Pokemon HeartGold: Gift/In-Game Trades Only

[Robert Stewart]

After the success(?) of my Emerald Gift/IGT only run, I felt like doing another one of these. The vote in the last thread was split, but I felt like playing HeartGold for unrelated reasons anyway, so that's what I'll go with.

For a refresher, the idea here is to only use Pokemon that I'm given for free or which can be obtained via an in-game trade. Pokemon which are required for trades may be used up until the trade is available. (Or, that's what I allowed before...)

Emerald offered an...interesting experience, with a somewhat troublesome early game and limited access to HMS - including NO access to Fly. How will HeartGold compare?

Here are the Pokemon which will be allowed(well, with some possible exceptions):

Spoiler

Gifts:

• Your starter
• Mareep (Egg from Primo)**
• Wooper (Egg from Primo)**
• Slugma (Egg from Primo)**
• Togepi (Egg from Elm's Aide)
• Spearow (from Webster on Route 35)
• Eevee (from Bill in Goldenrod City)
• Shuckle (from Kirk in Cianwood City)
• Dratini (from Master in Dragon's Den)
• Tyrogue (from Kiyo in Mt. Mortar)
• Kanto Starter (from Pro. Oak)*
• Hoenn Starter (from Steven)*

(There is also a Tentacool given as a "pity mechanic," but due to the requirements for getting it I will not be considering it for use.

Trades:

• Onix (Violet City)
• Machop (Goldenrod City)
• Voltorb (Olivine City)
• Dodrio (Blackthorn City)
• Magneton (Power Plant)*
• Xatu (Pewter City)*
• Pikachu (Saffron City)*
• Beldum (Silph Co)*
• Rhyhorn (Diglett's Cave)*
• Steelix (Olivine City)*

Substitutes:

• Bellsprout (unttil Violet City)
• Drowzee (until Goldenrod City)
• Krabby (until Olivine City)
• Dragonair (until Blackthorn City)
• Dugtrio (until Power Plant)
• Haunter (Pewter City)*
• Pikachu (until Saffron City)*
• Foretress (Silph Co)*
• Bonsly (until Diglett's Cave)*

I won't be allowing a substitute for Steelix because you can apparently trade anything for it? Which would be way too abusable.

* Only accessible in the postgame
** Not sure if I should allow these unconditionally

Gen I and II were a lot more generous with the amount of trades available, and their remakes reflect this. There's also quite a few gifts too.

I will be playing mainly on a modded DSi, so there will be fewer screenshots this time. I'll still make occasional transfers to a PC emulator to get screenshots of new team members.

Spoiler

I was concerned I'd be in another forced starter situation with Cut, but according to Bulbapedia all of the starters can learn it. How nice of Game Freak.

With that, I opted for Totodile as my starter. Going with the Water starter again feels a bit boring, but I feel safer with one guaranteed Surf/water HM user on my team.

I didn't get a screenshot at level 5, but here's him at level 10.

Not much to say about the game up to Violet City. I made it to Mr Pokemon and back to New Bark without needing to heal at all.

As is tradition, I named my rival ???. Even as the times change, some things must remain.

Also, for some reaosn after taking this screenshot, my emulator inverted the DS screens. Not sure why.

I got my first sub right outside Violet City.

He doesn't have much time to contribute before being traded.

We'll have to see how Rocky does.

In Violet city, we hit our first big question mark of the run. There's an NPC named Primo who gives rewards based on various passwords that you give him, including three possible Pokemon eggs. The three Pokemon (Mareep, slugma, and Wooper) aren't exactly game-breaking or anything, but it's still a lot for so early in the game. So, I'm unsure if I should allow them.

I'm not sure about the subs rule either - there's a lot of trades in the postgame, so the sub rule might be more prone to abuse than usual. HGSS seems more generous with gift and trade availability than my earlier challenges, so there may not be as much need for them here. I'll leave it to "the people" to decide, if they have an opinion. :v

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by Robert Stewart

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

but I feel safer with one guaranteed Surf/water HM user on my team.

You could always make your Eevee a Vaporeon as your Surf, Waterfall, and/or Whirlpool user.

 

11 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

As is tradition, I named my rival ???. Even as the times change, some things must remain.

Classic.

 

5 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

 

In Violet city, we hit our first big question mark of the run. There's an NPC named Primo who gives rewards based on various passwords that you give him, including three possible Pokemon eggs. The three Pokemon (Mareep, slugma, and Wooper) aren't exactly game-breaking or anything, but it's still a lot for so early in the game. So, I'm unsure if I should allow them.

You could always dole them out over time, taking one as soon as you get there, and setting different gym benchmark before getting the second and third.

 

11 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

 

I'm not sure about the subs rule either - there's a lot of trades in the postgame,

Are you stopping after the Champion, or going all the way to Red?

 

[Robert Stewart]

4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

You could always make your Eevee a Vaporeon as your Surf, Waterfall, and/or Whirlpool user.

Getting a water stone for that might be an issue. It I'm reading Bulbapedia right, it would be possible to get one from a rematch on route 42, but I'm not 100% sure that's reachable.

4 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Are you stopping after the Champion, or going all the way to Red?

Following convention, I'm going all the way to Red.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Robert Stewart said:

Getting a water stone for that might be an issue. It I'm reading Bulbapedia right, it would be possible to get one from a rematch on route 42, but I'm not 100% sure that's reachable.

