Gen III Battle Frontier Discussion and Records

As said last time, my next destination was the Battle Pike. I like it a lot. The theme of it is luck, but I think it is more a combination of skill and luck. Or as said by Lucy in Pokémon Adventures: it tests your ability to influence your luck. You don’t know exactly what awaits behind the next door, but you always have a choice. I like the somewhat creepy atmosphere in the Pike, the music makes it even better. I remember that the first time I entered it back in 2005, it scared me to the point that I didn’t even complete the round!

After playing through the Pike once again, it has become my second favorite facility in Emerald, after the Dome and Pyramid which are tied at first place. I really like the unique combination of exploration, strategy, luck and the different types of battles you can have in the Pike. It was also nice with a change of pace after going through so many rounds at the Pyramid. I really appreciated doing something different for a bit. At the Pike, I sometimes had to face trainers in regular 3vs3 battles, which never happens in the Pyramid. Those are basically the same as regular battles in the Tower, though you might be at a disadvantage if your team is damaged beforehand. I also like how quickly it goes to complete a round in the Pike. In comparison, it took me much longer to go through a round in the Pyramid. Here’s how it went.

Battle Pike

Level 50

For level 50, I had an ongoing streak of 28, a record streak of 140, and I had cleared 35 rounds in total. I cancelled my initial streak after beating Gold Lucy for the first time because I wanted to farm BP against Silver Lucy, which I did many times. But I will never have to do it again since I have more BP than I’ll ever use at this point. I regret cancelling that streak, but nothing can be done about it. All I could do was to start a new one. My goal was to get up to Gold Lucy again, get past her, and see how far I could go afterwards. How did it go? Quite well. I didn’t get quite as far as I did in the Dome or the Pyramid, but I still got a pretty good streak (by my own standards at least). I’d say this is my third best streak in Emerald so far.

Format: Level 50, retail cart

Team:

My team varied a bit depending on the round. I am pretty sure I used Metagross for the first two rounds in the past. Here are the teams I used:

Round 1-2: Metagross/Starmie/Blissey
Round 3-6: Salamence/Starmie/Blissey
Round 7 and on: Slaking/Starmie/Blissey

Full details for them:

:rs/Metagross:
Metagross ** Rufus
Ability: Clear body
Flawless HP / Att / Sp.def
EVs: 148 HP / 252 Att / 110 Def
Level 50 stats: 174/205/151/95/110/75
Nature: Adamant
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Explosion

:rs/Salamence:
Salamence (F) @ Choice Band ** Natalow
Ability: Intimidate
IVs: Flawless Att / Spd
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Att / 252 Spd
Level 50 stats: 169/205/95/108/90/152
Nature: Adamant
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- Brick Break
- Aerial Ace

:rs/slaking:
Slaking (F) @ Choice Band ** Liza
Ability: Truant
IVs: Flawless Att / Def / Spd
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Att / 252 Spd
Level 50 stats: 221/233/120/99/75/152
Nature: Adamant
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

:rs/Starmie:
Starmie @ Lum Berry ** Zed
Ability: Natural Cure
IVs: Flawless Sp.att / Spd
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Sp.att / 252 Spd
Level 50 stats: 125/77/99/167/97/167
Nature: Modest
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Psychic

:rs/blissey:
Blissey (F) @ Leftovers ** Faszal
Ability: Natural Cure
IVs: Flawless HP / Def
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 6 Sp.def
Level 50 stats: 362/26/68/80/142/74
Nature: Impish
- Seismic Toss
- Toxic
- Aromatherapy
- Softboiled

Streak: 279

Picture proof:
First, some words about the team. I gave Starmie a Lum Berry here. I’m not sure about the best item for Starmie in the Pike (or for the Frontier on the whole, for that matter), but this gives it an extra status immunity in one battle at least. In the past, I avoided using berries in the Pike since I thought they would be lost forever if they were used up during a round. Now I know that you get them back after completing the round, so there’s no risk of losing them permanently. They don’t get restored during a round though. Even if you get healed during the round, berries and other consumable items won’t be brought back until you have completed the round.

Blissey was chosen for the same reason as in the Pyramid. It can heal itself and the team with Softboiled and cure status with Aromatherapy, which is great. Especially here in the Pike since you don’t have any Potions or Revives, which means you must be more careful than in the Pyramid.

I used Metagross for the first 2 rounds since it destroys Silver Lucy, Salamence for the following four rounds to get past early Pokémon which might have Protect, and then Slaking for the rest of the run. I went with my CB Salamence here since it just feels better than a DD set. I used a DD Salamence for the Pike in the past but I don’t know if it is the better option. DD Salamence doesn’t have an optimal hold item for the Pike either since Lum is one-time only, and using it on Salamence would mean that I need another item for Starmie.

