Session 1
This first session is just a rapid fire blast of catches.
Starter: aipom. Barbra, female, adamant. I asked my Tumblr followers and nearby family members for starter choices, then put them all into a random picker wheel. My sister’s pick won. Out of all the choices aipom was the one I was hoping the least to get. I made her name it and I hate it. Off to a great start.
Route 101: zigzagoon. David, male, level 3.
Route 102: wurmple. Luna, female, level 3.
Route 103: hoppip. Jessica, female, 4. My sister named this one as well. After a Twilight character. She didn’t tell me that until after I entered the name.
Route 104: pidgey. Makus, male, 5. Yes, I misspelled Markus. Yes, the pokemon renamer guy is just in Oldale. I’m deciding to live with my mistakes.
Ran around back and forth for a little bit to evolve Luna so as to avoid a double catch. She evolved into silcoon and will soon become a beautiful butterfly, I guess.
Petalburg Woods: ledyba. Dot, female, level 5. If I’m remembering its stat spread and move pool correctly ledybe/ledian is one of the worst mons in the game.
Barbra OHKO-ed the Team Aqua grunt’s wailmer with a single dizzy punch, so it looks like the dev wasn’t lying about this fancy aipom being broken early game. Makus did not learn a 4th move until level 13 so things still aren't looking good for the team overall.
Rustboro Wishing Well: bulbasaur. Terry, male, 1. Starters generally have good stats, so I was happy for this one.
Route 116: pichu. Cha Cha, female, level 6. You can tell this is the point where my sister left the room because I’m no longer giving my catches boring human names.
Rusturf Tunnel: snubbull. Pupper, male, level 8. A fairy type with intimidate! Now that might be useful against Brawly.
Roxanne was an absolute breeze. I had Barbra buff herself with one victory dance and then she OHKO Roxanne’s entire team. It’s a shame she’ll be of zero use against Brawly.
Dewford: trapinch. Chomper, female, level 10.
Route 106: vulpix. Tricky, female, 10.
This is where I ran out of steam. Next session will be Granite Cave and Brawly, so I promise things will get interesting soon.
Session 2
Before I start I have a small confession to make, this session write-up has been done for a while and I got distracted by Legend’s ZA. Editing boring, new pokemon game fun. And then I just kept forgetting to post it. But anyways getting back on track now.
First thing upon getting back to it is the wishing stars everywhere are taunting me. So many possible actually good pokemon that’d be interesting team members. It’s previously given me a dratini and a bulbasaur, so what else could it holding for me? Let’s be real, probably a caterpie.
On to the cave catches.
Granite Cave Floor 1: geodude. Whatever, male, level 9. There’s cool stuff in this cave but it’s whatever, I guess.
Granite Cave Floor 2: aron. Dino, female, level 10. It’s not like the past Dino had any time to shine.
Granite Cave Floor 3: zubat. Batto, male, 10. Honestly, zubat is seems better than pidgey so it’s the box for Makus.
While running around in the cave Terry evolved! Now no one is leaving this goddamn cave until we’re all up to level-- Wait there’s a guy in Petalburg that sells those EXP candies? And the candies don’t level you past the current cap? Okay, I can do my grinding the old fashion way somewhere else. I am SICK of this cave.
I very carefully considered my team going into Brawly, then fed all of them candy until they hit level 19. Here’s what I eventually settled with.
Lead with Pupper: He doesn’t have a fairy move yet but has intimidate, knows charm, and does decent damage with headbutt.
Luna: She has crazy high special attack, and the fact bug types aren’t particularly useful meant I wouldn’t feel all that bad sacrificing her if need be.
Batto: Is better than pidgey.
Terry: Starters have solid stats, and Terry can hit ‘em with the leech seed + sleep power combo to hang on a little extra.
Cha Cha: Thrown in after I learned that pichu evolves via leveling instead of friendship. I figured Brawly probably wouldn’t have any electric counters, and Cha Cha could outspeed his team for at least one good hit.
Barbra: The starter goes down with this ship with a hail Mary technician boosted bullet punch.
The very first turn went perfectly. Pupper not only flinched makuhita but also got it down to the red, forcing Brawly to use up his potions. Even after four bulk ups a critical hit vital throw wasn’t enough to take down Pupper, letting him get the KO in the end. Now for that run ending heracross. I sent out Luna hoping to get at least one gust and my jaw dropped as it was a 2HKO. And then Luna, my beautiful Luna, leveled up and learned air cutter just to OHKO Brawly’s meditite.