Fairly certain you can get all the basic stones you need from the Poke'athlon, although you do have to set your clock to the right day for them. Looking it up, I think you need to check the prize counter in the Poke'athlon Dome on Wednesday to get one (before the National Dex), and you can't access the place until after beating Whitney.

 

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, Robert Stewart said:

Getting a water stone for that might be an issue. It I'm reading Bulbapedia right, it would be possible to get one from a rematch on route 42, but I'm not 100% sure that's reachable.

You can get to that Fisherman by going through Mt. Mortar, which you don't need Surf for. Of course, it's easier to reach him with Surf, and it generally opens up the game for you (i.e. you need Surf to get Fly).

Anyway, I would actually suggest using Primo's Wooper for this purpose. Quagsire is one of the best HM slaves in the game, and this way you can use it for field moves, even if you feel guilty about using more than one of his gift Mons.

Wait, he gives out Mareep, Wooper, and Slugma? Why is he giving out two Mons you can find on the very next route? That's silly. At least getting early access to Slugma is nice.

[Robert Stewart]

Midweek update madness!

Spoiler

I realized that without another team member, I’d have to brave Sprout Tower with just two Pokemon which were weak to grass. Following form this and from some feedback, I decided to grab the Slugma egg from Primo….not that it mattered. I was too impatient to wait for it to hatch, so I decided to brave sprout tower anyway. In hindsight, Cyndaquil would probably have been the better starter choice, with Wooper as the gift egg for later surf access. Ah well.

...technically, if I allowed postgame subs, I could have caught a Ghastly here at night to help. But I also was too impatient to wait for night.

In any case, Sprout Tower wound up being easier than I thought. Geese is overlevelled enough that I was able to trudge through all of the required fights, skipping the two optional ones. For the Elder, Geese managed to defeat both Bellsprout, and Rocky only needed to finish off the Hoothoot.

With that done, on to the Gym. I only fought one of the trainers, to get Rocky to learn Rock Throw. Rocky not having 100% accurate damaging moves will be quite annoying going forward, methinks.

For Falkner, his Pidgey went down to a Screech + rock throw. Rocky almost managed to take out his hax Pidgeotto, but Geese needed to finish that one in the end. All in all, not too bad.

...somehow after all that, the Slugma egg was no closer to hatching. And we got our Togepi egg, which...was already down one stage on the egg watch. Huh.

After a bit of sidequesting in the Ruins of Alph, South we go to Route 32. Not much to say here, since I made an effort to skip any optional fights. I wound up only fighting two Youngsters, a Pickicker, and a bird trainer. I also taught Rocky Rock Smash here so I could get the Shell Bell, and in case I needed it later.

In union Cave, I used a repel to avoid fighting any wild Pokemon. I fought all the trainers except Firebreather Ray, who I didn’t see when I made my way through.

On the other side of the cave, Togepi was another stage down in the egg watch, while Slugma just made it to the “moves occasionally” stage.

The Team Rocket fights were pretty easy – Rocky made a clean sweep of their Zubats and Rattata with Rock Throw and Rock Smash, with some softening from Screech occasionally. I’m not sure why they bothered to add an executive fight here – he’s barely stronger than the Grunts preceding him.

For the Gym, this was an easy clear for Rocky, as you might expect. He learned Rock Tomb over the course of things, which...is the same power as Rock Throw, but with lower accuracy. So, not exactly helping things in the reliability department. Oh well.

I didn’t want to proceed with just Geese and Rocky in my team, and the Togepi egg was at the lowest Egg watch stage, so I ran around the gym for a bit to get it to hatch. Now I have another team member I can split experience with. Neat.

At this point Geese still hadn’t evolved. Unfortunately, ???’s next fight turned out to be too big of a roadblock for my current team. Prof Elm had asked me to show him the hatched egg, so I opted to run back to New Bark to get the Everstone. The Slugma egg hatched along the way.

Due to...reasons I didn’t get a screenshot of her at hatching. Please forgive my sloppiness.

I fought most of the trainers I skipped along the way, and managed to get Est and Miranda to level 9. Miranda didn’t make training easy through, as her only level 1 damage move was Smog. Yeesh.

I was too impatient to grind any more, so I took on ??? right when I got back to Azalea. Ghastly was an easy KO for Geese. He died to Bayleef, though he did managed to lower its speed with Scary Face.

I sent Miranda in next. The 9 level difference made her embers pretty weak, but she did get a lucky burn in, and also made Bayleef use a lot of Synthesis PP. Miranda did get KO’d, but left Bayleef weak enough for Est to finish the job. Est immediately died to Zubat, but the rest of the way was clear with Rocky still in reserve.

If I had planned this playthrough better, the best choice would have been to start with Chikorita and grab the gift Wooper egg. Fighting Cyndaquil would be much easier in that case than trying to deal with Bayleef currently. Ah well, not sense crying over spilled milk.

Not much to say for Ilex Forest. The fights are pretty easy compared to the roadblock of ???. It’s been a while since I played this, so I forgot they changed the mechanics for the Farfetch’d chase thingy.

On the other side, I managed to catch a Drowzee in the afternoon.

The name is because something something sleep staves. IDK.

I thought it was catchable at night only, but apparently not. Or maybe my DS clock is messed up. Who can say.

Anyway they won’t be around for long, as we’ll trade them right away in Goldenrod. Pretty odd so far that all these NPCs are looking for Pokemon that are readily available nearby…

Immediately after healing in Goldenrod, I make a beeline for the next trade.

Coming with an item that would be useful if I cared about EV training. Well, the thought is nice.

