A Day in Hoenn, Pokemon Emerald Diary 11/2/21 (Patreon)

A Patron asked on Twitter if I could write some blogs about my adventures in Pokemon Emerald as bonus content for the Patreon. I absolutely can do that, however I have an inability to be brief so these will probably be more than you want or asked for. Anyway let me know if you like this and want to hear more about what I get up to in Hoenn. If you are a part of the Patron discord you probably hear me talk about all this stuff already constantly in #in-game-hangout, but if you only follow on Twitter you only get to see little bits of what's going on, so this might help fill in some of those gaps for you. 

So if this is what you are interested in, keep reading! If not I will see you soon with a video update, since the main channel video will finally be finished in the next week or two.

-A Day in Hoenn-

Each day in Hoenn begins with the berry route. I make my way from Oldale Town to Rustboro, checking on all the berry patches along the way, stopping into the Pretty Petal flower shop for my freebee, and battling the two Rich Kids on the way north. My team is set - three Linoones at level 72, a Vileplume holding a Soothe Bell, my False Swipe Swablu from Pokemon Box: Ruby & Sapphire to fly me around, and whoever I need to level up to evolve for my Pokedex next. Right now that happens to be Lileep, who you get at level 20, and evolves at level 40. Woof. Despite the levels in the region never getting terribly high, Hoenn's regional dex has a ton of late bloomers.

I need to explain the three Linoones. Emerald compared to Ruby & Sapphire revamped how a ton of abilities outside of battle work, including Pickup. This means the probability of getting certain items from Pickup changes depending on the level of the Pokemon. I had my Linoone gang at level 51 for a while to farm Rest TMs. But now that I have way too many of those, the next goal is getting them to level 100 for Earthquake TMs. I don't feel like deliberately grinding them at the moment, so instead my strategy has been to just carry them everywhere I go, gaining exp here and there, and hoping for that 10% chance at a Rare Candy every time I win a battle. When I'm EV training, that's when the real magic happens. But on the day to day I do still knock out all wild Pokemon I run into for that chance at a Pickup proc. I have a fourth Linoone at level 60 something, but right now the party is a bit too full for her.

The secondary function of the Linoones is of course to help me get around the HM heavy region and also to abuse Covet. Whenever I fight Rich Boy Winston and Lady Cindy on the way to Rustboro, the first member of the party holds an Amulet Coin and then I swap to one of the Linoones with Covet for an additional Nugget. Really easy way to passively grind for money on my way to the northern berry patches on Route 115.

Once I get up there, I surf up to the two berry patches in the hidden parts of the route. Then on my way back down, I switch Lileep to the first spot in my party and stop in on my three makeshift "Blissey" bases. These I plan to make more useful over time, but for now, what I did was raise one actual Blissey in Leaf Green for the dex data, and then breed 5 Chanseys. I traded this team to all the games I had on hand to mix records with and clustered the bases all in Route 115. There's only three of them and right now the Chanseys are all at level 5. So this really worked better for raising Pokemon back when I was in the earlier parts of the dex where most things evolved at level 16. In late Hoenn numbers I don't get as much out of them. My goal is to eventually level up and evolve all the Chanseys to be higher so that I can actually grind party members to level 100 on them. There's one Blissey at level 31 too, that's where most of the exp yield comes from. I also have my Lucky Egg I happened to get when I caught the first Chansey in the Safari Zone in Leaf Green, so lately I have been using that too to help expedite the process a little. 

My dex is really filled out thanks to the Professor Oak Challenge run I did in Leaf Green last year before I started Emerald. Right now I'm at 352/386. Pretty much as soon as I hit 150 caught in Emerald, I used Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire to mass migrate all the Pokemon off of my Leaf Green, which had a complete Kanto dex. Then it was just a matter of breeding and evolving for all the mid stages. I traded with my Ruby and my Sapphire games for the version exclusives, and also the other Hoenn starters. All I'm missing now are the Johto starters and their evolutions, Espeon and Umbreon, Raikou, Entei, Celebi, Ho-Oh and Lugia, Torchic's evolutions, Cradily, Armaldo, Milotic, Banette, Glalie, Spheal's evolutions, Bagon's evolutions, Beldum's evolutions, Regirock, Registeel, Latios, Groudon and Rayquaza. Some of those are obviously more passive to get than others, but we'll come back to that later. 

