RBG and his quest for 386

[RBG]

So despite my love for Pokemon, for some reason, I took a break during Gen III and never played through any of the Gen III games. However, I have decided to rectify this by playing through all 7 games (handhelds and console) to culminate with the ultimate goal of having a living Pokedex in Pokemon Emerald. To help with this, and to document my progress as I go, I have decided to tumblr my progress at http://emerald386.tumblr.com/ I have created the following as my rough timeline of how I plan on playing through the games.

• Start with FireRed/Sapphire
• Somewhere down the line, start LeafGreen/Ruby (Ideally near the end of the game from their duo)
• Start Emerald when I am near done with Ruby
• While doing the boring breeding part to get the living Pokedex, play through Pokemon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness

In addition, I plan on using Pokemon only once on each playthrough, so I get a better experience of the generation I missed, and to make things more interesting. Besides, 3 Gardevoir playthroughs would be pretty boring.

So before I start, I decided to ask Smogon what they felt I should do to make this more interesting, and any suggestions that I should keep in mind while playing through Gen III.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

FRLG: Starmie makes the game easy-mode, dont use it, Lapras is close. Recommend using Blastoise so that you dont ditch your starter. Slowbro is an incredible beast and will make your life so much easier. Also you gotta use Dragonite in one of your runs :P

RSE: Numel is an incredible beast, must use, same for Gardevoir. Manectric is another must use, best paired with a Blaziken run. Armaldo is surprisignly decent but Lileep is crap without Exp. Share grinding, I'd use one of them once. Cacturne is a badass.

XD: TANGELAAAAAAAAA (is incredible). Shuckle can actually be used well since it tanks stuff and gets exp from its partners kills.

Colo: ugh, so long ago...Feraligatr is strong...Metagross is god...Miltank is incredible, beyond that i can't remember.

 

[Rayquaza2233]

There's a glitch for infinite Master Balls (or any other ball, if you like) in Colosseum that involves throwing a ball with your first Pokemon, then switching that ball's position in your bag with another ball with your second Pokemon using the X button if you want to use it. Doesn't work in XD.

XD : anything with Shadow Half is deadly useful for snags imo.
VVV ending spoilers if you don't know how XD ends

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Greevil has 7 snags; Shadow Lugia comes out on its own first then you immediately battle him again with six other shadow Pokemon - I strongly recommend going into the Greevil doubleheader with five Pokemon and snagging the Shadow Lugia with the Master Ball to have it tank shadow-type attacks as Shadow is super effective against purified Pokemon and not very effective against other shadow Pokemon

As always, you can Old Rod a Magikarp early on if you want a Gyrados, but I suppose you know that. FRLG isn't "over" until you beat the Elite Four twice and it closes while you complete the quest between the first and second clears. There's a Battle Tower in FRLG I'd recommend checking out since it's vastly different from the other Battle Towers, I think they added it to Emerald too north of Mauville near the Winstrate's house. Emerald does have a Mew event in it, if you've got an AR or somethign similar. It also has a slightly varied story compared to Ruby and Sapphire.

 

[Treadshot A1]

Here's a way to make XD extremely awesome an entertaining:

Snag the Shroomish and Houndour early in the game. Lead with them. They form one of the best offensive cores you can get in game, as Breloom's fighting typing is great for smashing through many pokemon even for neutral (remember, the physical special move split hasn't happened yet). Breloom's base 130 Atk is applied to all his fighting moves, so you can abuse the hell out of them (forget Spore, Shroomish at level 51 is stupid). Houndoom gets Ember early, which is decent, but it's Bite and Flamethrower you're after. I've pummeled through so many pokemon with Flamethrower (and Mach Punch off Breloom) in my XD run it's not even funny.

And yes, i went through Mt. Battle to get a Choice Band for my Breloom. CB Mach Punch off Breloom's base 130 Atk? Rips through the game.

For the record, i evolved my Eevee into Umbreon for its godly defensive stats, and kept it levelled up with the rest of my team to tank hits while i snagged. That thing can live through even the strongest hits and be fine.

