October 02, 2009

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (NDS)

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The Basics of the Game
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To start off, this game is not like any of the previous
Pokemon titles. Instead it has a turn-based strategy
element to it. If you are familiar with titles such as
Final Fantasy Tactis, than you will catch on to this quickly.
What it means is that each Floor of a Dungeon has an
invisible grid to it (which you can make visible by the push
of a button). This grid is divided up by squares. Your pokemon
will fit inside one of these squares and can move from square
to square. Other pokemon on this grid can move around as well.
Think of it as a chessboard and pokemon are your pieces.

Rescue teams are made up of 2-3 pokemon and only a maximum
body size of 6. What is body size you may ask? The larger
the pokemon is, the more body size it takes up, such as the
legendary birds, dragonite, onyx, etc. are of a body size 4.
While your starter/partner should always stay at a body size of 1.
When you are out rescuing you may only recruit pokemon
who fit into your party( (a maximum of 4 pokemon or body size of 6). If
you are trying to recruit a body size 4 pokemon with 3 body size 1
pokemon already with you..it will be impossible.

In this game there are a few things you need to keep in mind about your
pokemon. First, your pokemon have PP in their movesets, just like in
previous pokemon games. PP can be replenished with items such as Max
Elixirs (replenishes PP of all moves). Also, a new feature, you need
to keep track of your pokemon's Belly in this game. When you bring up
the Menu you can keep track of your pokemon's Belly at the bottom
Belly's can be refilled with types of food, such as Apples, Gummies,
Berrys (minimal increase) so try to always keep some with you. The
Belly will decrease as you maneuver your way through dungeons, the
decrease in belly may accelerate if you are moving across odd terrain
or hold down the B+A buttons (or if that pokemon is holding an item
like the Heal Ribbon that will increase how fast the Belly depletes).
The 2 items that help prevent Belly decrease are the Stamina Belt (which
when held slows belly decrease) and the Tight Belt (which when held
your pokemon's belly will never decrease. The Tight Belt is a very rare
item though which can only be found after the credits have passed.

This game does not have trainers like in previous games, instead it has
missions submitted by other Pokemon for your Rescue Team to embark upon.
Missions can be found in your mailbox outside your base, on the Bulletin
Board outside of the Pelipper Post Office, or by entering a Wonder Mail
Code at the title screen. When your pokemon accept a mission from one
of these locations it will then appear in their Job list. The Rescue
Team may not embark on these missions until you bring up your Job List
menu and choose to "Accept" missions. Multipe missions can be accomplished
all at once, under the circumstances that they take place in the same
dungeon and all of the Clients are on different floors. Example: You
cannot rescue a Charmander and Squirtle if they both need to be rescued
from the 2nd floor, but you can if one is on the 2nd floor and the other
is on the 3rd floor.

Once you unlock the ability to do side missions, you can complete them
at anytime, and in fact they are a great way to level your pokemon,
pickup some useful items and get some Rescue points for your rank. The
main Storyline mission will be marked with "Go" when you walk downward
from your Rescue Base, the storyline will wait for you as long as you
want, so do not feel obligated to continue moving on.

To recruit a pokemon you need to take a few things into account. First is
their Friend Area, if you do not have that your chance of recruiting a
pokemon is already 0% (unless its a pokemon like Kyogre who gives you his
Friend Area upon recruiting him). Then you need to lookup their base
recruiting % before any modifiers, I will personallly recommend this
FAQ for more detailed information.
http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/file/pokemon_fnd_red_pokedex.txt

The above FAQ is written by TFergusson, nicely done.

Once you know their base % there are 3 things that can modify this. Your
current Rescue Team Leader's level, whether or not he has the Friend Bow
equipped, and what your Rescue Team's Rank is. If your pokemon is lvl 90+
with the Friend Bow and Lukario Rank, then your chance to catch a pokemon
is increased by 34% from the base %.

Rescue Team Ranks are determined by how many Rescue Points you have
accumulated by completing Rescue Jobs. The following is a list of all
the possible Rescue Ranks and the points required.

Normal Rank - 0 Rescue Points
Bronze Rank - 50 Rescue Points
Silver Rank - 500 Rescue Points
Gold Rank - 1,500 Rescue Points
Platinum Rank - 3,000 Rescue Points
Diamond Rank - 7,500 Rescue Points
Lukario Rank - 15,000 Rescue Points

There are only 2 things I still need to cover, IQ and Linking Moves which
I will do now.

IQ is a term that defines intelligence, and that is a good way to describe
it for this game. During your adventure you are bound to come across some
Gummies which you can feed to your pokemon.

Note: If you wait till after the main storyline and "Give Gummi" to a friend
in it's Friend Area, they will also get a stat increase along with IQ
boost.

When you feed a Pokemon a Gummi it's IQ will increase, this will depend
on what kind of Gummi you feed it. If you feed a Pikachu a Yellow Gummi
he will gain the most IQ from it over feeding him a Green Gummi. What's so
important about IQ you might ask? Well IQ can allow certain pokemon to learn
abilities later on, but what's really neat about it is it can improve the AI
of both the pokemon you are controlling and your teammates. After so much
IQ increase pokemon will learn IQ moves which can be set in the Menu -> Team
-> Check IQ tab. Your pokemon will learn new IQ skills such as PP checker
which keeps them from trying to use a move that currently has 0 PP left. As
the pokemon's IQ increases so do the skills it learns. Eventually your
pokemon can learn more advanced moves such as Quick Dodger (more likely to
dodge enemy attacks), All-Terrain Hiker (ability to walk on Water, Lava and
Clouds), Trap Avoider (will avoid stepping on visible traps), and many more.
There are plenty of reasons to raise your pokemon's IQ, my personal favorite
is having my leader with Trap Seer (If the pokemon steps on an invisible trap
it will not activate it, just make it visible) and giving my teammates Trap
Avoider, almost making traps null and void for my team. There are tons of
different IQ skill combos so make sure to experiment with them!

Finally, Linking Moves a question on alot of minds. To link moves you can
either goto Gulpin's shop and pay him a small sum or use a Link Box, a fairly
common item. Either way linked moves are moves that you set to go off
together when one is used. If you link Scratch and Growl, then when you use
Scratch, both Scratch and Growl will be used in a single turn (using 1 PP from
each). If the PP of one of the linked moves hits 0, then the link is broken.
What is the use for something? Well it's especially useful on bosses while
going through the main storyline. Let's say you started with a Machop and
linked the moves Low Kick and Focus Energy. This means each turn your Machop
will use Low Kick, then increase his attack. This combo is very devastating
when used against a boss. You can link all 4 of your moves together into one
but it would be unwise as conserving your PP is one of the fun things about
this game. Also Gulpin can remember any old move your pokemon used to know
completely free of charge, so if you are unsure how a move will perform in
a dungeon, just re-learn it, go try it out, if you don't like it, go back to
Gulpin and swap it for another move. Make sure to experiment alot as linking
moves and choosing your movesets are a lot of fun!

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