Chapter 14 - Journey's End

When I challenged the Elite Four, my team was as follows:

Rebound (Wobbuffet) – lv.50 – Counter, Mirror Coat, Safeguard, Destiny Bond

Gem (Tentacruel) – lv.53 – Surf, Barrier, Giga Drain, Ice Beam

Charlie (Exploud) – lv.59 – Earthquake, Flamethrower, Rest, Sleep Talk

Major (Manectric) – lv.56 – Thunderbolt, Iron Tail, Charge, Bite

Crash (Swampert) – lv.60 – Surf, Ice Beam, Brick Break, Earthquake

At this stage I should point out that I realised I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of winning this thing without using Potions. So I decided to change my rules so that I was allowed no healing items – UNTIL the Elite Four. I figured it was impressive enough to get this far without healing once; I could allow myself a bit of slack. It would have been very nice to round my team off to the full complement of 6 with Spice, but it wasn’t to be, I had to make do.

So unto the breach I went, dear friends. The first member of the Elite Four was Sidney, a Dark-type trainer. Gem took his whole team down single-handedly (single-tentacledly?), even finishing the fight with full health due to Giga Drain.

Next up was Phoebe, who uses Ghost-types. Charlie took them on due to his immunity to Ghost-type attacks. He won in the end, despite a tough final bout against Phoebe’s second Dusclops – Phoebe used a couple of Full Restores as Charlie couldn’t quite finish it off. Charlie hit 6 HP at one point, but Rest and Sleep Talk won the day in the end and Charlie hit lv.60.

Next up was Glacia. Charlie struggled through another epic encounter with her first Glalie, but when Sleep Talk and Flamethrower both ran out of PP I had to switch in Major, who swept through the rest of the team with no trouble.

The last member of the Elite Four was Drake, a Dragon trainer. I decided to lead with Gem, because Ice Beam should be able to take care of all the Dragons; the only worry was that Dragons have high stats. Hopefully Gem’s high Speed stat would make the difference.

And boy, did it. Gem swept everything before her, getting 5 one-hit kills and levelling up to 54.

I’d beaten the Elite Four. The only remaining challenge was… The Champion. Steven.

He led with Skarmory. Luckily I’d seen that coming, and one-hitted it with Major’s Thunderbolt. Next was Aggron. I switched in Gem… Oh no. Earthquake! I completely failed to see that coming. Cursing my stupidity, I watched Gem’s health fall… and stop at 31/183. What a let-off. I’d nearly lost Pokemon to all three members of the Aggron evolutionary line! Surf took care of the big lump, and Gem moved on. Steven’s next Pokemon was a Claydol. I hate Claydol. I usually struggle to take them out. I needed to try something new. I looked at my remaining Pokemon, and selected… Rebound.

I was hoping Rebound’s massive HP stat would allow him to take a few Earthquakes and come out fighting. Was I right? Hell yeah I was! Claydol went down to a Counter, and Rebound was on a roll. Cradily was next – another pain in the arse to take out due to its Rock/Grass typing removing most of its weaknesses. It led unexpectedly with Giga Drain, rendering Counter useless; I switched to Mirror Coat and it went down.

Next up was Armaldo, which annoyingly survived a Counter to its Ancientpower; I’d need two to take it down. After a few Full Restores by Steven (and one or two by me) it went down. Finally. I was down to Steven’s last Pokemon, the last Pokemon in this entire challenge – Metagross!

It led with Meteor Mash… which killed Rebound! He had served me well in the short time I’d used him, and he died honourably. In came Crash, for his first appearance in the whole Elite Four (a real surprise considering I’d expected to rely on him for the whole thing…) and two Earthquakes later (Steven had run out of Full Restores it seems) Metagross was down!

It was over. After all the successes, all the losses, and all the grinding of this epic run through Hoenn, I’d reached the pinnacle of any Pokemon trainer’s career, and become the Champion of the Pokemon League. Steven took me through to a room where my comrades and I were immortalised in the Pokemon League records, but I was barely listening.

