Ranking the Tera Jewels from Pokémon Scarlet/Violet
So I was going over things to do for the year when I started thinking about Pokémon Scarlet, because I have Scarlet specifically and didn't have interest in Violet, and how the Tera Jewels look.
Basically, there are some I like and some I dislike. Therefore I decided to write down my opinion about them like any other sane nobody on the backwaters of the internet.
Remember that this is my opinion and I have absolutely zero influence so shouting and screaming at me accomplishes nothing.... Anyhow...
As I was playing Scarlet and doing the blinding terastalizing thing over and over. I began to wonder what the Dark tera type jewel would be like.
I had seen the Grass, Fire, Water, Electric, Rock, and Ground jewels so my expectations were high.
Would it be a moon? A thief mask? That weird demon masks that appears in everything Japanese themed?
Oh, nope, it's just a comic action bubble with an impish grin on it...
You know, there's so many options they could have gone with the Dark type. Instead, we get a sign post that goes "hey I evil now hehehehehe"
I thought Dark type was supposed to be intimidating or ominous. I feel nothing with this comic book print piece. Not even amusement like what actual comics give people. All it did was make a lame appearance after a massive flash and disappoint.
Guess they were invoking DC comics energy for this tera jewel.
The second I saw the gift Pikachu I knew this tera jewel was specifically made for nostalgia bait.
Much like the Dark tera jewel, there was a metric ton of options that could have been made and they went with the dumb one. I'm not calling it lazy. Lazy would have been a single sphere and called it a day. Give them props for putting strings on the three spheres they made!
I joke, but this tera jewel does feel low end. Not really the worst that could have been but still sort of lame.
Also, it's funny to terastalize Drifblim into a flying type so it ends up being a balloon with balloons attached to it.
Listen... just because I rank something low doesn't mean I do not like it. In all honesty, the fairy tera jewel is something I would've picked out for the fairy type. and... that's the main issue with it.
Yes, fairies are all cute and bubbly and oh so adorable so a regular heart shape is the best and possibly only option for the type.
Can you think of something better? I can't. Mainly because my brain has been absent for a numbar I can't count on my fingers. So however long it's been is no concern of mine.
Where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, hearts and fairies are good together. However it's cliche and that's why it gets slotted in the lowest ranks.
Speaking of expected, a boxing glove was something I did not expect for a tera jewel and said "oh of course it'd be that"
This is the same issue the fairy type had. It's something that is so cliche and expected that seeing leaves me meh.
What? You want more emotion? This is a list about crystal headgear colorful fantasy creatures wear in what is considered a kid's game. Being meh is the only emotion you're going to get out of me here.
At least it wasn't that anger symbol all anime from the 80s/90s had. Then I would've had emotions for this one.
Should be a surprise to no one at all that I don't really like the very expected obvious choices for tera jewels. Which is exactly why Ice, one of my favorite types, is so low.
All it is is a snowflake. Terastalizing turns my pokémon into snowflakes which turns me into a snowflake which makes me triggered.
Ice was already kind of a useless type in battle since ice is weak to practically any type that attacks.
Meaning I was wrong in my ranking and Ice is actually 18 for being bad in battle.
That was a joke. This list isn't based on battle effectiveness or functionality. It's based on what I think looks good and I like snowflake because snowflake pretty!
You know what else is pretty? Flowers.
Crystal flowers are very pretty and sparkly and I bet they smell nice too. Maybe... I don't know my skull is hollow.
It is a very common tera type, though, so you're going to see it too many times to care. I know I had after terastalizing my starter, a Deerling, a tera raid Starly, a Foongus, and that thing that is not a Tentacool. Yeah, 7.5 out of 10, too much grass!
This is the ultimate test to see how long before I make a very specific reference to that Japanese cartoon everyone loves... I can smell the pitchforks already.
Anyhow, the ground tera jewel is different from the rock tera jewel because the rock is a building while the ground is what the building is built on.
What really surprised me was the fact that the ground type was given the most colorful tera jewel in the game. Yes, even more color than the flying tera jewel.
It also didn't appear as often... for me at least. The only thing I saw it on was Clodsire/Whooper. And, come on, we all agree that this tera jewel is adorable on Clodsire.
It's like a little hat! My little Clodsire has Za World on its little head!
ah, hit that JoJo reference...
Yo, I head you like chandeliers so we put chandeliers on all your fire type pokémon so they never burn out.
And it looks good. Pretty crystal chandelier is top tier design. Excellent choice! I was expecting a candle but its third evolution works much better.
In actuality, this one was tied with the next one because they looked similar and I put this one lower because I have bias against fire.
"Oh wow, the person with Frost in their name and has Ice type as one of their favorites hates fire. How cliche."
Yes. That is correct. You can dump me down to the pits of your "random person from the backwaters of the internet" list if you want.
I'm already burnt out on this list and need a refreshment.
Ha ha, refreshment like a beverage like a glass of water. Get it? I explained a joke so it'll be funnier.
No. That's stupid and I feel gross for doing that. I'm super sorry you had to read that.
Like I said, this one was tied with Fire because they look similar. Not the same but similar enough.
Also, is this supposed to be a fountain or a spring or a spout?
Whatever, it looks good and pretty and cool and that's all that matters.
Downside is this one appears on a LOT of pokémon and I do mean too many to count. I already made the IGN joke so I'll have to do the unthinkable and come up with an original joke!
Moving on to the next entry! How clever.
This one gave me the most giggles because it's just a light bulb.
It's stupid and unoriginal but so funny I can excuse it. Plus the fact they managed to lower to opacity to make the bulb itself translucent in the crystal effect is astonishing.
