacrifices your turn to buy time for your (presumably more frail) partner, while Spotlight sacrifices your turn to buy time for… yourself?  It’s potentially useful with a partner who does something when attacked, like Aegislash with King’s Shield, but that’s about it.  You can also use Spotlight to focus fire on an opponent, but it can’t redirect enemy attacks towards their own allies, only your own attacks… which you already choose targets for anyway.  I’m pretty sure you can’t even use Spotlight to override Follow Me, because it has a higher speed priority.  So… what’s the move even for?  Answer: Battle Royals.  In a free-for-all against three opponents, using Spotlight will force two of them to attack the third.  This isn’t game-winning, because the Battle Royal is scored according to how many Pokémon you, personally, knock out, but you can still manipulate your opponents in pretty powerful ways.

You might have noticed that Shiinotic’s ability choices haven’t come up yet, and that’s because they’re fairly grim.  Illuminate increases the frequency of random encounters, but has no-in battle effect, so we can write that off immediately.  Her hidden ability, Rain Dish, provides a little bit of extra healing every turn during rain.  I’m not sure why you would use Shiinotic on a rain team, when there are so many Water-type tanks who stand to gain so much more from weather control, but you could.  That leaves Effect Spore, which is one of those rubbishy little abilities that occasionally does something nice for you but is too unreliable to use meaningfully.  Every time Shiinotic is hit by an attack that makes direct bodily contact, there is a 30% chance that her attacker will be struck by paralysis, poison, or sleep – chosen at random.  Not all Pokémon will care about all three of those conditions, and they may actually interfere with Spore, one of Shiinotic’s strongest features, but that’s what we’ve got.

If you pay any attention whatsoever to this blog for any length of time, one of the first things you discover is that I like Grass-types.  The Grass-type has been my go-to starter for my first playthrough (and most subsequent playthroughs) of every generation since the first.  Rowlet’s fate was bound to mine by destiny long before I ever laid eyes on him.  And I’m basically okay with this.  Rowlet isn’t really in contention to unseat Bulbasaur and Turtwig as my favourite starter Pokémon, but he’s fine.  He’s easy and fun to use in a playthrough, we’ve never had a birdlike Grass-type before, it doesn’t hurt that he’s just objectively adorable, and in abandoning his Flying-type Decidueye becomes the very first Ghost-type starter Pokémon ever, which is neat.  Rowlet and Dartrix are clearly barn owls, with the barn owl’s distinctive pale heart-shaped face, whereas Decidueye is maybe more of a hawk owl, although I wouldn’t read too much into that.  Comparisons to Hoothoot and Noctowl, who seem to be horned owls, are in order, as one of my usual criteria for evaluating new Pokémon is “is this actually new?” and I think the answer there is… probably???  Part of the problem there is that Hoothoot actually has a much more clearly-defined and interesting “personality” than Noctowl, with his heavily stylised cuckoo-clock aesthetic and metronome-like rocking from side to side (actually though, as long as we’re here, why doesn’t Hoothoot get Metronome?  I mean, I get that Metronome was still super-exclusive when Hoothoot was introduced, but they gave it to Snubbull and Chansey as an egg move).  Noctowl is kinda just a big owl that does owl things.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are a bit deeper than that, which I generally tend to think is good.  Decidueye’s arrows and archery are an odd touch, but as with Talonflame, you can link birds and arrows conceptually via feathered fletching, so that makes sense.  What might not immediately makes sense to some of us is the switch from Flying to Ghost when Dartrix evolves, and this gives me an excuse to begin one of my patented Bull$#!t Lore Digressions™, so let’s learn some more about owls.

