Pokemon Emerald: Gift/In-Game Trades Only*

[Robert Stewart]

What the title says. i will be playing Pokemon Emerald, using only Pokemon available as gifts or in-game trades.

I did this recently for FireRed and found it to be an interesting twist there. I wanted to try Emerald next because it looks like it's the most restrictive game in the series in this regard.

Spoiler

Mainly this is because none* of the available gift or trade Pokemon can learn Surf or Fly, and there are much fewer trades or gifts than other games.

*Technically there is one who can learn Surf, but you don't get it until after you need to have Surf anyway.

The asterisk in the title is because I will allow Pokemon that are required to perform a trade to be used  up until that trade is available. This is mainly just to prevent the early parts of the game from being a pure starter solo, which are boring. I'll refer to these mons as "substitutes" since they're "subbing in" for a future trade.

I will use subs under the following restrictions:

• Only one of each may be caught.
• They must be left in a state/evolution stage where they can be traded.
• They must be traded as soon as their corresponding trade is available.

Here is a list of the allowed Pokemon:

Spoiler

Gifts:

• Your starter
• Wynaut (Egg from Lavaridge Town)
• Fossil 1 (Mirage Tower/Rustboro City)
• Castform (Weather Institute)
• Beldum (Mossdeep City )*
• Fossil 2 (Desert Underpass/Rustboro City)*
• Johto Starter**

Trades:

• Seedot (Rustboro City)
• Plusle (Fortree City)
• Horsea (Pacifidlog Town)
• Meowth (Battle Frontier)*

Substitutes:

• Ralts (until Rustboro City)
• Skitty (until the Postgame)
• Volbeat (until Fortree City)
• Bagon (until Pacifidlog Town)

* Only accessible in the postgame
** Not accessible due to challenge restrictions.

Other restrictions/notes:

• No breeding will be done.
• This will not be a nuzlocke, because I'm not that much of a masochist.
• I will try to avoid grinding as much as possible. Not sure about specific limit, but I'll probably try to stay in the range of +/- 5 levels of the next gym leader/whatever other major story event?
• Outside trading will generally not be allowed. There may or may not be one exception, but we'll get to that when it comes up.

So, yeah, Hopefully the restrictions are clear and this sounds interesting enough. Not sure if it will be challenging, but it will be at least a little tedious, so wish me luck.

The first update will come later. I wanted to draft the first post to get all the rules/etc out of the way ahead of time.

Edited May 14, 2023 by Robert Stewart

[Punished Dayni]

Interesting pick of run, I've looked at the games in the past to see how many options one could have (BW is terrible imo), but yeah RSE can be tough.

With the starters Swampert would cover the water HM issues, but it's generally too good for balance good, though it's a bit less OP in Emerald. Sceptile would be the least boosted, but still useable(I had to grind mine to 40 in a monograss run and it barely survived Overheat from Torkoal). And Blaziken gets hut by the change in champion but will be good elsewhere. But it'll still be awkward enough early on with Seedot and starter before the 4th badge and only the fossil, Castform and Plusle on top of that before surfing (Though in fairness, Wynaut is there too). As for Horsea. how will you handle that? Will it stay Seadra? I can see Skitty having access to Covet utility and Volbeat is early Signal Beam fun among the subs at least.

In terms of levels, not sure what to recommend there.The starter might need it but I don't see Plusle not having a bad time with the same limits. And what is your plan with the postgame, considering you mention those options?

Edited April 10, 2023 by Punished Dayni

[Robert Stewart]

38 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

With the starters Swampert would cover the water HM issues, but it's generally too good for balance good, though it's a bit less OP in Emerald. Sceptile would be the least boosted, but still useable(I had to grind mine to 40 in a monograss run and it barely survived Overheat from Torkoal). And Blaziken gets hut by the change in champion but will be good elsewhere.

Swampert is required in Emerald because of needing Surf. It's actually not in R/S - the first IGT there is a Makuhita, and Hariyama can learn Surf.

39 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

As for Horsea. how will you handle that? Will it stay Seadra?

I would evolve it unless people think I should stick rigidly to the no-trading rule.

40 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

And what is your plan with the postgame, considering you mention those options?

I forget what's exactly in Emerald's postgame. :v

I'll probably try the Steven fight at least. But I'm definitely not attempting the battle frontier. I don't even usually do those in "normal" runs, and in this run my team composition would be too much of a mess to consider it.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

15 minutes ago, Robert Stewart said:

I would evolve it unless people think I should stick rigidly to the no-trading rule.

Personally, I think "tradebacks" are fine. The Pokemon was still acquired in the base game. Also, Kingdra is awesome.

Good luck on this run! It reminds me very much of a "minimum battles" run of Pokemon Emerald I recently watched.

[Robert Stewart]

Time to actually start this.

Spoiler

I call it "not appearing in this run."

As explained before, our choice here is not actually a choice. Most toher games have at least one IGT or gift that can learn surf, but Emerald offers us no such luxury.

Remarkably, I lucked into a female starter. Though i don't actually know if that's considered lucky. I think it should make my team more resilient against attract shenanigans.

Mudkip being female threw my naming scheme for a loop - I went with pirates for my water types in my FR run, but I'm aware of no female pirates in FE, not even in the forbidden Saga games. I opted for Echidna since she's kinda the closest thing?

The initial rival battle goes smoothly. Echidna got to level 7 off of the demi fight and one wild mon. Nothing of note there.