Once the bases are beat, I head back down and to the east to harvest and water one last berry patch outside of Rusturf Tunnel. Then I fly straight to Mauville. There are two berry patches in this area, to the west and to the south, and on my way west I usually stop by the day care to check in on the progress of whatever Pokemon I'm passively raising, which is none at the moment, and then I make a quick stop in Verdanturf Town to have the affection lady check up on my Vileplume. The reason this Pokemon is tagging along with me is to get steps with the Soothe Bell, which translates into easy friendship. 

I guess now is a good a time as any to explain what the point of all this berry harvesting even is. Of course, I am trying to raise 5 special Pokemon to win the 5 types of Contests, Cool, Cute, Beauty, Tough and Smart. By complete coincidence, I happen to have run into 4 full odds shiny Pokemon between my Leaf Green play through and this Emerald one. Not only did I get super lucky finding these shiny Pokemon at all, but they also all happened to have different natures. 

There's Nelly, my Docile Bellsprout from Leaf Green. I ran into her in the grass outside of Celadon while I think I was just grinding for levels. Docile is a neutral nature, which meant she has no Pokeblock preference and could really be used for any contest. At first I thought I would use her for Smart, because she learns so many Smart moves, but then I stumbled on the Growth + Vine Whip/Solarbeam Combo and decided to raise her as my Cool contest Pokemon instead. She won her Master Rank last week and has a portrait in the art gallery. Bellsprout, the spitting image of "cool."

Next I ran into Camille, my Relaxed Wurmple in Petalburg Woods on the first leg of my daily berry route. I had been RNG manipulating shiny Pokemon in my Dead Battery Sapphire save file, so I didn't necessarily expect to be able to start doing it in my Emerald version without some science to retroactively figure out my SID, but then I ran into this full odds little purple Wurmple completely on accident and he enabled me to find my SID super easily and opened up a whole new world of RNG hunting in Emerald for me. Thanks to his nature, he also would make a perfect Tough contest Pokemon... other than the fact that Wurmple learns virtually no Tough moves. But I looked at the learnset and the combos, and decided to go with Tackle, Gust, Thief and Harden. He evolved into a beautiful Beautifly and I thought it would be so great to have such a delicate Pokemon win a Tough Contest. 

I thought that would be it, one full odds per game is still more than I ran into in over a decade of playing these games normally, but no, they kept on coming. One day when I was working on my dex during my breaks at work, I turned the game on and started surfing south on Route 122 to Mt Pyre to try to catch a Chimecho. Then within maybe less than a minute of turning the game on, a shiny Timid Tentacool appeared. I caught her and named her Rae and decided she was obviously destined to be my cute contest Pokemon. Her moveset, Swagger, Rest, Sleep Talk and Facade easily net her the Master Rank title and she just got her portrait in the art gallery a few nights ago. 

Then less than a week later, I forget what I was doing but my game had been on for a very long time. I think I was checking up on some berries to water them midday, when I found and caught my Rash shiny Oddish, Barnabas on Route 119. I was extremely torn on what to evolve him into, obviously Barnabas the Bellossom has a nice ring to it, and Bellossom does learn more Beauty moves than Vileplume, but it was precisely for that reason I knew I had to go with Vileplume. I had inadvertently chosen all Pokemon who didn't suit the archetype of their respective contests at all, or rather, they had all chosen me. So I decided it would be fitting for a Rafflesia to win the Beauty contest. I spent last night raising him to level 39 before evolving him so that he would learn Moonlight and Petal Dance, then gave him Sunny Day and Flash. The four Beauty moves a Vileplume can learn.

Whoever my Smart contest Pokemon ends up being, I guess fate will decide. Or it won't.

The best Pokeblock recipes for each stat all call for the berries you can only get after the post game of course, and they all grow extremely slowly. After weeks of harvesting, I finally have a decent number of Spelon, Pamtre, Watmel and Durin berries. Still working on Belue. That's why the berry route has been such a main stay really, I wanna really optimize my unlikely heroes to do the absolute best they can do in their respective categories. Unfortunately Belue is the one you need for Tough contests, so that's what's keeping Camille from making his contest debut. But I just finally finished growing Pamtre, so it's Barnabas's turn. A little known quirk of the contest condition system is that you get the most mileage out of your Pokeblocks if your Pokemon's affection is high, so that is why Barnabas has been by my side with a Soothe Bell on my daily trek around Hoenn. Even with all the work we did last night grinding, he's still not at max friendship, so maybe tonight if I'm impatient, I can pump him full of Tomato Berries to get him the rest of the way there before blending my Pokeblocks. While I'm visiting the affection checker, I stop and watch some TV to see if there's anything fun happening in the news this week. At the moment, it seems there are no events planned.