For her brave and loyal service Luna has been placed in the box. If I fail this run as well the story will be that my trainer retires to live with her in peace. While I was there I also swapped out Pupper, and brought on Dino and Tricky to prepare myself for Wattson. His magneton ace and self-destructing voltorb have always given me trouble in normal playthroughs, so given how my first fight vs Brawly went I’m very worried about whatever this hack has given that old man.
Session 3
Hey there, long time no see. I don’t really have an excuse for why this took this several months (perhaps Legends ZA got me a little more off track than I thought) but I’m back!
First off time to kick the asses of every single person on the beach outside of Slateport City. I’d forgotten whether you fight Team Aqua or Magma here so I prioritized leveling Dino in preparation for the upcoming gym, and Barbra because Starter = Good. I quickly talked to everyone in Slateport to get all the goodies, then ran to get my next catch.
Route 110: ekans. Viper, male, level 12.
I wasn’t very excited at first, but then I noticed the hack changed ekans’ typing to poison/dark. That might be a good combo in the future? For now, though, I’ve got a solid team so into the box. Going through the route later I was reminded that this is where you can catch plusle and minun, AKA the worst of the pikaclones, and gained a little extra thankfulness for Viper.
Back in Slateport a bunch of Team Aqua grunts were milling about the museum so I led with Cha Cha into battle. It was an easy sweep, but the battles reminded me of how much I hate it when the game forces you to fight two trainers in a row (usually grunts) instead of just doing a double battle. It’s not like these guys ever have a full team, so even though it’s technically the same amount of pokemon fought total it feels weirdly tedious to me. Also double battles are cool and I will take any opportunity to do them.
After finishing up my chat with Archie I ran to the pokecenter to find a new NPC standing outside of it. Some guy with his pelipper providing fast travel to Pacifidlog Town. Wasn’t expecting that, so of course I take a quick detour. The man very kindly dropped me off next to some tall grass before I set out to explore town.
Pacifidlog Town: natu. Borb, male, gentle, level 10.
Oh, cool. So now I’m getting anti-Brawly pokemon. As a back-up to Batto I don’t know if natu is actually any better than pidgey, but this will be Borb’s role purely out of spite. In town there’s another opportunity for a catch; a scuba diving minigame!
Scuba Safari: corphish. Crawdaddy, male, level 15.
Maybe he’ll be good after I’m done with the electric type gym.
The scuba safari functioned kinda like the bug catching contest in Johto. High level and high rarity means lots of point. Unfortunately, since I’m allowed one new team member and catching any pokemon would fill out the pokedex entries I couldn’t go for the gold, but I got a held item as nice consolation prize. Also the waterfall HM for some reason. I did the scuba safari a few more times to get all the items scattered around the arena before realizing they were all random respawns, then left to get back to my journey.
The first trainer battle on route 110 was a double battle, so I sent out Tricky and Dino for a test run. The battle was even VS a plusle and minun. I’d get to do my test run on some actual electric types!
It went poorly.
Dino barely chipped away at them, and I had to swap Tricky out for someone better before I even got my first KO. Fingers crossed they’ll learn better moves soon. After that debacle I made a b-line to Brendan to get the rival fight over with.
Since she’s got a good track record at this point I led with Barbra. Brendan sent out a very not scary skiploom. Had Barbra buff herself real quick with victory dance and proceeded to sweep using only dizzy punch. In the aftermath of the carnage Batto evolved! At that moment I had two very important realizations.
1: If I’m raising Tricky specifically to be a counter to magneton her fairy typing might be a problem.
2: Wattson will kill Batto.
I quickly ran back to Slateport to swap Batto for something, anything, and found Chomper waiting in my box. Based purely on vibes I’m not super confident on trapinch’s battling abilities. I’d really like to be able to evolve her first, but with the level cap that’s not going to happen. Still, she’ll have a better chance than Batto ever could.
After that I finished up all the trainers on this side of route 103, did the trick house, and got on my way. At the very end of route 110, VS the second to last trainer on the route, I had my closest call yet. A random abra used hidden power on Dino, and I don’t know what type it was, but it was a super effective hit that almost OHKO-ed her.
