Recent news in Emerald:
-I finally finished training my 60 or so Pokemon, so I rewarded myself by battling Liza and Tate with the following team:
Amazon (Sharpedo, F, level 40, Surf, Crunch, Taunt, Dive)
Moby Dick (Wailord, M, level 41, Water Pulse, Water Spout, Rollout, Mist)
Sirius (Absol, M, level 41, Bite, Future Sight, Slash, Razor Wind
Samara (Dusclops, F, level 41, Shadow Punch, Curse, Will-O-Wisp, Confuse Ray)
Artemis (Mightyena, F, level 42, Shadow Ball, Sand-Attack, Bite, Swagger)
Gollum (Sableye, M, level 41, Shadow Ball, Faint Attack, Confuse Ray, Detect)
The battle was a bit harder than I expected, especially since I expected them to use Solrock and Lunatone first, and instead got Xatu and Kadabra. The Pokemon I had first were Amazon and Moby Dick... Well, thanks to Amazon's Crunch, Kadabra went down in no time. Then Liza or Tate (arrgh, I still can't tell them apart) sent out Lunatone. Moby Dick's Water Spout didn't do as much damage to it as I would have liked, though. Then my Wailord fainted and I sent out Sirius, who KO'd Xatu with Bite. The twins sent out Solrock. And that's where it got hard. Solrock and Lunatone were faster than most of my Pokemon, and after using Sunny Day, Solrock had an easy time KOing my Pokemon with Flamethrower--even Amazon, who soon fainted. Sadly, Sirius also had low defenses, thus he fainted as well. The other problem area was Lunatone using Hypnosis to put my Pokemon to sleep--it especially picked on Sirius, who was asleep almost all the time. After that I sent out Samara and Gollum. Samara was barely able to use Curse on Lunatone before fainting, so I had to send out my last Pokemon, Artemis. From that point on my Pokemon focused on Solrock, knowing that Lunatone would eventually faint from the Curse (even after the twins used a Hyper Potion on it). Artemis helped out by using Swagger on Lunatone, while Gollum assaulted Solrock with Shadow Balls and Faint Attacks. However, after Artemis used Swagger, Lunatone put her to sleep. Fortunately, a couple of turns later it fainted from the curse, so only Solrock was left. Solrock was close to KOing the sleeping Mightyena when Gollum finally Shadow Balled it to death. That Sableye was really a huge help in this battle. He really did prove his worth.
After that, I headed into the Space Centre in Mossdeep City, casting aside every Magma Grunt in my path. I finally made it to the admins, and entered a double battle alongside Steven. Cumulus, my Altaria, went first in the battle, but it was Gollum who fought the longest and landed the last hit. (Those were the only two Pokemon I used in the battle.) I'm starting to like this Sableye. Perhaps I'll use him in my battle against the Elite Four...
Of course, after that battle, I got the HM for Dive. So I headed into Sootopolis for the first time, and caught three Pokemon underwater. One was a male Chinchou--I named him Lumiere. Another was a male Clamperl--I named him Aqualad. (He's going to become a Gorebyss sometime soon.) The third was a female Relicanth--I named her Granny. XD
Then I proceeded to catch the Regi's... and so far I have two of three. Regirock was a pain to catch. I tried getting its HP down to one then paralysing it, but then I threw over 20 Ultra Balls before Regirock wiped out my team. I restarted and tried this again twice, with similar results. Then I tried putting it to sleep instead, but that still didn't work. Then I went in with Samara (the Dusclops from before), because she knew both Confuse Ray and Will-O-Wisp, and was immune to Superpower and had high defenses. (My Ninetales also knows those attacks, but he's at a type disadvantage.) I entered this routine where she first confused, then burned Regirock, then threw a Shadow Punch. In the turns after that, I threw Ultra Balls. If Regirock snapped out of confusion and still had HP left, Samara used Confuse Ray again. Then I threw Ultra Balls until Regirock fainted, upon which I restarted the game. I did this about twenty times, until one try where the first Ultra Ball caught it. Regirock had about half HP at the time. Whew...
Regice surprised me. My Medicham used Hi Jump Kick and got its HP into the red zone. Then I switched to my own Lunatone, who put Regice to sleep with Hypnosis. Then I threw an Ultra Ball... and it worked! First attempt, first ball. I think that made up for time wasted on catching Regirock.
Then I tried Registeel. I tried getting its HP low ad paralysing it, getting its HP low and putting it to sleep, Samara's method a couple of times... and by that time I was getting tired, so I decided to call it a day. I'll try again next time.