I've been reading for the DLC ever since I beat Scarlet & Violet on the weekend I bought it, so I wasted very little time.

In the Teal Mask, the player is invited on a field trip to Kitikami, a rural region that draws heavy inspiration from Japanese culture. There, the player is introduced to two new rivals in Carmine and Kieran and with their help has to visit certain landmarks to learn about the loyal three and the sinister Ogrepon. As the campaign continues, the player is invited to the local festival where they can take part in a favourite festive past-time, Ogre Oustin.

Ogre Oustin is a fun distraction where players have to pop balloons in order to collect berries and deposit them in the correct box. It starts off simple enough, but the game ramps up considerably when it asks the player to collect more berries than they can carry. Leaving your boxes unattended allows wild Pokemon like Munchlax and Skwovet to eat your harvest, forcing you to recollect those berries. Completing the mini-game rewards you with EV raising items as well as the EXP Charm among other rewards.

After the festivities are over, the loyal three rise from the dead and the player is tasked to hunt them down before they get up to any mischief. This section plays out similar to Alvin's Titan quest where the player teams up with Carmine and does battle with souped versions of Okidogi, Munkidori and Fezandipiti. These are all largely straight forward with the exception of Fezandipiti who forces you to travel through a cave before you're able to battle it.

This leads to one final battle with Ogrepon where the player has to beat all it's masks form before you're able to capture it.

Through out the campaign, the player is also constantly challenged by Carmine and Kieran, with just about every plot beat leading to a battle. Like with Hop in Sword and Shield, these become incredibly repetitive rather quickly and neither character is overly charming. This maybe by design as the campaign finishes with Kieran losing his mind and having his own villain origin story moment that's left for the second DLC to resolve.

After the trainer registers 150 Pokemon in the Kitakami Dex, they're able to assist a photographer Perrin in her quest to take a snapshot of the incredibly rare Blood Moon Ursuluna. This sidequest involves a Pokemon Snap type mini-game where the player explores the Timeless Woods and has to snap photos of ten different Pokemon.

Along with 8 new Pokemon, the DLC also includes 102 returning Pokemon. Registering all of them rewards the player with the Glimmering Charm which rewards them with more Tera Shards from raid dens. This is weighted by the difficulty of the raid den, so 3 stars gives 2, 4 stars gives 5 and 5 stars give 10.

There is also Ogre Clan battles involving high level trainers who are scattered through out Kitakami and you're rewarded with valuable held items and rare candies.

Players should also keep an eye out for Professor Jacq who is hanging outside Mossoui Town on the way to Kitakami. Jacq comes bearing a Pokemon Egg of a Sinnoh Starter. The breed depends on which starter the player chose, so if you chose Quaxly (Water), you'll end up with a Turtwig (Grass).

All in all, the Teal Mask is more of the same. While the story itself is a disappointing return to the status quo after Scarlet and Violet's more charming rendition, the player is still free to explore the region for themselves. Being able to set off on your own, explore the new region and it's new items and Pokemon is the main attraction and captures what made the base game so enjoyable.

Bring on the Indigo Disk.

Lovely write up, Big Pete.

I played the game a bit more yesterday, made it up to the crystal lake area (where you battle a Milotic). Honestly, I've just been taking my time, exploring Kitikami and catching Pokémon, while slowly making my way through the story.

I've officially beat The Teal Mask... getting the To Be Continued screen.

Sept 16, 2023 2:19:11 GMT Lony said:

I've officially beat The Teal Mask... getting the To Be Continued screen.

How did you find it? Have you completed all the side-quests (Beaten all the Ogre Oustin difficulties, defeated all the Ogre trainers, located the rich eccentric trainers, completed the dex etc?)

Sept 19, 2023 7:14:53 GMT Big Pete said:

Sept 16, 2023 2:19:11 GMT Lony said:

I've officially beat The Teal Mask... getting the To Be Continued screen.

How did you find it? Have you completed all the side-quests (Beaten all the Ogre Oustin difficulties, defeated all the Ogre trainers, located the rich eccentric trainers, completed the dex etc?)

- I beat the orge trainers, although not the rich eccentric trainers.

- I haven't completed the dex yet, but that's cause I'm waiting for the wife to get the Pokemon that evolve via trading, and we'll do that together.

- Ogre Oustin is alright, but I've yet to do the hardest difficulty.

Sept 29, 2017 17:19:14 GMT Lony said:

- Ogre Oustin is alright, but I've yet to do the hardest difficulty.

It's surprisingly difficult. Normal requires at least two people, Hard requires four and it basically comes down to the map. I've been grinding it on discord just to get as much mochi as possible and I fail far more than I succeed since I don't use coms.

Still, it's a surprisingly relaxing way to end the day and I can't get the OST out of my head. Takes me back to FFX and Chocobo Racing.

Lately, I've been doing runs of Scarlet/Violet

It all started when I was bored one day and just wanted to start another playthrough. One cool aspect of the Switch is that you can create another profile and create save data on that finally giving Pokemon an elusive second save slot, something that has been desired since the beginning.