I messed about training in the underground and north of the city instead of going to fight Whitney.

Speaking of the north, a bit of an odd team member is waiting for us there.

Not sure if I should try to keep her or just do the sidequest. Est will be able to learn Fly after evolving, and we get a Dodrio later anyway. Time will tell, I guess.

See y'all next time.

[Robert Stewart]

Weekend update, mostly finishing Goldenrod and Ecruteak stuff.

Spoiler

Whitney postmortem:

Not too bad honestly. Clefairy wasn’t that bad. For Miltank, I had Geese debuff her speed with Scary Face and then had Rocky debuff with Screech. I probably should have used scary face or screech a second time, as Muscle wasn’t able to outspeed her and missed a KO by just a hair. She wound up getting three shot. Rocky ended up finishing the job with an extra screech and then two rock smashes.

Afterward, we made a merry jaunt through national park to Ecruteak. Nothing much to detail there.

In Ecruteak, I headed to the burned tower first. Time for the next rival fight.

Went much easier than the last one. Ghastly went down to a single Extrasensory after using curse.

I managed to lock Bayleef into spamming Reflect with Encore, and was able to KO it easily with Miranda. Zubat went down easily to Rocky. I got too cocky against magnemite, who wound up two-shotting Miranda with Sonicboom. F. All in all, not to bad.

Conveniently, Est evolved right after this fight.

Neat. Unfortunately I think her final form is postgame only.

For some reason at this point I felt like going back to get the Eevee from bill.

Unfortunately I again forgot to screenshot him at the time he joined, so this is after a few levels of training in Burned Tower and other places.

He’s Kliff because multiple evolutions. IDK.

I feel like the best option for my team is to evolve Kliff into Espeon so I have a psychic type to deal with Chuck. If I didn’t have Geese, I’d need to make Kliff a Vaporeon by waiting for the gift water stone from Fisherman Tully...but that sounds really tedious, so I’m glad I didn’t have to do that. Apparently you can also get one from the Pokeathlon but I don’t wanna play those minigames. :v

Anyway, now it’s Morty gym time.

I unfortunately got Kliff KO’d due to mean look force trapping him against the first trainer in the gym after forgetting to switch. RIP.

Afterwards, the trainers were mostly easy fights for Geese and Est. There was one unfortunate Confusion and Curse induced KO for Est, though.

Now for Morty himself…

Post-mortem screenshot:

I had Kliff lead and then switch in to Geese for some EXP on his leading Ghastly. Then, it was time for Gengar. I thought Geese could contribute by using Scary Face to setup for another team member, but he was too weakened to curse and died to a single shadow ball. RIP.

Est managed to beat him by getting lucky dodging Hypnosis and inflicting Sleep with Yawn, then spamming Extrasensory.

For his weaker Haunter she did end up getting put to sleep, but woke up after a single dream eater. It went down pretty quickly to extrasensory. The stronger Haunter I managed to lock into using Mean Look via Encore, after which it was an easy clear. GG Morty.

Now that I have Surf, I thought about going back to some side areas. But my lack of an answer for water types was...really causing me problems. So, I opted to head to Olivine for our next trade.

Conveniently, Olivine has a house with the Good Rod in it, which is just what we need for our next sub.

Something something claws are kinda like swords, right?

Anyway, she’ll not be around for long, as the trade is right down the road.

“Likes to run,” huh. Sure.

See y'all next time.

[Robert Stewart]

Midweek madness, with a lot of updates. Probably too many. :v

Spoiler

At this point I felt like returning to side areas, in particular the trio of ace trainers on Route 34. Turns out I was jumping the gun here, as I was pretty underlevelled and Billy doesn’t yet help much in fighting water types.

Somehow I managed to get through the first double battle with one KO. For the final sister, I managed to beat her Cloyster by getting lucky with Yawn and Encore. Somehow I made it through that fight without any KOs. The reward for all that trouble is a single-use item, which seems a little lame for the trouble. In Gen 2 it was a type-boosting held item, which I guess is still niche but is at least permanent. Oh well.

I did some more exploring in Union Cave and Slowpoke Well, during which time Kliff evolved.

Unfortunately I forgot to check if Espeon learns any Psychic moves when evolving. It does not, and doesn’t learn the next move (Psybeam) til level 36, which is too overlevelled to help with Chuck. It does learn Confusion at level 15, but I missed that. Ah well. We still have Est and Kenya.

Speaking of Kenya, she evolved not long after.

Neat. The remakes buffed Kenya’s level from 10 to 20, which is actually the level that Spearow normally evolves at. Hopefully Webster won’t mind the free training….

After this, I explored a bit in Mt. Mortar. Most of the interesting stuff in Mt. Mortar is locked behind waterfall, so I’ll have to come back there later. Though along the way, Muscles did evolve.

Neat.

I’ve been trying to train Billy as well, but he’s really frail and can die easily due to bad luck. Ah well.

That aside, I decided to head to Cianwood directly. Probably should have gone up the lighthouse first, but I didn’t feel like it, and once we’re there we can fly back.

Time for Chuck.

His Primape was pretty easy for Kenya to take down, but Poliwrath was a bit tricky. Keyna didn’t do much damage with Aerial Ace and took huge damage from Body Slam. I tried sending in Billy thinking maybe he could do more damage with Charge Beam, but unfortunately he missed and was immediately KO’d by Focus Punch. Poliwrath got Paralyzed by Static. This did slow him down, but also meant I couldn’t rely on Sleep strats for anything. In the end it came down to Extrasensory spam and praying that Hustle never made Est miss. Fortunately, she did not, so I managed to just power through both Hyper Potions. Fun.