I’m not convinced that Slaking is the best choice for the Pike either. It is great, but not quite as epic as in the Dome or the Pyramid. Since you can get into 3vs3 battles here, Slaking’s contributions are not quite as amazing. But it is still great. I’m not sure that Slaking/Starmie/Blissey is a perfect team for the Pike either, two of them are weak to Fighting which means that if I run into a strong Fighting-type and Starmie has fainted or is unable to beat it, I’m in a very bad situation.

I have gone over the main details for Salamence, Slaking, Starmie and Blissey in the past, but I haven’t talked that much about Metagross (just briefly mentioned it in a previous post). Time to say some things about it. This Metagross was built as a standard CB set. Meteor Mash is the obvious STAB move, it hits hard but is unfortunately a bit inaccurate. Earthquake and Rock Slide for coverage. But I have thought about changing Rock Slide to Shadow Ball. It feels like Shadow Ball offers better coverage, allowing Metagross to hit Psychic- and Ghost-types for super effective damage. In comparison, Rock Slide doesn’t really help that much. It hits Flying- and Bug-types, but they don’t feel like huge threats to Metagross. It also hits Ice-types, but I already have Meteor Mash for that. It also hits Fire-types, but I have Earthquake against them (though I’d rather switch out most of the time). I think changing to Shadow Ball would be better, but since I have no plans to use this Metagross for anything serious in the Frontier in the future, I don’t think it will make a difference in the end.

Explosion as the final move, it deals extremely heavy damage at the cost of Metagross fainting, making it great as a finishing move. Adamant Nature to hit as hard as possible. I remember that I got the EVs from a guy on Serebiiforums after asking for suggestions about EV spreads for a CB Metagross. However, I don’t think the EVs are optimal. Metagross without Speed EVs is quite slow, I think bumping up its Speed a bit would have been very helpful. I have no idea what item it was holding when I used it in the Pike in the past, but I know for sure that it wasn’t a Choice Band since I needed to use different moves against Silver Lucy.

Speaking of which, the reason I used Metagross for round 1-2 is that it completely destroys Silver Lucy. Earthquake to get rid of Seviper, then Meteor Mash Shuckle, which can’t touch Metagross since its only means of doing damage are Toxic and Sandstorm. Against Milotic, I just exploded on its phat ass for an instant OHKO. I always used this strategy during my many rematches against Silver Lucy, it is a great way to farm BP quickly.

Another idea I saw now as I looked on the leaderboards was to use a Pokémon with Guts in the Pike, such as Heracross or Swellow. That way, you actually benefit from being burned or poisoned. Which is a cool alternate strategy. Yet another idea I have seen is to lead with Starmie, allowing it to instantly switch out and Naturally Cure any status it has if it should have one at the start of the battle.

So that’s the Pokémon I used. Next, my strategy. The way I played in the Pike now was quite different from how I did in the past.

First, let’s take a look at the different rooms and what they contain:


(Taken from Bulbapedia)

In the past, I always avoided the “distinct aroma of Pokémon” rooms, since I was super scared of getting to face a strong trainer and losing. Looking back now, this is definitely not the best strategy, but it worked. It got me to Gold Lucy on my first attempt, in an unexpected combination of skill and luck.

When I went back to the Pike now, I decided to try a different strategy. I looked at some strategies used by other people who had gotten great streaks at the Pike here in this thread and decided to follow their lead. Here’s how I did regarding the different rooms:

Nostalgia: I always went for these rooms. These are the only rooms where you are guaranteed to never get into a battle, which is nice. If my team should get afflicted with status, I can cure that with Blissey’s Aromatherapy afterwards. I also have Natural Cure on Blissey/Starmie as well as Lum on Starmie. If I get the second option and get one or two of my party members healed instead, then that’s even better!

Trainer: These rooms became the new ones I always avoided. A regular trainer battle without any recovery afterwards is not worth it. Especially not later on where the regular and tough trainers are equal in terms of strength. Getting full recovery for the team is nice, but it isn’t worth the risk. I suppose I could have picked these rooms early on since the trainers you face are still weak at that point, but I didn’t. I guess I could also have picked them if they were the last room in the round and my team was healthy enough, but I never did that either.

Aroma: I always went for these rooms. A tough trainer battle shouldn’t be too hard as long as the team is healthy enough. I can use Softboiled outside of battle to heal before the battle. And then I get fully healed after the battle, which is nice. Another thing worth noting is that even the “hard” trainers are easy early on, and then they are on the same level as the regular “easy” trainers later on, so there’s nothing to lose by picking one of these rooms.

