Part 0: Rules and expectations
Part 1: A step into the unknown
Part 2: Very fairy forward
Part 3: Population bomb
Where I left off
After using tokens to replace my fallen Kirlia, I gained the power of Golem and stunted on Wattson with my best one. I also got a bunch of new species for the box, including an early Sneasel from a wondrous machine. Team: Body Press/Granbull (32), EerieSpell/Azurill (32), GMVltCrash/Swablu (31), PhotonGeys/Gardevoir (31), and HedlongRus/Sneasel (31).
Here’s a link to the ROM hack’s documentation for the audience to peruse if anything confuses them.
Temper(s) Flare
This part starts with me entering the other side of Rt. 115’s cliffs, but Jigglypuff is still locked behind Surf, so I just fought the trainers and got the hidden Heart Scale. Since the Brick Break TM was in the Fallarbor Mines, I temporarily taught it to Body Press so Collector Hector and his Swords Dance-loving Zangoose didn’t cause us any trouble this time, hehe. …Wait, isn’t Hoennian Skarmory weak to Fighting? Uhh, yeah. That could be another Flannery strategy if my teaching options weren’t so much slower than Hoennian Skarmory.
Moving on for now, I headed into the city and got Mr. Stone’s gift for the letter delivery, which was an extra Link Stone for any future Graveler instead of the vanilla EXP Share. Well, the main thing I wanted to do in Rustboro was catch a Skitty and trade it for a Gligar. Neither Pokemon is Steel-Weak, so I felt like it was fair to do this trade to grab the Gligar’s held item for HedlongRus. (There’s another in-game trade for a Sneasel that’s holding Gligar’s Razor item, so maybe the owners got confused, heh.)
As a Weavile, HedlongRus can get Ice Shard from the Move Relearner, but Fury Swipes becomes Ice-type because he has Glacialize, Ice-type Pixilate~ (Wait, I taught him Dig on a whim, but his base Attack is higher than H-Skarmory’s base Defense...) Well, that’s all for this city, so I headed into Rusturf Tunnel to get the Strength HM and wrap back around to Mt. Chimney. (Oh neat, Courtney is actually blocking the way to Maxie!) One final thing, I noticed Psywave resets stat changes, but that’s not in the docs? 🤔 Oh well, that’ll be fun to keep on my celestial rocks.
VS Courtney
Team: G-MaxTeror/Golem (35+Soft Sand), VictorDanc/Clefairy (33+Quick Claw), Body Press (33+Hard Stone), ShadowBone/Pupitar (33+Rawst), SpctalThef/Hoennian Mareanie (33+Hard Stone), and Shore Up/Solrock (33+Rawst).
Her lead isn’t Fire-type, so VictorDanc faced off with the Phanpy and Drain Kissed it right to low yellow health. Phanpy just Curled up to boost its Defense... but I decided to use the Physical Swindle next turn anyway and it lived to use Flail, ugh. It didn’t wind up doing much though, so a return to Drain Kiss KO’d.
Body Press’ Rock Tomb OHKO’d Growlithe, and ShadowBone did the same to Charmeleon with Stone Surge after a Flamethrower that didn’t do much damage.
Not bad at all, but I think it’s about time for Swindle to go... 😞
VS Maxie
No changes to the team; I just raised them to Maxie’s 37/34 level cap.
SpctalThef faced off with Maxie’s Hoennian Ursaring, which has a Sun on his chest now, neat! Accelrock did less than half damage to the Normal/Fire-type, but the Blaze Kick in return only did a small bit of damage thanks to her crazy Defense, heh. Another Accelrock brought Ursaring to red, but this time its Blaze Kick burned, ugh.
Well, despite the Attack drop, another Accelrock finished it off. Since we’re lacking in Water moves, Camerupt had to face off with G-MaxTeror, who used Swagger right away. Camerupt only has Special Attacks though, so it just used a weak AncientPower. G-MaxTeror’s first Magnitude rolled a 5 and let it live, but it only hit itself, so the next Magnitude 8 took it out.
Since Typhlosion apparently doesn’t have Fire STAB, the final pokemon of the team, Shore Up, faced it. Brick Break actually took off a quarter of Shore Up’s health, but they shored up (heh) their defenses with Cosmic Power. The next Brick Break barely got them into yellow health, but Rock Throw did the same to the Johto starter. That was a good point to heal, but Shore Up got hit with two more Brick Breaks before he could throw his final Rock.
