Spending Dimes and Stopping Crimes (Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee Nuzlocke Chapter Nine)

Celadon City is known for three key features. The first of course is its gym, the fourth gym in a series of eight where the lovely Erica fights with grass-type Pokemon. The second is the department store, the largest shop in the Kanto region complete with evolutionary stones, technical machines, and important accessories. Finally, there’s the game corner, a cool hangout that hides a terrible secret. In our last chapter we paid a visit to the gym – this time we’ll knock out Celadon’s other attractions.

The first thing I decided to do was have Block take Fuzz to the department store. This may seem like just the Kanto version of a lame shopping mall but there are some key things of importance here. The fourth floor sells evolutionary stones for your Pokemon, and if like me you have a Weepinbell in your party then a leaf stone will be a necessity for that Pokemon to reach his or her full potential. Speaking of which, I took the opportunity here to give my “starter” Thorn a little present:

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. There are actually some notable things on both the second and third floors as well. The second floor is where you can purchase both technical machines as well as the typical items that trainers need for their journey. Erica marks an important turning point in your Pokemon capturing methods – defeating her unlocks Ultra Balls for purchase. Except for the sole Master Ball in the game, these are your best tool for capturing Pokemon and you’ll want to start carrying them as your primary means of catching things. As always, I made a point of selling all my other balls and buying Ultra Balls exclusively. By the way, while you’re here – don’t buy healing potions. We’ll talk about why soon, but seriously, save your money.

There’s a decent collection of TMs here, and which ones are useful will depend entirely on what Pokemon you have in your party in order to take advantage of them. My personal favorites to purchase here are U-Turn and Waterfall. Waterfall is a physical water-type move, so if your water type is better at physical attacks than special attacks then waterfall will likely be their best offensive tool. U-Turn allows your Pokemon to attack and then switch with something else. This gives you great initiative during battle and can be invaluable when playing in set battle mode like I am. Shadow Ball is another good one for the upcoming section of the game – Pokemon Tower and Sabrina’s gym both heavily feature ghost weaknesses – but before you spend $30,000 you might consider that we’re going to be getting Dark Pulse at the game corner, which has the same attack power and hits the same types for super effective damage.

A few other quick things about the department store. If you talk to the clerk on the third floor he’ll give you the Helping Hand TM, a great tool for all those double battles you have all the time. To be fair, there is about to be one at the game corner so I suppose that’s mildly helpful. The fifth floor has accessories you can purchase for your Eevee (or Pikachu) if you want. Block got Fuzz a spiffy pair of glasses before heading up to the roof. Now the roof is an important location because it is here that you obtain not one, not two, but three TMs as well as saving some serious money on medicine. Please reference the following table:

Medicine	Healing	Price	Cost per Unit
Potion	20	$300	$15 per 1 HP
Fresh Water	30	$200	$6.67 per 1 HP
Super Potion	60	$700	$11.67 per 1 HP
Soda Pop	60	$300	$5 per 1 HP
Lemonade	70	$350	$5 per 1 HP

Notice how the items served in the vending machine – the fresh water, soda pop, and lemonade – have a much better price per unit compared to the items sold in a store? When it comes to purchasing healing items, until you need to heal amounts much larger than 70 HP this vending machine is going to be your best option for purchasing medicine. It takes a little longer to purchase because you can’t buy in bulk, but the savings will most certainly be worthwhile. Once you’ve bought some cheap healing items, talk to the girl next to the machine. Giving her one of each type of drink will net you three TMs: the ones for Protect, Reflect, and Light Screen. These are useful defensive abilities that can make a big difference when testing out whether or not an enemy has a dangerous move (Protect) or setting up defenses for a battle against a tough opponent like a gym leader (Reflect and Light Screen).

Now while we’ve finished up at the department store there is a bit more to do in Celadon before we hit the game corner. As you head to the east side of town by the Pokemon Center, Brock will stop you to give you the tea you need in order to bribe the thirsty guards all around Saffron City. Beside the Pokemon Center is a trail that goes around the back of the building and splits off a few different ways. Following the path to its rightmost end will get you a nugget – following it to its leftmost end will get you some rare candy. You’ll notice a small trail heading into the back of a building; this area is the Celadon Condominium, and following it all the way to the top will get you the TM for Play Rough. Play Rough is a very good fairy-type attack, a move that’s super effective against fighting, dark, and dragon type Pokemon. If you have anyone who can learn it, it is certainly worth teaching.

Finally we can head to the game corner. Having a conversation with Jesse and James at their arcade cabinet will give you the information you need to get inside the hidden base. Talk to the Team Rocket grunt who is “nonchalantly” hanging out in front of a poster of a rocket. He’ll try to beat you up, but beating him up is relatively simple and allows you to press the switch behind the poster to open the way to Team Rocket’s hideout below.

The Team Rocket hideout is infamous for its spinning arrow floor pad puzzles, of which there are two. The hideout has four levels from B1 at the top to B4 at the bottom. You’ll spend the majority of your time here on B2 and B3. As far as combat goes, there are various rocket grunts spread throughout who primarily have poison-type Pokemon around level 29. Poison is weak to psychic and ground generally, but you’ll have specific scenarios you want to watch out for. Golbat is immune to ground, for example, while Pokemon like Arbok often carry Bite or Crunch and can deal a lot of damage to your psychic types with surprise super effective moves. Use that cheap medicine you bought to keep your health close to full so moves like these won’t catch you with your shorts around your ankles and you should be good to go.