Post mortem screenshot:

I then went up to fight Eusine, who I was...not ready for. I didn’t have any team members, and for some reason I removed Rocky from my team for the fight. So, yeah, attempt 1 did not go well.

For attempt 2, I brought Rocky back and taught him Dig. The fight against his Drowzee went much worse, as Geese got hit by Hypnosis and then didn’t wake up before dying to Dream Eater. F. But after that, Rocky was able to take care of his Electrode well enough. And then Est took care of Haunter.

GG.

I opted to teach Fly to Kenya because I didn’t want to give up any of Est’s other moves.

I flew back to Olivine, went up the lighthouse, flew back to Cianwood, and got the medicine. While I was there, I also grabbed Shuckie.

Not sure if they’ll be useful, but I wanted them just because. :v

Apparently if we get high enough friendship we get to keep them? Neat.

I got the call that the Safari Zone was open. I ran over there mainly as an excuse to do more training, then I flew back to Olivine to finish the quest to get Jasmine back in the gym.

And with that, on to Jasmine.

First attempt went even worse than this. I thought Miranda might help here, but she got one-shot by the Magnemite. So...yeah. In attempt two I KO’d the first Magnemite with Rocky, who died to her Steelix. I KO’d Steelix with Geese, who I oped to trade against the last Magnemite for big Surf damage. Then Muscle got the final KO. Probably could have avoided any KO’s if I switched out Rocky against Steelix, but it is what it is.

On to Mahogany.

After beating the Red Gyarados, I immediately traded the red scale for the Exp. Share form Mr. Pokemon, which should make training my weaker team members somewhat easier. For the Rocket HQ, I oped to give it to Miranda.

The Rockets here are really underlevelled compared to the last two Gym fights – maybe you’re supposed to go here first before Olivine/Cianwood? IDK.

The fight with Petrel went smoothly. The fight with Arianna also went smoothly – it’s hard to see how it couldn’t with Lance being 13-15 levels above Arianna’s team. So, yeah.

At some point along the way, Geese evolved.

Neat.

The Gym wound up mainly being a solo for Muscles, with Vital Throw or Revenge being able to easily take out most of the trainers here. Onto Pryce himself.

Well, this could have gone better…

Muscles easily handled Seel and Dewgong, but took too much damage to last against Piloswine. Geese would have been able to finish the job, but he missed two Surfs and died. So I had to send in Billy to use Selfdestrct as I wasn’t confident any else on my team could finish the job.

On to the next Rocket encounter. There’s some nonsense with clothes in the meantime, but afterwards, it’s up the tower for us. The grunts aren’t quite as weak compared to the ones in the HQ, but still kinda weak.

I neglected to bring Est for this mission, which probably made the Petrel fight more tedious than it should’ve been. For once we have a fight against a trainer with a full team, but it’s all Koffing and one Weezing. Not difficult though.

I, uh, wound up playing too much of this game and neglecting to record my thoughts on battles starting from here very soon after they occurred. So my memory on the rest of the fights is somewhat hazy. Moral of the story: pace yourself!

Anyway, into the Goldenrod underground we go. Rival fight time.

Billy took out Golbat, and then Muscle took out Magnemite. Muscle got paralyzed, which was annoying. But most of her attacks have low priority anyway. Muscle also took out Sneasel, but I forget what order exactly that happened in. Est took out Haunter but died due to Curse damage. And Kenya took out Meganium.

That’s it for interesting fights in the underground. Back up the tower.

Proton was easy enough. How hard can a 2-Pokemon really be, I suppose. Harder than Gen II, at least.

Somewhere around this point is when I realized that Shuckie can actually contribute thanks to Safeguard! Not needing to have the rest of my team worry about statuses is pretty useful.

Ariana was easy enough, aside from some issues with Glare. But Shuckie helped with that. But I managed an answer to basically everything.

And now onto the big boss himself, Archer.

Not a huge challenge, but somewhat tricky. Geese took out his Houndour easily enough. Est needed some help from Kenya against Koffing. Geese couldn’t quite manage against Houndoom, so Muscle needed to help there. But everyone made it in one piece.

With that done, it’s….time for some more side areas. Mainly Lake of Rage. My focus here was getting Kliff to level 36 to learn Psybeam, so he could actually contribute to the team. Somewhere along the way I grabbed the Choice Scarf and Specs, which actually wound up being significant!

I also went and got the once free heart scale you can get in Johto. Well, free as in there’s no luck involved in finding it.

With that done, it was through Ice Path and to Blackthorn.

Before anything else, I used the move deleter to remove Cut from Geese’s moveset and the reminder to learn Ice Fang. I don’t really have a better option for Ice damage right now...

And for the Clair fight.

This was a doozy. Billy could take out Gyarados, but not anything else. He did live enough intorder to switch out before fainting.

I actually switched in to Shuckie here. Shuckie could put up a safeguard to prevent any shenanigans with Thunder wave against Geese. Despite not even being level 30 yet, he managed to tank an Aqua Tail with the help of a damage reducing berry, and then switch out to Geese.

Geese at his current level wasn’t fast enough to avoid taking too much damage from the Dratini. However, I found the choice scarf gave him enough damage to outspeed them. He couldn’t oneshot them with Icefang, but he didn’t need to without getting outsped.

