Part 27: Awaken My Masters

Part 25: Awaken My Masters



Greetings. Before we head off to Ever Grande City, there's a fair few things we can do with all the various tools we obtained out on the water.

"back and forth for us."

I'm not lonesome, even though we're far apart.



Now, did I forget that this was here the first time we arrived at Mossdeep, or was it all meticulously planned and I wanted to do this sidequest after doing the whole chunk of ocean? You decide.



Got plenty of new Pokemon to obtain with the Super Rod. God I hate fishing in this gen. Have I mentioned that before? I think I've mentioned it before.



At least we finally find this damn mon. Lilycove will be a little bit darker tonight.




Okay now we've got all the Pokemon in the Safari Zone. ...yup.



Well at least there's a happy ending to this mess.




See you in the multiverse.



Ehhhhhhhh, I'll forgive them eventually.



Have you the time to hear the new legend of HOENN? It happened long, long ago... the world was wracked by a ferocious clash between the POKEMON of the land and the POKEMON of the sea... The POKEMON of the land raised mountains and created continents... The POKEMON of the sea raised huge waves and carved out oceans... their fierce duel raged without end. The world was engulfed in massive infernos and vicious storms. It was then that the POKEMON of the sky descended from a storm. The POKEMON, shining a vivid green, becalmed the two enraged POKEMON. Then, it's duty done, the green POKEMON flew off into the wild blue yonder...



Huh? What is this? What is it holding? A MENTAL HERB? It must have picked it up somewhere. But I'm not a TRAINER, so you can have it.



Mental Herbs cure infatuation, which isn't very common, so this item isn't very common.

Abandoned Ship



Alright, our first proper stop on our whirlwind tour is the depths of the Abandoned Ship. Uh, after fishing, of course. Can't forget it!



Much better than a 1% surfing encounter.



What's on this side of the ship?



Alright, good start.




We've got a puzzle here. The keys we need to find will glitter on the floor, so I hope you've got good memory.



Bit trickier.



There's some good stuff down here.



The other sparkles are trash. Hey, you never know if it'll be a Piece of Nugget. Eh, probably not.



Dunno how we saw that sparkling from the bin from there, but whatever.



Hmm, nothing sparkling in this room, but we've obtained the only Luxury Ball you can get aside from contests. Weird how they'd make this ball so rare, but maybe that's the point?



Only by entering room 5 can we see where the sparkles are. No that doesn't make any sense, but hey, what's in the final room.



Alright, now we can start chaining wild Pokemon in the gra- oh wait, this is something else. Wasn't someone looking for this?



Listen, can I get you to deliver that to CAPT. STERN? I want to investigate this ship a little more.



YUKI, would you trade your SCANNER for something? Like, say, a DEEPSEATOOTH or a DEEPSEASCALE that I have?



Now these are interesting items. Clamperl can evolve into two different Pokemon when you trade it holding these items, but they also have another effect: the Deepseatooth doubles Clamperl's Special Attack and the Deepseascale doubles Clamperl's Special Defense. You can probably guess which is the better item to equip. It's at least something, but Clamperl isn't too amazing to make use of these great items right now.



Oh would you look at that, ANOTHER physical Water type? With the double SpAtk from the DeepSeaTooth, Huntail just isn't very impressive compared to Clamperl, especially since it doesn't learn a single physical move through level up. Seems a little bit suspect. Still, it works alright as a special attacker, but then what's Gorebyss for? So you should use its Attack... except the only physical moves it gets are the standard Normal ones and Rock Tomb! That's seriously it. So mixed set it is, with Return, Hydro Pump, Crunch and Ice Beam. Seriously, I don't know what they were thinking with this mon. At least it keeps Clamperl's excellent Defense, but damn, Shell Smash was a real blessing for this poor fish.



While Clamperl prefers the DeepSeaTooth to the DeepSeaScale, Gorebyss at least gets the moves to make use of its stats, even if Attack is pretty much useless for it, as we just saw. However, unless you want to use some cool Psychic moves, there's not a huge reason to use Gorebyss over Clamperl, aside from getting around Species Clause? At least it can dish out some real damage, but it's too slow to really sweep, so this entire line needs Shell Smash then, huh? It even gets Shadow Ball, just to screw over Huntail even more, it's so baffling. It's gonna be a while until I'm gonna catch these two, so, uh, try not to forget about them.