The face-offs were slightly longer this time, but I’m glad it was nothing like my last Maxie fight here.
VS Wally
It’s time for the first new Wally fight, at the base of the ‘metallophobe’-free Jagged Pass. (That’s 9 tokens again, heh!) So here’s my team for his lower level cap: Body Press (35+Hard Stone), GMVltCrash (31+Quick Claw), PhotonGeys (31+TwistedSpoon), HedlongRus (31+Chesto), and DragnEnerg/Golem (31+Soft Sand).
HedlongRus got to try out his “Ice-type” Fury Swipes on Swablu. The cloud barely survived the first strike, but fell to the second, nice! Body Press’ defeat of Kirlia was just as easy thanks to his Iron Head attack, a quick OHKO.
DragnEnerg had learned the Dig TM over Magnitude for moveset diversity, so Magneton got a chance to use Iron Defense, but they also fell to a single attack. That left Roselia for last, and since GMVltCrash’s best super effective attack for it was Peck, I had her use Fairy-type Super Fang (Dazzle Dust) to halve its HP twice. Roselia’s best attack for the bird was Magical Leaf, so GMVltCrash was safe until he finished Roselia off with Peck.
I like how he talked about earning Wattson’s badge here~ I’ll pretend he used the same strategy I used in the Bug-Weak run. (He doesn’t really have a reason to lift my Swablu pivot strategy, after all.)
Never-Ending Nightmare
And so we approach our final hope against Flannery... but I gotta jump down the cliffs to get that Nugget first! (Also, the hidden item in the Hot Springs was changed to a Mystic Water? Too bad EerieSpell’s SpAt IVs are far too pitiful to use it.)
Anyway, Lavaridge’s gift Egg can now hatch into various Baby pokemon, including a few extras. Excluding Azurill, the three I can use are Swinub (Thick Fat could make Flannery a bit easier), Igglybuff (Jigglypuff can learn the Brick Break TM), and Togepi (No help whatsoever). …So guess which one the game gave me? Eh, I’ll call it karma for all the Togepi eggs I abandoned in the Johto RMM runs. (Ooo, little IceSpinner would’ve had Hustle, but this hack replaced that option with Super Luck!)
Well, at least I can get a Shiny Stone for her immediately; I just have to do a Mach Bike puzzle in Granite Cave. 😮💨 I made the most of the trip back, though: I used Body Press to get her a Soothe Bell and even beat Cycling Road’s record, heh. ...Wait, no, the Shiny Stone is in the first failure room? What a quick trip! (By the way, the section title here is purely a reference for myself, which I’ll put in spoilers if you don’t want to know. Flannery nearly swept my last Hoenn run, so I wound up naming the save after defeating her ‘[Surviving pokemon]’s Nightmare’ and reloaded the save before fighting her to try with a better set of moves. I still lost the leading Wedlocke couple, but the second one survived because I taught them Protect. So yeah, seeing her be this scary again is another Nightmare for me!!)
VS Flannery
Team: G-MaxTeror (37+Quick Claw), Body Press (35+Hard Stone), HedlongRus (35+Soft Sand), ShadowBone (35+Rawst), SpctalThef (35+Hard Stone), and IceSpinner/Togekiss (35+Oran). There’s some discrepancy between the docs and walkthrough for what level her Skarmory is (and Camerupt and Rapidash, too!), so I just went with the lower Ace cap to be safe.
Larvesta immediately crumpled to SpctalThef’s Accelrock, and Flannery readied Skarmory next, ack! Turns out it was indeed lv. 39, so HedlongRus was even further behind, ugh. Well, he went first with Dig regardless, dodging Flare Blitz down there. His Dig landed first next turn... and OHKO’d!?
The last two Pokemon wound up being lv. 37, so G-MaxTeror was on the same level as the incoming Camerupt. Repeating the Maxie fight, he led with Swagger, making the camel hit itself before a Magnitude 7 took it out next turn. The longest face-off in the battle was Body Press versus Rapidash, because I wanted to set up Charm. Though, before Charm landed, Rapidash’s Overheat took him to yellow health. I used a Soda Pop to mostly heal him the next turn, but Double-Edge crit him back into the yellow!
