Dragonfree

Pokémon trivia of the day: in Platinum, Iron Island B3F has Steelix and Graveler in the first two encounter slots. However, the swarm slots, which for locations with no swarms are normally just a dummy copy of the first two slots, it has *Onix* and Graveler, seemingly copy-pasted from B2F.

Having a baby really gave me a new and sobering perspective on "For sale: baby shoes, never worn", namely that most of our baby shoes have in fact never been worn, even though the baby was and is alive and well. It's just not all that practical to put a baby in shoes!

Beautiful six-word tragedy undermined by awkward reality that, realistically speaking, if you see that ad probably there was just never a sensible reason to try to put shoes on the baby before it could even walk

Poll for people who have used the Favorite Pokémon Picker's split mode, where you pick every Pokémon you like and then every Pokémon you *don't* pick across the whole first round through every Pokémon is treated as eliminated by all the ones you *did* pick:

- Those were two different split mode rounds; the ones you didn't pick for the first split mode chunk are eliminated only by the ones you picked for that chunk - All Pokémon you didn't pick while in split mode for the full round are eliminated by all the ones you did pick in split mode for the round

Poll for people who have used the Favorite Pokémon Picker's split mode, where you pick every Pokémon you like and then every Pokémon you *don't* pick across the whole first round through every Pokémon is treated as eliminated by all the ones you *did* pick:

Caterpie managed to climb up to where I put the Switch 2 Pro controller, take it, wake the console, and then start a new game of Brilliant Diamond on Shadey’s profile. So far she has managed to name herself 1 and pick the darkest-skinned Lucas. Still trying to name Barry. #Babyplayspokemon

I should mention for the most part she is holding the controller upside-down or sideways, so the control sticks and D-pad don’t make the character go where you’d expect if you had any expectations. Truly on hard mode in terms of forming associations between buttons and specific things that happen.

Caterpie managed to climb up to where I put the Switch 2 Pro controller, take it, wake the console, and then start a new game of Brilliant Diamond on Shadey’s profile. So far she has managed to name herself 1 and pick the darkest-skinned Lucas. Still trying to name Barry. #Babyplayspokemon

She also changed the text speed to slow at some point. I try to only help by saving between sessions and occasionally helping her get from the console home screen menus back into the game, so text speed stays, unfortunately.

Caterpie managed to climb up to where I put the Switch 2 Pro controller, take it, wake the console, and then start a new game of Brilliant Diamond on Shadey’s profile. So far she has managed to name herself 1 and pick the darkest-skinned Lucas. Still trying to name Barry. #Babyplayspokemon

Caterpie has made it out of her house in Twinleaf Town, after some attempts to change profile avatars

Finally got around to beating Cynthia today! The absolute MVP of my League challenge was Beautifly, who swept Bertha, Lucian and most of Cynthia while very underleveled by setting up with Quiver Dance against a special attacker. The lesson here is butterfly Pokémon are superior.

Underrated MVP: Metronome the hold item. An actual delight for super-effective sweeps. Watch the move just get stronger each time and hit like an absolute truck when they send out their final ace. So satisfying.

Finally got around to beating Cynthia today! The absolute MVP of my League challenge was Beautifly, who swept Bertha, Lucian and most of Cynthia while very underleveled by setting up with Quiver Dance against a special attacker. The lesson here is butterfly Pokémon are superior.

Caterpie managed to climb up to where I put the Switch 2 Pro controller, take it, wake the console, and then start a new game of Brilliant Diamond on Shadey’s profile. So far she has managed to name herself 1 and pick the darkest-skinned Lucas. Still trying to name Barry. #Babyplayspokemon

After a long while including some swapping between keyboard languages, she managed to pick the default Markus name

It's not like I don't get the disdain for BD/SP - it really doesn't add much, it lacks a lot of Platinum features, and a number of things about it feel rushed or silly. (Everything about the Pokétch is so awkward! The hidden moves "app" is glaringly thrown together, and also whyyy only one button)

Really is kind of nuts that BDSP did not change Dialga/Palkia's catch rate back to 30 *and also* they have the Sw/Sh difficulty modifier mechanic pre-eight badges. I'm on Dialga now with nothing better than Ultra Balls, and asleep at 1 HP it'd be 2.119% per ball.

There will plainly never be another capture harder than this in the game; once I've got the eighth badge the 0.1x difficulty modifier goes away and future legendaries are much easier. So the only logical thing to do is use the Master Ball here.

Caught a shiny Geodude earlier and now a shiny Sneasel? I think this is the third time in a Pokémon game I suddenly find two shinies within a short interval. What's up with that.

I’m playing Brilliant Diamond (never actually finished a playthrough when it came out because I had too much stuff on my hands) and there’s got to be something up with encounters while biking, right? I keep running into a new encounter when I *haven’t even moved* since the previous encounter.

Something that bugs me about the new experience mechanics is that now any Pokémon fainting *lowers the total amount of experience your team gets for every subsequent Pokémon you fight*. A Pokémon that fights and faints is now the only one that *doesn’t* get experience.