Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

Don't worry, you were very civil and not at all offensive!

Unfortunately it's a bit hard for me to answer questions about a game that I played literally more than a decade ago; I simply don't remember exactly why I made individual choices about moves or exactly how I felt about specific individual dungeons in 2008.

I can tell you I pretty much only played through the main story - I don't think I ever did the level-reset dungeons. I also know I was not a fan of the belly system, since it adds another RNG element to whether you can make it through the dungeon.

Thanks for your thoughts!

As for whether to be specific in your guide: it's going to depend a bit on what your guide is about - if the exact stats of these Pokémon aren't particularly relevant to the purpose of your guide, it's fine to leave them out, especially if you also link to resources with exact numbers. The main point of the advice to be specific is that if you're vague about the subject of what you're talking about, it makes it less useful; if it's not a guide on stats, then you don't necessarily need to be specific about stats. I'm not 100% sure what the guide you're describing is about but it doesn't sound like the point of it is to be about what these Pokémon's stats are, so it should be fine to talk about that in more general terms.

[20/10/2020 20:30:37]

15

I am making a guide/rant thing that I plan to post on a forum. However, at the moment, I am using general terms of "high," "somewhat high," and so forth, as I have linked multiple resources for exact stats on the top of my post. Would this be acceptable, or would it benefit for me to be specific and put lists of numbers for stats in the section of the pseudo-guide pertaining to the pokemon in question (my main reason for not doing that is that there are 6 stats per floor, and I believe that placing each of the stats for all the 3 or 4 floors it appears on may be harmful, especially when poorly formatted when it is possible and recommended to cross-check a guide)? Or is there another benefit of being specific?

[20/10/2020 16:31:07]

