Pokemon Emerald Part #22 - That's a Lotta Water

Part 22: That's a Lotta Water

Part 21: That's a Lotta Water

Are you ready for endless surfing? ARE YOU? We've got a Cold Gregg to train and what better way then up against many, many, MANY Water trainers.

While Cold Gregg doesn't have great stats, her moves are pretty good, so it balances out.

The tide ebbs and flows inside the SHOAL CAVE. By the way, it's about six hours from high tide to low tide. Did you know?

Standard skipping procedure activated, cause hoo boy, there's a fair few trainers on these massive empty routes.

"Are you going to see him, too?"

(IRIS) KIM, can you tell me what we're looking for out here?

Expect to see a lot of level ups in this update.

(KIM) A funny old man lives in the SHOAL CAVE, doesn't he? Let's go see him, IRIS!

(IRIS) Oh, we came sort of close. KIM, are we really going into the SHOAL CAVE? We'll get all wet.

...right, uh, well, this thing... what to- what to say about this Pokemon...? It focuses purely on Speed to the detriment of all its other stats and it has a super barren movepool, like it learns Tackle, Water Gun and Take Down. THAT'S IT. At least it learns all the good Water HMs, as well as Ice Beam, but that's it. Also you're not dealing any damage anyway, so it's all pointless, the only reason it exists is so you can reasonably farm Heart Scales at a 75% rate with Compoundeyes. That's it, don't use this Pokemon for anything else. Mainly because it can't do anything else, all it has are Water, Ice and Normal moves.

Wanna know how I got in this situation?

Timing this stuff is bullshit, lemme tell ya.

Definitely worth it though.

What a great little story.

And that's Route 125! It was pretty small, only like four squares or so. All the other routes in this update are bigger.

Back on Route 124, there's a billion dive spots to go down, so let's get started.

Diving

There's a lot of hidden items underwater, but they're all marked, or in very obvious locations. Unlike a certain remake... While a fair few of them are fluff, there's some good stuff down here and of course the music is just great, so it's not all bad. Just annoying to hear Nobunaga's cry over and over and over and

Some dive spots lead to not only seaweed to find Pokemon in, but also other parts of the route that are inaccessible otherwise.

It's usually shards, but those aren't that bad. Let's go get some underwater Pokemon.

There's only 3 underwater encounters and Dive Balls make getting them a joke.

This stoned grandpa isn't all that bad, despite being unable to use one of its STABs. Sure it can't learn Rock Slide outside of breeding like every Rock type ever, but it gets Ancientpower at level 43! That's, uh, something. It can at least use Take Down or Double-Edge, as well as Earthquake, but its special side will go unloved. It can take physical hits all day so long as it's not weak to them and it'll fall over if a Grass type looks at it, but it has the firepower and hard-headedness behind it to at least hit something pretty hard, if nothing else. It wishes for better STAB options though.

The final deep sea denizen doesn't have its crazy tricks from future generations, but is basically a stronger, slower Luvdisc, having Normal, Water and Ice moves to work with. Thankfully it can be proved upon by evolution, which you should do straight away since it doesn't learn anything by level up, ever, but both options have their ups and downs. The only other notable thing is the evolution items of Deepseascale and Deepseatooth, which double Clamperl's Sp.Def and Sp.Atk respectively. Obviously the tooth is the better option if you just want to use Clamperl, but again, it isn't too impressive at the moment. Shell Smash is a bit away, baby.

Now where does this lead?

Very nice, but this is a dead end. Cheers game.

This is a bit better.

Now where does this lead?

Another dead end, cheers game.

This is a bit better.

Pretty good haul overall, got plenty of drinks to force down Cold Gregg.

Now that we have some shards, let's get some good stuff.

We only need one extra Water Stone and one Leaf Stone to evolve all the Pokemon in the Hoenn Dex with the various freebies we get across the game. Now that we have some spare stones, let's have an evolution extravaganza!

Surfing

Onto the third route of the update and this one is a real short one, trust me. Definitely not one of the largest routes in the game, no sir.

Cold Gregg is slowly catching up.

If you have a rival, don't you get the feeling that you have to keep getting better?

Let's not talk about the rival.

Let's talk about this instead: it's cool. Uh, that's it.

There's a supermassive dive spot in this route that goes all the way down to Route 128.

