Petalburg woods, the place of wurmples with poison sting!
I was fairly lucky here. Rodeo and Teshiz could OKO the dreaded wurmples, and I just ran with tasmond. I needed to level Tasmond up to match the rest of my team, and I bumped into a shroomish.
Because of all the training I had done, Tasmond was about a quarter health down, and I was almost in the middle, closer to Petalburg. I was happily tackling away, and this happened: foe SHROOMISH's EFFECT SPORE poisoned Tasmond!
Oh. Crap.
By the time I left petalburg woods, it was fairly obvious Tasmond had no chance of making it. I still had hope though, and while I was making my way forlornly through the grass, a marill appeared! After and absorb and 10 hp later, I managed to get him to the pokemon centre with 7 hp remaining. Thank god.
I avoided the bug catchers in Petalburg woods, nuked the team Aqua member with Rodeo's gust, and made it to Rustboro with a bunch of level 15's.
Before I went kicking Roxanne's @$$, I wanted to grind my team a bit.
I went to route 116 and bumped into a female Poochyena at lv6.
Not bad, could have been a lot better though. I paralyzed her with Tasmonds stun spore, caught her with eaze and nicknamed her La Cruz. She had a docile nature.
I gained her a couple of levels, and decided to pit her against a trainer back in route 104. That was one of the things I regretted most in this update.
She was about the same level as the opponents zigzagoon, but a decent attack stat determined my victory on a bit more than half health.
She then sent out a shroomish, and I clearly hadn't learnt my lesson. One effect spore later and La Cruz was on orange health with poisoning. I swapped in for Rodeo who quickly killed the shroomish with gust, but La Cruz died just as I went into Rustboro.
I was still reeling from almost losing Tasmond, so this impacted me way more than I should have. RIP, La Cruz. I went back to route 116, and grinded my team to level 16 each, and Teshiz evolved, gaining double kick on the way. I didn't want to pit Rodeo against a rock type gym, I was being cautious, so I only used Teshiz and Tasmond on this challenge.
Teshiz wiped out the gym trainers, so I swapped him with Tasmond to kill Roxanne. Two mega drains later and I had dead geodudes, and Nosepass took the same and fell. I got my badge with no damage at all, went out and healed my team (for pp, of course)
Then the team aqua goon who I thrashed earlier raced out of the Devon building, and one of the workers bribed me into killing him with a great ball.
I raced down route 116, killing some trainers, leaving some to train my next teamate on, and waltzed into Rusturf tunnel. I wiped the first whismer I bumped into, but I didn't really care.
After I cornered him, killed his mon with Rodeo, then proceeded to get out my knife left the cave with a random wingull following me, and old man came and blabbed about stuff I didn't pay attention to.
After some grinding to get a level 17 team, I went back to Rustboro where I was prompty kidnapped by the worker who bribed me, but he still gave me a great ball so it was worth it. He showed me to this creepy old man, who then asked me to be a mail man and gave me a pokenav.
After quickly getting the hell out of there, they forced me to phone the creepy old man, and I quickly ran off to whip my rival and go to the house of another creepy old man with a wingul and a boat. I forced him to waste his valuable petrol driving me to Dewford (do boats even use petrol? Next time I make a snarky remark about something I should really know what I'm talking about).
I went to granite cave, hoping to get an aron or zubat (crobats are beasts, maybe I'm biased coz mine has a benificial nature with max speed IV :3) (yeah, I'm biased)
but I bumped into a male Makuhita instead. I nicknamed him Quaker, and promptly deposited him in the pc. I left granite cave, talking to some man who was obsessed with fashion and gave me a silk scarf (each to their own I guess) then lied to some fisherman to get a free old rod.
I went to the water and tried it out, catching a female lv 5 magikarp predictibly, gentle nature. I nicknamed her Hypothermo, coz hypothermia didn't fit. I'm playing on my emulator at 500% speed, so I decided to grind her to a gyarados. Still took me an hour though. I used to send-out-and-switch method in granite cave, then went back to the main land, got cut, and battled some trainers using the same method.I checked online to see when she would know tackle, but it wasn't till lv 15 and magikarps only have base 10 attack anyway.
I went back to granite cave and went a floor down, grinding her to about lv18, then getting her to gain the last two lvs herself killing makuhita's on the top floor.
After about two hours that worked, and my darling magikarp was a lovely gyarados. This also gained each member on my team about 3 levels each, so I had a team of lv 21s, with Hypothermo at lv 20.
I went to the gym and whipped the gym trainers with Hypothermo's tackle, and after she leveled up I finished of the gym with Teshiz.
Now I was up to Brawly. He has always been one of my least favourties, with a big jump in levels and a makuhita that could cause some nasty damage. I knew it was risky, so I went at him with Rodeo, who has a super effective move and fighting resistant typing. Two OKO's and I had wiped out his compleatly ineffective mons, and then the makuhita came out. Rodeo almost wiped it out first shot, leaving it on red, but its sitrus berry restored health. Enough health for me to happily KO it next turn. And after that, the knuckle badge was mine!