Clearing the fight allowed us to search for our first sub. Searching for subs will probably be one of the most time consuming parts of the run - Ralts here has a 4%  apeparance rate, which as about as good as we'll see for any of our candidates.

I actually encountered one, but had it die to a tackle crit. So I had to spend several more minutes looking for a second.

I used FE4 sub names in my FR run, so I opted for SD subs for here instead.

Unil's time is short, just learning Confusion in Petalburg woods, and then getting traded immediately on reaching Rustboro.

It's been a bit since I played Emerald, so it took me a while to find the trade house.

Had a bit of an "oh crap" moment on remembering that Seedot can't learn cut. But cut isn't technically required at this point, and Dots will be able to learn it after evolving.

Dots wound up getting into disobedience range during out Gym attempt, which makes it somewhat unreliable from here on out. This is much less forgiving than FR - you have an opportunity to clear two gyms before your first trade there.

I thought I'd be able to get it to evolution during the Gym, but Dots got trapped by Nosepass's block and died due to disobedience. So the evolution had to wait until Route 116.

Route 116 leads us to our next sub, though calling them a "sub" may be stretching things a bit given they'll stick around til postgame.

Skitty has a 2% encounter rate this time. Things are not looking good for my patience if the trend here continues. Thankfully, there was no unlucky crit kill this time.

Dua was also nice enough to bring us a Leppa berry.

Dots and Echidna both wind up evolving here. These feels a big excessive, but I'm not fighting any wild battles at all. Guess Emerald just has a more generous EXP curve.

Dua manages to solo the team Aqua grunt with help from Attract shenanigans. I seems less reliable than when it's used on me, but I suppose that's just how these things go.

Dua did not manage to get through the rival fight - despite using attract, Treecko never got immobilized.

Dots ended up finishing with a disobedient nature power. I guess it works in the end.

This seems like a good stopping point. Next time, a gym leader that a lot of people skip, but I can't if I want dots to be a reliable team member. And it will be a challenge with 2/3 of my team facing type disadvantage. We'll see how it goes.

Edit: I forgot to post everyone's levels.

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Robert Stewart

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

Swampert is required in Emerald because of needing Surf. It's actually not in R/S - the first IGT there is a Makuhita, and Hariyama can learn Surf.

Plus Swampert is definitively the starter that does best in an Emerald run.

 

2 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

I would evolve it unless people think I should stick rigidly to the no-trading rule.

My rule would be that you have to keep them as Seadra for two gyms (or before the Elite 4, if that comes first). A somewhat arbitrary restriction, but I thinks its a rough estimate of how long you tend to have to use a middle form pokemon with other evolution methods.

 

1 hour ago, Robert Stewart said:

I call it "not appearing in this run."

A classic Monty Python reference.

 

1 hour ago, Robert Stewart said:

 

Remarkably, I lucked into a female starter. Though i don't actually know if that's considered lucky. I think it should make my team more resilient against attract shenanigans.

The only place I can think of off the top of my head where that might matter is the Flannery fight, as some of her pokemon have attract, and this is back when they tended to match pokemon genders with trainer genders.

 

1 hour ago, Robert Stewart said:

 

I used FE4 sub names in my FR run, so I opted for SD subs for here instead.

I rather like this naming scheme for the "sub" units.

 

1 hour ago, Robert Stewart said:

 

Dots wound up getting into disobedience range during out Gym attempt, which makes it somewhat unreliable from here on out. This is much less forgiving than FR - you have an opportunity to clear two gyms before your first trade there.

Disobedience is such a nuisance early on. They would change up the system for it around Heart-Gold/Soul-Silver to an increase after every badge instead of every other (from what I remember), but before that you have to suffer through it against the first 2 gym leaders, and possibly even the fourth before you badges are good enough for the issue to go away...

 

[Robert Stewart]

A short update this time.

Spoiler

Somehow, I made it through Dewford. Brawly essentially came down to RNG with how much I was able to (ab)use sleep/attract to keep Dua alive.

Surprisingly, at level 15 she was able to take a karate chop or low kick, but not more than one.

His Meditite was actually trivial because it kept spamming focus punch.

Makuhita came down to attrition vs Echidna. Dealing with that Sitrus Berry was no fun at all. Alas, Dua will not learn covet til level 31, so we didn't really have a better way to deal with it.

But now it's done, and Dots is actually a real team member again.

Now to explore Dewford.

...I completely forgot this was here. Would've been nice for the Gym fight.

Our visit to Dewford cave is unremarkable. I opted to teach Dua Flash, which I'm sure I'll regret. I forgot how simple the cave was, so I'm actually regretting it already...

I accidentally let Dots get KO'd by fighting some wild mons. Guess I got cocky after the gym fight...

After we delivered the letter to Steven it's on to Slateport. The trainers on the beach are no trouble...especially as Nature Power turns into EARTHQUAKE here.

Extremely goofy. Sad that it doesn't  do anything interesting inside buildings, including all Gyms. Oh well.

 

 

[Robert Stewart]

One update with Slateport and most of Mauville.

Spoiler

So you literally need a "secret power" to get in this secret club, huh?

Though it's not so secret if you tell people about it...

I like how the museum is still charging admission despite the flood of suspicious individuals who have flooded their premises. Maybe they think Tema Aqua is jsut a bunch of cosplayers?

The TM in question is Thief. Rude.

Upstairs, we fight two Aqua grunts with Carvahnas and a Zubat. I tried to use Dua for this fight but she, uh, didn't do so well. One Bite from a Carvahna took off like 60% of her health. Yikes.