Thankfully there's just the one item in it, the game is very good at not putting random stuff in impossible to know places.

Hey, only Cold Gregg can level up now!

Secrets in the corner.

That's the good stuff, still got like 7 levels to go though...

Soon you won't be able to tell Cold Gregg has base 50s across the board.

That's all the underwater items, so now it's the rest of the trainers.

Now Cold Gregg has got a good Ice move too, she'll be team ready in no time.

Now for the other big square route. Route 126 is a giant donut, mmm, donuts, so let's go counter-clockwise.

Can finally fight those swimmers at the entrance from Route 124.

For whatever reason there's, uh, nothing around the left half of Sootopolis volcano. We'll dive under after we've found all the trainers.

Since there's a separate spot here, might as well explore it.

Alright, I'll just shove them into the PC, no need to make more stones.

Lotta guys flexing at children. Down into the deep we go.

Diving

Alright, what's up here?

Cool, what's down here?

We'll head into that ominous opening in a minute.

Even underwater the top left side is super empty.

What's in a remote place like this?

That's some pretty good stuff and another route down, so...

Welcome to Sootopolis City!

Sootopolis/Rune City: The mystical city where history slumbers.
From soot and polis (Greek for city), and rune, ru (flow), ruri (blue colour of lapis lazuli) and netsu (underwater soil that makes black dye).

Sootopolis City

The last Gym Leader, though the place is locked right now. Sootopolis is split in two, so let's explore the right side first.

But that also means I have many rivals for his attention. He's got appeal with a DOUBLE-EDGE. I couldn't even catch his eye. Please, let me teach your POKEMON the move DOUBLE-EDGE!

Cold Gregg will appreciate this boost, since everyone else is pretty set in their moves.

Now that I've become an old buzzard, my only amusement is watching young TRAINERS battle.

Worry not, this weird house that seemingly had no purpose in Mossdeep in RS has just been moved to Emerald. What is this house for? Sigh, I guess I'll have to go over the e-Reader in a Side Notes eventually...

You've brightened up my day, so I'll give you a big WAILMER DOLL. Take good care of it!

Never gonna say no to free stuff and saves us having to buy it at Lilycove.

My big brother says that SEEDOT is bigger. But that's wrong! Everyone knows that LOTAD is a lot bigger. If you get a big LOTAD, please come show me!

Here are two NPCs that wanna see some big Lotad or Seedot. I've already gone over how the game calculates size for those that rate it (it's ridiculously complicated) here and you get 2 Elixers every time you beat the size record. As luck would have it, Dots from Rustboro's trade is just large enough to count, at 0.01 inches over the threshold. What a coincidence.

... Okay. That's nice. My name is KIRI. My mommy and daddy named me that so I would grow healthy and warmhearted. That's what they wished. You can have one of these.

Spring, summer, autumn and winter. If you're born in springtime, do you like the spring, and if you're born in the summer, do you like the summer?

Checks out, I was born in summer and love it. I miss the warmth...

So Kiri is pretty interesting: she is Junichi Masuda's daughter, born shortly before the release of Ruby and Sapphire, which definitely added to his stress of when that game was being released. Her berries are pretty rare too, only given out by the Berry Master otherwise. Her second berry is either a Figy or Iapapa berry, which can only otherwise be obtained by the Beauty on Route 120 if you have the right ID number.

All endgame stuff, which is just what we need. I've barely sold anything this game and I'm just rolling in money, it's been quite nice.

Only a couple of interesting things on the left side.

Alright mate, it's not that amazing. Brick Break has 75BP, 15PP, 100% accuracy and shatters both Light Screen and Reflect, even if the opponent is immune to the move. It's pretty cool and gives some much needed Fighting coverage to a lot of physical attackers, but Nobunaga doesn't need it and also has no room for it because Water HMs!

Bit of a journey getting down here, so there must be something good.

The spirits of POKEMON, becalmed at MT. PYRE, are said to be revived here. Please leave.

Alright, we're finished in this city for now, so let's use the shitty fishing mechanics and take 20 minutes to find the one Pokemon I want.

Seriously, it's only a 20% encounter, but because fishing is shit in this game, it takes so much longer.

Surfing

Route 128 will be the final area we'll go over and thankfully it's pretty small. Still a lot to it like all the others, but it's a nice straight line.