Geese couldn’t quite make it through Dragonair #2, so I had Kliff come in instead. I gave Kliff the Choice specs, which boosted Psybeam enough o finish the Dragonair and deal some damage to Kingdra. For the coups de grace, Billy switched back in to finish with Selfdestruct.

So, yeah, Exciting stuff.

After this, we have access to the Dragon’s Den. I needed to reconfigure Geese’s moveset yet again as I needed him to use Whirlpool in addition to Surf. So Scary Face had to go. Alas.

In Dragon’s Den, we got our next sub.

Technically I could have taught her whirlpool, but since her trade is available despite not having evolved her yet, I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.

After going through the Dragon’s Den, then back to the gym, then back to the Den, we have another team member.

Don’t get these two confused, okay?

Sadly I don’t think that unique Extremespeed will be lasting – I’ll need too much of Altena’s moveset for HMs.

After grinding on route 45, Femina was ready for the trade.

Birb.

IIRC Dodrio is considered better than Fearow, so maybe it’s worth it to replace Kenya?

IDK.

See y'all next time.

[Robert Stewart]

A much shorter update:

Spoiler

Before doing any of the story stuff, I went back to Mt. Mortar. I got in some training for Geese and Altena, but mainly it was to get our next team member.

I think I may evolve him to Hitmonchan and have him replace Muscles for fighting-type damage. Learning all the elemental punch moves could give him some backup utility for type matchups. Or something.

Unfortunately the story won’t let me head to the Elite Four, so I have to deal with stuff in Ecruteak. First, the Kimono girls marathon.

I forgot to save and didn’t prepare, so I wound up wiping on my first attempt. I actually made it all the wat to the last one, but I didn’t have a way to deal with her since Billy had already selfdestructed. Ah well.

On attempt 2, I...also didn’t prepare enough. My bad.

I made sure to bring Muscles and Rocky for attempt 3, alongside Geese, Kliff, and Billy. And Altena is there for exp.

I led with Muscles and had Billy in slot 2 – I assumed Muscles could take out Umreon and then die to Espeon, and Billy could use screech before switching out to Geese or someone else as needed. While Muscles did help, he did not even make it through the Umbreon right. RIP.

Espeon went as planned – soften with screech, switch in to Geese, OHKO with Crunch. For Flareon I switched directly to Geese, not needing any softening.

Jolteon was tricky – I thought I’d screech + switch to Rocky, but Jolteon decided to spam double team, which made things more annoying. I did manage to hit once with dig, but it wasn’t quite an OHKO. Instead of waiting for another hit, I switched in to Kliff to finish with Swift.

Vaporeon was last. In stead of gambling on a charge beam hit, I just had Billy selfdesruct and then finished with Geese.

Could’ve gone better, but we made it.

The story still won’t let me got to the League, so I guess I gotta deal with Ho-oh.

Route 27 and 26 went mostly uneventfully. I spent most of the time training Kenya, as she was quite underlevelled at the start (~level 31). Others will have easier grinding opportunities later.

After that, it’s time for Victory Road and our penultimate(?) Silver fight.

Post mortem:

Went pretty well. I didn’t check his team composition beforehand, so I didn’t know he would lead with Sneasel. Geese happened to be first, and he did pretty well. Next was Meganium, who Kenya could take out easily. Next was Magneton, who I brought in Muscles to face. Muscles didn’t quire finish before Silver switched in Kadabra. I opted to switch in to Kliff, who was able to take out Kadabra. Then I switched Billy > Geese for finishing Magneton – they were weak enough that I could finish with Waterfall. Geese fainted to Hauner, but Kliff was able to sweep him and Haunter.

So, that’s the last fight before the Elite Four. I’ve got a lot of training to do in the meantime, so I’ll see y’all when that’s over.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Made on run at the elite four today. Surprisingly, I made it to Lance! but not past him. Geese's Ice Fang can't quite deal with his Dragonites, and I don't really have backup for when he faints. So, it's still a work in progress.

[Robert Stewart]

Elite four done! Only took me three attempts.

Spoiler

Here's the champion team.

Geese probably did most of the work on the team, or at least as much as the next member. Will was nearly a clean sweep for him, except for Slowbro - the combination of defense buffs from Curse and Exeggutor's Reflect were too much to get through with Crunch. I had him using the Choice Scarf to give him the edge to outspeed (almost) everything. He also KO'd Bruno's Onyx and Karen's Houndoom.

He also did most of the work against Lance, but I'll save that for last.

Kliff played an equal if not more important role than Geese. He basically swept Bruno aside form Onix, and completely swept Koga (even Foretress). He aalso took out Karent's Gengar. I gave him the Choice Specs and basically spammed Psybeam the whole time.

Billy played an important role filling in a few gaps in fights. He wound up taking out Will's Slowbro after it stacked too much defense for Geese, and also took out Karen's Murkrow. It's really unfortunate than all of his important moves (Charge Beam, Thunder, and Screech) have accuracy issues, but I'm too lazy to play enough Voltorb flip to get Thunderbolt. :v

Muscle took out Karen's Umbreon. That's...mostly it. In some earlier attempts he took out Houndoom as well, but He didn't quite manage that this time. Ah well.

Kenya took out Karen's Vileplume, which was helpful. In some earlier runs I had her take out Exeggutor using Fly and some more stalling to help wait out Barrier. Probably should have done that this time, but oh well.

Rocky's job during the E4 was to sit in the back and gain EXP for Lance, because I was too lazy to grind him past lv42 before starting. In the end, that worked out. On my earlier attempts, I brought Altena as member #6, but Rocky ended up being more useful.