Echidna and dots were able to handle the rest though. Archie shows up to warn us not to interfere, and we deliver the goods.

Outside, we're accosted by a suspicious individual. Even the game thinks he's suspect.

I will not be doing the battle tents. This one I think is the rental team one, so I wouldn't even be keeping to the challenge by doing it.

Fighting some trainers north of Slateport. Nature power defaulting to swift is coming in handy, as it's my best way to avoid effect spore or poison point contact damage.

We also take care of the trick house. Cutting down all these trees sure is tedious....

I opted not to learn this - I'm happy to inflict RNG on my foes, but I don't need more of it on my side.

And now for what I thought might be one of the hardest fights in the run.

The slayer of speedruns - the route 110 rival fight.

This came down to RNG, but it didn't take nearly as many attempts as the Brawly fight. It all came down to ordering. I couldn't have Echidna out against her Wingull, because then she'd send out Grovyle. Grovyle would pretty much always KO Echidna, which left me without anyone to deal with her Slugma. But doots couldn't be out against her Wingull because of Wingull. So...it was all up to Dua.

With enough Attract RNG luck and being able to inflict sleep, Dua was able to take out Wingull. Then Echidna comes in to take out Slugma. Then, it's  on to Grovyle. Mud shot actually deals an OK amount of damage (about 1/4 of its health), and also has the nice effect of lowering speed. But it has a nasty habit of missing, so Echidna got KO'd.

Then, Dua came back for more annoyance. She wasn't able to damage Grovyle much on her own, but was able to use Flash to nerf Grovyle's accuracy quite a bit thanks to Attact and Sleep stalling. Then it came down to Dots. Thanks (I think) to the accuracy nerf, dots was able to spam Nature Power (Swift) to whittle down Grovyle's HP without taking any damage. And with that, the battle is over - a good team effort, I'd say.

On to Mauville.

Our next HM is given to us very enthusiastically.

This guy has a point, actually!

I also grabbed the Acro Bike from the bike shop, which will enable us to return to Slateport more easily. Which is actually useful, as the Poke Mart here doesn't sell any Repels? Very strange.

Before taking on the Gym, it's time to grab our next substitute to the east o the town.

It appeared surprisingly quick given its low encounter rate. Guess I should count my blessings.

Trim comes with confuse ray and double team - more tools to annoy my enemies into submission.

Trim is able to handle the Wally fight outside the Gym on his own, surprisingly. Quite a good first impression.

In the gym, there's quite a few opportunities for double battles, which gives Trim a chance to grow with support.

It also gives him the ability to team up with Dua for maximum RNG annoyance. The only thing missing is a way to inflict paralysis...

Using Trim is a bit risky since even the non-electric types have electric moves. Bit of a an odd quirk of this gym.

Watson is mostly an easy fight with Echidna. I say "mostly" because unlucky mud shot misses leave her vulnerable to more damage than she should have taken. It's enough that she wasn't actually able to take out Manectric.

I got Manectric down to Super Potion range. Echidna was vulnerable to a quick attack, so I  swapped her out to see if others could finish the job.

Dua got oneshot by Shock Wave, so...that plan was a no go.

In the end, Dots finished things off for us with Nature Power.

There's some miscellaneous errands to run back in slateport (I need to restock on repels and pick up some berries I planted), but that's all for this update.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Another fairly big update, or at least it feels like it should be.

Spoiler

I mean....I think they do? :thonk:

We get an HM for this diversion. Strength would be a nice move on Echidna, but I don't want to give her another HM since she's already on Rock Smash duty. So, Strength will have to wait.

Onward to the north of Mauville.

Sure, why not.

The fights don't turn out to be that challenging...most of my crew besides Trim are too high level, I think.

Dots' fake out does a surprising amount of damage...though maybe it's not so surprising given the level differential.

Along the way, he learns Torment. Not sure how useful it'll  be, but probably more valuable than Growth at least.

She challenged me tho :v

Lol

We get the macho brace fr our trouble, which is probably not useful for me?

A but further north, we get our first interview battle. Not too challenging.

I tried to pick something deep and meaningful for my first interview.

😄

Nothing shady going on here, no sirree.

🤨

Along the way, we also get the secret power TM, getting inducted into the secret base club.

Hey it's me!

>_>

Also wtf they're ignoring my nicknames >:[

So true!

This cooltrainer later on wound up being a bit of a close call. >_>

On the way, Trim gets a new move.

...which didn't seem that useful, given that bug type was all physical until gen IV. >_>

This is an odd set of fights. You fight a double battle and then this pokemaniac, just to grab an item.

...I think it was a good item at least, but I forgot what it was. >_>

After this, I made an effort to avoid most trainer fights where possible, mainly because I didn't want Echidna to get overlevelled.

Not much to do in Fallarbor, so on to Meteor Falls we go.

Well, nto before stopping to see the fossil maniac.

We get a TM and not much else.

There's a few unavoidable fights on the way to Meteor Falls.

WTF that's my trick! >:[

At Meteor Falls, there's a story scene. but no fight, surprisingly. Odd.

We can't get to the room that Bagons are in yet, so there's nothing else for us here. So, I run through Rustboro, Verdanturf, and Mauville to get to the cable car.

The double battle with the grunts here isn't that eventful.

Tabitha went a bit sideways though.

Dua and Dots fainted to unlucky crits and rock slide misses. 😕

I forgot to stock up on revives before this, so I didn't have any left after healing for the Maxie fight.