I took this as a sign to quit playing for the night when I made it to Mauville City. Next session I take on Wattson I suppose, so everyone wish me luck!
Session 4
It’s Wattson time… after I do all my chores around town. Beat up Wally with a single bullet punch, and Scott emerged for the child gambling den to tell me he was watching the whole time. Got the mach bike, had to run back to Slateport to buy some mail so I could trade it for a coin purse, then I spent some time gambling because there’s a guy in there’s giving out eggs for Alolan pokemon!
Ok, so it wasn’t actually gambling. This hack added some fun little pinball mingames. I was very bad at it, but thankfully you only need two points per egg. The egg is randomized so I was very excited to see what I’d get. We’ll get to that in a moment. Egg now in my team I went to get my next catch.
Route 117: volbeat. Night Light, male, level 13.
Eh, they have a fun design gimmick, but I’ve never been particularly fond of volbeat and illumise. The hack has changed it from pure bug to bug/electric, though, so that might be interesting down the line. I beat just enough trainers to clear a path for egg hatching. Several minutes of mindless bike riding later...
Mauville City Egg: Alolan exeggutor. SLANGIN, female, level 1.
I was really hoping for marowak or vulpix. I already have a much better grass type, but could probably use a fire type, grass/dragon isn’t very good typing, and I’m generally not sure what Alolan exeggutor has going for it. Then I took one step and saw its follower sprite.
[Image ID: Two screenshots from Pokemon Seaglass. Alolan exeggutor is easily twice as tall as the player character, perhaps even taller. The second screenshot is of a typical follower sprite for reference. It is a trapinch that is slightly shorter than the player character. End ID]
SLANGIN is in the box for now, but if I lose Terry she’s going on the team on principle. (At least until I find a better replacement.)
Egg hatching out of the way it’s time to get back to grinding. This is when I had what I think is my closest call yet. I sent Dino out to fight the hiker in Rusturf Tunnel, he sends out a geodude. Ok, easy win. I use dig and wait for my next for KO.
The geodude uses magnitude, a move that does double damage against pokemon mid-dig and is quadruple effective against Dino.
Dino held on with 8 HP, thank god, and went first next turn to get the KO. It barely even gave me that much EXP. I took this as a sign that maybe Dino was leveled enough and swapped to chomper for the rest of the trainers.
Shortly afterwards was much, much better. At level 22 Chomper evolved! In the base game trapinch doesn’t evolve until level 35. I keep forgetting I can just check the pokedex for the new evolution requirements. A little bit more grinding to get everyone up to level 24/25 and I was ready to go.
The first gym trainer I fought had a voltorb with the ability aftermath, which does damage upon fainting. Already very worrying. Then several trainers had non-electric types that knew electric type moves. Cool, so now I can’t even rely on the gym theme to plot out my team.
Now for Wattson himself. I led with Dino, and, in no particular order, the rest of the team was; Chomper, Terry, Tricky, Barbra, and Cha Cha.
Wattson’s first pokemon was a volbeat. One easy rock tomb later he sent out his scary magneton. Turns out I had nothing to fear because Dino got an OHKO with dig! Next up was manectric. Being so slow Dino was down to half HP at this point, so I sent out Chomper. The manectric was able to raise it’s attack twice with howl and got a scary quick attack in, but ultimately Chomper prevailed. Final pokemon, flaaffy. With Dino and Chomper having taken decent damage I swapped to Terry purely on vibes. That sheep was surprisingly tanky (or maybe Terry’s razor leaf just isn’t that strong,) so I used leech seed and poison powder to get some chip damage going. From there it was just a matter of waiting for Wattson to use up all of his potions and victory!
Gym 3 with no casualties has got me feeling pretty good about this run. Next time I’ll be getting to some Team Magma shenanigans and Flannery, so the team will be getting a bit of reworking. I feel like my catches so far have been kinda meh. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t really been feeling my current team. I’m hoping the rework and upcoming catches change that soon!
Session 5
How can one person catch so many pokemon, yet at the same time so little. We’ll get to that in a minute, though. First up, chores.
