#wtrescues

Hello one and all, welcome to my own personal piece of tumblr; a place to call my own and to hang up my virtual hat at the end of the day.

Let me just get it out of the way now and say that I used to run the Wonder Trade Rescues blog. Life got hectic and a revival of that blog is still far from the cards; have a full time job, school and all the insanity of being an adult with a home (sorta kinda), so I don’t have the time currently to pick up something so time intensive.

I am very saddened to say that this is the end of Wonder Trade Rescues. At the beginning of January I got hit by very uncomfortable life developments, one after another, and they are still coming. I have to transition into having a full time job, full time at college, running a household and a bunch of other jazz and now find the abundance of free time (well, more like flex time) that allowed me to run this blog completely dried up.

I want to, from the bottom of my heart, thank every single one of you who have helped this blog since the beginning and who have followed our attempts at making the Pokemon Wonder Trade community a better place. I'd like to think that we ultimately did some good and brought happiness to the lives of some trainers and that's all I can really ask for, in the end.

And who knows? Maybe, someday, down the road, I'll have free time to let me get seriously back into Pokemon again and maybe Wonder Trade will still be part of the game. If I do and if it does, you can rest assured that I'll do my darnest to resurrect this blog. But until that fabled day comes, this is it for me. Maybe I'll make a personal tumblr, maybe I won't, but that's neither here or there.

So yeah, as I mentioned in another post, real life and World of Wacraft ate me up again. I hate how I keep hitting these pockets of inactivity on here one after the other, but that's life sometimes.

To catch things up from where I left off with the last post, I saved Peeko from that Team Magma Grunt, yaaaay! I love the little guy and I'd absolutely hate for anything to happen to him! I'm now on my way though to track down Mr. Briney, as my mission for the President of Devon Corp takes me off the shoes I barely know for what I can only assume will be some high seas adventure!

Now, here are the little ones that I caught:

And here's who I got in return:

I blew a mulligan on that Luvdisc (useless little things), but I was otherwise very happy and excited with what I got! I never used a Breloom or a Gardevoir before and I'm really looking forward to using them this time around! Who knows...maybe they'll even end up on my Elite 4 team!

The first thing I notice coming out of Petalburg Woods is how much I miss the berry farm from Y. It was so incredibly convenient to have one spot to plant and raise all your berries and I don't know how well I'll do having to go back to the way it had been in Gen III. Guess we'll just have to see, but I'm definitely not planting anything until I get access to Fly.

Don't have a terribly large amount of things to say about Rustboro City. The visual reworks are gorgeous, as expected, and the NPC dialogue is more of what one is accustomed to from previous games. I was definitely amused how the Ace Trainer turned into a Hiker after giving me the float stone and I hope to see more of that humor.

The Rustboro Gym continues the tradition of making gyms eye candy (though I miss the puzzles from all the previous games), but I felt they could have made it bigger with more exhibits or maybe just have made that reproduction of Hoenn interactive. I sadly don't have anything positive to say about its leader though. I always questioned why a student barely out of training was allowed to become a Gym Leader (maybe Devon Corp paid off the League) and her ridiculously enlarged skirt just adds to any disbelief of mine that she's ready to be a gym leader. Her rework makes her look even more like a child (a self-important one who thinks she knows enough to be considered an adult), while at least her original design had a sense of studious maturity about it.

She at least taught me one important lesson and that was the greatest peril of a Wonder Run; your Pokemon not listening to you. The little buggers were loafing around and falling asleep left and right and if my knock out rule had been in effect, this gym run would have been disastrous to the rest of my play-through. I'll need to balance their level and discipline from this point on and it might behoove me to max out their affection from here on out.

I honestly can't remember if the beach on route 104 had Wingull that would fly away in Ruby, but it's a lovely thing to see regardless of whether it's there for the nostalgia factor or not. Speaking of nostalgia, I was really glad to get to see Peeko and Mr. Briney again; those two are still some of my favorite NPCs period and I'm happy to be able to go on adventures with them again (seeing that painting in the museum in Kalos made me smile).

Route 104 saw me capture Pippy the Taillow:

Who was Wonder Traded away for an overleveled Tentacool (though 25 isn't that far off):

So, I guess I won't be needing Bara Bara after all! He gets to stay adorable and untouched while his vacation at the scenic Box Hotel gets kicked to an indefinite duration.

The world of Pokemon seems to be like the real world, in that rich people get to follow different rules than the rest of us! I mean, a Full Restore being used by an NPC trainer this early in the game? Seriously? He must of had daddy buy someone off at the Pokemart to get such premium goods!

Leaving Route 104 behind and saying goodbye to Peeko and Mr. Briney, I intrepidly made my foray into the Petalburg Woods, picking up another Taillow on the way:

Poppy likes to flock with birds of a feather it seems, as I received yet another slightly overleveled bird Pokemon in return:

I definitely feel sorry for poor Roxanne when I get to her. Those rock moves might put the hurt on my Skarmoy and Beautifly (yup, trained up that Wurmple I received pretty darn fast), but with my Surskit, Tentacool and Lunatone, she doesn't stand a chance!

I barely get any further into the forest before I get my first encounter with Team Magma. Those rascally grunts keep acting way too big for their britches and I just had to continue the long tradition of putting them in their place! I really like the new pre-battle animation for Team Magma and I just wish I had my 3D on to see how it looked; oh well, always next time.

