Part 21: Fuelling Failure
Part 20: Fueling Failure
Mossdeep City
Mossdeep City/Tokusane City: Our slogan: cherish POKEMON!
From moss and deep, describing the deep ocean, or deep space, and tokusa-iro (teal green colour of horsetail) and takane (high peak).
It's the second of five island towns in this game. Mossdeep is pretty big and has a fair amount to it. Like this Dynamicpunch tutor. We're getting there.
Oh yeah, we should make a Secret Base, it's just other votes have taken priority.
Ugh, this Game Corner was copied over from FRLG. Thankfully we don't have to touch it at all, it just gives those in FRLG more player options. Cause they need to play it, if they want to be a master. You do want to be a master, don't you?
We can also finally buy Dive and Net Balls, both very useful, though the Net Ball could've come much earlier. It has a 3x rate on Water or Bug types and while we've caught all the Bug types in the dex, there's still a silly amount of Water types left. The Dive Ball has a 3.5x rate when catching Pokemon underwater, which will be very helpful soon, but is only for 3 Pokemon.
This guy tells you your Pokemon's Pokeblock preference, so since Ranmaru has a Careful nature, which boosts Sp.Def and makes it prefer bitter food, it likes Pokeblocks that boost its Smart contest stat.
Two Gym Leaders? What a crazy idea.
I think it's called KING'S ROCK. Do you want it? Why would you want it? You're weird. You can keep it, but please keep it a secret from STEVEN.
A cool pickup, though neither the Slowpoke or Poliwag lines are in the Hoenn Dex, so I won't be using it. Still, 10% chance of flinching the opponent when you hit them with a contact move ain't bad. I'm kidding, it's shit, but might as well use it for something.
Seems Steven isn't home, wonder where he's at?
"take a look-see for myself."
But there's something wrong about this town. People are going on about a warning letter and the SPACE CENTER... I don't think it concerns me in any way, though.
Oh my god a white rock. Doesn't seem to do anything though.
What do you think? You want it, don't you? You bet, you bet! After all, a SUPER ROD is really super!
We've got the final rod and boy is there a fair few Pokemon we can get with it. Usually it's evolved forms of previous Pokemon we could fish up, but there's some other cool ones too. Despite its description, you can't use Dive Balls on Pokemon fished with this rod.
Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace
Very nice, we only need one Sun Stone for the dex, so thankfully we don't need to get anymore from wild Solrock. Man, wouldn't that suck if you were playing Sapphire and couldn't get any more of those? Haha. Yeah.
...has it only been six weeks since I started this save file? Man I'm going through this LP quick.
I don't know what they'd need it for, but they can't be allowed to take it. I'll keep an eye on things for a while longer. In the meantime, why don't you go check out the town?
We will soon visit you to take your rocket fuel. Please don't try to stop us. We will take the fuel no matter what. Let there be more land! TEAM MAGMA
I've mentioned before how the multiple taps to get a fishing Pokemon in this game sucks, but now it's even worse. With the Super Rod, you have to sometimes tap up to 6-7 times to finally land a damn Pokemon and the number of times you have to hook something has no correlation to what it is, or what level it is. It's such a waste of time and I hate fishing in this game so much.
But hey, might as well fish up some cool stuff, even if it takes forever to do. That's it for Mossdeep for now, so onto the Gym!
Pokemon Gym
If you go up against them with FIGHTING or POISON-type POKEMON, they'll inflict horrible damage! Plus, they'll come at you with outstanding combination attacks. If you want to win, you'll need to show them how tight you are with your POKEMON. Go for it!
This Gym got a major redesign from RS and now features buttons to rotate statues and trainers. Every battle in here can be a double battle, which is cool, but none of the trainers have anything we haven't seen before (mainly cause we cleaned out the Safari Zone), so I'll be skipping over them. What can I say, the last part of the game has a lot of trainers but very little in new and interesting Pokemon.
This Gym is pretty simple, but we have a choice of two teleporters. We'll go right.
Very loud psychics.
Eventually, Wargreymon will evolve. Spoilers, it won't be for a while yet.
Alright, now that we've cleared the way, it's on to the left teleporter.
The Gym is not particularly hard to get through, but having to press the buttons multiple times does get annoying.
Gym Leader time!
Huh??? I'm seeing double here! Four Gym Leaders!
That there are two GYM LEADERS? We're twins! We don't need to talk because... We can each determine what... The other is thinking... All in our minds! This combination of ours... Can you beat it? VS Gym Leader 
VS Leaders Tate & Liza 
Tate & Liza/Fu & Lan: The mystic combination!
From levitate and fūran (wind orchid) and fū (floating).