The wild Pokémon are really nice, it is basically nothing or free healing. Unlike in the Pyramid, you can run from the wild Pokémon here without problems, which is what I did most of the time since you don’t get any “reward” for beating them. If necessary, I used them as healing bait for Blissey to heal itself or the team. Here’s how I did against the individual wild Pokémon.

Seviper: Never bothered with it, I always ran from those snakes.
Milotic: Occasionally used for healing. It can annoy Blissey with Hypnosis/Toxic, it can also hurt with Surf/Body Slam, but it won’t do much damage and once I am done, I can always freely run from it.
Dusclops: I often used it for healing (mostly because I met more wild Dusclops than Milotic). It can’t touch Blissey with Shadow Punch but it can annoy with Toxic/WoW, it also has Mean Look which forces me to beat it instead of running. Blissey can unfortunately not use Seismic Toss against it, but Toxic gets the job done.

I never got to face Electrode, Breloom or Wobbuffet since I didn’t get that far.

I also noticed that the movesets for some of the wild Pokémon vary a little depending on whether you play on Level 50 or Open Level. They seem a bit more annoying in Open Level, Milotic/Dusclops notably has Ice Beam over Surf/Shadow Punch, giving them the ability to freeze you. The differences aren’t very big though.

Whispering: I always went for these rooms as well. They have either nothing which is the best of all, or a multi battle which should be easy most of the time. The only thing I had to keep in mind was that I do not get automatically healed after a multi battle, so taking as little damage as possible was preferable. I also needed to make sure my team members didn’t faint in multi battles since I can’t revive them with Softboiled. As for the trainers you face in multi battles, it seems like their Pokémon are picked from the pool of just one of them (the first one mentioned at the start of the battle), just like in the Tower and the Pyramid.

With this strategy, the odds of getting into a trainer battle are only 2/6! Assuming the odds are the same for each event in the rooms. In the past, Bulbapedia had listed that the first option is more common than the second, but they have removed that. My guess is that the odds for the events are the same and that the information Bulbapedia had in the past was incorrect. But I don’t know.

Either way, that’s my strategy. It is funny how the theme of this facility is luck, yet what you really need to beat it is strategy!

Some other observations I made were that Poison damage happens outside of battles (the same is also true for the Pyramid), which means that it can slowly wear you down if you walk too much without curing it.

While battling in the Pike, I sometimes got through a whole round without a single trainer battle! Those rounds were always appreciated.

It also seems that if you get into a room where 1-2 of your Pokémon get healed, the game will prioritize those that are damaged. From what I saw, the game won’t try to heal a Pokémon that is at full health (and full PP) if another Pokémon is not at full health or PP.
I was a bit worried about how my return to the Pike would go, but I worried too much as usual, there was nothing to worry about. I made it to a rematch with Gold Lucy without any real issues. On my first try, just like during my original attempt back in 2006. Before entering the room where Lucy was, Slaking and Starmie were at full health, Blissey was slightly damaged and burned. I picked the center room, the maid offered no healing. Didn’t matter though. Here’s how the battle against Lucy went:

Lucy starts with Seviper, I send out Slaking, EQ OHKO
Next Steelix, loaf, Steelix uses EQ and gets a Crit, Slaking at 105 HP
Slaking uses EQ for around 80%, another EQ from Steelix brings Slaking to 43 HP
Loaf, Steelix uses EQ for the KO
Starmie, Surf KO
Gyara, TBolt for like 95%, it uses DD
TBolt KO!

Very similar to my original battle against her 16 years ago.

I got to rematch her again twice more afterwards since she appears at the end of every fourth round after the initial Gold battle. I used some different strategies against her during those battles, but I won both of those rematches as well.

Next, the other notable battles and things that happened. Not a whole lot, but a few that I think are worth mentioning.

I had one very scary battle in round 11. I got to face a Bug Maniac in a tough trainer room. Slaking and Blissey were paralyzed from an earlier encounter with a Kirlia, which made it harder than it should have been. Lead Pinsir, it uses SD, Slaking gets FP. SD again, loaf. Guillotine! Miss. Return KO. Next is Armaldo. I switch to Blissey, Armaldo SD. I try to use Aromatherapy but Blissey gets FP, Armaldo uses SD again. It then uses EQ and Blissey lives with 11 HP left! But now it successfully uses AT. After that, it was faster than the Armaldo and managed to throw in a SToss before falling. Out with Starmie, Surf for the KO. The final opposing Pokémon is a Scizor. Surf for around 60%, it uses Aerial Ace, which means it is one of the sets without Silver Wind. Another Surf and it is down.

Another notable situation was that once in round 15, the whole team got frozen by a Dusclops. Fortunately, I found a wild Pokémon room directly after, I met a wild Dusclops and switched to Blissey. But it took over 10 turns before it got defrosted! The Dusclops couldn’t do anything though, and Blissey just recovered with Leftovers along the way. Once Blissey got defrosted, I used Aromatherapy to heal the team, then I had to defeat the Dusclops with Toxic since it had used Mean Look.