Anyways it was a nice casual revisit where I used a bunch of monsters I typically wouldn't like Squawkabilly, Wugtrio, Dachsbun, Grafaiai, Arboliva alongside Skeledirge. It was an enjoyable enough playthrough, challenging in parts where I actually had to use status moves to lower attacks/defences but I beat it all in a standard 20 hour playthrough. That was a few weeks or so before the DLC came out, so when I beat the Teal Mask over on my main save, I did the same over on this save when a thought occurred to me.

Should I catch another copy of Bloodmoon Ursuluna?

In order to catch Bloodmoon, you have to register 150/200 Pokemon in the Kitakami dex. Bloodmoon is one of the best new Pokemon to emerge and is the sweeper in a number of different teams.

I figured, yeah sure.

So on my main save, I embarked on re-catching the same monsters and building up five boxes worth of a living dex. I even did the trade evos and it was a fun excuse to explore the region once again.

Now for the crummy part. Since I'm a tight arse and don't have the premium version of Home, I could only transport 24 Pokemon at a time. Usually that would be 30, but I still have a few shinies from Pokemon Go taking up space, waiting for the second DLC to bring them in.

So after 7 tries trading boxes full at a time, I could finally complete Perrin's quest, catch that Bloodmoon and call it a day.

I figured though, what am I going to do with 150 Pokemon? Do I just release them now, or can I get more use out of them.

That's when it occurred to me...how quickly can you beat Scarlet/Violet?

I had a brief look at the ESA speedrun race and according to them it's 6 hours. Now I'm no where near as experienced or as skilled as them, but 8 hours sounds achievable.

This is where I tell you what a Scarlet/Violet speedrun looks like. So the game starts off with a 40 minute opening/tutorial that can't be skipped. You then sequence break by jumping up onto the cliff, make your way to some high level Flamigos and catch it with a quick ball. You feed it some candies, take down the crab titan, hunt down a bunch of candies until it's at Level 50 before the first gym and it's all fairly straight forward from there as Low Kick/Acrobatics covers for everything.

It takes about 3 1/2 hours to take down all the gym leaders and the majority of that is doing gym challenges and skipping text.

This is where I add my own twist. Instead of doing all the Team Starfall or doing the rest of the Titans, I actually import my team from Home, clear the rest of the Titans and focus on collecting the 32 Pokemon Ruin stakes around Paldea. This gives me access to all the Ruin Pokemon that are largely easy to get except for Wo-Chien who is immune to Spore and since I'm too lazy to put Quench on another Pokemon that isn't my designater catcher-mon I'm usually just chucking Ultra Balls until Timer Balls come into or affect or if it's night time so I can use my Dusk Balls. This usually takes 1 hour 1/2 to 2 hours to complete.

My next stop is Kitakami. If you don't beat the base game, all the Pokemon are capped at much smaller levels making it far more manageable to speed through. This usually takes about 2 hours to complete and most of it is just mashing A with the occassional battle. Doing this gets me Ogrepon and access to the Loyal Three. The Loyal Three are always at Level 70 and while you can get lucky I've had instances where Okidogi and Munkidori took well over 10+ turns to catch. However by far the most annoying was Feazandipiti who uses two different confused moves and has a self-heal so you'd lose turns to confusion or those heals in-between Spores. Catching those 3 would added another 15-30 minutes.

This would lead to Bloodmoon. Now if I was just hunting purely hunting Bloodmoon, it would take about 4 hours to do since I'd have to beat all the gym leaders, draft my team and living dex over and then do the short quest to catch it. However since I'm catching everything else, this just adds another 30 minutes to the counter, factoring in the trading in and out of Pokemon.

Originally I'd go back and complete the rest of Scarlet but 3 additional hours just wasn't worth it to catch another Koraidon. You can't use Koraidon in VGC just yet and honestly the Team Starfall, Elite 4, Nemona, Arven, Clavell, Penny, Area Zero just isn't that enjoyable to do. So I learned during my forth playthrough, to only clean up any Gimmighoul chests I left lying around. They're largely located at towers that act as waypoints, but there's a few hidden area that you have to be conscience of. Collecting 15 or so, will give you enough coins to obtain a Gholdengo who's one of the best current monsters.

I hope you took notes, because I just did that playthrough four times in recent weeks. Every now and then forgetting where one of the stakes was, or missing the odd candy because I forgot my pathing and having to review footage to see where I mucked up and knocking my time down. I'm actually going to keep that save for the time being, play through the rest of the game and have it ready for the next wave of DLC.

Excessive? Yeah and I probably don't need six copies of each of these monsters. But I also think there's something to be said about replaying your favourite games over and over, getting a better understanding of them and taking in details. I think what really makes Scarlet/Violet so appealing is the movement and it's sweet to chew through the scenary. The hunt for the ruin stakes, candies and gimmighoul chests are some of my highlights.