For gym prep I swapped out Tricky for Crawdaddy, and Cha Cha hasn’t been pulling her weight so Batto is back on the team. Rock smashed my way through Rustuf Tunnel to get strength, then finally picked up my reward from Mr Stone for delivering his stupid packages, which turned out to be a Z-Ring! I’m not sure if I’ll use it, but I bought up one of each crystal from an old man downstairs just in case. It might come in handy if anyone’s lacking a decent held item, I suppose. Biked all the way to Petalburg to stock up on EXP candies, and finally it’s time to get back on track.
I’m saving the battle gauntlet family just outside Mauville for pre-gym grinding (and because they scare me). Nothing to catch on this side of route 111, so time to get started on the disappointing catches just ahead.
Route 112: bonsly. Cry Baby, female, level 14.
Fiery Path: machop. Muscles, male, level 15.
I do not care for either of these creatures. I really don’t. Though, I guess Muscles will be good to throw at Norman. There was nothing on the other side of route 111, which was. Fun. Two catches I don’t care about sandwiched between a dead zone. Surely the cool volcanic ash zone up ahead will have something neat, right?
Route 113: ponyta. Lucy, female, level 14.
This is the route skarmory spawns on. I don’t know if skarmory is actually any good, and I definitely can’t use it in the upcoming gym, but it’d be really cool to have one. I did my best to avoid the trainer fights here for level grinding, so I’ll be back later to see all the other way cooler catches I could’ve gotten instead.
Professor Elm was just chilling in Fallarbor Town and offered to give me a special pokemon! ...if I show him 50 complete pokedex entires. Given I’m so limited in my catches that’s not going to happen, so for the rest of the run Prof Elm will just be dangling some sort of cool Jotho pokemon over me. At least the graphics in Fallarbor are pretty. I can understand why he’s chosen to stake out his hostage situation here. Combined with that disappointment I don’t even wanna talk about my next catch, but the game must go on.
Route 114: stantler. Doe, female, level 16.
So I ended up having to run back and forth across route 114 a few times, and the only, only other pokemon I ever encountered was swablu. Maybe wyrdeer is good. Probably not. It’s whatever. Before I could watch Team Aqua and Magma have their little scuffle one more catch jumped out at me.
Meteor Falls: nidoran. Queenie, female, level 17.
Now this finally gave me a little hope. She’ll make a solid ground type for when it’s Flannery time, and if I remember correctly the nidoran lines have a pretty diverse TM pool. I only wish I could've caught the male version because I’m not a big fan of the fact nidoqueen has boobs for some reason.
At this point I’d been playing for a while, and combined from a session of nothing particularly interesting I almost called it quits, but the nidoran catch gave me just enough energy to finish up the last few things in this area. Poking around the rest of the cave I found a moon stone. Ok, this is a sign. Queenie will be replacing Terry for the foreseeable future. Now onto the other side of Meteor Falls.
Route 115: clefairy. Luna, female, level 20.
Another decent pokemon? That also evolves via a moon stone? Perhaps the tide is turning for me. There was also a Team Aqua grunt standing around by the beach. She told me she’d found a mysterious egg that she couldn’t take with her, but didn’t want to leave it all on its own.
So of course I had to run all the way back to Fallarbor to drop off a pokemon, run all the way back to her to grab the egg, and run all the way back to Fallarbor (again) for plot mandated backtracking. By that point it’d gotten way too late so I had to call it for the night. Egg hatching will commence next session, and I swear to god it better be something good.
Session 6
Ok, no build-up. Let’s get right to the egg hatch because I’m so happy.
Aqua Grunt Egg: tinkatink. Muffin, female, level 1.
I love this thing so much. Unfortunately she’ll be useless against Flannery, so into the box she goes… for now. Immediately on to good news no: 2, Batto evolved!
While grinding I realized I don’t have access to good TMs for Queenie yet. On top of that Crawdaddy isn’t learning any decent water type moves, and will assuredly be nerfed by a sunny day setup. I brought Cry Baby on since she’ll at least resist fire type moves and can double as a sacrifice, then jammed enough rare candies down her throat to evolve. By the way, while I was grinding on route 113 I ran into multiple duskulls. Just putting that out there. Just a fun fact.
