Early game is kicking my a**

General Discussion
1

So I’m new to Pokemon Insurgence, but not to pokemon games and fangames. I’m familiar with competitive building and Smogon and such, and played Reborn and Zeta.

And the early game is making it so I have to constantly use potions or go back to pokémon centers. I got swept by the first cultist because almost all of their pokés were higher level than mine (had to cheese them with Sand-Attack, ugh) and I came back to town having assembled some semblance of team (with almost no grinding except on Nidoran). Then I got swept by a trainer with a Eggexcute after losing most of my pokés to wildlife and such, because the trek to the second city was pretty long - three areas full of trainers and wild pokés.

And then I’m in the second town, getting in the cave next to the school, and I’ve barely gotten in and already I had to go back to the pokemon center twice.

I have two Nidos (one male and one female), a Gastly, a Roggenrola, a recently caught Donphan, and my starting Eevee (i honestly didn’t like any of the delta starters.). They’re mostly level 10-14. The most useful is Gastly - but he’s extremely fragile, as is expected. And yeah, half of my team gets killed by psychic moves, and the other half is weak to water. And they’re almost all physical too, so I have to power through stuff like rock types using Harden or so. Though I now have two fighting moves.

What is it ? I realize my team is very weak because it’s the starting levels and the best move is Curse on Gastly (really) and maybe Swift on Eevee. Is earlygame just a rough ride in this game before I get actual sets that are more than Tackle and a few stat debuffs, EV’s, and evolutions ? Do I need to grind more than I do ? Did I crippled myself by not picking the delta starters ?

I’m on normal difficulty, by the way. And yeah, I know the game is harder than the nintendo games (but those are pretty easy anyway).

What are your experiences with earlygame difficulty ? Thank you for your answers.

2

I can’t really remember my early game experience, it was a while ago, but I just watched a friend of mine play through the game, and he had the same sort of experience as you. Earlygame is pretty difficult, mainly because even normal trainers have some pretty strong pokemon. I’d recommend trying to evolve that gastly as soon as you can, but don’t really worry about grinding that hard, or about picking the wrong starter.

3

I can’t really speak about difficulty, I make the game harder for myself usually (a habit I have developed for the official games and that I brought to fangames as well) with rules like “no hold items, no heals outside centers, never change the pokémon in fight, always send a pokémon with at least 1 type weak to the opponent” etc.

The hard part imho is until Metchi Town tbh, after that you can just grind until you reach the level you need/want.

4

You chose a starter that struggles quite a bit in the earlygame, after around 2nd gym, journey gets quite a bit easier. Metchi town does help a lot, because at that point you can have the ability to grind easily.