I will say after playing through it now six times, the Teal Mask campaign had so much filler. Pokemon itself would go up another level if you could just skip all the dialogue and cut-scenes, I'd wager those playthroughs were largely made up of unskippable cut-scenes and animations.

Still not done with Pokemon. Actually have the itch to go back to Sw/Sh, catch the remaining DLC Pokemon (Single Strike Urshifu, Glastrier and Regielecki) and potentially do a few playthroughs there.

Hopefully the Indigo Disc has the PKHex feature that have been heavily rumoured.

New trailer is here.

I'd say the biggest news is that Palkia and Dialga have been released in raids that have started right now.

Also Darkrai has been made available through Mystery Gift. There's also a Mystery Gift for a Shiny Lucario that comes with a Master Ball.

The trailer showcased a new feature where you can control Pokemon in Union Circle and explore that way. It sounds like a cosmetic change and something I'll bother with but it's there.

You can trade with gym leaders and you'll get Pokemon with a Special Ribbon.

Also in the post-game you can spend BP points to encounter legendaries. There's a special trainer who will reveal information at a price and it appears the datamine was accurate which means the following will be encounterable.

The Legendary Birds
The Legendary Dogs
Ho-Oh/Lugia
Latios/Latias
Groudon/Kyogre/Rayquaza
The Legendary Sword Trio
Reshiram/Zekrom/Kyurem
Solgaleo/Lunala/Necrozma
Kubfu
Spectrier/Glastrier

For those playing at home, that means the Regis, the Sinnoh legendaries, the weather genies, X&Y legendaries, Ultra Beasts, Tapus etc. are unavailable through this task. They could still be included through other means.

Still no confirmation of a PKHex feature which is what I've been curious about since the DLCs were rumoured.

www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/12/grab-darkrai-and-shiny-lucario-in-pokemon-scarlet-and-violet-distribution-event

Mystery gift codes for Darkrai and Shiny Lucario... although, apparently one has to wait until the 14th to do the Lucario one if they want the masterball.

Edit: And I should have read all of Big Pete's post.

Dec 7, 2023 19:50:46 GMT Lony said:

www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/12/grab-darkrai-and-shiny-lucario-in-pokemon-scarlet-and-violet-distribution-event

Mystery gift codes for Darkrai and Shiny Lucario... although, apparently one has to wait until the 14th to do the Lucario one if they want the masterball.

Edit: And I should have read all of Big Pete 's post.

I misread the Lucario distribution. Apparantly the Master Ball is seperate and is accessed via Mystery Gift --> Receive from Internet (instead of a code).

Some more previews coming out from Japan.

Every Pokemon in S/V is eligible for the Synchro Machine and you have a fair amount of freedom when you control the Pokemon.

The BP system can be used to increase spawns in biomes (it's speculated that this is how you'll unlock the starter mons as they're not available right away).

You will also have to unlock gym leaders/NPCs to invite them over to your clubhouse.

Part 2 is officially live, I haven't done much yet (I'll save that for tomorrow), mostly just been exploring the new region.

How are you finding it Lony?

I completed the main campaign and I'm just wrapping up some of the side content. I couldn't believe how obscure the Meloetta side-quest was. You have to unlock filters in the club room, find a location in the Coastal region, spin clockwise for 30 seconds and then straight after view the arena through a special lens to get the mythical to spawn. That maybe my highlight so far since it felt like a throwback to all the old Mew rumours from back in the day.

They've actually managed to make Union Circle relevant with the BlueBerry Quests. Attempting to do it solo is an annoying grind, teaming up online allows you to really rack up a ton of points and unlock all the legendaries in just a few hours. There's just one group quest that's a pain and requires real co-ordination, where you have to make a 4-star sandwich with everyone in the party. I made the four star sandwich (it requires two people) but found out the hard way that you needed everyone else involved. I wasted so many Herbas trying to do it...

I still have to invite all the guests over to the League Room and trade them monsters. So there's stll a ton of content, but I caught the Paradox Pokemon, completed the dex and upgraded the Item Machine to it's final form.

It appears they're saving some content for an event coming up as well, which might explain why Kieran was acting up so much. I also expect to see more legendary raid events over the next 12 months considering a lot of legendaries like the weather genies, the regis, heatran etc. can be traded to the game, but can't be caught in the wild.

Only disappointment was a lack of a PKHex feature. The game is so close to being able to raise perfect monsters, all you need is the ability to set some stats to 0 and make it less time consuming.

The legendaries were also shiny locked which is causing an uproar online, but I'm not a shiny hunter.

Big Pete, so far I'm digging it, although admittedly I'm not that far into the second part of the DLC. I've only really just beaten the first Elite Four trainer so far, mostly just doing the BBQ stuff and catching new Pokemon while I'm at it. I am going on holidays though, starting December 23rd, so I'll have plenty of time to do the Indigo Mask story.

Edit: Also, I'm currently updating to a 1 TB microSD card, as I need more space for all of my Switch games.