Mt. Chimney time. During the very first fight Crawdaddy flinched twice VS a houndour and almost died. At least he evolved afterwards, but things aren’t looking good. I led with Batto VS Maxie to scout out his first pokemon (a mightyena) and u-turned outta there. I decided this was the time for Crawdaddy to prove himself. He was immediately swaggered. Okay, it was go time. With that boosted attack he’d for sure KO that thing easily, if he hurt himself in confusion it’d be over. Crawdaddy managed to resisted the confusion twice to get the KO and snapped out of it just in time to fight Maxie’s camerupt. Even with Crawdaddy’s subpar move pool there’s no stopping that quadruple weakness to water. After that he made quick work of gligar and the fight was over. Perhaps a sign of good things to come!
On to Flannery, but first a quick catch.
Jagged Pass: spoink. Female, level 21.
Ehhhhhh, I’m not really sure what I’ll do with this think. Grumpig is decently tanky, so maybe I can use that. The way more interesting thing in this area was the random Magma grunt with a damn shiftry of all things. Chomper’s bug buzz made quick work of that surprise.
Went and grabbed all the goodies in Lavaridge Town. There’s an egg that’s normally has a wynaut I’ll hatch later, and I learned the herbal medicine shop now sells some evolution stones. Assuming I actually catch anything that requires one that’s nice, I suppose.
My gym team is settled. Crawdaddy at the lead followed by Chomper, Barbra, Cry Baby, Chomper, and Batto.
Going into the gym I had one major worry. There’s a lot of overlap between fire types and rock/ground types. Batto is by far the strongest member of the team, he’s fully evolved, he’s fast, and he’s got go STAB moves. Batto might be able to take out a problem pokemon on pure strength, but one bad rock tomb and it’s over. Dino is the team tank, is neutral to fire because of his rock typing, and has some super effective moves, but suffers from quadruple weakness to ground.
One of the gym trainers inexplicable had a flaaffy, but besides that the most difficult part of the gym as the stupid teleport puzzle that I hate. Now finally, finally, it’s Flannery time.
Crawdaddy got the OHKO on her slugma before it had a chance to do anything. An easy start to a tense battle. Next up was flareon. As I predicted it set up sunny day first round, as I did not predict it’s next move was trop kick, a grass type move I’d never heard of. I paused to quickly look it up, and turns out the reason I’d never heard of trop kick is because it’s a move exclusive to tsareena. I can’t even rely on pokemon having their normal move pools any more. I managed to clutch the win and swapped into Chomper VS torkoal. Here’s where things start getting bad. Even with Chomper’s fire resistance the sunny day boosted overheat was enough to do half health. The torkoal was holding a white herb to negate the overheat stat debuff, so Chomper had to tank another full power overheat. With the white herb consumed the overheats were a little less scary from there on out. After that torkoal was forced to reset sunny day I was finally able to start getting some hits in. Chomper was able to get torkoal down to red, but never quiet enough to take it out, so Flannery started burning through her potions.
And then, by absolute freak bad luck, toakoal switched to using body slam, landed a crit, and paralyzed Chomper. This is the closest to death I’ve come to yet. I went into full heal mode for several turns waiting to get a safe switch during the next sunny day reset. It was Cry Baby’s turn to shine. Flannery took the time to use her last potion while I had Cry Baby drop toakoal’s attack stats with tearful look, then it was on. Cry Baby spammed rock tomb and toakoal spammed overheat. With every use overheat gets weaker and Cry Baby resists it, so I think there’s a possible the AI interpreted sudowoodo as a grass type? In any case Cry Baby won out the war of attrition at half health.
Final pokemon: camerupt. Cry Baby, Cradaddy, and Chomper were all half health at this point. It was go time for Batto. First round he did big damage and flinched with bite, which forced camerupt to waste a turn resetting sunny day. With Batto’s damage and speed I was hoping for a 3HKO, but the camerupt held on by only a few HP. The worst had come, a sunny day boosted full power overheat on a pokemon that’s not particularly defensive. I watched Batto’s health creep down, my full body clinched, agonized yelling causing my sister to come from the other room see what was wrong.
Batto just barely survived!
Time to get Batto fuck outta there. Camerupt was just low enough for the u-turn damage to KO. Batto wins by running away, and another gym is survived!
Outside Brendan showed up to give me the go-goggles, so I decided to get my desert catches real quick.
Route 111 (for real this time): phanpy. Big Guy, female, level 21
Mirage Tower: sandshrew. Mole, male, level 24.
Besides that Cry Baby is off the team so Muscles can buff up to fight Norman, and oh god next session I have to do the Mirage Tower bike challenge. Wish me so much luck.