Now, for Lance.

Billy took out Gyarados with Thunder (having to reset for the occasional double miss). He could survive one hit from Gyarados, but would faint in one hit either way to Lance's Lv50 Dragonite. He was fast enough to use screech before fainting, which setup for a 1-hit kill from Geese with Ice Fang.

For the next Dragonite, I switched out Geese for Rocky to setup Screech. Rocky had enough defense to survive one hit of Dragon Rush. I gave him an Ice damage reducing berry thinking he might need to tank a Blizzard, but that ended up not being needed, so I should have given him a Sitrus berry instead. Oh well. After Screeching, I switched to Kenya to take a hit for that Geese could switch in cleanly and KO without taking any damage.

For the second Dragonite, I switched out for Kliff instead. Kliff paralyzed the Dragonite thanks to Syncronize, though this isn't end up being that helpful. He did enough damage with Psybeam before fainting that I didn't need to use Screech to setup a KO for Geese.

Next, Aerodactyl. This one was tricky because I couldn't outspeed him. I switched out to Rocky, who managed to survive a hit despite being low health and used Screech again. Then I switched in to Muscles to take a hit so that Geese could switch in cleanly. Geese still took a hit from Thunder Fang, which left him at really low health. But he did oneshot Aerodactly with Waterfall.

And the final foe was Charizard, who...died in one hit to Waterfall without any debuffs. So, that was a relief.

So, that's the League. On to Kanto next week.

[Robert Stewart]

A brief foray into Kanto:

Spoiler

I did the fast ship and then the missing part sidequest before doing any gym fights, and then also rushed to Pewter to get my trades done.

Here are our subs:

I opted to go for the 10% wild Dugtrio chance, and for the wild Haunter on route 8, so that I didn't have to train them before trading.

And here's our trades:

Not sure about these - Paul might give me some type flexibility if I want to keep fly but can't bring both Kliff and Kenya. Maggie I think will have higher special attack than Billy, so might be better as a straight electric type damage dealer? IDK.

For gyms, I cleared Surge, Brock, and then Sabrina.

Surge was a bit tricky because I'm still stuck with Rocky for ground type damage. I should probably spring for Earthquake for him instead of dig, but...well, I'm stingy.

Brock was uneventful.

Sabrina was more of a challenge. Most of my team is sub level 50 and I couldn't outspeed her Alakazam at all, and Energy Ball was a big threat for Geese. I did figure out a way to beat her in the end, though.

Post-mortem:

I ended up getting billy to level 50 and then teaching him light screen via TM. I also bothered to spend some time doing Voltorb Flip to get him thunderbolt...not that it mattered for this fight.

Billy lead and setup light screen + screeched to weaken Espeon. I got lucky with Espeon spamming Calm Mind for three turns, which let Geese switch in safely and KO with Crunch.

For Alakazam, I planned to switch to Alena to use Thunder Wave to slow him down. Alakazam always set up Reflect on the first turn which let me switch in safely, but Altena got crit and I had to do something else. I somehow forgot Alakazam had Energy Ball, so I switched in Rocky thinking he could Screech or something. Which, didn't work. Oops. After that I switched in Billy to renew Light Screen and screech, then switched in to Geese. He got lucky with Alakazam deciding to renew Reflect instead of attacking, so he could finish with Crunch.

Mr. Mime went down to just Geese.

So that's that. Maybe some of our new team members will contribute on some of the other Gym leaders. I figure they'll be easier than Sabrina at least.

 

[Robert Stewart]

I forgot to update this for a bit, oops.

Spoiler

I tackled the remaining Kanto Gym leaders besides Blue.

I opted to do Blaine, then Misty, then Janine, then Erika.

Blaine first. Incidentally, while I was doing this, I gave the Exp Share to Maggie until she learned discharge.

Post-Blaine status:

Ended up being a tricky fight due to his Gengar. I lead with Altena instead of Geese because I wanted to level her as well.

First attempt had some bad luck on his Magmar. Altena got confused and then died to a sunny-day boosted overheat. Then Geese got Burned which reduced his attack more than I wanted to deal with.

Probably I could have dealt with this using a slightly different team composition, but instead I just switched in Billy to have him use Explosion to deal with Magmar. Then Rapidash wasn’t as hard to deal with.

After this, I went through Seafoam Islands, but forgot to grab the Ice Beam TM. Oof.

Inside the Islands, Maggie got to level 40 for Discharge, so I felt comfortable going after Misty next.

Along the way, there was a trainer I had an embarrassingly hard time taking down, because he had a Quagsire and I’m bad at Pokemon. :v

Post-Misty status:

Maggie was helpful for the Gym, less so for the actual Misty fight. They did weaken Golduck, but were a little slow and so were’ able to finish the job. I switched in to Altena because I wanted to save Billy for later. Altena finished Golduck with Dragon Rush. She also took out Quagsire.

For Lapras, I switched in to Muscle. I was mainly using him for a free turn, but he actually managed to get Lapras down to low HP with Revenge. Maybe if I trained him more or evolved him, he would have gotten the KO. Ah well.

Starmie went down to Billy. Not much to say there.

After this, I setup a trade to get Muscles and Rocky evolved, finally.

Wheee!

Janine next.

Unsurprisingly, this was an easy sweep for Kliff with Choice Specs.

The most thing was during the fight, Altena got her final evolution thanks to Exp. Share.

Lovely.

I’ve had some issues in dungeons with running out of PPs for moves, so I spent some time after this farming for Red Shards from Rock Smash. As far as I know, this is my only source of Leppa berries in the game, aside form planting an existing one in a pot.