Now, I can't remember if cutscenes without your character being present are a new thing, but it's definitely something I don't personally remember being in previous games. Either way, yet another bit of flavor that keeps me coming back for more and continues cementing this game as being in the "awesome category".

So, let's preface this one with the fact that I don't have any screen shots to share. My laptop was borrowed to watch Guardians of the Galaxy while I was playing Omega Ruby and it turns out that my smartphone's camera is of even worse quality than my laptop's webcam (as if that was possible).

On my way to Petalburg, I picked up a Poocheyna (named McGruff) and a Seedot (named Nuzlocke). I also discovered the new mechanic for sneaking up on Pokemon, which came hand in hand with random wild Pokemon with better move pools (pretty awesome addition to the games actually). The first capture came off as basically scripted, so I filed that Poocheyna (named Cindertooth) under being as such and plodded my way along.

I like the new design for the Pokecenter (it's pretty open concept and bright, which is neat) and love the one for the Pokemart (enough that I wouldn't terribly mind it returning to being separate in later games), but Wally's design came out of nowhere to me. Maybe I just don't remember Ruby as well as I thought, but isn't Wally supposed to be around the same age as the Protagonist? So why is he suddenly this Moe Shota-bait in silk pajamas? Pretty weird, but hey, this is Japan.

After getting Wally his Ralts, I finally gain access to Wonder Trade (huzzah!), meaning I could get the ball really rolling. McGruff, Nuzlocke and Cindertooth went sailing out to other homes, being replaced by a Spinda, Goomy and Wurmple. I blew the mulligans on both the Spinda (waaaay too high a level to use) and the Goomy (already used one before on my original Y playthrough and had bred a nice Rain Stall one on my second playthrough), getting a Lunatone and a Wurmple in return. Following the no duplicates clause of my rules (mostly because I still don't know how to determine if you get a Beautifly or a Dustox), I traded out that second Wurmple and got a Surskit in return.

With three new battle buddies on my hip I put Bara Bara away in the box till I need to call on his amazing swimming powers. Aaaaand that's it for this chronicle, as my battery was dying shortly thereafter.

I was absolutely tickled pink by the opening sequence; choosing to use the exact same one from the original Ruby, graphics and all, and then revealing it as being the display screen for your Pokenav was a stroke of genius that brings back strong feelings of nostalgia. The cut to the panorama of Pokemon in their natural environment is something we haven't gotten enough of since Pokemon Snap (which I'm still mad we didn't get a sequel or remake of) was a beautiful touch and I hope we get more of it. Hell, the whole game has a retro feel to it so far and it's a step in the right direction. I have high hopes for where this game is going.

In other news, May is absolutely adorable.

Now, here's my first Pokemon obtained, which I'm selecting as my one Water type (even though, since it was gifted, it's also exempt):

Once upon a time I used to play Pokemon the normal way (once upon a time defined as "Blue through Black"), catching all that I could and using the Pokemon I liked best to form my teams. It was around Black that I learned about Nuzlockes and I did my first Nuzlocke on my first play through of X/Y. It was a really fun and nail biting experience and ended up sparking back up what love I had lost in the game after Sinnoh and then Unova. It was also with Kalos that I learned about the concept of a Wonderlocke, which I made my second completion of Y centered around.

So, while the blog is on hiatus pending my completion of Omega Ruby, I figured it'd be fun to do a run through using Wonder Trade again and post my misadventures here (basically what I get from WT and any specific comments I feel inclined to make) on the blog so things don't get insanely quiet again in the interim.

Without further ado, here are the rules for my Wonder Run:

1. Only one Pokemon may be caught from each route and no further Pokemon may be caught from said route after the capture. This does not have to be the first Pokemon encountered, but it must be the first pokemon most feasibly capturable. Shiny Pokemon are exempt from this rule.

2. Once a Pokemon is captured, it must be traded away on Wonder Trade as soon as is reasonable and possible. One mulligan is allowed per original instance of Wonder Trading. The re-trading of Pokemon already obtained does not consume a mulligan as long as it does not have an evolution not yet obtained (i.e. an entire team of evees is valid and does not count as the obtaining of duplicates). This rule and Rule 1 are lifted after the Elite Four are beaten for the first time.

3. One Water type Pokemon may be rendered exempt from Rule 2, to ensure that Surfing will be possible later in the game. Additionally, Legendary Pokemon, Shiny Pokemon, Event Pokemon, Pokemon obtained with their Mega Stone and Pokemon given as a gift are exempt from Rule 2.

4. When a Pokemon faints it must be boxed as soon as possible, being considered in a "coma" and unusable until after the Elite Four is beaten, at which point this rule is lifted. If an NPC who is scripted to heal your party is encountered non-voluntarily before a fainted Pokemon can be boxed, it is considered as having a "close call" and can be still used. This rule does not come into effect until after seven Pokemon have been obtained.

5. Healing and restoration items, other than those that can be held and used by a Pokemon naturally, are banned from use until after the Elite Four is beaten for the first time, at which point this rule is lifted.

6. Though they can be caught/obtained and are exempt from Rule 2, Legendary and Event Pokemon may not be used.

7. The Day Care Center may not be used until after the Elite Four has been beaten the first time.

8. The rules may be edited, subtracted from or added to at the discretion of Wonder Trade Rescues.