[Gen 3] LA's Gen 3 Living Dex Journey

LA's Gen 3 Living Dex Journey​

The aspect of all main series Pokemon games that I get the most enjoyment out of is the "gotta-Catch-'em-All" aspect and, more specifically, creation of Living Dexes. I recently moved house and uncovered a whole bunch of old carts and handhelds which has inspired me to blow off the cobwebs and set out on a new adventure that satisfies my itch.

With a region-by-region approach, I'm going to jump into Living Dex creation with the following self-imposed rules:



In theory, the releases to cover should be those in the spoiler box below but let's see how we get on, starting with Gen 3!

Stage 1 – The First Gym​

So, up to the first badge and time for an update.

In Ruby I picked Torchic, Sapphire Mudkip and Emerald Treecko to satisfy my colour-must-match-game itch. They all form the core of each game's levelling team and so wont be traded around until the very end of the run. For each game, I hammered through the beginning of the stage and caught all of the regular fodder monsters, making sure to fill out the group with Zigzagoon for the Pickup ability to work its cash-generating magic. After playing a number of hours on each game it was clear that Emerald was obtain very different Pickup items to Ruby and Sapphire so I jumped online to check out how different it could be… DAYUM! Emerald is laaaaame! My brilliant level 3-5 Ziggies on Ruby and Sapphire gave me Rare Candies, Vitamins and King's Rocks but our team of like-minded scavengers on Emerald found nothing nearly as good and wouldn't until reaching higher levels! What a strange difference to insert into a third-instalment game!

In Ruby, I levelled up a Wurmple to find that it evolved into a Cascoon. As with all cocoon Pokemon, levelling them up is a bit of a pain so I boxed this one and decided to leave the levelling up until later with Emerald. It turned out that hunting for Ralts wasn't even needed as they were my 6th and 8th encounters on Route 202! For some reason I remembered this encounter being far more elusive when I was a kid so it was nice not to face this "challenge". It did, however, take an insane about of encounters before finding Surskit. The best part in this game was finding my third-ever Gen 3 shiny! A Shroomish that I called Mario 😊. Ruby's levelling team is now Combusken, Ralts and Surskit.

I actually played through Sapphire after Emerald and was very very annoyed to spend hours searching for my second Surskit. In that time, around 5 hours, my Slakoth evolved into Vigoroth which gives you an idea of the frustration I faced in trying to get this final capture of the stage. The only "bonus" to spending so long hunting the elusive bug type was accruing an incredible bunch of items for sale or use later down the line. Sapphire's levelling team is now Marshtomp and Vigoroth.

Someone prove me wrong but Emerald, like other third-instalment releases seems to be far more popular than Ruby and Sapphire online. Maybe it is due to its increased challenges and added features? For me, following this stage of the game, I HATE it. This game stole hours from me – hours!!! For finding a stupid little Seedot on Route 102. Last time I played this game there was no way this took 8 hours so that claimed 1% encounter rate online can go and take a good long look at itself and think about what its lie has done to me!
On this game, I completed the Beautifly and Dustox lines as well as evolved Marill to Azumarill before ploughing through to the Gym in Rustboro.
Treecko's levelling team is now Grovyle and Ralts.

Over in Kanto, everything has moved a lot more smoothly. In Fire Red I started with Charmander and used my Leaf Green copy to trade in Squirtle. A restart on Leaf Green now has that playthrough carrying Bulbasaur to complete my starter colour-must-match-game obsession. The initial section of the game was simple for both – captures were straight forward and since Fire could level up a Butterfree and Leaf could level up a Beedrill, I'm doing pretty well already.

The journey between Rustboro and Dewford in R/S/E is actually incredibly short so running through those was incredibly quick for me. All of the catches were done in pretty good time, too. This included the potentially sanity-stealing capture of Abra which can take a super long time to get done if you're unlucky.

Completing the few trades that I needed to get the dex entries onto Ruby didn't take too long although it did highlight that my Emerald cartridge likes to play up. I had one moment where it froze while trying to save a few more where the GBA failed to recognise that it had been inserted into the slot. I really don't want to lose a whole load of progress so will keep saving at regular intervals and completing trades when I can.

Fire Red and Leaf Green enjoyed a trip down memory lane in Mt Moon and a battle with Misty. I really thought that I would have an easy time defeating her with my Golbat but even with Bite available, Starmie's Water Pulse made everything so much harder due to the confusion it continuously gave me. After the third try, the Cascade badge became mine and we finished off the stage without any other hiccups.

Time has really gotten away from this project with a hefty combo of work, other hobbies and a teeny issue of biting off more than I can chew…


Running through Hoenn I realised that there is only a very tiny amount of content between Badges 2 and 3 so decided to run a joint section for the next two badges. To keep things fair across all games I did the same for Kanto and started a long slog…

Again, I really must only be remembering the content of R/S as the differences with Emerald really stand out. The Gym leaders continue to be especially noteworthy and Wattson carried one of those additional challenges that wasn't expected. I don't think the levels of his team were that bad but somehow his Manectric hit like a truck with each shockwave. Since Emerald is carrying my Grovyle as the led party member at least I could heal up with some resisted hits… In pretty much the opposite experience, Emerald had a very easy time with Flannery so I guess the changes aren't all bad!

Over in Kanto, Fire Red and Leaf Green smashed through the S.S. Anne and next two badges without any issues. Arriving in Celadon I spent some time buying a few evolutionary stones and picked up Eevee to start the happiness grind… Until I found out the effort would be in vain! Turns out happiness evolution is barred until the national dex but the bigger problem is that there is no time function in FR/LG so Espeon and Umbreon would only be able to be collected in R/S/E once trading between Hoenn and Kanto is available. I wonder if I'll find any other problems like this…

In an attempt to finish off one of these challenges before the release of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl I have decided to focus solely on Fire Red and Leaf Green. Since the last update I have gradually clawed through a lot of the content and am now on the final stretch but have a few updates to catch up on… Here comes the next section!


This section of the game always feels really long; between the cycling road and the eastern boardwalk, there are a lot of trainers to power through before making it to Fuchsia City. Critical points to pick up on here were the collection of both the Good and Super Rods which will make sourcing many entries to the Living Dex much easier and the painstaking process of the Safari Zone…

Both games made short work of the trainers and drove evolution along the way. The core teams changed a lot during this section, resulting in the following groups: Charizard-Venusaur-Golbat and Blastoise-Rhyhorn-Dratini-Chansey.

The Safari Zone was such a pain and ended up swallowing loads of hours in the search for Chansey. In total, I faced twenty-four Chansey before one would stay in a ball and finally added the elusive egg to my collection. At this point I made the very clear decision not to try to catch a second; this one would be the eventual evolved Blissey which I would later breed to get a second Chansey for the Living Dex.