While getting Baltoy to evolve was a bit of a pain, now you've got a pretty good defensive monster. Shame its typing kinda sucks for that, both those high defenses are pretty damn good and it getting dual screens as well as Cosmic Power really makes it a wall against Ground or Rock types. It learning Hyper Beam immediately is a bit strange, but aside from Explosion, there's not really anything to help you, so Earthquake and Psychic need to be TMed. Those are some amazing moves, so is it the best recipient of them? Probably not. Ice Beam, Shadow Ball and Ancientpower are alright coverage at least, but it can't even learn Calm Mind, so you won't be dealing much damage despite those strong moves. Overall, could be a lot better.
Fighting two Gym Leaders at once in a double battle is a super rad idea, but in RS, they only had two Pokemon. Now, Xatu and Claydol have been added in and you can understand why I want to get rid of Claydol as soon as I can, it will just spam Earthquake endlessly, so having a Flying type really helps avoid lots of damage.
...jeeeeeesus, Calbrena. That's beautiful, I love it.
Xatu can hit you pretty hard, but it's mainly a support to Claydol and Solrock.
It's also supporting me, indirectly. That was just the first turn, double battles have a little bit more going on compared to singles.
Calbrena is doing pretty good in her debut Gym, as I expected. Since Light Screen and Calm Mind are being thrown around a lot, having a strong physical attacker is a good idea.
While Lunatone does nothing against Dark types, it can be a nice support to Solrock or Claydol and can boost up pretty effectively.
Thankfully that was the most Xatu did. Sure, I knocked them out quickly instead of showing what they can do, but I don't wanna know what they can do, cause they can hurt super bad. I don't wanna get wrecked and double battles means it a lot easier to throw damage around before it gets thrown back at you.
Since I'm not super scared of these two compared to the Claydol, I can go a bit easier on them. Wouldn't be fun if Calbrena just two shot everything, right?
Darn, I was hoping to put Lunatone back down to where it was, but since Solrock is paralyzed, it's safe for Wargreymon to come out.
Well it can take the Psychic attacks coming at Calbrena, remember you switch a Pokemon in mid-turn, and it can outspeed with Iron Tail instead of taking a Flamethrower and dying immediately.
I'm just glad Iron Tail didn't miss, or we would be in a bit of trouble.
Hah, boost up all you want, it's not gonna-
Maybe I should force feed Wargreymon some Zinc.
At +1 Sp.Def, I dunno if this will knock out...
But Ranmaru is just that good. Also props to Nimbus for just sitting there dishing out damage and paralysis and being ignored the whole time.
Pokemon Gym
It also lets you use the HM move DIVE outside of battle. You should take this, too.
It raises SP.ATk and... It raises SP.DEF! It's a move that's perfect... For PSYCHIC POKEMON!
"the bond that we share as twins." You will become even stronger! We've battled you, so we know.
Just one more badge to go! Shame there's a lot of ocean inbetween that...
Oh yeah, this is happening. We should probably do something about that.
Magma Takeover
Just the usual grunt fare. Feels a bit last ditch.
"That I stayed to the bitter end..."Alright, thankfully there's only two floors to this place. Up to the boss.
Uh...
On to the boss!
If you're going to mess with us, too, we'll take care of you at the same time!
What's the point of stealing rocket fuel?
Fufufu... since you're so curious, you deserve an explanation. We're going to jettison the entire load into MT.CHIMNEY! With GROUDON gone, we have no need for that slag heap of a mountain! So we'll use the fuel's power to make the volcano erupt! It will be savage! YUKI! You're going to help me? Let's go into battle together! Are you ready?
From the first big double battle, to the very first big multi battle! Though this makes this the third time we're fighting Maxie. Hmm.
VS Leader Maxie
Steven won't be helping a huge amount, though screens are appreciated. As you can see, this is the last battle against Maxie and to fight him so soon after the Hideout, especially before fighting Archie once, is definitely a misstep.
Only Maxie is actually interesting to fight here, Tabitha is just too weak with Steven in the mix. I mean, it's a dice roll whether Steven actually attacks, or just supports with random moves.
Alright, now with Mightena out of the way, let's start throwing Psychic around.
Yeah Golbat ain't doing much. Especially since it's not targeting the Pokemon weak to Dark. Well anyway, I think the whole dual team plot could've worked a bit better if things had been swapped around. After all, where the hell is Courtney? You know, the other Team Magma admin? This is also the third time we've fought Tabitha too.
Teamwork! See, I think the Magma Hideout and the Space Center Takeover should've been swapped. Have Tabitha and Courtney steal some fuel to help reach the very depths of the volcano and get the Magma Emblem now. Then fight Maxie and have Groudon awaken much later than it does, since we haven't heard anything about it since. It also means you'll fight both leaders at the climactic part of the story, instead of this weird plot.
Things seem to be going pretty smoothly for us.
Well, not anymore.