How'd they pull that off? Must've been a month of work just for that. And they had less that a year to develop it? Legends Arceus came out in January 2022 so yeah, less than a year.
Someone force these people to go on vacation.
I like the light bulb. It's funny and makes the game brighter because I smile over it. and then go blind because of the brightness.
I was expecting like slime or a trashcan to be the tera jewel for the poison type but nope, it's the classic skull and cross bones.
The skull and crossbones had been used as a universal sign for mess around and die. Which is most fitting for poison types.
And, yes, it is one of the many obvious picks I threw a bunch into the lower section of the list for. But the poison tera jewel has the benefit of being a crystal skull that shines like a diamond.
It looked prettier than the other obvious picks so I put it up higher for being the best looking obvious choice I didn't expect.
This one is an actual nostalgia bait but it didn't have to fold in on itself like how the flying type did.
The ghost tera jewel is the ghost sprite from generation one. That's cool and totally draws me in even though my first pokémon game was Silver.
A funny thing to think about is thinking of the tera jewel ghost possessing your pokémon when they terastalize.
Call me morbid or something but I got mild amusement from thinking that. Add it to a nuzlocke and have it so your dead pokémon come back for revenge battle.
What could bug possibly get for a tera jewel? What entomologist decided which bug was best to represent the entire bug type pokémon?
Turns out it was a butterfly... and it's the cutest thing ever.
I first saw this when I battled the bug gym with an over leveled team that swept the gym in less than half a minute. That's including the time it took for the terastalizing animation to finish.
That gym leader had a bug bear, HA!
But I briefly saw the oh so cute crystal butterfly on that Teddiursa and wanted one.
I don't know how good bugs are in battle but I don't really care either because something I said earlier that I don't recall at the moment. All that matters to me is that crystal butterfly is something I want and I want to purchase crystal butterflies off etsy.
You ever get an axe logged into your head and you suddenly become a steel type pokémon? I can only claim the first half of that sentence but the point still stands.
This is an axe... that is embedded in the skull of your pokémon.
There's nothing cute, pretty, or cliche about it. It's just so gosh darn hilarious I made a steel tera type team just to have that specific tera jewel appear.
The steel type is a defensive behemoth to boot so it's like giving your pokémon a MASSIVE BRONZE SHIELD whenever you jam that axe in their head.
I'm not a competitive player nor have I ever cared about the battling that much. I just find it hilarious thinking of all the actual competitive players using pokémon with axes in their heads to get those steel type resistances.
For the rock type, I 100% expected it to be a Kirby hat. You know, the one that is basically a pile of rocks and lets Kirby turn into various stones.
Well color me yellow because seeing the Parthenon be the tera type jewel shocked me!
At least it looks like the Parthenon to me. And oddly enough, it's a perfect unexpected fit.
See, the Parthenon is made of marble which is pretty much fancy stone. The high class kind of rock that has no time to squabble with the garnets or amethysts.
This one was a real treat to see. Pokémon often uses landmarks for various spots in their games. And while I'm certain that temple that becomes Spear Pillar in Legends Arceus was meant to be the equivalent to the Parthenon. I do hope for a region based around Greece and/or Italy.
Or we'll just stick to teasing it.
I... don't like the psychic type.
They were over powered in generation one. Render poison types useless due to being tied with faries in generation 6. and have some of the most unpleasant designs... ok, last one is personal but I'm right on the first two!
Yeah, and of course the pure fairy type, Florges, gets terastalized to be psychic in the psychic gym. Who's gym leader is a makeup artist with her own brand of makeup. She's interesting but this isn't about gym leaders.
We're here for the tera jewels! And what does the psychic type give us?
A massive glowing crystal eye!
Wow... I know it is cliche, expected, and obvious to pick the standard psychic eye to be the tera jewel for the psychic type. However... the eye is textured (similar to the poison tera jewel) and actually glows to make it stand out far more than the rest of the tera types in general.
I'm downright mesmerized by that eye. It's unlike any of the other tera types I've seen.
I was so mesmerized by that eye I forgot why I don't like psychic pokémon for a couple minutes...
Then the confusion reminded me oh too well.
The dragon tera jewel is, well, a dragon.
Chock this up to the no Sherlock Whover.
At this point, I'm not excusing the obvious picks. We're on the second to last entry and I'm getting very tired of writing. So Let's just sum it up.
Yes, it's a dragon. A dragon that sits on your pokémon's head.
Like Remy from that movie about rats that run a restaurant.
It is also a very very nice color. Doesn't sparkle much but still good color and design.
This tera jewel just radiates awesome energy and I love it.
Yeeeeah.... so Normal isn't something that is known for uniqueness or having anything tied to it.
At the end of the day, normal is so bland and uninspired that there's literally nothing you can do to make normal interesting. All you have is meh.
So what in blazes could make normal the most appealing tera jewel to me?
Make it a plain, boring, old gemstone...
They achieved perfection. Our mortal brains can't comprehend this level of brilliance and I don't even have a brain!
It's just... it's just a regular gemstone! It should be at the bottom of the list for being so bland! But it's not. Why?
Because it is so bland and boring.
All the previous entries were tera jewels that tried to fit their type and they morphed into weird, stupid, and been there done that objects.
Normal, meanwhile, went with something so bland and normal that it transcended its normalcy and became the most interesting tera jewel!
I guess when you're stuck in the middle of a crowd full of polychromatic protagonists, being the dull ordinary one ironically makes you the only unique personality in the room. Sometimes being plain vanilla is the only way to get the most attention.
...or I just have a thing for diamonds.
Either way that's how I ranked all the tera jewels in Pokémon Scarlet. Now it's out there... hope you enjoyed it.
