LogFAQs > #961262948

Fought Fantina, and the whole gym was worrying (kept up my self-imposed rule of no team swaps or exiting to heal up until the whole gym was cleared). The problem is I have no Dark-types, and Ghost is weak against Ghost, so I didn't WANT to risk Stephen or Hermes. Ultimately, I led the team with Erin, who is immune to Ghost attacks, and knows Crunch. That did pretty well (and I had Patrick as a back-up, since he's immune to Ghost as well and can use Thunderbolt for Drifloon/Drifblims). Fighting Fantina's Drifblim though, I wasn't sure what her first Pokemon was, so I led with Violeta, which stuck me in a battle where I didn't WANT to use a physical attacker, but I couldn't risk switching out. I beat her, but Violeta was burned, so that negated her usefulness. Patrick took out Gengar with Psychic, and then it came down to forcing Stephen to take a risk against Mismagius, which worked out! No casualties and five badges down.

Of course, this leads to the most annoying aspect of BDSP: the Surfing. It's bad enough that everything from route 213, Pastoria, the Great Marsh and route 212 is water-based, but now I've unlocked a whole bunch of new routes that are MORE Water-types. Route 219 and 220 have exactly two new Pokemon to catch, which I caught: a level 18 Finneon (named Jennifer) fished up on route 219, and a level 23 Tentacool (named Gillian) on route 220. Of course, surfing down both of these routes means a never-ending streak of encounters with worthless Pokemon (and the occasional Pelipper for a bit more EXP), which is annoying.

Then I got to route 221 and caught the one new Pokemon I could from there: a level 29 Roselia (named Pierre). This is the part of the game where you're kinda trying to level up your new stuff to catch the rest of your team, which leads to some risky behavior that doesn't pay off. I was fighting an Ace Trainer, and I'd taken out her first two Pokemon, no big deal. Her last Pokemon was a Lopunny, and I had nothing that knew Fighting attacks, so I figured "This won't hit too hard. I'll just send out Gillian to get some extra EXP so she can evolve into Tentacruel. Headbutt, Critical Hit, RIP Gillian (Level 23 to 29). But hey, I happened to have Chase on the team, and he hit level 40, so he finally evolved into Rapidash. Battery started dying after that, so I've only managed to clear surfing opportunities on the south end of the map. I still have Fuego Ironworks, half of route 213, route 218, and the inside of Mount Coronet to come.