Current Events > I'm doing a solo run of Alpha Sapphire with my favorite gen 3 Pokemon

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV1tcxLi7kI
https://i.imgur.com/31dsoYl.gif

I spent about two hours using the Dexnav trying to find a Surskit that had a decent nature and knew Signal Beam (because it doesn't learn any Bug-type attacks by level-up unless I evolve it to Masquerain, but I want to keep it a Surskit) and now I'm about to head towards the first gym. The fact that Surskit's three weaknesses are represented in the first, third, and sixth gyms in Hoenn will probably make this run fairly difficult, but having infinite use TM's in this gen so I can swap between coverage moves at any time will be a big help.

My starter Mudkip evolved into Marshtomp while I was catching/defeating wild Surskits that popped up with the Dexnav until I finally caught a good one, but it'll just be an HM mule for later in the game. I'm pretty sure Marshtomp + Tropius can cover every HM needed to beat OR/AS.

This is my first playthrough of a 3DS Pokemon game in a few years, and I think it'll be fun. Wish me and Surskit luck.
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Tag

Have fun!
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Surskit evolving into yet another bug/flying type was the most disappointing thing since I looked up Onix's stats.

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DeadBankerDream posted...

Surskit evolving into yet another bug/flying type was the most disappointing thing since I looked up Onix's stats.

Masquerain should have definitely stayed Bug/Water, but then they would have probably given it Levitate as its ability and it would have lost the very useful Intimidate. I actually played a ROM hack once (I think it was Sacred Gold and Storm Silver, a HG/SS ROM hack) that made Masquerain Bug/Water with Levitate, but it also gave Masquerain higher base stats to make up for the loss of Intimidate.
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My Surskit almost got bodied by a Marill on Route 116 that was 4 levels lower. The Marill resisted Signal Beam (remember it's a Fairy-type now), got a critical hit with the second hit of Rollout, and might have beaten Surskit if the 3rd hit of Rollout didn't miss. Definitely a wake-up call battle right there.

Anyways, my Surskit is currently at level 15 after beating all of the trainers I can face aside from those in the Rustboro gym. I'm thinking I might be able to beat the normal trainers inside the gym with just Signal Beam (I remembered that Rock-type Pokemon don't actually resist Bug-type moves today when I fought a hiker's Geodude) but I'm definitely going to need to grind to level 17 for Bubble Beam to take down Roxanne herself.
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Looks like I overestimated Roxanne, because I was actually able to beat her at level 15 with just Signal Beam. Her Geodude survived the first one with Sturdy and hit Surskit with a Rock Tomb. When she healed, I also healed, then I knocked it out on the second hit. After that, Surskit managed to two-shot Nosepass with Signal Beam while surviving a second Rock Tomb with barely any HP left. First badge acquired,

Anyways, I just took care of the Team Aqua grunt in the cave (Surskit ended up hitting level 17 and learning Bubblebeam after that battle) and got the Devon Parts back, now I'm off to Dewford to take on the second gym.
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Taggers

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Short update: Brawly was easy, Surskit is now level 18, and I forgot how much they shortened Granite Cave in OR/AS compared to the original R/S/E.
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Calwings posted...

Short update: Brawly was easy, Surskit is now level 18, and I forgot how much they shortened Granite Cave in OR/AS compared to the original R/S/E.

ORAS is the cocomelon of children's games.

Like, All pokemon games are made for children, but ORAS is literally made for toddlers. Granite Cave, the EXP share, the free Lati twin, all of it.

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Cemith posted...

ORAS is the cocomelon of children's games.

Like, All pokemon games are made for children, but ORAS is literally made for toddlers. Granite Cave, the EXP share, the free Lati twin, all of it.

Luckily two of those things don't even matter in this solo run.

