Glen-i

Go for them if you want and I'll join in to help but I'm not looking to catch them. Already got a G-Max Colossal for the Online Competition that I'm training.

It's cool, I've already got three. And some Flapples too.

Congrats on the captures! I'm going to be doing every raid I come across, mind. I need the candy for my Galar only team. And it'll help refresh the raids. Join if you want. I'll give a heads up here once I find an Appletun.

Great, I'll start the room then. Code is 4729.

And there we go, found a Lapras. @Ike is online, but @markderoos doesn't seem to be playing at the moment. And remember, only lame-o's use legendaries in raid battles.

Okie dokie, so 1-ish, I'll boot the game up and start looking for Lapras and Appletuns. Keep an eye on this thread, because I'll post once I find one with the code you'll need.

Hooray! It's the meaningless award ceremony! Way more important than any other crappy award ceremonies going on, and much shorter too. So, let's get started. The Perfect Attendance Award This goes to the person who managed to attend all 138 GP's this year. That's a lot of Mario Kart! Here's the certificate I made for you this year. Yes, I left the incorrect spelling line there on purpose. Honourable mentions go to @S.C.G and @martinist and @RedShell for acheiving over 90% attendance. The Blue Shell Award This award goes to the person who achieved the most second places in GP's. Who can blame them? You never know when that thing will ruin your night. This year's winner was @RedShell, with 33 2nd places. Congratulations on not getting blown up. @BowserBasher and @Glen-i got the 2nd and 3rd most, respectively. The Ultimate Rivalry Award This award goes to the two people with the smallest difference in averages at the end of the year. Screw the race for 1st place, seeing which one of these guys would triumph was way more exciting. 2019's ultimate rivals are @martinist and @RedShell with a 0.1 difference. Maybe next time, there'll be no difference? It could happen. And I can't wait to find out if it does. The Balanced Player Award This goes to the player who managed to not only get more than 10 1st, 2nd and 3rd placements throughtout the year, but also had the smallest difference between all three of those. In other words, a great balance between all their top 3 placements. In the case of a tie, the award will go to whoever got the highest top 3 percentage out of the two. @BowserBasher wins this one with a difference of just 8. (21 1st places, 29 2nd places and 29 3rd places) Honourable mention goes to @martinist who also had a difference of 8, but a lower top 3 percentage. And that's it for the awards, but who are the three best Mario Karters this year. Oh, the suspense is killing... well, everyone else, I already know. And that wraps up this league, a bit later than usual, sorry. Christmas was hectic. I'd like to give massive thanks to @BowserBasher for hosting all the rooms and basically being second-in-command as far as this league goes. I really appreciate the effort you put in to helping this train go smoothly. Also thanks to @RedShell for providing me with this year's very red logo. He's already updated it for this year too. And finally, thanks to everyone who took part. You all realised that Mario Kart on mobile is no substitute for the nonsense that goes on here, anyway. And special thanks to anyone who managed to qualify for any of the two Leagues. I think I can say that the Champion's Bonus did help to keep the table more dynamic and it will be returning in 2020, albeit with a slight tweak. I also have a small plan to further help the balance, but I'll go into more detail on that in the new thread. 2020's League will begin on the 30th of January. I'll start a topic a week before hand. I hope to see you there!

Righty-o! Sorry for the wait. In case you haven't noticed, we're in 2020 now. Which means it's time for the final results of not just this second half of the year, but the whole year! But let's not get ahead of ourselves, we gotta finish up here. 3rd Place BowserBasher 38.4 points Our League room host looked set to take second place at one point, but some unexpected competition knocked him down. Still, 2,650 is the highest total points anyone got in this half. Unfortunately, N-E League is a game of averages. But a very impressive performance, none-the-less. @BowserBasher is the most likely to complain about Battle Mode, you'd think Mario Kart was some kind of racing game or something... 2nd Place Dcubed 39.7 points I don't know what happened there, but @Dcubed came out of absolutely nowhere towards the end of this half to steal 2nd place like the jammy goit he is. He couldn't quite break the 40 point barrier, but with a total score of 1,785 over just 45 GP's, he was remarkably consistent this half. Way to go, I suppose. @Dcubed is the most likely to whine about his average dropping, only for it turn out that it didn't really drop that much. 1st Place Glen-i 43.6 points It's meeeeee! It was quite the sizable difference as well. Someone should complain to the management or something, I'm sure they'll do something about it. A total score of 2,488 contributed to that high average, despite not benefiting from the Champion's Bonus. @Glen-i is the most likely to be the team captain with the fewest willing members joining. Anyway, here's the league table. If you take out the people who didn't make the 50% attendance threshold, the table doesn't change that much, except for @S.C.G rising to 7th place. @martinist almost managed to steal 4th place at the last minute with his amazing performance that night, but it wasn't quite enough. Stick around, there's the still the meaningless awards and the full year final results!

OK, @markderoos, I should be available to help until around 5pm today. Give me a shout when you know when you'll be able to go online and then I'll start looking.

That's unlikely, I'll have to let you know if I can in the afternoon.

Well, let me know what time you plan on starting, so I have some notice.

Once I finish at the community centre today, I should be available to help with these. I don't think Gengar is one the G-Max Raids that are more common at the moment, so no promises with that Pokémon.