I’d avenged Jabs, Thumper, Tiny, Laser, Pepper, Spice and Rebound, and I was the Champion.

Thanks for reading! I’ll post my thoughts on the whole thing soon.


-Samwise

Chapter 13 - Giving up the Ghost

I had to do some grinding if I wanted to beat the Elite 4. For a start I only had four Pokemon who were battle-worthy, and they were only level 51. They wouldn’t stand a chance against the Champion’s level 58 Metagross – a pseudo-legendary (meaning very high stats) Psychic/Steel type (meaning very few weaknesses). So, to training I went, full of hope and optimism having finally reached the end point of my journey.

My joy was to be short-lived, however. I was training Spice at level 53, when disaster struck. She had almost half health, which had been enough to avoid danger until now, when she took a critical hit from a wild Lairon’s Iron Tail. Spice was down. I had just three battle-ready Pokemon left, and I was still underleveled.

At this point I seriously considered giving up; having come so far, this was a hefty kick in the sack, especially given that Spice had the enviable ability to take no super-effective hits from 3 of the Elite 4, and to dish out super-effective hits to one. I had to plough on though; I hadn’t struggled past Flannery and Norman and lost so many dear Poke-friends to bottle it at the death.

But I needed a new team member.

I looked in my PC box. I didn’t have too many options; a bunch of Pokemon that would never be strong enough, a few strong Pokemon whose types rendered them useless for the task ahead, and a few decent Pokemon who were of the same types as my current team. I decided to take a two-pronged approach.

Firstly, I’d withdraw Rebound and put him in the Daycare centre. For those new to the idea, the Daycare centre is a place to store your Pokemon mainly for breeding purposes. The bonus is that any Pokemon left at the Daycare gains 1 XP point for every step the player walks, meaning they can level up as you progress through the game. The drawback is that any new moves they learn automatically replace their old ones.

By this time Rebound was a Wobbuffet, and had learned all the moves he was ever going to learn (Wobbuffet’s an odd Pokemon, as he only knows countering moves – he can only damage an opponent after he takes damage himself). He was the perfect candidate for the Daycare, and he might be a genuine life-saver.

My second approach was more conventional; I’d withdraw Gem and train her up, teaching her Ice Beam so that she could be back-up for Crash against those pesky Dragon-types. Plus, When Gem evolved into Tentacruel, she’d be quick and blessed with a monstrous Special Defence stat, which is never a bad thing.

So, to grinding I went. With only four Pokemon + Rebound (who was pretty much an unknown quantity) I figured I’d need to be over-levelled to stand a chance. I spent a good four hours buffing out my team, and finally I thought I was ready. Ready to become the Champion. Ready to avenge my fallen comrades. Ready to take on the Pokemon League.


-Samwise

Chapter 12 - Gunning for Victory

Wallace proved to be a pushover in the end. I was expecting to have trouble with his Milotic due to its high Special Defence rendering my Electric attacks less deadly, but Major cleaned up with little trouble. I’d earned the final badge, and now nothing stood between me and the Elite 4, and success!

I Surfed east on Route 128 to Ever Grande City, the site of Victory Road. For those that don’t know, Victory Road exists in every Pokemon game as the final area before the Elite 4. Victory Road is a long, tough series of maze-like caverns, containing high-levelled wild Pokemon and lots of tough trainers. In short, it’s not particularly easy to navigate when you’re not allowed to heal your Pokemon.

With that in mind, I decided to do some more training before I gave it a go, and cleared out a few areas I’d not yet visited, including the Dragon Trainers at the top of the waterfall in Meteor Falls. I couldn’t catch any Pokemon here – so no chance of adding a super-powerful Salamence to my team before the Elite 4 – but a few trainers provided some valuable experience. I also picked up the Dragon Claw TM, which is one of my favourite moves, but none of my Pokemon could learn it. Darn.