15

Sorry if I'm really blunt in my comments and I apologise in advance if something in this is overly offensive.
Also note that a large amount of my comments are more opinions than factual errors.
Comments or questions in response to specific sections of the review
Intro: Reviewer made claim "they are supposedly exactly the same aside from some obtainable Pokémon and items. Therefore, this review should be entirely applicable to Darkness as well, but I call it a review of Time anyway since that's the game I played."
Response to claim: I agree with the claim made, that the review can easily enough pass for a review of Explorers of Darkness. Chances are that the recruitable Pokémon would likely not be used for much due to the nature of the game, which introduces severe level gaps in player-partner-only arcs. However, as it appears that you are a Mudkip starter, there are a couple of differences that may apply to you. A source claims that the Blizzard TM is exclusive to Explorers of Time and the Swagger, Substitute, and Water Pulse TM's are exclusive to Explorers of Darkness. (there are also other version-exclusive TM's, but I believe that these would likely be the most relevant ones on Mudkip). Both versions' Mudkip have their unique strengths, with Explorers of Time getting a move that targets the entire room allowing the player to be able to clear Monster Houses and the Darkrai bossfight relatively easily. This is what happened in my Darkrai bossfight, which made it very easy. Substitute is a weird move that makes the enemy targeted move weirdly and makes other enemies target it or something like that. And then there's Swagger, a confusion-inducing move. I feel like confusion is better than sleep in this game because of the nonsleeper IQ occuring in some of the lategame enemies. In general, I believe Time as opposed to Darkness gives you some AoE power as opposed to some status's.
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Reviewer's statement: "there is something unnerving and nightmarish about the time-stopped areas that makes it fall under the Rule of Cool to some degree"
Responder's question: What is the Rule of Cool and what causes the planet's paralysis to fall under that rule?
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Reviewer claim: "Even the standard, randomly generated missions are more interesting and varied: there is less emphasis on rescuing and more adventurous Pokémon who want you to escort them to treasures, as well as an entire class of missions that revolve around catching rogue Pokémon by fighting them on a certain floor of a particular dungeon."
Response to claim: I strongly agree with this claim that escort missions and outlaw missions added depth to the game. Let us take the example of escort missions first. Firstly, escort missions tend to be annoyingly hard, with the necessity to protect one's level-1 escort from the slightest attack. I agree that this can introduce a somewhat large challenge into the game, although it can often get close to too challenging. It is also notable that because of this, escort missions tend to be one level above rescue missions on the same floor, resulting in better rewards. Better rewards + harder mission = more satisfaction (in my opinion). Escort missions seem even more fleshed out by escort A to B missions, prospect missions, and Golden Chamber missions, which I strongly agree show how much it was fleshed out. My opinion on outlaw missions is a bit weird. I feel like they are essentially bosses, but that they encourage inflicting status-conditions and overleveling, which I believe may limit playstyle and put too much focus on metaprogression. However, the may is notable, as it could also possibly be defeated when not overleveled with heavy use of items. And then there's the "Steal from Aftermath pokemon" missions, which require that you get rain set, damp, covet, or something of the sort, which forces the user to think creatively, which is interesting.
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Reviewer claim: "I had the misfortune of being a Mudkip, which I have begun to suspect may be the absolute worst Pokémon to be in the entire game. Until I hit level forty-two and learned Hydro Pump, my best attack was Water Gun. Eventually I gave up and taught myself both Dig and Rock Slide, but I still had no convenient status-inducing attacks like I did as a Bulbasaur."
Response to claim: Strongly disagree. I do agree that Mudkip is a very vanilla starter. However, I do not believe that it would be "bad" in many ways. First things first, there was the claim that Water Gun was your best attacking move until Hydro Pump. I agree with this claim, but disagree that Water Gun is anything of a bad move, as it can cut corners, gets reasonable PP and STAB such that I feel like it should be treated as at least a decent move and may be effective as a secondary attacking move (maybe with Tackle acting as a primary attacking move).
Dig is interesting because although it is a charge move, I believe it has a double damage multiplier (I could be wrong on this), which may make it viable on enemies a tile away from you, especially with type weaknesses. Rock Slide seems like an unusual choice, but it may be because of PP for more attacking moves (leading to your later argument that moves are important and that PP could be maximised), or maybe for coverage (if I recall correctly I saw a source claiming that STAB is better than coverage unless it is a double weakness/resistance. However, it may make sense as double weaknesses/resistances to rock seem relatively common with the number of Bug/Flying types.) However, I am unsure about your decision of using this move as opposed to Mud-slap, which has more PP. Is it because of the cringe chance? If so, how well did it work for you, as an extra turn to move can be quite helpful at a good amount of situations.
Despite Mudkip not learning moves that inflict status ailments on the opponent, Mudkip does learn Protect at 37, which may be helpful. Although it is less accurate than moves like Sleep Powder and Supersonic, I still believe that it can be helpful and is probably better than nothing. As a side note, I had a Mudkip partner and Protect helped me cheese the Dialga bossfight, although a few reviver seeds were consumed from misses. I agree that Protect is outclassed by other more versatile status moves, such as Munchlax's Amnesia and Stockpile, Chikorita's Synthesis, some Fire-types' SmokeScreen, and possibly, as you mentioned earlier, Bulbasaur's Sleep powder. However, I still believe that Protect can still be useful in a large amount of circumstances. However, I think that there are worse starters, for example, Meowth does not get many helpful status moves (since it's mainly a physical attacker, nastyplot is not that helpful), and despite it having the overpowered ability Technician, its only two technician-boosted moves are both EoD-exclusive TM's.
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Reviewer claim: "depending on which Tactic I made him act on, my partner Charmander was either completely unhelpful or would run off and get himself into trouble while I was stuck dealing with some other Pokémon."
Response to claim: Agree, I'm not really a fan of the partner mechanic to this extent. I prefer to solo when I'm allowed to unless I feel like micromanaging set moves (mentioned in later section of your guide). I was under the impression that Charmander was one of the better pokemon for this, as it gets corner-cutting moves like Ember and the almighty SmokeScreen. ('mons with attacks that go in front of in front are even better partners (like quick attack), but I don't believe that partner Charmander would be as bad as, say, partner Munchlax or something because even in Let's Go Together, partner Charmander would still be able to do something in the case of rooms or corners, which, while not amazing, might be something. There's the possibility of switching with the partner, which may or may not be worth the partner taking a hit depending on the enemy and depending on the partner. However, I strongly agree with you on the partner system comment.
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Claim by reviewer: "Fainting in a dungeon gets you into a vicious cycle: you lose all your money and around half of your items (I believe it's just that each item has a fifty-percent chance of being lost; I have ended up with only three items left, but I have also kept just over half of them), which means you lose your Oran Berries (which means you can't heal yourself in a dungeon) and whatever else useful you might have had and can't buy yourself Reviver Seeds when you happen to come across a Kecleon shop, which means you'll almost definitely faint if you try again, too; all you can do is make futile attempts until you happen to have leveled up enough to get there. Or go all the way back to Treasure Town, do a bunch of missions to earn yourself some money and items, and then go through all the previous parts of the dungeon you were trying to get through."
Response to claim:
Somewhat disagree: Mystery dungeon games are like the weird hybrid between roguelikes and RPG's that remove of permadeath in exchange for metaprogression. And the metaprogression is strong in this entry, with the huge duskull bank, the farming of items, the ability to keep items when you die in a dungeon, and so forth. (I'm not sure about the 50% thing because I don't recall keeping more than half. However, I'm not a reliable test subject because I rarely check my inventory). Metaprogression can result into grinding. Depending on how likely I am, I choose between the grinding approach or simply re-attempting the dungeon, as you mentioned; the former if I wouldn't be able to survive without the items, or the latter if I simply got unlucky (as you have addressed later in your review). The game seems to encourage grinding, with the extra empty days to grind for items and do jobs (and probably end up with a sizeable collection in storage) may prevent the grinding from happening after a defeat, as items can be taken from the copious storage built from large amounts of items stored from missions. I tend to have a huge amount of surplus useful items, such as oran berries, apples, big apples, and grimy food, in my storage, which is usually the result of required mission days or external grinding, which may make grinding at the time of the dungeon less crazy. However, note that the future dungeons and Spacial Rift don't let you go back to treasure town, which may pose problems if you have not filled up your storage, which I believe can be a gameplay flaw. However, in other cases, where the player is simply unlucky, the player would probably be able to clear the dungeon given that the player doesn't get unlucky with problematic enemies, so I wouldn't classify those as always futile.
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Claim by reviewer: "The fundamental issue behind what makes the gameplay of Mystery Dungeon so irritating is the fact that moves - in general - are vastly overpowered. You see, in the Mystery Dungeon series, Pokémon don't always use moves - they also have a "standard attack". However, as it happens even a move like Tackle is greatly superior to the standard attack in terms of damage, and as if that weren't enough motivation to use moves almost all the time, you get more experience for beating Pokémon with moves than without. Now, you would run out of PP (a precious resource in these games) way too quickly if you had to waste a whole bunch of moves on every Pokémon you fight in every dungeon, so they made it so that moves will generally beat any Pokémon around your level in two or three hits."
Response to claim: Somewhat agree. I'd like to make an analogy to competitive Pokémon, in which PP-stall using things like stall and pressure can hurt normally-good low-PP moves like espeed or other 5-PP moves and encourage use of moves with more PP. Something similar may be the case. Something that may be of note: I believe that most moves (except for the multiplier ones) are similar in power with one another because of base power being additive and evening out as levels get higher. (I'll look for a source on this). I tend to use a single move and then regular attack for enemies because of the sheer power of moves, which usually ends up 3HKOing the enemy. However, it is probably of note that I tend to be 5-7 levels overleveled. I'm not sure whether you tend to be more on-level than I do, which may be contributing to the necessity of using more than one move or the often getting 2HKOd. As a munchlax starter, without using stockpile, the main 'mons that had reliably 2HKOd me were Combusken, Monferno, a good amount of 'mons from Mt. Travail, and a reasonable chunk from Mt. Bristle. (without application of Stockpile). However, again, it may simply be because I tend to be overleveled. I was going to make a separate section about this, but it flows into this, so I strongly agree with you on multi-hit moves being luck-based and possibly annoying when enemies land multiple hits. This also applies to my personal pet peeve, Perish Song.