I also backed up my team with a Gardevoir (Thunderbolt and Psychic are amazing) and a Walrein which packed Hail/Water Pulse/Aurora Beam/Rest. Those two basically stopped anything that got past Breloom and Houndoom.

RSE: You can beat through this the same way you can beat through most Gen III games: Gardevoir. Actually, you can use that in XD as well, as she's got a very decent base Special Attack stat, and can utilise Psychic which hits hard. Plus, if you catch one in the grass where Wally gets his (outside Petalburg city), she can make the Brawly battle much easier. Other pokemon to use? Breloom, Swellow (decent in game, flies as well), and that's about it off the top of my head. Oh, and Blaziken. You can solo the game with just him alone.

 

[Nickscor]

FR/LG: Go get yourself a Nidoran and evolve it to a Nidoking ASAP for early game awesome, as he learns a shitload of TMs / HMs / Tutor Moves. I might also suggest sequence breaking by immediately going to the Dojo in Saffron right after arriving in Celadon and get yourself a Hitmonlee, he is a true beast. I actually did a solo run with Venusaur, but it was annoying—use him if you want a proper challenge (after the first two gyms)

RSE: All the starters are pretty good actually. Ralts takes forever to level up and is pretty weak from the start but when it evolves to Kirlia and then Gardevoir, boy the effort will be worth it. Ludicolo, Manectric, Camerupt, Breloom, Flygon, and Swellow are all pretty reliable Mons to use IMO. If you really feel up for it, have Shedinja and Ninjask on the same team. Grumpig is cool.

XD: I've played through this shit so many times for soft resetting. Since you'll be playing Colo, Vappy and Jolteon are the better choices but Flareon could be good for a challenge. I think I almost always used Teddiursa (the first Mon you Sang) and a combination of weird stuff—Houndoom, Walrein, Swalot, Shiftry, Claydol, and Ampharos could be obtained early with plenty of grinding. I always had an Electrode on my team unless I had Jolteon. Vulpix's Heat Wave is pretty nice. Greevil has 7 Shadow Mons, but he's no big deal, not as bad as Evice from Colo where you actually had to defeat his stuff >.>

Colo - Dump Umbreon when you can start purifying stuff, since it's useless. Abuse the Infinite Ball Glitch too. Have fun with Umbreon and Espeon as those are the only Pokémon capable of gaining EXP for like, the first third of the game. Feraligatr is good, as well as Ampharos. It takes too long to purify shit in this game that it's not enough to justify purifying everything. Although for in-game you can find 3 Time Flutes which instantly purifiy a Shadow Mon, but if you use those up, you're on your own :x Entei and Raikou are a pain to Snag.

 

[RBG]

Well, I wasn't really asking for Pokemon advice, but that does help quite a bit, since I have no idea what to expect in RSE.

Does anyone have any advice on anything (not related to which pokemon I should use) to help keep the tumbles more interesting?

 

[Arcticblast]

As far as RSE goes, almost every Pokemon is usable. Hell, Spinda is usable and that thing has shit for stats. If you can catch it, you can probably use it. A couple random notes on Pokemon I can think of:
-Aron is next to impossible to use if you catch it in Granite Cave. Aggron makes an awesome late-game boost however; catch your Aron/Lairon in Victory Road.
-Numel is great but suffers after Lilycove, where everything is either Water-type or Zubat. This ends at Victory Road.
-Every starter is good and brings something new to the table.
-As everyone else says, Gardevoir is a really good ingame Pokemon.
-Team diversity! Just like in every game, have a diverse team. Having some good anti-Water Pokemon is particularly good here (Breloom, Gardevoir {Thunderbolt}, etc.)
-Kingdra has a rather shallow movepool (Water moves, Ice moves, Return, Twister) but still does really well. The quad Water resist helps.
-As cool as Tropius is, he isn't that great. He's rare but not too hard to find.
-Be prepared to spend hours looking for Jigglypuff, Chimecho and Feebas.

I strongly believe that Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald are the best games in the entire series, with the rest of the third generation following. Have an awesome time. Also, cinematic Tumblr updates would be cool.