I only have the Exp share on so the Zigzagoon I taught Cut to can eventually evolve to Linoone and learn Strength. I'm gonna use Linoone for Cut, Strength, and Rock Smash until I catch Tropius later on, who can learn those plus Fly.
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Tentacool, Marill, and Wingull are proving to be really annoying so far. They're commonly used, they resist both Signal Beam and Bubble Beam, Tentacool and Marill are pretty bulky, Wingull has Flying-type moves, and Marill often has Rollout. Anyways, I got to Slateport and cleared out Team Aqua. Surskit is now level 21, and I also taught it Struggle Bug via TM because move options are very limited right now. All of the actually useful coverage moves I was thinking of teaching Surskit aren't available until after the fifth badge or later, so I think I'm stuck with just my Bug/Water STAB for a while.
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An underrated feature that I completely forgot was a thing in gen 6 onwards: if your Pokemon evolves by level up and is past the level where it would evolve but hasn't, it gets 20% more experience points, so my Surskit will level up a bit faster than I expected. Surskit is at level 27 right now, and Zigzagoon just evolved to Linoone so I turned the Exp Share off. I'll try to fight Wattson at this level, but I might need more grinding.

I also found the TM for Round, a special Normal-type attack, in Mauville City. A neutral effective Round will do slightly more damage than a not very effective Signal Beam or Bubble Beam (60 base power vs. 56.25 and 48.75 base power respectively) to those pesky Tentacools, Marills, and Wingulls I was talking about earlier. Not much of an improvement, but it's the only option i have for non-STAB moves right now, so it'll have to do.
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Marill is a good HM slave too

Strength, rock smash, surf, dive, and waterfall are all learnable by it.

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Wattson was surprisingly easy. His Magnemite survived a Bubble Beam with Sturdy but used Thunder Wave (which was negated by my Cheri Berry) instead of an attack before going down to a second Bubble Beam. After that, his Voltorb was OHKO'd by Signal Beam. Then his Magneton cleanly survived a Bubble Beam but used Supersonic (which missed) instead of an attack before a second Bubble Beam finished it off. I don't think Surskit could have survived a Volt Switch from Magneton (maybe Magnemite's) so I definitely got lucky.

ZMythos posted...

Marill is a good HM slave too

Strength, rock smash, surf, dive, and waterfall are all learnable by it.

That's true, but Marshtomp also learns that same set of HM's and I started with it instead of needing to catch it. My plan is Surf, Dive, and Waterfall on Marshtomp and Cut, Strength, and Rock Smash on Linoone until I catch a Tropius, who will take over Linoone's HM's and also gets Fly.
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i love surskit!!!

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I got sick of needing to press B to stop Surskit from evolving every level, so I took the Mach Bike to Granite Cave and grabbed the Everstone. It'll always be holding this Everstone aside from important and potentially tough battles where I might give it a berry or something, I also beat the Winstrate Family, but besides that, I didn't do much today. I'll start the long trip to the fourth gym either later tonight or tomorrow.

Surskit is currently at level 31. I'm thinking of avoiding trainer battles more because I'm getting a bit overleveled, but I'm pretty sure the sixth gym (especially Winona's Altaria) is going to be a pain in the ass later, so I can't slack off too much.

Choco posted...

i love surskit!!!

It definitely is adorable.

https://i.imgur.com/dCphdyF.gif
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Didn't end up playing today, so this is just a quick bump to avoid the purge
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Calwings posted...

An underrated feature that I completely forgot was a thing in gen 6 onwards: if your Pokemon evolves by level up and is past the level where it would evolve but hasn't, it gets 20% more experience points

Wait what? I never knew this was a thing!

Surskit is an awesome Pokemon. Introduced a unique type combination and water striders are pretty cool in general.

