Rustboro and Roxanne

 

Well, we made it to Rustboro! This town has the first gym we'll be tackling and it's a the leader uses rock types. It's too bad I don't have a water types in my team.

I go around all the houses and find a guy giving out the Cut HM. It's only at this point that I realise that I'm going to have to burden one of my precious few pokemon with HM moves in order to progress. Only a couple pokemon can learn it, so with tears streaming down my face, I make Victor the zigzagoon learn move Cut. 

snip snip snip!

Then I run into a boy who asks to trade pokemon.

I've put a lot of energy into levelling up Daniel the Slakoth! Plus the way he kind of flops out of the pokemon ball at the start of a fight like he doesn't have a single bone in his flappy lil' body is charming!

But on the other hand, he's still absolutely useless and a fighting type would be very useful for the upcoming rock type gym soooo

Goodbye Daniel! and hello Makit. Not a big fan of Makuhita's design. He looks like someone glued some boxing gloves into a couple of rubbish bin bags and drew a face on it.

 

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The pain of losing Jessica is still fresh in my mind, so I head out north of Rustboro to train some and get new Makit levelled up a bit. On route 116 we catch Dave the Skitty.

For some reason, my beige bin bags doesn't respect me as a trainer. I had forgotten that traded pokemon can get arsey. He had better behave at the gym!

The Rustboro gym double as a pokemon school, so before we can get to Roxanne we have to destroy the dreams of a half-dozen school children. Eventually I am ready for our first gym battle!

 Makit lets me down, luckilly it doesn't matter much as his defence is so high.

We win, and with no deaths! With the rock badge Makit suddenly respects me

 Next we will head back south and make our way to Dewport.

 

The current party

Petalburg woods

Pets for Charlotte

 

We exit west out of Petalburg and enter route 104. Here we catch our first flying type, Jessica the Taillow.

 
The team trains a bit on the short section of route 104 before going north into Petalburg woods, where we get another team member, Daniel the Slakoth

Jessica is already an awesome fighter and levelling up easily. Petalburg woods is full of bug types and Jessica is our hero, eventually she's one-hit killing any foe.
Daniel though... Daniel has only one attack move; it's called snore and it only works if he's asleep. Perhaps you're wondering if Daniel also has a move that makes him go to sleep so that he can use snore?
HE DOES NOT.

There's a few trainers between the woods and Rustoboro city, they're about the same level as my team who are all healthy so I'm not worried.

I should have been worried.

I start the battle with Ralph the ralts but the enemy zigzagoon hits it too hard and I get nervous and switch in the unstoppable Jessica. She has no problem taking on the zigzagoon, with one gust attack she has the pokemon down to the red, while her health is still good and green.

I start the next round with a quick attack to be sure Jessica will finish it off before taking any more damage.
That's when the enemy trainer uses a full heal. When her quick attack damage just wasn't enough anymore. The enemy zigzagoon tackled. Hard. A critical hit. And my Jessica's died forever.

I'm devastated! My first loss and my good flying pokemon. I put her little corpse into the "graveyard" box I've set up in the PC. We return to Petalburg woods and train real hard, I aim to get everyone to a nice high level 12 before we move on.

I miss Jessica, Rupert the treecko is no use against all the bugs and everyone else is just about getting by.

Daniel is a problem. I fight other slakoths that know the move scratch, Daniel never learns scratch or anything useful. With blood, sweat, and tears we manage to get Daniel to the same level as the rest of the team. I'm certain that something this horrible to raise must be worth it later.

We risk the trainers again and successfully make past to Rustboro City without any more losses. 

Next Blog: Roxanne and Rustboro

My challenge begins

 

I will blog my play through of my pokemon nuzlocke challenge on omega ruby.

The proper rules can be found here in full but basically:

• I can only attempt to catch the first pokemon in each route/area
• Every pokemon must get a nickname
• If a pokemon reaches 0 hp it goes into my “graveyard” box forever

 I’m also using the optional rules

•  Duplicate clause – If the first pokemon in a new area is a type that I already own, I can skip it until I find a new pokemon
• Shiny clause – I can catch any pokemon that shows up if it’s a shiny

 

I choose you, Treecko! I will call him Rupert. I think Rupert is a safe choice once he learns Absorb it’ll be easy to keep that health bar safe and full. Plus he’s kind of my favourite.

 Once I’ve progressed enough to unlock pokeballs, Rupert and I go back to route 101 and see who our first team mate is going to be.
Welcome Bert, the wurmple! Soon after we stumble into a tutorial from my rival Brendan for catching special pokemon – we can see a tail sticking up, the wild grass is shaking and Brendan instructs me on how sneak in and catch it. We’re still on route 101 and this is my second catch, which is against the rules but I didn’t have a choice! I consider letting her go but I like her, she has a rare move due to being a special catch. I consider keeping her and letting Bert go but how can I? my first catch! our little Bertie.

 In the end I decide to consider it a bonus starter pokemon. So we welcome Charlotte the poochyena to the team, she has thunder bite and I know having an electric move this early in the game will serve me well.