Rejoice RS players, you now no longer need to use Dive ever again. Emerald suckers still have one more use for the shitty HM, but for now, Nobunaga will be climbing up waterfalls.



This will also be the last time we'll be seeing the Acro Bike. It's... in this game. I guess.



Aside from some rad Secret Base locations, what else is there?



Cool. Let's never use the Acro Bike again.



Before we head off to more waterfalls, it's time to make our Secret Base! We had a few ideas suggested by various people, so we'll be going with Jade Rider's suggestion of this cave.



I do quite like this design, lots of room and all easily accessible.



There's a nice checklist of all the various decorations you can get, but I only got a few things that were suggested, like some cool mats that Nondevor chose.



Our cool statue we got for filling the art gallery will fit in just fine.



We also need lots and lots of dolls, so hopeandjoy, Leraika and rannum have the right idea here. There's also an E note block from Kikas, cause hell yeah music. To wrap it up, there's a Big Plant from Hobgoblin2099



Alright, that's looking pretty good, though obviously there's some cool stuff we can get a bit later that I'll put in here too. Overall, our Goon Cave is looking good!



There aren't many waterfalls in the game, but we've yet to get to the good stuff.

Meteor Falls



As you'd expect of the name, Meteor Falls has a lot more to it at the top of the falls.



Good move, awful accuracy. One member having it is enough.



We've confidence in ourselves.

We've been married for fifty years. The bond we share as a couple could never be broken.



Young TRAINER, if the chance arises, will you battle with us again? We've been married for fifty years. Come to think of it, I've yet to beat my dear wife in a battle.

Oh, dear. We've lost, my dear husband. Fifty years of marriage... if we ever argued, we always settled it with a POKEMON battle...



The CHAMPION even visits. Now do you see how special it is here?




Your dragons are no match for my dragon and kaiju combo.



The road ahead remains long and harsh. When will my POKEMON and I become the best?



With that brief trainer interlude, let's head to the water.



Ooh, a back room.



That's a relief, Nimbus really needs that boost to her STAB, though it's a shame how late it is.



Oh hey it's that dragon thing. Let's get one.



Well we actually need two.



We can also get a catfish. It can also be found in Victory Road, so it's not a unique monster to here, alas.



And there we go, we are seriously running out of places to complete.



It's sort of like a HORSEA, and yet it's subtly different. Thank you! I know I could go looking for one on my own, but... but I really wanted to get a BAGON that another TRAINER caught...



The trend of giving shitty trade Pokemon shitty mail instead of a useful item is thankfully contained to this gen for the most part.

Trick House



You know what time it is. Since I decided to stick to the ocean instead of coming here after Mossdeep and totally not forgetting about this, we've got two Trick House challenges to get through.




Oh baby, turntable puzzles.



This area is pretty open, so here I am going to the door without a scroll. Look, it's been a little while since I played these puzzles.



Gwaaah! I blew it! Ehehehe... I guess I lost because I was trying to cheat.




It's a challenge I've found worth repeating!



While they're a bit trickier than the Gym puzzle, they're still not too difficult.





Now who would expect this spooky scarecrow to have such excellent attacking stats. Well it's to the detriment of all its other stats, but it means its STAB is perfectly usable and, as it is written, if you have special STAB, you have physical coverage and vice versa, because fuck you. So I hope you like Return, cause that's all you got. Okay, if you trade to FRLG you can get Revenge from the Move Reminder (after you've grinded to get some shitty mushrooms) and then go with Faint Attack and Needle Arm as your best options. What, just because you have good stats doesn't mean you actually get moves to use them with. Get outta here, preferably with a strong Fighting, Flying, Poison, Bug, Fire or Ice move. Huh. That's a lot of weaknesses.



Pokemon protagonists seem particularly resilient to spinning.



Let's get the heck out of here.



Was the previous one "TRICK MASTER is my love" and I didn't notice?



Meh reward. Next one!



Since the Mossdeep changed in Emerald, so too did the challenge associated with it. It looks all too familiar.




Aiyeeeh! You're much too strong! How do you do it? I wish I could appear and disappear as if I were smoke, too.

Defeated! It's a bad sign... I've circled the same spot over ten times now... it's ill fortune...



Let's get outta here before she blames that on us. There's a fair few coloured switches around and thankfully they each affect one thing.



Alright, we've moved all that we have to. I will move the top two trainers so I can actually get past and not have to backtrack.