Owls are associated with the spirit world in several different and unrelated cultures, and there are some pretty good reasons for this.  Owls are night hunters, but more than that, they’re silent hunters – owls’ feathers are softer and smoother-edged than those of other birds, so the flapping of their wings is much more difficult to hear, giving them a ghostly, ethereal quality.  Also, like many nocturnal animals, their eyes reflect light and seem to glow in the dark in a disconcertingly eerie manner.  Not for nothing are owls omens of death in sub-Saharan Africa, of sickness and bad luck in the native cultures of the American southwest, or of catastrophe in ancient Rome.  In ancient Greece, of course – mainly in Athens – owls had a more ambivalent role as the sacred birds of Athena and symbols of wisdom (an association that persists today and gives us Noctowl’s famous intellect and minor psychic abilities).  Even there, though, the sinister scops owl was seen as a creature of the underworld, and the owl’s reputation for knowledge subsequently made it the familiar of witches and warlocks in mediaeval Europe.  In New Zealand, where I come from, the small brown hawk owl known as the morepork or ruru is believed to be an oracle of the future in Maori culture, its different cries portending either good fortune or disaster.  Finally, and perhaps most relevant for us today, on several of the islands of Hawai’i a species of short-eared owl called a pueo is one of the more common shapes known to be taken by ’aumākua, the spirits of a family’s honoured ancestors, who return to serve as guardians and as a link to the spirit world (sharks, lizards and turtles are also common; families must show respect and deference to all animals of a similar form to their ’aumākua).  An owl Pokémon thus becomes an intermediary between this world and the next, a sort of warrior-shaman that protects its trainer from spiritual threats using powers of its own that are more than a little dark and sinister (we see a similar theme with Hoothoot in the anime, where he has the unique power to force hidden Ghost-types to reveal themselves with Foresight).

This “mystic guardian” aesthetic is conspicuously undercut by what Rowlet and Dartrix seem to be doing, because they have more of a “dapper gentleman” style in play – consider the Pokédex line that describes Dartrix as “a bit of a dandy” obsessed with keeping his wings groomed, or their leafy bow-ties (in Decidueye, that evolves into something more like a brooch or the clasp of a cloak, which has a more mediaeval-fantasy feel to it).  It feels like a very odd fit for the direction that Decidueye moves in.  If you had just given me Rowlet and Dartrix, and told me to come up with ideas for a final evolution, I might, after substantial umm-and-ahh-ing, have pitched a kind of James-Bond-esque super-spy-in-a-tuxedo concept.  That seems like a more natural continuation, but easily could have turned out looking rather stupid without some very clever way of unifying the design elements (and if there’s anything this blog should teach us, it’s that I’m not quite that clever).  The self-important “dandy” aesthetic, after a bit of thought, is oddly reminiscent to me of the vain, professorial Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh, genuinely wise (…relatively speaking) but perhaps just as much concerned with the appearance of wisdom as with wisdom itself, and eager to look the part of the sober, intellectual scholar of the arcane.  Decidueye’s own description from the Pokédex tells us that this wise Pokémon is nonetheless easily startled and flustered (try slapping him awake in PokéRefresh and you’ll see what they’re getting at).  It’s still incongruous with Decidueye as mystic archer and night hunter, but it is at least giving me a common aesthetic thread to follow through all three evolutionary stages, something that’s quite important for a starter Pokémon to maintain.  Which is enough for the purposes of this review, I think.

Stats-wise, Decidueye seems to be built as a mixed attacker, with strong offensive skills, but isn’t very fast.  That doesn’t bode particularly well, since he can’t really afford to not max his speed in training, leaving less to split between attack and special attack.  There’s a passable physical movepool here, which includes Leaf Blade, Brave Bird, Sucker Punch, U-Turn, and… I guess Steel Wing if, like, you really hate Alolan Ninetales or something?  There’s also Decidueye’s signature move, Spirit Shackle, which has several advantages.  It’s a reliable Ghost-type physical attack, which a) is a rare sort of attack for anyone to have access to, and b) is something Decidueye clearly needs, c) it traps its target in play with Decidueye (unless the target is a Normal-type or Ghost-type, or has some escape mechanism), limiting your opponent’s options, and d) it fires a spiritual arrow that nails the target’s soul to the ground, which is super badass.  This move is easily Decidueye’s biggest edge; you want to use him to set up critical moments where you can switch and your opponent can’t, then pressure their weak points with one of Decidueye’s teammates, or try to Swords Dance while they’re off balance.  Leaf Blade and Spirit Shackle are actually a pretty solid combination; neither Grass nor Ghost gets a lot of super-effective hits, but Ghost has strong neutral coverage, so basically you’re resisted by all the Normal/Flying birds and a bunch of Dark dual-types.  Sucker Punch is mostly redundant with Spirit Shackle in terms of type coverage, but it’s also Decidueye’s only priority move, and he’s fairly slow and doesn’t have any speed buffs, so at least considering it is sort of obligatory (just remember that it only works on targets preparing a direct attack, so be careful using it against support Pokémon).  U-Turn is just generally a good move, because the free switch-out gives you a lot of flexibility in responding to your opponent’s actions (and especially switches), and it covers your ass against Dark-types, whom Decidueye tends to have trouble with.  Trapping something with Spirit Shackle and then bouncing out with U-Turn is a decent little combo, if you like that sort of thing.  Brave Bird adds a bit more of a sting than Decidueye’s other options, but lacks their utility.  Some combination of four of these, or three plus Swords Dance, should probably be the default go-to.  Decidueye’s kit lends itself to switching in and out a lot, and he doesn’t really have the speed to try and sweep a significant chunk of an enemy team, so I’d be more inclined to slap a Choice item on him than bank on Swords Dance, but to each their own.

