Challenge The Orange League - Pokemon Emerald Catching Contest (Deadline 4/4/14)

[TheOrangeLeague]

(Art by Kadew)
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Welcome everyone to Round 7! If you're new to the Orange League, check out this thread. But without any further ado, let's get into the next challenge!

~*Challenge*~​

For this round, we take a trip back to the Gameboy Advance for a challenge in Emerald version!

This challenge is simple: Catch as many Pokemon as possible in 1 hour and 30 minutes on a brand new save file!​

Rules and Guidelines:
1. Pokemon Emerald Version.
2. New save file, name your character "OLR7"
3. Catch as many Pokemon as possible in the time limit of 1:30. Any screenshots with an in-game time of 1:30 or higher will not be counted.
4. No glitch abuse, cheats, save state abuse, RNG manipulation, screenshot manipulation, submitting someone else's score as your own, etc. If we have solid reason to believe you have cheated you WILL be permanently disqualified from this round and all future rounds, as well as have your name stricken from the leader board. Also, Hulavuta will cry.
5. No sign-ups required, but posting on this topic if you're interested in competing would be appreciated.
6. All submissions must be in by 11:59PM EST on March 28th, 2014.
7. In the unlikely event of a tie, the person who submitted their score first will win.

Submitting:

Start a Conversation with TheOrangeLeague and send us photographic (screenshots or camera photos) proof of your score. What we are looking for is the trainer card:

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You can submit as many times as you'd like. Only scores submitted to TheOrangeLeague via private conversation will be counted.
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If you have any further questions, first refer to the main topic. If that fails, then contact either Hulavuta or Jimera0 via forum conversation or in #orangeislands.

Good luck everyone, and have fun!

And uhh... sorry for the delay again.

 

[atsync]

I probably won't be submitting this time, but it's cool to see this challenge come back again.

This looks like it'll be more straight-forward than the Pokemon Crystal one since there's no day/night system to account for and the early-game path is fairly linear, but players will still need to figure out how to manage their money and whether to clean out routes entirely or just focus on the more common wild Pokemon.

 

[Kavatika]

can we use ruby version instead

 

[Jimera0]

can we use ruby version instead

No, it has different available Pokemon than Emerald and different events and stuff too. For the competition to be valid it has to be the same version.

 

[Kavatika]

No, it has different available Pokemon than Emerald and different events and stuff too. For the competition to be valid it has to be the same version.

damn I might not be able to do this one ;-;

 

[Age of Kings]

Unfortunately I won't be able to participate this week due to not having a copy of Emerald and not having the time to get started on a new game before the deadline. Best of luck!

 

[Kadew]

Is this challenge counting total pokemon bodies, or number of unique pokemon species?

 

[Hulavuta]

Is this challenge counting total pokemon bodies, or number of unique pokemon species?

It is the one that shows up next to "Pokedex" on the Trainer Card, which I believe is the latter.

 

[DHR-107]

Well... This is going to be awkward. I have never speed run Emerald before... But I'm going to go with my gut and reckon you could get a decent number of species here.

I think its really going to boil down to whoever can get both Dustox and Beautifly maybe... Or whoever gets the luck with a Ralts :P

 

[Jimera0]

Is there any problem using an emulator?

No, no problem. That's why we mention Save States in the rules y'know :P.

 

[DHR-107]

Always get stuck in this conundrum of distance over completion...

Like before, I am going to go for completion over distance. I think there is a decent chunk of mons I can get with the route I've taken and the time i can allow myself to use up to get them.

 

[Mekkah]

I'll stream one last run tonight in about 30 mins.

edit: Okay, I'm done being trolled. It was fun.

 

[Hulavuta]

Just posting to say we've decided to extend this deadline for one more week. New deadline is April 4th, hopefully this is enough heads-up time for more people to enter!

 

[Mekkah]

So are more people actually going to do this? If not a deadline extension is futile.

 

[spiresquire]

I actually tried this out and got insanely lucky finding Ralts, both Cascoon and Silcoon, and Slakoth with ease. But, I ended up killing Cascoon and Slakoth by accident by crit. ._. Might try again if that deadline is moved though!

 

[Jimera0]

The deadline IS moved. I encourage everyone to at least give one run at it even if you don't think you'll do very well; right now we don't have enough submissions to make a go of it, so chances are anyone who submits has a good chance of at least placing!