...and they made it evolve into yet another Bug/Flying

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I have 5 badges now. The fight against Norman was literally a battle decided by RNG. If his second Slaking used Retaliate the first turn after I knocked out Vigoroth (doubling its base power) then there was zero chance that Surskit could survive it even at full health. If it used any other move that first turn (even Swagger, since I had packed a Persim Berry) then Surskit could survive and defeat it with Signal Beam. I saved in front, the first two times I fought him it used Retaliate and KO'd Surskit, but then the third time it used Chip Away instead and I won. It wasn't difficult, just annoying that it relied on RNG. Flannery's gym and the Team Aqua battles at Meteor Falls and Mt. Chimney were predictably easy, nothing of note there.

Now onto Fortree City and what might be the most difficult gym battle of the run against Winona and her Flying types. This is made even worse by the fact that two of her Pokemon also resist Bubble Beam as well as Signal Beam, and I can't acquire any of the TMs for the coverage moves I was hoping to use until after beating her. So a weak, non-STAB, 60 base power Normal-type attack might be my best move against her bulky Pelipper and Altaria.

Umbreon posted...

Wait what? I never knew this was a thing!

It doesn't come up often in normal playthroughs because there are very few Pokemon who evolve by level up but really benefit by holding off that evolution for a while (Shroomish waiting to learn Spore before evolving into Breloom is the only really good example that comes to mind) but it's great for solo runs with unevolved Pokemon like what I'm doing. Speaking of unevolved Pokemon, I should look up if I can get an Eviolite in OR/AS.
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They may have prevented this in ORAS, but I believe the Fortree gym can held off until later. Wallace has dialogue for beating him but not having the 7th badge. Course that means walking everywhere. I don't remember what HMs are needed for Ice Beam.

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Another thing that I totally forgot about OR/AS: it just straight-up gives you a free Latios/Latias (depending on your version) after the fifth badge. So instead of replacing Linoone with Tropius to add Fly to my HM mules, I'll replace Marshtomp with Latias. After the small sidequest to get Latias, I made my way north and took down Team Aqua again at the Weather Institute, then I saved and shut down for the night. I'll play more tomorrow.

Umbreon posted...

They may have prevented this in ORAS, but I believe the Fortree gym can held off until later. Wallace has dialogue for beating him but not having the 7th badge. Course that means walking everywhere. I don't remember what HMs are needed for Ice Beam.

The TM for Ice Beam is in Sea Mauville, which requires Dive to get. Plus, I believe OR/AS does prevent you from going too far beyond Fortree without beating Winona. I'll double check tomorrow, but if it does prevent me from going farther so I can't reach the Safari Zone (for the Solar Beam TM) and Mt. Pyre (for the Shadow Ball TM), then the only hope I have for a new coverage move is getting lucky with Hidden Power.
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Made it to Fortree City, got the TM for Hidden Power, and the HM for Fly. My Surskit's HP type is Electric, which will help against Winona but unfortunately not against her Altaria. I also checked and confirmed that I can't go down route 120 and reach the Safari Zone or Lilycove City because an NPC blocks me, so I'm out of options. I'm still stuck with a 60 base power non-STAB move as my best option for Altaria, I went through the gym and saved in front of Winona, and all I can do now is hope my level 44 Surskit has the stats to take it down. I am not looking forward to this.
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Winona's Altaria took a fucking hour to beat. No exaggeration. Hidden Power and Round (both 60 base power and non-STAB as I mentioned) were Surskit's best options, and even with no healing involved, Surskit could only at best 6-hit KO Altaria with either of those moves. There's also the fact that her Altaria knows Roost to heal itself far faster than Surskit can damage it, plus Winona also had a couple of Hyper Potions too. To make things even worse, Dragon Breath's 30% chance to paralyze managed to happen 12 times, including the 12th staying for the rest of the battle because I ran out of items to heal paralysis with. The battle took so long that I only won because Altaria ran out of moves to use and Struggled itself to death.

The battle wasn't technically difficult since Surskit was never in danger of fainting or running out of moves (I had plenty of Moo Moo Milk and Leppa berries for healing and Altaria didn't know a Flying-type attack to do a lot of damage anyways) but it was really long and really fucking annoying.