The first floor primarily has items for you to pick up, including a spiffy Team Rocket outfit from the “beautiful spy” in the little storage area across from the stairs onto B1. Now once you get to B2 and see the first set of warp pads you may be tempted to say “ah yes, I shall proceed in that direction posthaste,” but you actually want to pass on those warp pads for now. You need an item to get through the elevator at the end of the puzzle and if you don’t have it, you’ll have spun around the place for no reason. Instead, make your way to B3 first and tackle that challenge.

B3 has a couple of short hallways on either side of the warp puzzle which have items, one of which is Dark Pulse. You’re going to want this to deal with Pokemon Tower and with Sabrina, so definitely make sure you pick it up. The other item is a revive, which of course means $1000 in your pocket since this is a Nuzlocke. When you get to the actual warp tile puzzle, you want to take the leftmost arrow pad and then the one south of that after you stop spinning. After you stop the second time, head south down the hallway and then west, avoiding warp pads until you reach the item on the ground. There’ll be two warp pads on the south – you want to take the second one from the bottom, which takes you to the puzzle’s exit. You’ll notice an item sitting in a different part of the puzzle that you may be tempted to go back and get – don’t do it yet. You want to only have to do these warp pad dances one time and you can scoop the item up as you’re leaving this area.

When you reach the end of the B3 puzzle and make your way over the stairs, you’ll end up facing a rocket grunt who is protecting the lift key. This is the item you need at the end of the B2 puzzle to progress. Defeating him is a simple matter and in my case it came with a bonus: Vincent the Pidgeotto finally realized his true potential and became a Pidgeot! I don’t use Vincent much but he’s been around nearly as long as Thorn, so it’s nice that the two of them have both had the opportunity to evolve over the course of this chapter. In any other Nuzlocke, one of them would probably have died by now.

With the lift key firmly in hand, return to the B3 puzzle and take the warp pad closest to the stairs you just took. That will spin you right over to a rare candy which you can scoop up before then spinning back to the beginning of the puzzle. Head up the stairs and now prepare to do it all again with B2. You’ll see two warp pads on the left – take the one on the bottom, then after it stops follow the hallway to the right without touching any warp pads to find a nugget just laying around on the ground. *Return to where you landed after your first spin and then take the launch pad sending you right. From here, head down to grab the Rest TM. This should put you next to a pad on your right which leads downward – your landing pint will place you among four different arrow pads, and you should take the one that is the most to the right. Once you stop spinning take the pad on the left to a new position and from that position follow the hallway east and south to yet another set of arrow pads. The bottommost pad will send your spinning towards a PP Up item, but once you do that you’ll be trapped in a scenario which forces you to start the puzzle again from the point marked with an asterisk (*) above.

There’s a set of stairs at the end of the puzzle which leads to two more trainer battles along with some items to pick up, as well as an elevator. You want to take the elevator to B4 in order to begin the wrap up of the base. The final section of the base is essentially a boss ross: you’ll face Jesse and James as a double battle, then take on the Rocket admin Archer before ultimately facing the leader of Team Rocket, Giovanni. So let’s finish up by talking about how I approached each opponent in this final throwdown.

Jesse and James always take you on in double battles using their signature Pokemon, Arbok and Weezing. Both of these poison types are weak to ground, so one strategy you can employ with them if you have a Pokemon with Earthquake is to pair that Pokemon with a flying type. In my case, Grave the Graveler and Vincent the newly-evolved Pidgeot went into battle together. Grave could let loose with Earthquake without fear, enabling me to hit the weaknesses of both Pokemon at the same time. The most annoying thing these two will typically do is use Glare to paralyze you – otherwise they aren’t too dangerous.

Archer, though – that guy can be a problem. His Weezing is a poison type and therefore weak against ground and psychic. What you don’t want to do is use a psychic type to try and outmaneuver him – Archer’s Weezing runs Dark Pulse and getting caught off-guard by that would be seriously problematic. In my case, I was using Grave to try to hit the opponent’s ground weakness and I still had problems because of Grave’s painfully low special defense. If you have a ground type whose special defense is somewhat decent, that’s probably the Pokemon you’ll want to use here. Archer’s second Pokemon, Golbat, runs Air Slash, an attack which can flinch in addition to dealing special flying damage. Getting flinched out can make this battle much longer than it needs to be. A fast electric type may be the best Golbat solution – put that sucker in the ground before it can use flinching to put you at a disadvantage.

Finally, there’s Giovanni. Giovanni leads with Persian and Persian pretty much always uses Fake Out to start things off. If you remembered to get Protect at the department store from the little girl and you taught it to a Pokemon, this is a great opportunity to break it out. If not, consider using an X item here (or a healing item if you forgot to recover your team before facing Giovanni). It’s the most practical way to not completely waste your turn when the opponent uses Fake Out. Now both Persian and Giovanni’s second Pokemon, Rhyhorn, run moves with a heightened chance of causing a critical hit: Slash for the former and Drill Run for the latter. Remember that crits multiply damage by 1.5 and they ignore any kind of defensive boosts you may have, so be wary of how much a crit will do and heal accordingly. I was able to dispose of Rhyhorn quite quickly with Lucy the Golduck’s Scald attack, and the Mega Drain TM you just got from Erica would also be a great tool here.

Once you’ve defeated all three of these goons, you obtain the Silph Scope and can finally make your way to the Pokemon Tower to complete it. I wanted to get that knocked out in today’s chapter but the game corner took a lot more paragraphs than I anticipated. So next chapter we’ll visit Pokemon Tower for sure, and possibly engage in some other shenanigans afterward time permitting. Thanks for reading and I hope you find this Nuzlocke guide helpful if you’re playing through Let’s Go Eevee for yourself!