Your next paragraph contains a good amount of repeat from earlier paragraphs, so I won't address issues separately, but I also view SOS mail as painfully long and time-consuming to put in. As about people rescuing, there seems to be a reasonably large rescuing community for the Explorers games, which is aided by backwards compatibility from Sky allowing EoT players to rescue not only EoD players but also EoS players. I tend to micromanage my partner, as it seems required in certain circumstances. However, I do not view it as extremely tedious. However, that is really a matter of personal taste.
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General Questions/Comments
1. The belly system in the Mystery Dungeon games seems like a somewhat divisive factor. Where do you fall in the spectrum?
2. I noticed that you did not mention Aegis Cave, in my opinion the most infuriating dungeon in the game because of requiring RNG to progress. Why is this, and what are your views on the dungeon?
3. There is a set of level-reset dungeons: Zero Isle East, Zero Isle West, and Zero Isle South such that they reset your level to 1 and reset your stats so that you need to gain experience in the dungeon. I like to compare these dungeons with competitive Pokémon when the non-levelreset dungeons are likened to standard pokemon because I believe that the level-reset dungeons have more strategy involved because of the use level-up stats and movesets and because of the fact that your level is limited to be somewhere near that of the opponents, and I find it fun to attempt it with different Pokémon. On the flip side, there's more dependence on RNG to give the player Big Apples and Max Elixirs. What is your view on these dungeons? Do you like them or dislike them? Why is that?
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Thank you for reading this response. I'm sorry if some part was offensive. Please note that a large amount of the response included my opinion and is not strictly factual.

[19/10/2020 22:39:01]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

@15:

I don't think anyone has ever harassed me about the Oxford comma, or at least not that I can remember.