You're probably right then, but do keep in mind the demo consists of really easy dungeons, survival starts getting a bit trickier to pull off once traps and the like start getting introduced about a third of the way in.

Demo all done. Mt. Steel happens sooner than I remember. Holy hell, this game is gorgeous! Just goes to show a good art style can make up for any graphical shortcomings. I appreciate the Diglett hole warp from the base to the Post Office, that's very welcome. I expected as much, but the mechanics are heavily based off of Super Mystery Dungeon. The increased hunger speed, move levelling up, nerfed items and no basic attack, as well as the pushing mechanic. That might make the game a bit harder in some aspects. But the toolbox is larger than the original's 20 item limit. Makuhita Dojo is nothing like the original version. Instead, it seems to serve as some way to quickly grind some levels. I recommend not doing it to help preserve the challenge, but whatever, nice that it's there. It also has some tutorials on basic techniques which is long overdue for this series. The remixes are proper banging! I mean, PMD always had great music, but these remixes finally give us these songs uncompromised by GBA quality sound chips. Can't wait to hear what they do with a particular dungeon song. Something that caught my eye on the status screen was something called "Rare Quality" No idea what it is yet, but seeing as gummis seem to have something to do with it, I'm guessing this is the replacement for IQ Skills. If I had to guess, it might be some kind of secondary ability you can give your Pokémon, excited to see what that's all about. The TM's are all the ones from Sun/Moon, so even though Sword/Shield is out already, I wouldn't go expecting any Pokémon from the latest games to show up in this game. No transitions in Pokémon Square is nice. Originally, the pond and dojo were on seperate screens. Loading times are somehow quicker than the DS version, on Unity, no less. That's cool. March is too far away.

Yeah, there's still plenty of people online to play this with. And I'm always up for a hunt over the weekend if you want.

Congratulations, you've activated Easy Difficulty. Pikachu has almost always been the most overpowered main Pokémon in Mystery Dungeon, purely because Discharge is broken for this kind of game. Anyway, went with the same team I did for the original version. Cubone and Treecko. Will give impressions later. But I have noticed that after the second dungeon, there's a new set of tutorial missions that teach you the basic manueveres you need for this game. Which is great.

Some more useful Mystery Gift codes now. KAMPFTEAM gets you 20BP while GALAR will get you a bottle cap.

Next online competition has been announced. It's a Doubles Format that, as the name suggests, only allows Pokémon that were introduced in Sword and Shield. Zacian, Zamazenta and Eternatus are banned still. This also allows for Pokémon that got a Galarian Form, so you can use Pokémon like Corsola. The competition starts on the 31st of January, so get your team registered before then. You get 50 BP for completing one match. I have a few Galarian Pokémon ready to go, but not a full team, so I'm gonna have to work on that.

The best thing about that is it's not even a new feature. Super Mystery Dungeon had it. It wasn't called that though, which makes it even better.

Yesssssss! Second Boss is hilariously easy with him. Fourth Boss is an utter nightmare though. Anyway...

Boy, if you think adding 200-ish old Pokémon would help diversify the competitive scene, you are all dead wrong. No genies was the one silver lining to the Pokédex cut. I'm not happy about them returning. Anyway, this is obligatory. It was rarer to see a match where someone didn't have those exact Pokémon.

Just found out, I can't even be mad that they're blatantly selling old Pokémon in Sword/Shield now. Nothing gonna bring me down today! First of all, not Game Freak, Spike Chunsoft. Game Freak almost never have anything to do with spin-off's. And secondly, nah, looks gorgeous to me, really nice artistic style with the scenery. I actually think it looks nicer than Sword/Shield, that shading is bloody delicious. Holy crap! That art is sexy! It's gonna be hard to go digital! I chuckled when I saw playable Lucario. Which only the more hardcore PMD fans would get. PMD is a lot more forgiving than most roguelikes. In the original game, you lose all your items and money you're carrying and have to start the dungeon again, but you keep any experience points. That said, even the easiest PMD is harder than any mainline Pokémon game. Rescue Team is probably 3rd out of 4 on the difficulty scale, but you'll probably die a bit before seeing the credits. And then there's the post-game stuff. Expect 99 floors of pure hell just to get a legendary Pokémon. And for the absolute sadist, there's the dungeons that temporarily put you back to Level 5 when you enter. I expect there to be some QoL improvements as well, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the whole "Finish the dungeon to keep any recruited Pokémon" Anyway, hope Cubone is still available as a main character choice. Cubone is dope. And I doubly hope I can choose to evolve it into Alolan Marowak now.

It's @Goron_3, and he's giving away copies of Yoshi's Crafted World, which I would very much appreciate, please.

Hidden abilities are generally hard to get. In Sword/Shield, you can only get Pokémon with hidden abilities through a max raid battle. And it's not guaranteed. You just have to get lucky. A hidden ability just replaces the usual ability. So instead of Poison Touch, Seismitoad would get Water Absorb. This past month has been particularly hard to get them because G-Max Snorlax, Delibird and recently, Magikarp has been more likely to appear. Great if you want them, but it makes it less likely to get anything else.

No lie, that would make me actually buy a specific stamp for the first time in my life.