First round of the fight didn't go so well. I tried alternating between Echidna and Dots to fight Mightyena, which left them with too little HP to prepare for Camerupt.

Round two goes better. I treid to have Trim deal with Mightyena with Double Team and Confuse Ray cheese, but Roar put the kibosh on that plan. So Echidna dealt with him.

I didn't want to risk having Echidna get KO'd to another high-power magnitude, so I swapped in Dua. Who proceeded to die in one hit to a regular Ember.

This tuned out to be okay though, as it gave me a safe turn to switch in Dots. Not exactly the most obvious choice, but I thought he could deal at least a bit of damage with fake out and "Rock Slide."

And he then proceeded to 3-hit Camerupt thanks to a Rock Slide flinch. :v

As i had no revives, Dua was out for the Mt. Chimeny descent. So I made an effort to again avoid most fights.

Except for this guy, who's definitely not suspicious at all.

With no further incidents, we make it to Lavaridge Town.

And here, we sort of meet our next team member? It'll be a bit before we can use them, though.

Maybe over-correcting a bit, but I didn't want to be in the situation of not being able to revive my full team again. :v

Flannery will have to wait for the next update. Se y'all then.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Two gym fights in this one!

Spoiler

Flannery first. (Duh)

You might think this would be an easy sweep for Echidna. And it mostly was!

If not for the sunlight boosting fire attacks. And Mud Shot doesn't quite do enough damage to Torkoal.

This didn't help. :v

Welp :v

There was some hope the rest could clutch it out, but no dice.

The key to the second attempt turned out to be steroids.

The attack boost gave Echidna much more reliable damage in the sun, and managed to let her sweep as expected.

Not a moment too soon for this, since Dots was on the threshold of disobedience again.

oh no-

oh good there's no fight.

With the go-goggles, it's off to the desert to get our next team member.

...or so I thought.

...uh, where the heck is the mirage tower?

Info on its appearance is pretty confusing - bulbapedia just says it "appears and disappears" as you enter and leave route 111.

Eventually, I read somewhere you had to talk to the Ruin Maniac to make it appear. Which I swear I had done, but i guess not.

There it is, finally.

I also had to go back to Mauville to get the Mach bike for our first set of Mach Bike puzzles. Fun.

At least there's only one this time.

Our newest member turns out to be the fossil and not the egg.

I opted to name him "Finn" on account of him being a fish out of temporal water, so to speak. Never mind that he's not a fish.

I thought he could learn Strength for some reason, but apparently I remembered wrong. I also taught him Rock Tomb, because training him with just scratch and water gun would have been painful.

I ran the circuit from Mauville, to Fallarbor, and then Rustboro to train him on all the trainers I skipped previously. I mainly wanted him to learn Metal Claw, just so that he had a second okay physical damage attack.

Along the way, Dots also finally got a STAB move.

Now it's on to Petalburg.

Not much to say about the mooks along the way. I opted to go Accuracy > Healing > OHKO which actually means crits....).

Healing was a bit annoying, but once Finn procced the Attack boost from Metal Claw, it became manageable.

The OHKO room kinda turned into a joke since Finn is immune to crits. 😄

Time for the dad fight.

I forgot to get any screenshots of it, but his Spinda was kind of a pain, inflicting confusion on anyone I sent against it. I managed to take it out with a combination of Trim, Dots, and Echidna.

Next, Vigoroth.

Finn managed to weaken and slow it enough with a few rock tombs that Doots could finish with fake out and faint attack.

I  though I could have some help with Slaking, but...

...yeah, no.

This wound up being an Echidna affair, and went easier than expected. Slaking opted to use counter on it's non-Truant turns. It was easy enough to negate that by just using water gun. So the strategy was to use water gun on non-truant turns, and then Rock Smash(!) on the truant turns in the hopes of lowering Slaking's defense.

After three procs, that left him weak enough for mud shot to finish the job.

Next, Linoone. He lead with belly drum, which I though might make it an easy clear. Unfortunately, mud shot didn't quite finish the job, which lead to Norman re-healing.

F

At  this point, only Dua was left, so I was thinking things were pretty much over...

Only for her to get a lucky sing hit and finish with tackle. 😮

Goes to show that we still need all the help we can get.

Oh, and Wally's dad gave us surf. Cool.

See y'all next time.

 

[Robert Stewart]

All the way to Winona with this one. And some pretty major team changes.

Spoiler

Somehow I missed ever fighting this guy. Whoops.

On the way to Mauville, our next team member hatched.

For the name, because Wobbuffet mainly attacks by countering, I thought an armor knight name would be appropriate? IDK.

Also, given that she starts with no attacking moves, training Wendy approaches her namesake a bit.

After crossing Route 118, w ehave another interview encounter, as well as a run in with Steven again.

Wendy also evolves. I thought her evolution was friendship-based, which was concerning to me, but luckily it's not. Or at least it seems to not be.

I opted to keep Encore and got with Counter/Mirror Coat/Destiny Bond for her.

On route 123, I get the opportunity to spread a very important message.

Between this and my interviews, you may be noticing a theme...

Well, at least it's not tackle. anymore. :v

🤨

Sure thing, but.

Fun fact: Mirror coat is affected by type immunities, despite not being affected by type effectiveness. Ask me how I know. 🥲

Trim's signal beam makes quick work of the numerous Carvanha's here. Sad this will be one of the last places we get to heavily use it.

Mighty kind of you!

Something something, magic-ish user and late(?) joiner = Nino?

Trim handling May's Grovyle in the next fight is more or lest his last hurrah, as he'll be traded away very shortly.