Thank Arceus it's finally over.
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Didn't play today, still taking a break after that annoying Winona battle. Have another cute Surksit gif in the meantime.

https://i.imgur.com/7XNrPYO.gif
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I defeated Team Aqua at Mt. Pyre, then went to Slateport and watched them commit Grand Theft Submarine. Next up for me to do in terms of story stuff is take down the Aqua Hideout in Lilycove. Surskit is level 53 now, in case anyone was wondering.

In terms of non-story stuff I did, I found the Eviolite to boost Surskit's defenses (though I'll only use it for tough battles because needing to manually cancel evolution after each level is a pain in the ass so Surskit is usually holding the Everstone) and I also got my hands on some useful TM's. I replaced Round with Shadow Ball in Surskit's moveset to have another decent coverage move, and I also have the combo of Sunny Day and Solar Beam ready to use later on. Thank Arceus for Gamefreak making TM's reusable from gen 5 onward.
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Norman is such a pain in the ass. I can't believe you beat him with a Surskit

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Blue_Inigo posted...

Norman is such a pain in the ass. I can't believe you beat him with a Surskit

All of his Pokemon were clean 2HKO's because they have pretty bad SpDef, so aside from needing to depend on the RNG to beat his second Slaking, it wasn't nearly as tough as I expected. If I were trying a solo run like this with a physical attacker, Norman would have been a lot more annoying.
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Didn't play today. Just a reminder that Surskit is very cute and that Viola, the only notable trainer in the entire series that uses a Surskit, is also cute.

https://i.imgur.com/DsoTByK.gif
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I beat the Team Aqua hideout (got the Master Ball too, which I'll likely just use on Kyogre) and surfed to Mossdeep City. I've beaten all of the trainers in the Mossdeep gym except for the gym leader twins, who I'm actually scared of now that I remembered what their team and movesets are.

My Surskit will basically have to 1v2 a Solrock and a Lunatone, and I don't know which one to target first. Solrock is the most immediate threat because it knows Rock Slide and that's super-effective on Surskit, but Lunatone can set up Light Screen to weaken my attacks, boost itself with Calm Mind, and put Surskit to sleep with Hypnosis, all of which could make Lunatone really annoying to beat. I saved in front of Tate/Liza and I'll probably battle them tomorrow, so if anyone has any input on whether you think I should target Solrock or Lunatone first in the battle, feel free to chime in.
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Tate/Liza were easier than I thought. I decided to go after Solrock first and Surskit actually one-shotted it with Signal Beam. Wasn't expecting that. Lunatone set up Light Screen and then used Psychic a couple of times, but it never used Calm Mind and missed with its only attempt with Hypnosis, so it went down pretty easily. So that's seven badges down and one more to go, plus I got the HM for Dive as well, which I taught to Latias.

I took a detour to Sea Mauville and did the sidequest there to get the TM for Ice Beam, then after that, I headed for the Seafloor Cavern to deal with Archie and Kyogre. While I was in there, I found the TM for Scald, meaning I could finally teach Surskit a better Water-type move! It can't learn Surf, so I had been stuck with Bubble Beam since the beginning of the run. Surskit's current moveset of Scald, Signal Beam, Ice Beam, and Shadow Ball is pretty much its finalized moveset, though I do have Hidden Power Electric and the combo of Sunny Day and Solar Beam as situational options.

I saved in front of the battle with Archie right before Kyogre awakens, and I'll probably pick up again tomorrow.
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Tag for Surskit
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Another bump to avoid the purge
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Surskit had the best walk animation in the Mystery Dungeon games!

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I could have sworn Winona's Altaria had Dragon Dance, which made it super scary to deal with. Guessing they replaced that with Roost in ORAS. A decision few people would be upset with I imagine.

Anyway, grats on beating her! Scald is going to be a fun new toy I imagine.


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Umbreon posted...

I could have sworn Winona's Altaria had Dragon Dance, which made it super scary to deal with. Guessing they replaced that with Roost in ORAS. A decision few people would be upset with I imagine.

