★This is the feature that got me engaged with the Pokemon games! ^_^
★
LOL; I'm serious, by the way. As a kid, someone was playing a
Pokemon game on their GameBoy Advance, and I was
amazed that you could have your own little compact treehouse Secret Base with little decorations and stuff. XD Thank goodness for this feature, or I might not even be posting here right now!
Proceeding onwards:
Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are unique in that they're the only games where you get your own little pad-- a secret base! And no, I'm not counting in that miserable excuse for a base in DPPt's Underground. You needed to meet too many requirements to decorate that nasty mess. But anyway! Using TM43 Secret Power, you could make your own base inside of a rock, bush, or tree. A lot of people found this to be a great feature, and I know most of that same group was disappointed with generation IV's attempt at it. And when you mixed records with a friend, their base will show up in your game, and they'll have whatever party of Pokemon they had when mixing records, so you could battle them everyday! So here are a few questions...
Where is your secret base?
Route 119 (Hoenn)! It's at the right of the southernmost waterfall, complete with its own Berry Patch nearby!
Do you tend to forget where it is?
LOL, of course not. Don't really see how you could, but I guess it's possible, especially with the ones located in more obscure areas. Secret Base Boy of Mossdeep City to the rescue!
Do you spend time and money to decorate it?
Indeed. Sometimes I take several minutes pondering the decorative choices and possible arrangements! And I've probably spent up to $999999 just purchasing items. The dolls exclusive to the Exchange Corner are like heck to get! Surprisingly, I have enough Battle Points for the majority of them, but you can only fit so many in the base, and my current Emerald file isn't even intended to be my permanent one. >_>
I have no idea why those Regi dolls weren't included in the post-game or at the Lilycove Dept. Store clearance sales or something! :(
-Oh...well, apparently, players of Japanese copies of Ruby/Sapphire got these as e-Reader rewards, yet they're unobtainable in all other language copies! WTF?! T_T
Well, all of the Gym Leaders have stone/metal variants of this Ornament in their Gyms, so I typically place two of these near the door.
WHY ARE YOU SO HARD TO OBTAIN IN THE BATTLE TOWER, GOLD SHIELD
Ooh, shiny!
So pretty...aside from the Shields and the Sand Ornament, this is probably my favorite ornament. It just seemed so intriguing, and due to this, I was going to catch Pidgeot with a Premier Ball, thinking that Pidgeot was associated with a "commemorative event" or something. Hey, it even forms an abstract and Farfetch'd GSC (glass=crystal) reference with the shields! XD
Feel free to post a screenshot! (use spoiler tags please!)
It's the one immediately east of the southern waterfall you see there. For some reason, I've always envisioned a Trainer named Landon residing in the other Secret Base across the waterfall that is parallel to mine - this is because I name myself
Sean in
Sapphire/
Emerald permanent files, and
Landon is a fitting parallel.
Also, I have fond memories of the Secret Base directly east of the Weather Institute, next to the northernmost waterfall. One of my elementary school classmates named himself "Pooky" in-game and made residence there. I will always remember his leading Level 37 Weezing. XD
Where is your secret base? Mine's on whatever route the bike path is on. It's in that big tree on the island in the middle of the river.
I
love that island-bound Secret Base tree on Hoenn Route 110. One of the easiest Secret Bases to remember, with the main drawback being the requirement of the HM Surf for navigation to it. I think that was my first-ever dedicated Secret Base location...
But yeah, Secret Bases of Hoenn were fantastic! Not only did you get to customize your own personal treehouse or cave, you also got to
visit your friends and battle them once daily after you Mixed Records! Major interactivity boost, that's for sure. And possibly the best part of the Secret Bases: THE TRAINING. If you get tired of the monotonous and somewhat weak Elite 4 and Champion, you can go challenge your friends! Who have
unrestricted Pokemon and items!
And utilize Medicine during battle! With the potential of LEVEL 100 POKEMON! The EXP gains I got there were simply
sublime.
I mean, just imagine how quickly you could train with this scenario: Lucky Egg, trade boost, against a
Blissey. In my current
Emerald save file, as a sidegoal from getting Totodile from Professor Birch, I was intending to construct Secret Bases like this and Mix Records specifically for training purposes. Several Level 100s were trained for this reason. Blissey would even be more preferable, though I only have one at Level 100 at the moment (
UNLESS I USE THE CLONING GLITCH). Furthermore, I lack a second GameBoy Advance and another copy of RSE, so such a plan is currently infeasible for me.
Blissey x6, Level 100
*drools at the potential EXP gain in RSE Secret Bases*
So yeah...the dummying-down of Secret Bases in Generation 4 were essentially the first-ever case I had of
They Changed It, Now It Sucks across
Pokemon generations. :cer_cry: I am
REALLY hoping that they return in RS3DS, once again promoting collaboration and benefiting long Training sessions. Generation 5 already worsened long-term Training with its modified Experience formula, and I don't see any NPC Trainers owning Blissey anytime soon... :( Maybe the PokeNav could feature an application to display your friends' Secret Bases (additionally, the Registry limit should be higher)?