From Mauville, I head north past the smashable rocks to Route 111. Sometimes I stop and battle Gabby and Ty here, but sometimes I don't bother. Then I take a short cut through the desert, and check all the berry patches on route 112 and the northernmost area near the entrance to Route 113. There's a girl here who will give another daily free Razz berry. I could bike through the ash on Route 113 to get to Fallarbor Town, but I usually do the lazy thing and Fly there instead. I have all the flutes and the Pretty Desk and Chair anyway. South of Fallarbor on Route 114 is one more berry patch and one more NPC who will give you a free daily Wepear berry. 

After this stretch is done I fly back to Mauville for the second half of the berry routine. Can you believe it's only half done? Surfing East to Route 118, there is one berry patch on the upper ledge, and then continuing east through the grass is the Berry Master's house and garden. This is usually one of my more fruitful stops. It takes a long time to water everything here. A pro tip is to keep the Wailmer Pail on the select button to skip half the watering dialogue each time. Then I get my 3 free berries from the family inside the house, and head back to Route 118 to head north to the next berry patch, past the tall grass and under the bridge. 

There are no more berry patches from here til you reach Fortree, but usually I run there anyway. Good way to get in the steps. After the 119 patch, there's another long stretch on Route 120 with no berries either. There are lots of trainers on this Route that like to rematch though, so if I'm not in a hurry I will sometimes grab extra levels for my dex mon here. At the very southern tip of the route there are two berry patches, and one more NPC who gives you a free berry daily depending on your Trainer ID. Mine ends in a 2, so she gives me Mago berries, but I did trade with my Sapphire and Japanese Emerald for Wiki and Aguave berries as well. To the east on Route 121 is one final berry patch. I used to run all the way from here to Lilycove, but now I take a detour down past Mt Pyre for one easy to reach berry patch on Route 123. Then I usually just fly back up to Lilycove and run just outside the city to the west to grab the last one on Route 121. There are also a few trainers here that are good to re-battle for exp, so sometimes I rematch them too. Inside Lilycove, I stop into the Department Store to see how I do in the Lotto that day. I usually don't get anything, but a couple times I have won a PP Up. Then I chat with the old man above the cove for another free berry.

The final stop on the daily berry tour of Hoenn is Sotopolis City to see Kiri. Kiri and the old gent in Lilycove are the only way to get Tomato berries, so out of habit I always just see what they give me. And then if I have work, I usually turn the game off there and repeat it all the next day.

The real progress on my goals right now is actually all happening in other games. I am midway through a Pokemon Colosseum playthrough. Obviously there are a lot of Pokemon I need for my Pokedex that I can get this way, but on top of that it is a good resource for more TMs, rare berries you can't get in Hoenn, and it is the only way to get Suicune with decent stats in all of Gen 3, which is what I'm stuck on right now. For Entei I painfully reset the encounter over and over trying to get a Lonely nature, until after weeks of this I finally broke down and learned Colosseum RNG manipulation. It wasn't actually difficult for Entei, but Suicune is in an area far from a save point, where you have to run through a town of people who all move around and advance the RNG. So I have to try to learn "Blink RNG" to try to get a Modest Suicune, which requires ANOTHER new program, but it won't run correctly on the small tablet I've been using for all the other RNG stuff, so I have to try to install it on a different computer and try to learn it all over again. I've been putting it off because to be honest I don't love Colosseum and I don't love Colosseum RNG manipulation. 

So in the meantime, I decided to try to RNG breed a Bold Female Eevee with good IVs to use for my Mt. Battle team. I have decades of Pokemon on my Ruby version, so somehow through just rolling the dice enough times I ended up with this family of Bulbasaur that all have really good IVs for breeding. So I bred some of those good IVs onto a male Seedot, and I have a Female Eevee from Fire Red with like one or two good IVs as well. So I've been trying at that as well after work, but even though it's only one more frame perfect input than wild or stationary RNG, I just suck at breeding RNG. Idk if it's because one of the inputs is on the Dpad or if it's because I have to hatch an entire egg and calculate IVs between each attempt, but it's not coming easily or quickly. I've wasted days on this already. 

Well make sure you join me next time to see if I make any progress on these two frustrating hunts! We're building our team for Mt. Battle, and you'll find out how Barnabas does in the Beauty contest! That's all for now, so see ya!