I also went out to routes 13-15 to train Doris. I wanted a second flying type for Erika’s gym. Also, I wanted her to learn drill peck. Kenya could also learn it, but I want her to keep Aerial Ace to deal with double team jank. Maybe a bad idea, but w/e.

Anyway, on to Erika.

Doris wound up being less useful than I hoped, probably because I left her two underlevelled. She wasn’t quite able to KO Jumpluff before she switched, and took a huge amount of her HP before finishing Tangela. A Grass Knot from Victreebel ended her.

Instead of Kenya, I oped to switch in Kliff, who easily took out Victreebel and the weakened Jumpluff.

For Belossom, I had Altena switch in for the resistance to Solarbeam. IDK why I didn’t use Kenya. That aside, Altena was able to spam Dragon Rush to win the day.

Also, during the fight, Atlas evolved.

Who knows if I'll actually train him up further or not.

Anyway, that’s it for most of the gyms.

Onto Blue next time, hopefully.

[Robert Stewart]

Blue time:

Spoiler

Post-mortem screenshot:

I guess I was pushing my luck with this one. Got it after 4 attempts.

My plan was to lead with Billy and put up light screen – otherwise Doris wouldn’t be oneshot by Exeggutor’s Psychic. This mostly worked, but I had to stall a bit to wait out Trick Room.

Unfortunately, on my last attempt Blue decided to switch out Exeggutor early and switch in Rhydon. I switched in Geese, who was able to take one stone edge. He wasn’t able to OHKO with waterfall, but I got a lucky flinch and KO’d in two hits. In hindsight, I probably should have used Altena for this, as I think surf would od more damage even without STAB.

Exeggutor came back next. Geese was locked to using Waterfall, so I switched out to Doris who died to Psychic. But this did let me switch Geese back in to use Crunch.

Next, Machamp. At this point Kliff’s Psybeam really wasn’t cutting it anymore, so I did use the Psychic TM. I would have preferred to learn it naturally, but oh well.

Kliff was able to take one Stone Edge and OHKO with Psychic.

Next was Arcanine, who took our Kliff with Extremespeed. I though Geese might also not live, but he survived with 2 HP :o. And then OHKO’d with waterfall.

Next was Pidgeot. Geese weakened it a bit with Waterfall, bt as expected he was immediately KO’d.

I then switched in Billy, who easily KO’d Pidgeot and the following Gyarados.

Probably a fight that I made harder than it should have been. I brought Maggie in case I needed an electric type after I had used Explosion, but that ended up not being needed. And then Atlas is just here for training.

There’s a lot of training coming up, so I’m thinking I might try to get a lucky egg. If I’m inpatient, I might try to force a swarm to appear somehow, but we’ll see.

See y'all next time.

[Robert Stewart]

Pretty short update this time.

Spoiler

Well, there was no Chansey Swarm this week, so I’ll have to figure something else out.

I hadn’t visited Mt. Moon yet, so there were a few chumps along the way to clear out. And then, there was another rival fight.

Atlas was just strong enough to contribute, though that probably has more to due with the rival’s Sneasel being weak. Next, I switched in Kliff to tank a Phychic, and then Geese to KO with Crunch. Next was Meganium, who Doris was able to take out pretty easily. Next came Magneton, who went down to Rocky. After that was Gengar. Rocky used Screech to weaken it enough for Geese to OHKO with Crunch. And then last was Golbat, who went down easily to Billy. All around an easy fight.

Probably won’t be much to say til I find the time/patience to grind for the elite four rematch, and then eventually Red. See y’all whenever that is.

[Robert Stewart]

Shot in the dark - anyone following this know what the conditions are to get Lt. Surge to appear and give his phone number are? Everywhere I check online seems to have contradictory information.

[ranger016]

Idk if this is accurate, but bulbapedia have this:

In Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, he will be outside of the Power Plant between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. This only occurs after the player has captured, not defeated, Zapdos. If the player defeated Zapdos, they will need to battle the Elite Four again for Zapdos to reappear. If the player arrives walking with a Pikachu, he will happily give his Pokégear number out, and if called on Friday morning, will be at the Fighting Dojo for a rematch. After the player gets his Pokégear number, he will be at the Magnet Train station in Saffron City. There he'll offer to trade his French Pikachu, nicknamed Volty, for the player's Pikachu that he saw at the Power Plant (though it need not be the same one). She will be at the same level as the Pikachu traded, will know the moves appropriate for that level, and be holding a Yellow Shard.

It matches with Serebii's too.

[Robert Stewart]

Not a full update, but i did get a Chansey swarm to appear. I got two lucky eggs out of that, which has made grinding for the elite four rematch/red much easier.

23 hours ago, ranger016 said:

Idk if this is accurate, but bulbapedia have this:

In Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, he will be outside of the Power Plant between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. This only occurs after the player has captured, not defeated, Zapdos. If the player defeated Zapdos, they will need to battle the Elite Four again for Zapdos to reappear. If the player arrives walking with a Pikachu, he will happily give his Pokégear number out, and if called on Friday morning, will be at the Fighting Dojo for a rematch. After the player gets his Pokégear number, he will be at the Magnet Train station in Saffron City. There he'll offer to trade his French Pikachu, nicknamed Volty, for the player's Pikachu that he saw at the Power Plant (though it need not be the same one). She will be at the same level as the Pikachu traded, will know the moves appropriate for that level, and be holding a Yellow Shard.