It looks like the base of Mt. Lanakila will work just fine for evolving Crabrawler! I'd heard otherwise but just tested it myself. It's been fixed.

If you have thoughts on Explorers of Time you can put them here if you want, sure! But bear in mind that my review is my opinion; if you think differently that's fine, but I'm unlikely to change my review unless there's something actually factually wrong that needs correction.

@Rurihime: Updated, thanks!

[19/10/2020 16:32:30]

15

I love how the https://www.dragonflycave.com/hate.htm page hints on the mew trick :D

[19/10/2020 10:22:38]

Rurihime
Commenting on: 10-17-20

Nice! I'm new here, and I also noticed that the Number game is outdated, lacking the meltan line and the gen 8 pokémon

[19/10/2020 06:35:53]

15

As an MD Time player, I have a couple comments on your MD Time review (a good amount of these comments are my opinion on the game as opposed to factual things). Would it be appropriate to put those here?

[18/10/2020 17:56:55]

15

Your Evolution list states ¨Crabrawler into Crabominable (player is on top of Mount Lanakila (Su/Mo/US/UM))¨
I´ve heard claims that Crabawler can also evolve on the base of Mt. Lanakila. I am unable to test this as I have lost my copy of Pokémon Ultra Sun.
If the claims that I have heard were false, then please let me know which area constitutes as the ¨top of Mt. Lanakila,¨ e.g. the area after the elevator, or the summit?
Thank you very much.

[17/10/2020 17:08:48]

15

This is a weird inquiry, but, since I had assumed to see that in frequently-asked mistaken error reports but did not see it, how many users have complained about your lack of use of the Oxford Comma?

[17/10/2020 16:41:44]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

Testing for a random event will always be probability-based, but you can get a pretty good idea about it if you try for long enough - if something should be a 5% chance, for instance, and you try it a hundred times and it never happens, the odds of that happening just because you were unlucky are only 0.6% - it doesn't prove anything, but it gives a pretty strong hint that it's not really a 5% chance. If the supposed odds are greater than that, then you need fewer trials to come to a pretty confident conclusion. But that's why I say to be sure it's better to try to get the actual data from dataminers.

Good catch on the fan test - seems to be a bug where the assessment of the total score follows the score on the last category (creativity), rather than the actual total score. Will fix! (Although I've been meaning to update the test for a long while now… may be tempted to do that if I'm messing with it.)

[17/10/2020 16:15:40]

15

I attempted the featured quiz and obtained the results

45% Gamer. You have some interest in Pokémon gaming.
25% Anime-Freak. You have little interest in the Pokémon anime.
60% Pokémon Know-It-All. You have quite a bit of interest in researching Pokémon.
25% Obsessed. Pokémon has some weight in your life.
5% Fan-Worker. You have no interest in Pokémon fanwork.
32% Pokémon Fan. You have no interest in Pokémon.

I would like to bring attention to the Pokemon Fan category and the Obsessed/Anime Freak category. I had a 25% in those categories and recieved that I had ¨little interest¨ in the Anime. However, a 32% in the overall made the claim that I had ¨no interest¨ in pokemon. Is this intended? If so, how does the thresholds differ for different things?

[17/10/2020 15:05:36]

15

Suggestion for the Self-Imposed Hardships section of the Fancy a Challenge? section: Only use status moves in battles.

[17/10/2020 14:57:32]

15

In your explanation, you mentioned testing as a possibility. However, how does one check if a random event happens or not? Even if consistent results occur, there´s still the chance that the tester may simply be extremely unlucky.

[17/10/2020 14:53:21]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

Lots of queries here! Doing my best to answer everything:

- Yes, I plan to continue the movie reviews. I've got some other things I'm focusing on at the moment but will probably get to that after. (I'd been redoing the reviews, rewriting the text and adding screenshots - I've still yet to do that for the specials, but after that I'd move on to movie 13 onwards.)

- Unfortunately I doubt I'll do the Eevee in PMD experiment, given it's something very specific reported by one person in a side game. If you have suspicions about Eevee, I think it makes more sense for you to try it out yourself!

- It was probably pretty over-the-top of me to insist OK is unacceptable on that page; English style guides generally don't seem to think so, or even prefer OK because it's the older spelling. I do personally think it's super ugly and jarring to read in serious text. It has just become a word, and I find it supremely awkward to treat it like an abbreviation when in fact everyone who says it regards it simply as a word, and it's decidedly unclear even to etymologists what it's even supposed to stand for, let alone to the people who use it. But seeing as I obviously don't dictate the English language, I should probably remove that particular gripe.