HA

HA

What're these guys doing over here 🤔

There's one in front of the gym too? I forgot. :v

Farewell, old friend. You served us surprisingly well during our time together, but rules are rules.

Echidna reaches her final form a bit further in route 120. Neat.

Bruh, it's just one Kecleon.

Wait, why does this one not activate a fight? 🤔

Ah well.

The mooks in Winona's gym give us some nice last-minute training for Nino, but also Pluses and Finn. The main thing i wanted was for Nino to get weather ball.

Time for Gym #6.

Her Swablu goes down easily to Pluses.

...I probably should have seen that coming. Ah well.

Surprisingly, Nino manages to live long enough to set up hail for that sweet 4x effective damage on weather ball.

But she doesn't live much past that. F.

I locked Skarmory into Spamming Sand Attack for a bit, so I had Dots chip with Faint attack since I didn't have anyone else who could ignore the accuracy drop.

Wendy manages to just barely survive a steel wing to KO with counter.

Next, Tropius.

Finn unfortunately just barely fails to 2HKO with Rock Tomb.

...in hindsight I should have anticipated this and blocked with Protect.

Finn misses a key Rock Tomb and goes down to Aerial Ace. F.

Tropius basically heals all the damage we did and KOs Dots. F.

Luckily, Finn lowered its speed enough that Wendy could set up destiny bond before dying.

First gym fight where Echidna didn't participate at all. Not sure what to make of that.

Se y'all next time.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Turns out I  forgot to save after the Winona fight and had to re-fight her. Oops.

Spoiler

With that re-fight out of the way, it's off to Lilycove.

I thought it might be possible to get out to the sea ahead of story stuff, but there's Wailmer in the way. Ah well.

The rival's in the way of us shopping.

The fight goes remarkably well. I  think the really challenging part of the run is well behind us.

While here, I use the move deleter to adjust Echidna's moveset. Surely this won't come back to bite me, right?

I forgot to adjust my inventory, so I find up not being able to pick up most of the items on Mt. Pyre.

Also, it's weird how you don't have to traverse the interior of the mountain at all? There's trainers and stuff there, but the only reward for visiting it is, like, Shadow Ball. Weird.

Opted to bring Dua along because I want to level her up to get Covet at least. That way I have someone who can steal heart scales without having to use the thief TM.

...that's probably not something I should worry about, but hey, I don't like wasting TMs if I don't  have to.

Time to find the Magma hideout...after we train Dua some more.

Learning faint attack really helped, what with all the ghost types in Mt. Pyre.

We don't have anyone who can Fly, so we need to run all the way back to Rustboro and up to Mt Chimmney-

Oh, right.

I could have just taught someone rock smash and been done with this, but I was stubbornly against this for...some reason.

So...yeah. I ran all the way through Meteor Falls, Fallarbor, and the Desert, then up the Mt. Chimney cable car and down Jagged Pass.

In my defense it's a lot of walking anyway.

The Magma base is where we fought the Grunt in the pass before. ORAS kept Team Magma's base in Lilycove, so as far as i'm aware this remains an Emarald excludive dungeon.

The base is kinda annoying to get through, with wild Pokemon encounters. I also found a lot of the paths pretty narrow? Maybe just a side effect of the touch-screen dpad being hard to navigate with.

Anyway, at the end is another fight with Tabitha.

...come to think of it, do we even fight Courtney in Emerald?

The wiki says we don't. Pretty bizarre.

A pretty easy fight. Though it's been a few days, so I don't remember how I dealt with Mighteyena. Oops.

After this, Groudon wakes up and we fight Maxie.

...who has three Pokemon compared to Tabitha's four. What.

His Mighteyena loved to spam Swagger, which was a bit annoying. Though it did end up being its own undoing, with Doots being able to nearly oneshot it with a 4x attack booster Cut.

Camerupt went down in the expected way.

Finn just barely lived through two air cutters to finish without any KOs.

And with that, I walked all the way back to Lilycove. Again, without rock smash.

One benefit to all this walking is noticing some berries that I forgot about planting.

I didn't really remember what  I was supposed to be doing at this point in the story. The guard wouldn't let me in to the Aqua base and said something about Slateport, so I assumed I had to go there. But I didn't see any even at the Museum or Shipyard(You may have noticed what I missed, but let me cook). A sign at the shipyard mentioned needing an experienced sailor, so I thought maybe I needed Capt. Stern to activate the event?

But he was nowhere to be found.

(And yes, I surfed all the way from Slateport to here.)

While I was in the area, I at least got the opportunity to get the Amulet Coin from our Mom in Littleroot.

...and back in Slateport, I realized I  forgot that the dock is a separate place from the shipyard.

Ah well.

Oh, and while I was around, I finally conceded and taught Finn rock smash. Not to get north of Mauville, but because you need it for one of the Trick House challenges....even though said challenge has nothing to do with rock smash.

Huzzah, warp puzzles!

I did grab the master ball, for whatever it's worth.

At  the end of everything is a fight with Matt.

...two Pokemon? Seriously?

Easy sweep for Pluses.

With this, the ocean is clear. I think we could go all the way to Pacifidlog, but we still need Waterfall before we can make our last trade.

I got Dots all the way to level 43 before evolving so that I could have Swagger. Not sure how useful it would be, but I wanted it anyway.

And now it's  time for Tate and Liza.

I sure hope so!

I lead with Finn, which ended up being a bad call. none of my Pokemon were fast enough to outspeed Claydol, so I ended up dealing with a lot of chip (well, more than chip, I guess) from Earthquake.