Decidueye’s special attack stat is pretty solid, so in theory you can use that to mix things up a bit.  Unfortunately, basically his only worthwhile special attacks are Shadow Ball and Energy Ball/Grass Knot, and if you cut Spirit Shackle for Shadow Ball then you’ve sort of forsaken one of the most compelling reasons to use Decidueye in the first place.  That’s not quite the end of the story; you might be gunning specifically for some big chunky physical tank with a Grass weakness like Hippowdon, who gets stung much harder by Grass Knot than by Leaf Blade even with minimal special attack training on Decidueye’s part.  Also, most human opponents are going to assume Decidueye is a physical attacker, so if you can grab him a free turn to set up with Nasty Plot (which he also learns), you might just be able to catch someone with their pants down.  I’m not sure this is particularly a good plan, and again I’m not encouraged by the fact that he essentially has no third special attack, but the possibility theoretically exists.  Decidueye does have a support movepool of sorts, but you can probably find better Pokémon for any conceivable support role he might try to fill.  Like, Baton Pass is there as an egg move (via Togetic or Oricorio), and again, Decidueye does get both Swords Dance and Nasty Plot, so he has perfectly sound options for using it, but he just looks so unlike my idea of what a Baton Passer ought to be (poor speed, average defences) that my mind sort of recoils from the notion.  Alternatively you could try to ply Roost and Light Screen with some HP training into some kind of weird tanky Decidueye – give up trying to outrun things, since he’s slow anyway, and focus on your defences.  Just don’t tell anyone it was my idea.

As well as a signature move, Decidueye has a unique ability; it’s his hidden ability and isn’t currently obtainable, but I think we’ll probably get it eventually, so we ought to talk about it before we finish up.  This ability is Long Reach, which lets Decidueye treat his “contact” attacks as ranged instead, bypassing enemy effects like Static, Rough Skin, Beak Blast’s retributive burn, and so on.  This… ehhh, I’m not really sure what this is for.  I mean, I understand conceptually why Decidueye has this: he’s an archer, so he should be able to make what would normally be close-range attacks from a distance.  But that aspect of the design is already expressed by his signature move, and by the fact that he can use ranged special attacks effectively.  Most contact effects aren’t that big a deal, most Pokémon that get them have better abilities to choose from, and even when they’re likely to turn up, Decidueye would often prefer Spirit Shackle to Leaf Blade anyway.  I think Long Reach would probably give Decidueye an extra edge against… Wigglytuff, Electrode, Parasect, Bewear, Stunfisk, and (lord help us) Delcatty.  Being able to one-shot Bewear with Brave Bird after a Swords Dance is not nothing, but I suspect the more general Grass-type damage bonus from Overgrow would probably still be more useful, even once Long Reach becomes available.

So, all in all, this is a decent start to generation VII.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are nothing amazing; they have a couple of conflicting ideas in their design, and other than Spirit Shackle there’s not a whole lot to be impressed by in their skillset.  They’re still interesting, though; as fighters they are at the very least passable, with an interesting niche courtesy of that neat little signature move, and I cannot stress enough that pinning a foe in place by the shadow is a very cool gimmick.  I got my cool new Grass-type starter, all is right with the world, and I can now review the rest of the seventh generation joyfully and optimistically, without a hint of malice or discontent in my heart.