- Bulbapedia and Serebii can both be wrong, so it's hard to say exactly in the general case. To be sure I will generally either try to see if I can find this data directly from dataminers somewhere or try to test it myself on an actual game. However, if I can't do that, provisionally it's good to look into where the information seems to be coming from and what's likely to be more up-to-date. For this case in particular, I notice that Serebii's Pokédex doesn't seem to treat SOS rate as a property of each form, but of the species - so if red and blue Basculin have different SOS call rates as Bulbapedia suggests, it makes sense Serebii would be missing that info. Furthermore, I looked on the history page for the Bulbapedia page on SOS battles - you can often find who added the information and whether they cite a source for it - and they point to a GameFAQs thread where multiple people confirm blue-striped Basculin doesn't seem to ever call for help. So, without getting into testing it myself, it seems likely that Bulbapedia is correct here.

[17/10/2020 14:26:12]

15

I´m seeing conflicting information on Bulbapedia and Serebii on whether Basculin-Blue-Stripe and Floette-Blue-Flower can call for help in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Which site should I trust and why? Is there a general solution on whether bulbapedia or serebii is more trustworthy, or is it determined on a case-by-case basis?

[17/10/2020 00:49:53]

15

Hi.
In your section on writing content, you mentioned, ¨writing "OK" rather than "okay"¨ as a possible stylistical pitfall? What makes ¨OK¨ worse than ¨okay,¨ as they both seem to be equally bad slang terms? Is one more professional than the other or should both be avoided?
Thank you.

[17/10/2020 00:35:01]

15

Hi Butterfree,
As per the section concerning ¨experimentation,¨ I have an idea for an experiment.
However, NOTE: this is a sidegame experiment, so it may not be the case for a main-series experimenter.
I noticed that you appear to have played MD Time. As an MD Time player, I have found Eevees abnormally strong compared to the source stating their stats in the definitive version (MD Sky), which may be something concerning a version difference. This may particularly be the case as Eevee has become a starter in MD Sky.
The experiment proposal is to attempt to run an Eevee through the dungeon Zero Isle South, Zero Isle West, or Zero Isle East and to compare the level up stats (and gains) to those listed on the MD Sky resource below.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ds/955859-pokemon-mystery-dungeon-explorers-of-sky/faqs/77718
Thank you. However, I understand if you maybe be unable to do this.

[17/10/2020 00:20:12]

15

Hello Dragonfree,
Are there any plans for the ¨Movie Reviews¨ section to extend to the newer movies (e.g. from Zoroark: Master of Illusions to The Power of US? If so, when is it scheduled to be updated?
Thank you very much.

[17/10/2020 00:04:27]

Braden M. Walker

Hello everybody here! I am a fairly-new nerd when it comes to Pokémon, but I have been familiar with the franchise throughout all of my life. Only recently, upon receiving gifts from a friend on my 21st birthday, did I REALLY start getting obsessed with all things Pokémon. I have been working a lot on a project that I haven't named yet, but it's a fairly simple project; it started with me reading the Pokémon: Master Trainer board game rules and manual, as a friend of mine possesses a copy from the early 2000's and shared it with me on my birthday. As we played the game and as I read the manual to understand the game entirely, I noticed how dissimilar it really is from the REAL Pokémon games - I mean come on, set damage? No evolution? What on Earth! - so, after we played like 10 rounds and I understood the game from start to finish, my friends and I changed the rules to make the game longer and more fun. As we did this, a question continuously arose; what if we made our very own version of a Pokémon board game, which would play almost exactly like the original Nintendo games (all rulings from Gen 2, Crystal), have certain customizable elements, roleplay elements, and actual random numbers generation (including dmg calculation and catch rates)? What if we were to make something like THAT? Would that be any fun?

Well, here I am two months later. I have been working on this project a lot, taking only few breaks during production. In a sense, the game is a combination of the original Pokémon games, the Pokémon board game, with some elements of Dungeons and Dragons (character customization, character leveling, more character actions and so on). And let me say, this has been a real pain in the arse, as I have NO prior Pokémon knowledge other than sucking very bad at the original games, and generic Pokémon trivia I learned from the shows, TCG, and Pokémon: GO.

Please, if anyone is interested in this project, alert me immediately. I am looking for fanatics that know even the smallest details having to do with in-game conversions and statistics, who know the specifics of the lore that aren't readily available on the internet, and who are eager to see the creation of this thing!

I have tons of work that still needs to be done, and tons of questions that need answering!

Thanks,
Trainer Walker

[29/09/2020 11:45:32]

Patrick Sankovet
Website: Psychic Patrick

hey i really like this website. awesome job!!!! lol. my favorite pokemon is Kadabra.

[24/09/2020 11:03:30]