Echidna was too slow to use surf after switching and got ganked by Solarbeam. Rip.

Dots managed to clear Solrock with Giga drain in the end. Claydol's Earthquake spam did turn out being useful, as it let Wendy take it out without having to guess between Mirror Coat or Counter.

Lunatone got Encore's to spam Calm mind, which let Dots whittle it down easily.

This feel like a good break point, so I'll see y'all next time.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Another one, in which we finish the lats Gym and acquire our last party member for the main game.

Spoiler

Time to fight Team Magma one last time at the space center.

Well, I guess it's a nice thought?

There's a random grunt guarding the stairwell? with pretty underpowered Pokemon at that. Strange.

For some reason the grunts fight me one on one. You'd think they'd activate at least one double battle. :v

Multi battle time! That's neat.

Damn, Crobat got hands.

Finn managed to clear most of Tabitha's Pokemon at least. Or helped. He spent most of the fight confused. I should really be using those persim berries more. :v

Gee, I wonder. :v

Neat reward. Now we can get to Sootopolis.

...well, I guess that answers how this Cooltrainer go out to this island.

Along the way, Finn reaches his final form.

._.

Finn got the revenge KO at least.

At this stage, I remembered that the EXP Share was available....all the way back in Rustboro.

....sigh.

There's nothing to do in Sootopolis since the Gym is closed. I supposed they wanted to make sure you didn't  get to the Elite Four before dealing with Team Aqua.

So, let's go do that.

Lotsa rock Smash and Strength puzzles.

The layout here is kinda weird? It's not really clear to me which direction you're supposed to be going in, since the north and south paths of the first room seem to eventually lead to the same place.

One last fight with Shelly, also with only two Pokemon. I guess Team Aqua is dealing with a shortage.

Nino managed to set up Rain for Pluses to use Thunder reliably, despite getting confused.

Neato.

With that, it's time for the bossman himself.

Surprisingly easy Finn sweep. I don't this any of Archie's Pokemon actually knew any water moves.

And now, story happens and the weather is all messed up. Weird that this didn't happen before since Groudon was already loose.

I  guess him being the Champion is supposed to be a surprise?

gasp

who could have seen this coming

Wallace jets off to Sky Pillar and leaves us behind

...why are there wild Pokemon in the cave of origin? Seems kinda pointless since it's so short and there's no fight here.

The trainers outside seem pretty nonplussed by the whole "weather going insane" thing.

In battle weather alternates between rain and strong sunlight. That's neat. Shame it doesn't go on for longer.

The rain does boost the speed of most of the water Pokemon, but it also lets Pluses use Thunder without missing. 😎

The effect disappears at route 130 though. Kinda lame.

Sure you're not.

I'll have to finish the story, clear the last gym, then trek literally to the other side of Hoenn before I can get this trade. ;_;

I do appreciate the goofy wordplay of the move tutors in these games.

IGN reviewing ORAS be like:

....ahem.

Rude. >_>

Now the weather effects are spreading here.

And there's only one mach bike puzzle to get to the top of sky pillar? I remember there being more. Maybe it's in the postgame?

Anyway, we get to the top, wake up big green, and then rush back to Sootopolis. And the hole event is resolved in a cutscene.

Neat.

Time for the last gym.

Kinda weird that all the gym trainers are optional.

They are worth a lot of money to fight, though.

All of the Lady class trainers here have Pokemon holding nuggets. Weird.

Time for the last gym leader.

You'd think this would be an easy fight for Pluses and Dots, but...well, I guess we'll see.

Pluses can easily deal with Luvdisc, but Dots needs to switch in to deal with Whishcash.

Lucky confusion activation made Sealeo a safe kill for Finn. Though he's actually slower than Sealeo, so it's still kinda risky.

...wait, Armaldo has lower speed than Anorith? Wack.

Kingra messed up the first run though. He  loves to spam double team,a nd the only guaranteed hit move I had was on Dots, which...yeah, did not work out.

Thunder does become a guaranteed hit in rain....but I dropped Nino from my team to bring dua to steal Nuggets. Oops.

...so after a quick trip back to the Pokemon center, we go with round 2.

Round 2 goes similarly for Dots.

But we get the Thunder setup, so it goes better overall.

Rude. >_>

With that, time to get out last part member.

A quick pit stop to get Echidna room to use Waterfall.

I switched to playing on my PC with a controller, whihc makes navigating on the mach bike much easier than trying to use the "dpad" on a touchscreen. And boy howdy does that make getting across Hoenn a lot quicker.

And we're here, finally.

Is this meant as foreshadowing that Steven is here in the postgame? :thonk:

And there's our gal. Here in our party for less than a minute.

And there's our final guy, for real. Not counting the postgame. :v

🤔

I mainly plan to use it just to free up move slots in Echidna's movepool, but we'll see if it's worth using to fight the elite four.

Anyway, hopefully that will be the next update. One complication due to the lack of fly is I'll have to traverse victory road if I want to use things like move tutors or the deleter during preparation, so I  kind of need to get my team setup ahead f time. :v

 

[Venger_06]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:02 PM, Robert Stewart said:

Mudkip being female threw my naming scheme for a loop - I went with pirates for my water types in my FR run, but I'm aware of no female pirates in FE, not even in the forbidden Saga games. I opted for Echidna since she's kinda the closest thing?

How could you forget her?