It matches with Serebii's too.

Yeah I found that later as well. Not sure why the other sources I found seem confused on this subject. I guess everyone assumes you'd catch Zapdos and never bothered just defeating it.

 

 

[Robert Stewart]

Time for the big finale(s).

Spoiler

Time for the elite four runback.

I didn’t take pictures after each fight unfortunately.

For Will, I led with Rocky. On a related note, have you guys heard about this “Stealth Rock” thing? Turns out it’s a pretty good move, and Rocky can set it up for me.

Anyway, I thought that it was strange that his Bronzong liked to use Gravity so much...but I forgot that Bronzong doesn't always have Levitate. Derp.

Rocky took out Bronzong, and then it was up to Geese to take out his team til he got to Slowbro. At that point I switched Geese out for Kliff with Choice Specs-boosted Shadow Ball. Having someone who can actually resist Psychic damage and do effective damage back is useful, surprisingly enough.

Next was Koga. I again led with Rocky, Who could setup stealth rock. Skuntank spammed dig, which worked out really well for Rocky since he knows Earthquake. After that I switched out for Fliff for the rest of the fight.

Next, Bruno. This was almost a sweep for Kliff if not for Lucario. I taught Altena Fire Blast to deal with it. I opted for Fire Blast over Flamethrower mainly because I can easily buy more if I need to replace it with something else on an upcoming fight. Aside from that it was another easy fight.

Next up was Karen. I setup Stealth Rock again with Rocky. Then I switched in Muscles to deal with Weavile – With Choice Scarf he was fast enough to outspeed. Billy was able to take out Honchkrow and also Spiritomb thanks to it halving its HP with Curse. Muscles took out Umbreon and Absol, but Geese needed to take out Houndoom.

Lance was the biggest challenge by far. Sadly, it’s been a few days so my memory on the exact details has faded. I had to make wide use of damage-reducing berries to make it through this. I used and Occa berry to help Rocky setup Stealth Rock. But he died immediately afterwards anyway. I had Ice Fang on Geese and Ice Beam on Altena, but neither were able to live more than 1 turn against him and couldn’t OHKO. They also couldn’t outspeed him, even with the Choice Scarf. I might have had Kliff setup with Psychic to weaken Salamence enough that one of the others could KO him. Or I had Geese heal enough damage to survive two hits. My world for a Vs. Recorder that worked for single player battles…

Anyway, I remember what happened after much easier. Billy took out Gyarados and then weakened Garchomp with Explosion. Then I was able to take out Altaria, Charizard, and Dragonite more or less easily. It could have been either Geese or Dragonite doing this since they both now and ice and water move. (Waterfall and Surf for each, respectively). I think I remember using Outrage here a bunch, but I can’t be sure. Curse my feeble memory…

Anyway, that’s the elite four part deux. Now to fight them again a bunch of time for more training.

Not much to say about the training itself, aside from one thing – did you know you can steal form the gym leaders during their rematches? I got a flame orb from Falkner that way. Very odd. I guess all’s fair in love and Pokemon.

Anyway, with my team in the level 71-74 range, I thought it was time to give fighting Red a go.

He leads with his Pikachu, so I lead with Rocky. Not much Pikachu could do, so I set up Stealth Rock before KO’ing with Earthquake.

Next was Blastoise. I was expecting it to use Hydro Cannon, so I gave Rocky Protect to try and do some cheese with it...but it never ended up using Hydro Cannon. Actually, none of Red’s starters used their “Super” moves. So much for that plan. Rocky went down to Blizzard, so it was Billy’s turn.

Billy couldn’t quite KO despite the stealth rock and hail chip, but he was still faster. Surprisingly, he also didn’t die to Blizzard in one hit. Huh. Anyway, after a full restore, he KO’d in two hits.

Next was Snorlax. Billy setup with explosion, which ended up taking out almost all of Snorlax’s health. I switched in Muscles and he finished off with Cross Chop – probably overkill and unreliable, but whatever. I actually gave him the Flame Orb I stole thinking he would need the power boost from Guts, but it didn’t end up being needed at all.

Next came I Charizard. This was an easy KO for Geese as Charizard had half his health already taken off by Stealth Rock. Went down easily to Choice Scarf Waterfall.

Next up was Venusaur. I opted to sacrifice Geese here so I could cleanly switch in Kliff. One Choice Specs Psychic was able to KO with chip from Rocks, Hail, and Waterfall form earlier.

Finally, there was Lapras. This fight might have been harder if Red kept his Espeon like in Gen II. Lapras went down to two Psychics.

Here’s the final team for this fight:

So...that’s it! Well, in terms of fights we can do. There’s some more trades and gifts which have been unlocked by this final fight.

First, Jasmine’s trade. She’ll give a Steelix in exchange for any Pokemon. I opted to trade the first Pokemon I caught on Route 39.

Let’s home she doesn’t mind…

Here’s what we get in return.

That’s neat I guess.

Next, we get a Kanto and Hoenn starter. Oak gives one for beating Red, and Steven shows up to give one after the Copycat sidequest.

I picked the types I didn’t get, but it’s not like it matters at this point.

Finally, Steven will trade a Beldum in exchange for a Foretress. So, let’s go grab that.

First, I got a Pineco on Route 26.

I think Route 26 is the highest-level area you can get Pineco, but I’m not sure.

After a bit of training, we’re ready for the final trade.

Whee.

So, that’s that. Hopefully y’all enjoyed this. I may or may not do another one at some point.