 

[Rayquaza2233]

Making it more interesting... in RSE you can do contests, those are fun. They're less convoluted than the 4th and 5th gen ones.

 

[Ray Jay]

IDK if you have the tools for this, but some livestreamed portions would be cool. Obviously it's more of a when you have time thing, but you could just send a post on tumblr ("yo, livestreaming tomorrow at x o clock") and I think that's something the Smogon community might enjoy should this become more popular.

 

[billymills]

Just wondering how you're going to do event pokes. If you have all the events ready then you won't have to do battle mountain in Colosseum (you can get event ho-oh instead).

If you are going to do battle mountain, I would strongly recommend getting 3-4 good pokes, not necessarily EV'd, but evenly leveled (pokemon are leveled to the highest level in your team) with decent movesets for each. It's not really hard per se, but you will need some sort of team, though i'm pretty sure you could do it with kyogre, rayquaza and mewtwo if you really wanted.

You'll want some sort of tank and some sort of status in Colosseum. Umbreon, while it doesn't do any damage, is really good for stalling while you're throwing 20 ultras at sudowoodo or even suicune. You can opt to faint raikou, entei and whatnot the first time around and then abuse the masterball glitch later if you want.

You may want to consider doing Colosseum and XD a bit earlier. XD has a lot of cool items in it (Lucky egg, a lot of the battle CDs have good rewards), and Colosseum will take forever to purify all the pokemon, which you will need to do unless you are getting event Ho-oh. You can start Colosseum, get to the part where you need to purify pokemon, and then just hold down the joystick for a few hours and play a different game in the meantime. This part alone will easily take days.

 

[v]

Make it a comic imo

 

[RBG]

If I had any art skills, I would make it into a comic. I might try to do silly/lame MS Paint comics, but I don't expect them to be good. I'm still trying to decide what other means of telling the story I should use without just using paragraphs.

@Billymills: I was planning on playing through Colosseum, but based on that advice, I might start it a little earlier that I originally planned.

 

[Stellar]

Have you given any thought to how you are going to obtain Mew/Celebi/Jirachi? I know Jirachi can either be obtained from the Colosseum bonus disc or EU/PAL versions of Pokemon Channel, but the other two are decidedly harder to get your hands on. I guess the same could be said for Deoxys.

 

[RBG]

Thankfully, the copy of Emerald I picked up from Gamestop had a hacked Mew, Celebi, and Deoxys on them, so I can use all of those. While it's not the most ideal situation, it saves me from having to get an action replay for the GBA.

In addition my friend has the Jirachi bonus disc, so Jirachi is going to be easy.

 

[Stellar]

Cool, I just wasn't sure how much of a focus you were putting on legitimacy. At least it saves you a few bucks! Good luck! I'll be keeping an eye on your Tumblr.

 

[General Spoon]

I would suggest playing through Mount Battle in Colosseum regardless of whether you were planning on getting an event Ho-oh or not. It is a wonderful experience. You do not need to import Pokemon from other games to beat Mount Battle. I was able to do it with only ingame Pokemon.

 

[King Serperior]

As great and powerful Nidoking is in FrLg, Nidoqueen is more important.

Why? better bulk provides you with a catching platform. Body Slam's 30% Para-rate helps. Add in most of the same moves of Nidoking, and you are set.

 

[tofucocoa]

Ruby and Sapphire are incredibly easy if you just solo with Torchic -> Blaziken. If you want to have a good catching Pokemon, grab the Shroomish in XD, grind it up to whatever level it gets Spore on (w/o evolving it...) and you have a capture monkey with Spore and False Swipe! You can ditch it for Smeargle in Emerald, but Smeargle is really weak. Bulbasaur is the best starter IMO because it gets Sleep Powder, but you get a bunch of other stuff with Sleep Powder later in the game.

In Colo, make sure you grab Croconaw. You get Entei pretty early for your Fire-type and Bayleef is the worst 'starter' ever. You get a better capture monkey in Jumpluff since it gets Sleep Powder.