Anyway, interesting challenge, wish I had found this earlier

[Robert Stewart]

On 4/23/2023 at 10:51 AM, Newtype06 said:

How could you forget her?

damn, guess I'm a fake fire emblem fan

Anyway, I got distracted from this for the lats week because I got Legends Arceus. Turns out it's a good game. Who knew?

I have an update, but it's mostly just preparation.

Spoiler

I spent today collecting a few of the remaining items that I hadn't gotten around Hoenn.

I went and did all the remaining trick rooms that were available.

I also finished the Abandoned Ship. The reward from Captain Stern isn't that useful, but I got the Ice Beam TM at least. Maybe that will be useful for something.

I also visited Shoal cave. I was lucky to visit at low tide, so I could grab the Nevermeltice from the frozen room.

I didn't have a Dragon Scale yet. AFAIK there's nowhere to get one for free, so the only option is to farm Horsea or Bagon for one. Initially I thought Horsea would be simpler since I wouldn't have to travel for it, but

1. Fishing with the Super Rod is a pain, and
2. Bagon's appearance rate is higher than Horsea's anyway.

So...of to Meteor Falls again.

I ended up wasting some time because I forgot that having a held item prevent Covet or Thief from working. My bad.

Farming with Dua ended up being a little tricky here since She was only level 31, while the enemies could be up to level 40. Since I couldn't rely on the Smoke Ball, I had to switch in other team members. This was a bit of a pain, but it worked out in the end. I got the Dragon Scale after 10 Bagon encounters, and got a few levels for Echidna and Finn.

I think you can do trading with emulators, but IDK how to set it up. So I copied my save to a flashcart and traded with my Ruby cartridge. I wanted to try my Emerald cartridge, but it wouldn't boot. 😞

After all that, here is our final team mate.

Not sure that I'll take him to the elite four, I think he'd be redundant next to Echidna. Probably.

Current I'm waiting for a lum berry to sprout. I only have one, but I want a least a couple for the elite four. IDK, I feel like being able to flexibly cure ailments would be useful. :v

 

[Venger_06]

On 4/29/2023 at 6:46 PM, Robert Stewart said:

Anyway, I got distracted from this for the lats week because I got Legends Arceus. Turns out it's a good game. Who knew?

The fanbase ever since it was released

On 4/29/2023 at 6:46 PM, Robert Stewart said:

I ended up wasting some time because I forgot that having a held item prevent Covet or Thief from working. My bad.

F

I once had this problem when I farming Lucky Eggs in Pearl

On 4/29/2023 at 6:46 PM, Robert Stewart said:

I think you can do trading with emulators, but IDK how to set it up.

If you're using VBA, you just need to open 2 windows

 

[Robert Stewart]

After a week of preparation, I have....16 Lum berries. Because Lums grow at a rate of 2 berries every two days at best.

Was the wait worth it? Who knows. :v

[Robert Stewart]

Surprisingly, this isn't dead!

Spoiler

Taking care of some prep work before getting through victory road.

Echidna now has brick break, which I though would be useful for Sidney? Probably would have been more useful if I had a black belt. Or choice band. Alas...

I also gave  Pluses agility so it could do setup and then baton pass. Unfortunately that leaves its only damaging move as...Thunder, which is less than ideal without setup. But it'll work out, I promise.

I also got the shell bell, because why not.

Now, time for Victory Road. I need Seasor on my team for Waterfall until I get through, so someone needed to get benched. I opted for Pluses since I figured it wouldn't contribute much here.

Wally jumpscare

Easy enough.

I started having some weird issues with Retroarch around this point, mainly with it locking up if I opened the menu too much. Very odd.

Not much to say for the rest of Victory Road. I probably could have temporarily benched Wendy to bring in Dua for Flash, but I opted to just check a map instead. :v

Echidna did most of the fighting, with Exp share splitting EXP mainly with Nino, who is my lowest level member at this point.

Along the way, Echidna learns the last move I was waiting for. This lets me save TM26 in case I need it for someone else.

And we're through.

Here's my team after clearing Victory Road.

I figured I wouldn't be able to clear the Elite Four based on my experience with my FireRed IGT run, but I figured it was worth trying for the EXP at least.

Somehow I forgot to take more screenshots than this of the Sidney fight.

Echidna wasn't able to oneshot with Brick Break, and I don't really have a good way to boost offensive stats to help. Maybe I should have bought some X Attacks. :v

Regardless. Echidna was able to mainly handle this one, with only a bit of help needed at the end.

...I also forgot to take pictures of Phoebe apparently. What the heck.

Anyway, I thought Dots would be the one to shine here? But when you have a 60 damage attack as your strongest move and middling special attack (I think?), not much you can do. So Dots took out a few, but Echidna did most of the fighting in the end.

This is definitely going better than I thought. On to Glacia.

...I also didn't take many pictures here. >_>

Echidna once again helped with brick break. Finn also contributed, but in a more limited way due to all the water types around.

The ending was pretty funny - I locked the last Glalie into spamming shadow ball, which let Nino switch in and safely set up Sunny Day. She was able to eat one Shadow Ball and finish with a fire!Weather Ball. Silly.

The ending could be seen as a preview for the next fight, where Nino really was the star of the show.

There was a false start here were I had to redo the fight from fairly late in the game due to the weird bug in Retroarch I mentioned earlier. >_>

But that aside, I was able to lock Shelgon into spamming Protect. I had to lead with Wendy and then switch out to bait it into using Protect over Double-Edge, which would have oneshot Pluses. :v

But this setup let Pluses setup Agility and pass it to Nino, who could use Hail and then sweep most of Drake's team with Weather Ball.