Especially now. Man, Earthquake is just too good.
Thanks Steven, for doing FUCK ALL. So yeah, we definitely should've fought Archie before this, maybe when they took the submarine, cause it is a bit unfair. At least we fight both of his admins.[/i]
Alright, I'm doing my part.
Stop not doing yours!!! If we were to only face Tabitha and Courtney, then yeah, it wouldn't justify Steven being here, so how about the rival instead? Steven can get held up fighting a load of grunts, but it would be a way for the rival to not disappear from the story, as well as seeing their fully evolved starter.
It's a good thing the main Pokemon of the leader of the Fire team doesn't have a Fire move!
Despite doing very little, Steven gets the final kill. Maaaaaaan.
Magma Takeover
We failed to make the volcano erupt... we failed to control GROUDON after we had awoken it... is our goal to expand the land misguided? If... if we, TEAM MAGMA, are wrong... then might TEAM AQUA's goal to expand the sea also be equally misguided? All right... we will give up on the fuel... there appear to be more important matter that I must examine... Mossdeep City
Please come see me at home after this. Oh, yes, I don't live in RUSTBORO CITY. I live right here on this island.
As you can see, there's not much here, but this is my home. Thank you for all that you've done. This is my token of appreciation. It's the HIDDEN MACHINE DIVE. No need to be shy--you've earned this HM.
Use DIVE if you come to deep water like it. You'll drop to the seafloor. When you want to come back up, use DIVE again. In some places, it won't be possible for you to surface, though. Apparently, there's an underwater cavern between MOSSDEEP and SOOTOPOLIS. You know, the one that CAPT.STERN found in his submarine.
Ugh, Dive. A rubbish move, an annoying HM and it makes the large empty ocean areas even larger and emptier. You thought Nobunaga would have good moves in the endgame? Hahaha, nope.
As much as I would love to go back to Route 124 and dive down, or go to the other twenty thousand water routes we can access, let's instead go to this cave. Yeah!
Shoal Cave
How about bringing me back some SHOAL SALT and SHOAL SHELLS? I can make you something good if you bring me the ingredients.
The Shoal Cave is a pretty neat area, as it changes its appearence from High Tide to Low Tide every six hours, starting at midnight. Since the clock isn't easy to manipulate, this is thankfully one of the few things it influences.
What's this mound of dirt?
Ah, some salt. There's four patches of both salt and shell that regrows every day. Obviously you can only access them at their respective tide heights.
There's some neat Pokemon to catch here and you can probably guess why I'm heading straight to this place instead of just covering Route 125.
I really like how different this place looks depending on the time and the various places of the other tide you can reach.
But with focus, one can overcome! With this FOCUS BAND, buckle down and withstand the cold!
I miss the Focus Sash... the band will do, but its 10% chance just isn't reliable.
Heading left from there leads us to the basin where a lot of salt is.
That's all of it we need, but what's down here?
Woah that's pretty bright. It's ice sliding time!
Not too devilish, but still a bit of a puzzler.
Can you solve the puzzle?
Yeah, not too tough, but all that's left is the new Pokemon!
It's about TIME we got our final team member. Ahem. So, Snorunt has weirdly even stats and won't ever be particularly impressive since the master of none archetype really doesn't work in Pokemon unless they're high enough to matter. So getting it to evolve is gonna be a bit rough, but it has the movepool to survive. Having Crunch and then a quick Ice Beam does a lot to increase the overall damage output, but that's really about it. Uh, there's Water Pulse, Earthquake and Shadow Ball. Nothing too crazy, especially with the millions of Water types everywhere, but hey, it'll be alright. I guess. Pure Ice isn't the best typing, especially with those low defenses.
Thanks to SageNytell for the nickname and hey, our team is equal gender, how nuts.
A 5% encounter that didn't take too long, thankfully.
Hardy, that's the most basic Nature you can get, since it's +Atk, -Atk. Overall, all the natures we got in our first outing could've been a lot worse.
Cold Gregg has a lot of catching up to do, so she'll be needing that. I think I'll give Calbrena the Soothe Bell later on, since I want to keep Return strong and the Focus Band just never pops up when you want it to.
Six hours later, it's high tide time!
Since everything's been filled in, there's a lot less to explore.
Still worth exploring regardless.
There we go, this better be worth it.
Would you like me to make you a SHELL BELL with them? All righty, then! I'll make you a SHELL BELL right away. ... There! Done!
Why, the SHELL BELL's chime... it's simply sublime! You can get its ingredients every day, so I can make you more.
Ehhhhh, the Shell Bell recovers HP equal to 1/8th of the damage dealt, which really doesn't add up to much. Especially considering what you have to do to get it too. Anyway, next time, we'll be taking our new team member for a spin as we go through... f-five water routes? Oh... oh no.