It has Roost for healing and Cotton Guard to raise its defense through the roof, but Surskit's a special attacker so Cotton Guard doesn't matter.

https://serebii.net/omegarubyalphasapphire/gyms.shtml

Between Wattson's Magneton and Norman's Slaking having really high defense, Brawly's Makuhita having Bulk Up, Flannery's Torkoal having really high defense and Curse, and Winona's Altaria having Cotton Guard, ORAS is much more difficult to solo with a physical attacker than a special one.
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I beat Archie, dealt with Kyogre (I ended up knocking it out instead of catching it), and defeated Wallace's gym to get the last badge. I mentioned that I had the TM's for the Sunny Day + Solar Beam combo, and using those against Wallace made the battle pretty easy. Now I'm at Evergrande city (which honestly isn't much of a city), my Surskit is currently level 65, and all that's left is Victory Road, the Elite Four, and the Champion.
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Good luck lil guy!

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65 is surprisingly low a level for a relatively low-statted pokemon to solo the game at.

sucks that you can't get past to lilycove before winona because the blizzard TM is in the store there

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kirbymuncher posted...

65 is surprisingly low a level for a relatively low-statted pokemon to solo the game at.

I've been 10-20 levels overleveled (without even trying to be) since like the third gym, plus Water/Bug has surprisingly good neutral coverage that carried me through the early/mid part of the game. But the Elite Four and Champion are going to be a completely different story. Even with the level advantage and better coverage moves I have now, Surskit will probably have a tough time. We'll see.
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Wait did you name Surskit anything?

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https://i.imgur.com/qRwGRTN.png
https://i.imgur.com/vNJtW9a.png
https://i.imgur.com/duCJBc5.png

Mission accomplished! I made it through Victory Road, beat Wally, beat the Elite Four, and beat Steven to become the Pokemon League Champion with only a Surskit! The toughest battles in the final stretch were against Phoebe's Dusknoir (it tanked a Shadow Ball and its Thunderpunch really hurt), Glacia's Walrein (the thing just wouldn't fucking die), Steven's Aggron (it had Sturdy and I needed the RNG of either Scald burning or Stone Edge missing to beat it), and Steven's Mega Metagross (even a not very effective Meteor Mash hurt like hell) but Surskit held strong until the end.

ApherosyLove posted...

Wait did you name Surskit anything?

No, I never nicknamed it. I pretty much never nickname Pokemon outside of Nuzlocke runs. Plus, I had to catch over a dozen different Surskit in the beginning to find one with Signal Beam and a good nature, so I wasn't going to type a nickname every single time.
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Awesome, congratulations!

(And yeah that fucking Walrein is a bitch to take down. And that's without 90% accurate Blizzards and Sheer Colds because the AI is a jerk)

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https://i.imgur.com/vNJtW9a.png
"Does this look like the face of mercy?"
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Umbreon posted...

(And yeah that fucking Walrein is a bitch to take down. And that's without 90% accurate Blizzards and Sheer Colds because the AI is a jerk)

I actually switched my moveset to use the Sunny Day and Solar Beam combo to deal with Walrein, but even then, I had trouble. Surksit was really low on health when Walrein came out (Hail damage plus one of the Glalies knew Freeze-Dry) and after I used a Hyper Potion to heal to full health, Surskit was paralyzed by a Body Slam, then paralyzed again after I healed the paralysis from the first one. I couldn't set up the sun until the fifth turn the Walrein was out due to all the healing I had to do, and even after that, it still took several Solar Beams (because it's really bulky and Glacia healed it with a Full Restore as well) to finally beat it. If I had just tried to brute force it with neutral Signal Beams, it would have been even more annoying.
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Are you gonna do the post-game stuff?
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teep_ posted...

Are you gonna do the post-game stuff?

Probably not. I might change my mind before this topic purges and do it, but I'm leaning towards no.
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