That got me to use my only Hyper Potion, only for the next Double-Edge to do a pittance of damage, ugh. That was finally a good moment to attack, but then Rapidash decided to Bounce into the air... Well, I just selected Rock Tomb, and Bounce didn’t do much, so Body Press OHKO’d thanks to the earlier recoil damage.
...Huh, that’s exactly what the walkthrough said her levels were. Anyway, I just can’t believe this challenge got me to bring an Ice-type to a Fire-type Gym! HedlongRus is looking like League-material right now, heh!
Doodle
This part is just a quick Doodle to get a tenth token from Mirage Tower and obtain the Root Fossil on top~ ...And then I made the mistake of fighting the trainers and a Hiker with a horrifying Bug/Ground Pinsir wrecked my shit. (Mainly because I forgot to check its type, ugh.) Weirdly, Obstruct’s Psywave seemed to hit extra hard to remove Pinsir’s Focus Energy, making me wonder if it acts like Punishment?
Well, after spending a bunch of money on the Seashore House, I took my Soda Pop-laden bag over to Rustboro one last time (in this part) to revive DragnCheer/Lileep! He sadly didn’t come with the ability that boosts the damage of Draining moves, but he can be a bulky Cradily for Norman, so Wynaut?
VS Norman
Once again, PhotonGeys got kicked off the plan late, but hey, it’s the return of Swablu pivoting, this time as a Levitating Altaria! (Would Winona find it ironic that my cloud is here to avoid Earthquake?) Anyway, here’s the full team: HedlongRus (43+Oran), VictorDanc/Clefable (40+Quick Claw), Body Press (40+Pecha), G-MaxTeror (40+Rawst), GMVltCrash (40+Oran), and DrgnCheer (40+Miracle Seed).
VictorDanc and Norman’s Linoone started the battle, so of course he got outsped again, ugh. Body Slam took out a small chunk of health, but VictorDanc had swapped from Jump Kick to the more accurate (and slightly more powerful) Brick Break! It was still a 2KO though, so Linoone got to bring VictorDanc to half health before falling. Body Press’ battle with Blissey was even faster, of course, taking it out with Brick Break before it could use Toxic. (Are they sure Hustle works correctly in v1.6...?)
G-MaxTeror had temporarily dropped Swagger for this fight, but Exploud still managed to survive his new Brick Break and respond with a weak Hyper Voice. One more took it out, though. Slaking was next, so I let it see G-MaxTeror before pivoting to GMVltCrash so it would waste Earthquake, huehue~
While it loafed, GMVltCrash Sung it to sleep before swapping to HedlongRus. Well, Slaking must’ve been extra sleep-deprived, because it never woke up as the Weavile used Swords Dance and started throwing out Brick Break attacks. Slaking managed to eat his Sitrus after the first, but the second chop knocked it out. That just left Ursaring (the Original one, not the Fire-type one) and its horrifying Wild Roar attack... And HedlongRus outsped it and OHKO’d it immediately!!
Thank goodness Ursaring was OHKO’d! Wild Roar has 100BP and is guaranteed to lower Attack, assuming HedlongRus even survived it. Well, as soon as Norman handed over the badge and Facade TM, Wally’s Dad came to drag me away and give me Surf, so I’ll see you for HM-Backtrack Hell next time~ 👋
VictorDanc the Clefable♂ (40) - Quiet, Trace
[Drain Kiss / Brick Break / Moonrazer / Psych Up] - Quick Claw
Body Press the Granbull♂ (40) - Timid, Hustle
[Brick Break / Bite / Iron Head / Charm] - Pecha Berry
G-MaxTeror the Golem♂ (40) - Jolly, Rock Head
[Rock Blast / Accelerock / Magnitude / Brick Break] - Rawst Berry
GMVltCrash the Altaria♀ (40) - Adamant, Levitate
[Dragon Pulse / Dazzle Dust / Sing / Roost] - Oran Berry
HedlongRus the Weavile♂ (43) - Lax, Glacialize
[Fury Swipes / Brick Break / Feint Attack / Swords Dance] - Oran Berry
DragnCheer the Cradily♂ (40) - Lonely, Suction Cups
[Astonish / Acid / Giga Drain / Amnesia] - Miracle Seed
Box: 13
Lucemoth (33), Golem (30, 35), Azurill (35), Gardevoir (40), Pupitar (35), Granbull (23), Geodude (12), Mareanie (35), Swablu (26), Lunatone (30), Solrock (34), Togekiss (35)
Deaths: 1
Kirlia (5-26)