 

[Snail489]

I'll give it a go tonight. Been quite busy the entire week and was fairly sure I wouldn't have time to try it, but since the deadline is extended I may as well give it a go while I still have time.

Edit: Found and caught an Abra on the first try!

 

[Jimera0]

Just to clarify, saving using the in-game save feature and resetting in order to get more desirable random results DOES count as RNG manipulation. I'm sorry that the rules were not clear on this beforehand. I didn't even think about people using that for some reason. My mistake, I'll try to make sure the rules are clearer next time.

 

[Netmonmatt]

Alright, I did a run with a safety save at the start of each route and I netted 35, but apparently that's right out. OH WELL. I hope this unbroken run is good enough.

 

[Hulavuta]

Okay! Sorry I'm a few minutes late but here are the scores! I'm glad that we extended the deadline because we got a bunch more entries!

In 5th place, we have our newcomer spiresquire who placed with a score of 17.

In 4th, we have DHR-107 who finished with 26 Pokemon caught.

In 3rd, we have yet again not-first-place Mekkah, who finished with a top score of 29.

In 2nd, in what seems like an Orange League tradition, Mekkah was just barely edged out by Netmonmatt who caught just one more Pokemon, for a final score of 30.

And...in 1st place...


We have Snail489, who got an absolutely unbelievably high score of 37. That makes him the winner of this round! Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone for participating, and feel free to share your strategies and routes now that the competition is over. I'm sure we're all curious how Snail got his high score!

 

[spiresquire]

that gap. :o

 

[Netmonmatt]

Wow. I am legit curious how you pulled that off, the best my hard save reset practice run could pull off was 35.
I must have missed something huge, like, ignore the Strength HM/Second Gym level huge.

 

[Snail489]

Yay, I won!

Before I actually conducted the run I used Bulbapedia to look through the available Pokemon, the maps of the routes I would likely be able to reach and the trainers on the route, and then I tried to determine what would be the most ideal way to run it. I figured it would be best to cover the largest distance I could while still catching MOST of the Pokemon per route, which I believe in my record run I achieved and exceeded (got really lucky, as I'll explain later...).

First run I had I got 28 Pokemon, but I did fight a few extra trainers here and there and missed out on some of the rarer Pokemon (also in my rush I missed Wurmple and Taillow embarrassingly). Second run was 37 - I tried to evolve my Torchic as fast as possible (evolved just before fighting Roxanne - who was a huge pain to fight because of all those potions - had to use a few "fodder" Pokemon to help me win this one). After evolving Torchic I skipped most battles (I also skipped some battles before Torchic evolved, notably that Bug Catcher with like 5 Wurmples or something). To save time I did (like Netmonmatt outlined) skip the second gym and do Granite cave without Flash.

In my route I also decided to go for the third gym and clear Route 111 + Fiery Path + Route 113 (skipping literally every trainer on these routes because after Wattson I had only ~13 mins left to run through these). I had to use the same "fodder Pokemon" strategy as before to clear the May battle and Wattson battle since I was so underleveled (really risky idea btw, I came really close to whiting out in Route 110, there's a double battle against a cyclist and psychic that you can't dodge so I had to fight them one by one and came out with only a 5HP Combusken! This might have actually had a negative impact on the run because I did have to come back to the route after I reached Mauville to catch Minun, Gulpin, etc.).

In the end my box had some pretty rare stuff like Ralts, Abra, Sableye, Skitty and Torkoal... but I still missed Zigzagoon somehow! Also, straight after taking the screenshot at 1:30 I found a Skarmory, but that obviously doesn't really matter.


Also, where do I get the banner?

 

[spiresquire]

Apparently ziggs is only located on three routes in Emerald before you gain access to surf. :U

 

[Snail489]

Apparently ziggs is only located on three routes in Emerald before you gain access to surf. :U

That's correct. When I looked at the Bulbapedia information on each route I saw Zigzagoon basically everywhere so I just kind of assumed if I missed it one route I could just go to the next route and catch it there to avoid wasting time running around in grass to actually encounter Pokemon. So I probably just ended up going straight past each of the routes it actually appears, and by the time I realised I missed it it was too late.