By the time I’d cleared these trainers out, my team were looking fairly handy and I decided to brave Victory Road, leaving Swift in the PC because I wouldn’t be needing Fly. In her place I withdrew Curly, so I had all the HM moves covered in case I needed them all. If all went wrong I had some Escape Ropes so I could flee back to the relative safety of the nearest Pokemon Centre anyway. So in I went, and the first Pokemon I bumped into was… a female Golbat.

Now, Golbat can be very useful, because they evolve into Crobat, which are awesome. But the trouble is they don’t evolve in the normal way – by hitting a certain level – instead evolving when their “happiness level” gets high enough. The happiness level is one of the many hidden stats in Pokemon, increasing every 255 steps by 1 point. When the level gets high enough that the Pokemon loves you, it will evolve when it next levels up.

The trouble is, the threshold for happiness evolutions is something like 250 happiness points – meaning that if I wanted to evolve Golbat, I’d have to walk something like 60000 steps with her in my team. That’s a lot of steps and would take a lot of time, and frankly I couldn’t be bothered. I caught the Golbat anyway (JUST in case) and called her Succubus. And on I went.

On a side note – how to the trainers in Victory Road expect to beat the Pokemon league with a single, lv.40ish Pokemon? The Champion’s Pokemon are above level 55, for God’s sake… How did they even beat Wallace?

Anyway, I realised/remembered a few important things during my time in Victory Road. One – I’d never got this far in a Pokemon game without a Fire-type Pokemon in my team. Fire is my favourite type. Sadly Tiny hadn’t made it, so no Fire for me. Sorry Tiny. Secondly, not being allowed to use Repels is annoying. It would have been very handy to deter all wild Pokemon instead of being attacked every 5 steps. Third, at one point Crash was reduced to 14/161HP because I took a risk and assumed he’d survive another hit. I remembered that such risks were ridiculous, especially with my number 1 Pokemon and so close to the finish line. Fourth, there were rumours of a tough little kid around, who came from Petalburg City. Could it be… Wally?

I reached the end of Victory Road. I could see the daylight shining through the exit door. I was mere seconds away from freedom and safety…

“Locke!”

It was Wally. He attacked.

First out was his Altaria. Major paralysed him with Spark, and finished him off with another.

Next out was Delcatty, renowned for Attract-based annoyance tactics. Major threw everything he had into one powerful Thunderbolt, to finish the pussycat off in one. It worked.

Third, Wally sent out Magneton. I switched in Crash for his immunity to Electric-type attacks; Magneton used his free turn to fire a Thunderbolt, which had no effect on Crash. Then Crash used a quadruple-effective Mud Shot, and Magneton was no more.

This was going well.

Wally threw out Roselia, which was a Grass-type and therefore had moves 4x effective against Crash. Despite what I said before about not taking risks, I decided to use Ice Beam – super-effective against Grass-types, and Roselia was down.

Wally’s last Pokemon was the first her ever caught, now fully evolved and a Psychic-type to be reckoned with. Gardevoir.

Crash hit Gardevoir with his strongest attack, Surf, which only took about 40% of Gradevoir’s health off. Clearly the Psychic-type had a good Special Defence, especially after it used Light Screen. A change of tactics was required, so Crash hit Gardevoir with Mud Shot for some Physical Damage. It didn’t finish Gardevoir off, but while Wally was using a Super potion I had a chance to switch in Spice. Time for a super-effective Shadow Ball; if that didn’t finish Gardevoir off, nothing would.

It missed. Gardevoir had used Double Team to raise its evasion. I feared for Spice.

But there was nothing to fear. Shadow Ball hit second time, and Gardevoir was down. Wally – about 20 levels on average stronger than the last time we fought – was defeated. He said something about how he’d beat me one day, but I wasn’t listening. I left Victory Road and headed to the nearby Pokemon Centre.

I had made it to the final stage of my journey.

The Pokemon League.


-Samwise