Behind warp number one is the scroll. Neat. What about number two?




Gah! Oh hey, it's that wind chime thing. Now you can see it's at Mt. Pyre and wonder where the hell it is.



I was hoping to switch places with you when I beat you, but...

Humph! I'm not upset! Not me!



Well that's everything, so it's exit time.




Well, anyway, we both picked a weird place to get acquainted. As one weirdo to another, let's do our best!



Oh! Well, go ahead, then! You're solving all the puzzles in the TRICK HOUSE. That's the feeling I get.



...you're not wrong.



Wow. Now we've got two of the damn things.



Last thing on our list is exploring these ruins that opened up. Of course, there's more Braille to puzzle out. Don't think you can use your RS strategy, it's different now!

LEFT, LEFT,
DOWN, DOWN.
THEN, USE
ROCK SMASH.



Simple enough, right? You could work that out without Braille, surely. In RS you had to go right twice, down twice, then use Strength.



This statue is beeping at me...

Regi Battle





The first of its trio and the master of rock. Its Defense stat is very impressive, but its typing does let it down by making it weak to a fair few things, as well as its alright HP stat. Still, it has a good Attack stat and the moves to take advantage of it, such as the excellent Superpower, Ancientpower (hey, at least it's not Rock Tomb) and Earthquake. All the Regis can learn Explosion though the Move Reminder, so that's an excellent option for a last ditch attempt. So yeah, it learns some good stuff, can dish out the damage and even take it, even when it's weak to it, especially if you use Iron Defense or even Curse. Still gotta tutor Rock Slide onto it though.



It's the first legendary of the game and definitely not the last. Let's get it nice and weak with Superpower's stat drops.



And then chuck some balls. With this current setup, we have a 4.3% chance of capture with an Ultra Ball. Hmm, that doesn't seem very good.



Past turn 10, Timer Balls become more and more stronger than Ultra Balls, so after 21 turns, we have a 7% chance of capture. Still pretty eh, but if we get to the mythical 40 turn limit, then it's a 9.2% chance! That's actually somewhat decent. Though with low PP on a fair few moves, Regirock will probably start using Struggle by that point.



Around turn 21 is when we caught it. Alright, onto the next one.



STAY CLOSE
TO THE WALL.
RUN AROUND
ONE LAP.



Much better than the RS version which had you just waiting for 2 minutes. Yawn.



Does ice usually... beep?





This chilly billy is the opposite of Regirock, focusing on the special side, though still having an awful typing. A lot of the shared moveset between the Regis is mostly physical, which Regice really can't make use of, as well as Icy Wind and Zap Cannon. So Ice Beam and Thunderbolt it is. Unfortunately that's it, aside from exploding, so get a good Hidden Power, or Toxic stall. Against a fair few special threats, especially when you factor in Amnesia, you're pretty much untouchable. Against physical threats? Well, it's good, but it's definitely the weaker side, especially since the HP lets you down. Also, as you can see in the romanization, it's pronounced Regi-ice. Checkmate, atheists.



Regice isn't as immediately threatening like Regirock was, but it's a bit trickier to whittle down since it's weaker on the physical side.



Ball chuck plan go.



Oh. Well okay, let's just do that then.



THOSE WHO
INHERIT OUR
WILL, SHINE
IN THE MIDDLE.



Pretty simple, just use Flash in the centre of the room. Or Fly in RS. Now this hunk of metal I expect to beep at me!





As you'd expect, this mechanical marvel is the best of both worlds. Not only are both of its defenses excellent (though HP still tries to drag it down), it has a great typing with lots of resistances and a nice movepool to be nice and defensive with. It sure as hell shouldn't attack, since its best STAB option is Metal Claw and, while it has good physical and special options, it's better to whittle opponents down with Toxic and Seismic Toss (move tutor annoyingly). You could go with the Curse route if you want to stall and then explode for massive damage, but Iron Defense or Amnesia are also fine options. You've got good tools to wall, so it's probably a good idea to use them.



Fire Blast will be perfect to get it down.



After plenty of tedious ball throwing later, we get it! Thankfully none of the Regis gave me huge trouble catching them with my sweet ball strats, but trying to shove 3 catch rate Pokemon into Timer Balls is still a bit rough and there's plenty more to go, of course.



Regardless, we are finished with the entire region for now. Next stop... is Ever Grande.