GGs.

Kingdra required some assistance, but Nino still got it in the end.

On to the Champion.

Ones again I had a false start due to the Retroarch bug. >_>

Had a similar setup strat to lock Wailord into spamming Rain Dance. And since it was always raining...

Thunder was much more reliable. 😈

Whishcash obviously wasn't vulnerable to this, but Dots helped out here...even if Giga Drain still couldn't OHKO. >_>

Dots died to Milotic's ice beam, but got taken out by a single mirror coat. Wendy unfortunately got poisoned here, though.

Echidna took out Tentacruel, but then died to Ludicolo.

Ludicolo ended up being a bit tricky, as I kind of wound up running out of options.

In the end I got a lucky thunder hit which left it at enough HP to be taken out by hail. And Wendy was still alive, so I got the win. 😎

There's the gang. In the end it really was a team effort.

Or is it...?

I'll probably try to do the Steven fight at least. After that...well, probably nothing more for Emerald. Maybe I'll do another run like this in a different game. I'm open to suggestions.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Added a poll to gauge interest in a "sequel," more or less. Limited the options to games I already own, and excluding FireRed because I've already done it. And Gen 1 because it'd be too similar to FR.

[Robert Stewart]

Prepping for fighting Steven is...uh, gonna take a while. :v

Here's a short update on the start of the postgame.

Spoiler

Can't believe the Mom character in this game is literally names Mom. :v

Anyway, there's a report of a weird Pokemon that we don't care about. And then Professor Birch upgrades our Pokedex so that we can do the postgame. Thank god it's not tied to dex completion...

Y-yeah...all the ones I caught....

Also, turns out I forgot to fight the swimmers on route 103.

Oops.

Anyway, time to run a bunch of errands.

I forgot to get this before.

Inside the Fossil Maniac's house, there's a new cave open full of Pokemon I can't use.

And also this, which I can use!

I forgot to screenshot him the moment he got revived. :v

I also did the last trick house challenge and went on the SS Tidal.

🤨

Anyway, Scott invites us to the Battle Frontier. Everyone's all excited for us to participate in all the exciting battles, but I'm just here for the cat.

And there's the last trade in the game.

🤨

Wondering what Gamefreak intended with adding this trade here...very strange.

Afterwards, It's time to get to grinding for Steven. His mons are almost level 80, while my team is...mostly level 50. So, it'll be a while.

The best strategy for leveling quickly in this game seems to be fighting Wally over and over? Let me know if there's something else that I missed.

I replaced Surf with Ice Beam in Echidna's moveset temporarily so that she can reliably sweep Wally's team. I would have replaced strength, but I need that to get in and out of Victory Road, and there's not really a good alternative team member I can give it to. Finn maybe, but I've invested a ton of expendable resources into his moveset, and I'd rather not have to redo that. Seasor can go on backup surf duty at least.

So, yeah, fo now it's time to beat Wally over and over until I feel ready to fight Steven. Unless I think of something better to do. :v

 

[Robert Stewart]

So...turns out I forgot something. I'll get to it at the end, though. It's funnier that way.

Spoiler

After 3-4 days of grinding, here's the team.

I couldn't be bothered to raise Wendy past level 60. In hindsight, I probably could have left Pluses and Nino a few levels lower. And Finn didn't end up doing much.

Here goes.

Once again, I forgot to take pictures of most of the fight. 😔

After 3 or so false starts, I did beat him....and then forgot to save. So, no point in recounting that attempt.

My plan was to have Pluses build speed against Skarmory, KO it, then baton pass the speed to Echidna. But having to switch Echidna out mid-fight ended up gutting that plan. Steven's team besides Skarmory is all slow, so it wasn't a big deal.

I did still have Pluses KO Skarmory using Thnder after Nino set up Rain Dance. Overkill! Probably. I never checked if Thunderbolt worked here or not. :v

I expected him to use Claydol next, but he sent in Aggron instead. Not that it made a difference.

Aggron's earthquake was occasionally able to lower Echidna below half health, which was too weak to deal with some later threats. My solution to this ended up being to give Echidna Leftovers and Protect to cheese heal itself enough to survive later on.

Aggron itself died in one hit to Earthquake.

Next was Cradily, who Echidna couldn't take out due to it's high defenses and eating Giga Drain in return.

Wendy took care of it with two Ancientpower counters. Even if Wendy didn't finish the job, She left Cradily weak enough that Echidna could finish it with Brick Break.

On my prior attempts, Steven sent out Claydol after Cradily. But this time he sent Metagross.

Echidna couldn't OHKO with earthquake, but was able to regain enough health to 2HKO it.

Claydol ended up dying to a crit Surf. I think Echidna would have been fine without it, though.

Armaldo died to two Surfs. Easy enough.

😎

Surprisingly low fatality rate for this fight.

So, that's it, right? Well..turns out there's one thing I forgot.

No, it's not Latias. I'm just mentioning here how I would up running into it 2 times by happenstance during my postgame training, and once again while heading to finish my last to-do item. Odd.

The real final to-do is...

...yeah, I don't know how I forgot this earlier. It's even in the OP!

Then again, I'm not sure I would have had the patience to train this lil guy enough to fight Steven. Ah well.

And that's it for the run. Hopefully it was fun for others to read through. And maybe I'll do another one later.

[Robert Stewart]

Based on the poll and my own preferences, I've decided to do HeartGold next. You can follow updates here if you're interested.