Experiencing the Pokemon Violet DLC (It’s Playtime!)
Hello everyone, and welcome to It’s Playtime! Have any of you been around this blog since 2023? If you have, serious dedication there, I appreciate it. But for those who haven’t, I released two separate reviews that year: One for Teal Mask, and one for Indigo Disk. These share a lot of my opinions of the stories and characters. However, I didn’t go into my actual playthroughs of those DLCs. Well, today, we’re going to find out how I handled the Pokemon Violet DLC for the first time!
Sidenote: I’m not discussing the Pecharunt epilogue here. Why? Because I’ve already talked about my first playthrough of it! In fact, it goes into great detail, since it was written shortly after the Pecharunt epilogue released. I highly recommend checking the Pecharunt epilogue post (Medium link) after you’re done reading this one. Now, let’s talk about my experience with Pokemon Violet’s DLC: The Teal Mask and Indigo Disk!
Let’s start with the Teal Mask. Now that I had gone through the experience of Pokemon Sword’s DLC, there was something I wanted to do differently. I didn’t want to use my main team. Sure, I would bring them into Kitakami, but I would cycle them out as soon as I could with Kitakami Pokemon, and build them up to be a proper team. I’m not going into my main team, as I’ve already discussed them in my Pokemon Violet playthrough post (Medium link).
I won’t go too much into the story since I’ve gone in-depth in my Media Musing reviews, but I’ll do quick mentions as I go along, like in my other playthrough posts. I along with some other students head to Kitakami, and I end up meeting Carmine and Kieran. I ended up fighting them both, and I was a little confused at why they had first stage Pokemon at such high levels. I later learned that you can take on this DLC any time after joining the academy, so the levels scale as you go along while the species do not. Anyway, my main team wiped the floor with them. That was my sign that this team really needed to go.
While I went along on the plot, I picked up a new team. They were all scattered around random spots, so I’ll just mention them all here. We have Puddle the Quagsire (my favorite), Pixie the Hatterene, Lash the Salazzle, Ivy the Lurantis, Coyote the Lycanroc, and Autumn the Ribombee. I didn’t get too attached to most of them, though Puddle bailed us out a bunch. Puddle and Muddy the Clodsire would be real buddies. I’m not as much of a fan of Salazzle as I once was, after learning about its lore, but Lash did help me out on many occasions.
Get Anna Carter’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Most of the battles weren’t eventful, aside from those incredibly difficult ogre clan trainers. I never went through with the Bloodmoon Ursaluna quest, since I didn’t want to bother with the dex, and the battles at the end didn’t give me much trouble. But I absolutely fell in love with Ogerpon, and after I caught her, I knew I wanted to use her for something important. That leads us into…
The Indigo Disk! This one is far more battle-focused, and it gave me a ton of trouble. Double battles from incredibly strong trainers with stronger strategies. There were a ton of times I struggled here, and I’m sure it made for a challenge for many people. I knew this time, my team would be very important. I didn’t bring my Teal Mask team in, since I wanted to build a brand new one for this DLC. Well, at least Drayton’s condition of only using Terarium Pokemon didn’t give me any trouble! Except for one member…
Here’s the team I used for this DLC: Eelyssa the Electross, Goggles the Flygon, Tundra the Lapras, Razor the Scizor… and okay, let me give explanations for the other two. One of the Pokemon I used was Ogerpon, named Ponio (after the noises she makes), to fulfill my promise of using her for something important. The last Pokemon… was a shiny Oricorio. Fun fact, this was my first shiny I ever saw in this game, aside from the Tatsugiri I failed. I caught her and named her Lychee, after the red fruit. This is because, while she was in her Pa’u form at the time, I changed her to Baile style to better suit the team. Plus, it’s my favorite Oricorio shiny form.
Now, let’s go briefly over the battles. Long story short, they were all hard. I had the most difficulty with Amarys, but all of them required some deep thinking on my part. Occasionally, I even swapped in members from my main team to help, though I don’t remember for which battle. My general strategy is a full-on offensive, though I did try to have some synergy among teammates. For example, my favorite pairing was Goggles and Eelyssa. Goggles would Earthquake, and Eelyssa, with levitate, would always be immune to it. Tundra knew Perish Song, which I knew would be invaluable for battles like these. Perish Song certainly helped with a lot of clutch moments. It wasn’t a full Perish Trap, since I didn’t learn about that strategy until a few years later, but surprisingly the trainers I faced didn’t think to switch out against it. I don’t remember what member I brought in to replace Ponio for the Drayton battle, so I must have not used the replacement very much.
There was a long and grueling battle with Kieran, though I remember him not being as tough as Amarys. Maybe I was getting used to the difficulty at that point. After I beat him, we headed through the Terapagos portion of the DLC. Unfortunately, the Terapagos battle wasn’t very eventful. I do remember bringing along main team members for it though, since Fern and Arthur helped in the battle against Terapagos. Goggles was able to help out too. However, the Terapagos battle is essentially just whittling down the HP bar, so I don’t have much to say. We get a nice ending to the DLC, all wrapped up with a bow as Kieran forgives my trainer. You know, until the epilogue, but you already have that story available.
There were a few things I did in the DLC afterward. I did a few sidequests. I caught quite a few legendaries, though I lost interest before I could gather them all. I tested out Terapagos a bunch, and found it really interesting. I did a whole bunch of flying to see what I could see with Miraidon, including the goodies on the huge sphere at the top of the Terarium. I swapped out members from all three of my teams on several occasions to see how they would work together. And finally, of course, I did a few posts for my blog involving Pokemon Violet, like the failed nuzlocke and the Christmas post from a while back where I made a Christmas-themed team.
Honestly, I enjoyed my time with the DLCs. They were probably the best DLC Pokemon has put out yet, though Pokopia might give it a run for its money, who knows? As you might have noticed, we’re almost out of first experience playthroughs of Pokemon games. We only have Legends ZA left, which I’ll be happy to oblige. After that, we’ll discuss what I’ll be doing next in this series. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you all next time!
This article and more seen on my blog site, Violet Pages.