I lost in room 280. It was the last room of the round, annoyingly. My team was at full health, I got into a room with a tough trainer. I don’t have a battle video since you can’t save videos in the Pike, just a summary of how the battle went.

My opponent was Pokémon Breeder Tess. She uses specific sets of various Pokémon, which means I know exactly what I am up against. Lead Salamence, Intimidate is not good for Slaking so I switch to Starmie, the Salamence uses Dragon Dance. I thought I would be faster since it has no Speed investment, but no, it is faster and KO’s Starmie with Double-Edge. I send in Slaking who tanks another Double-Edge and KO’s with Return. Next is Gyarados. It is also a DD set. It has ChestoRest too, not good at all. Since Slaking’s Attack got lowered by another Intimidate, I switch to Blissey. I try to damage the Gyarados to the point that it will be forced to use Rest a second time after using up its Chesto Berry, but I do not succeed. I manage to make it use Rest once, then SToss twice to get it to a little less than 50%. Unfortunately, it sets up with DD along the way and gets a Crit with EQ on Blissey, taking it down. Now I only have Slaking left. The Gyarados is faster and KO’s Slaking.

Mostly a fair loss, I’m not sure if I would have won even if the Gyara hadn’t got a Crit on Blissey. I wonder if I would have been able to win if I had led with Starmie instead of Slaking? It should have been able to beat the Salamence with Ice Beam and the Gyarados with Thunderbolt, leaving me with all three members of my team left against the final opponent.

I lost, but I accomplished my goal. I made another try at the Pike to see how far I could go, and I got quite far! Almost twice as far as my original streak. I’m satisfied with this, so I won’t make another try at Level 50. But what about Open Level?
Open Level
I decided to do Open Level as well just for fun. I had an ongoing streak of 28, a record streak of 57, and I had cleared the challenge 12 times in total in the past. I don’t remember anything about the record streak, but I guess I had farmed BP against Silver Lucy a few times here as well.

I withdrew the standard Heracross/Suicune/Raikou from my level 100 box and entered with them. Somehow, it went better than expected. I made it past Gold Lucy, but lost soon afterwards. Was it though luck or skill, or a combination of both? Either way, since I got past Gold Lucy and this streak doesn’t feel completely stupid, I might as well get it added to the leaderboards.

Format: Open Level (level 100), retail cart

Team:

:rs/heracross:
Heracross (M) @ Choice Band ** Festus
Ability: Guts
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Att / 252 Spd
Level 100 stats: 285/383/176/88/212/269
Nature: Adamant
- Megahorn
- Brick Break
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

:rs/Suicune:
Suicune @ Leftovers ** Velvet
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 232 Def / 18 Sp.att / 8 Spd
Level 100 stats: 387/154/305/211/259/178
Nature: Modest
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Calm Mind
- Rest

:rs/Raikou:
Raikou @ Lum Berry
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 38 HP / 252 Sp.att / 220 Spd
Level 100 stats: 311/161/185/305/234/352
Nature: Timid
- Thunderbolt
- Crunch
- Calm Mind
- Substitute

Streak: 147

Picture proof:

(Same image as for Level 50)

I have talked about these three Pokémon before, nothing more to say about them. Though I guess I should mention that with this team, I did get to try using Heracross with Guts at the Pike! It really benefits from being burned, but being poisoned is nice as well even if burn is optimal. It doesn’t really like any other status though.

I went with the same strategy as for Level 50 even if I don’t have Blissey here. Which means that I can’t heal outside of battle, and my team has a bigger weakness to status. But Guts/Lum/Sub/Rest should hopefully help a little at least. I wasn’t really expecting a great streak, my goal was just to complete it. There were some notable battles along the way, see below for summaries of them.

First one in round 5. Prior to it, I had been in three Multi battle rooms in a row. Heracross had fainted, I had Raikou and Suicune left, both at good health. I got into a tough battle room, facing a Ruin Maniac. He leads with a Forretress, I send out Suicune. CM and then Surf for around 60%, Forry uses Zap Cannon twice but misses with both of them. I use Surf again, expecting a KO, but Forry lives thanks to having a Focus Band. It uses Explosion, Cune lives with a little HP left. Next is Aerodactyl. Not good. I’ll risk losing Raikou if I switch, so I let Cune stay in, the Aerodactyl is of course faster and KO’s. Raikou comes out and uses TBolt for the KO. If the last opposing Pokémon is a Ground-type, it is basically game over. But it isn’t. For better or worse, the last opposing Pokémon is a Shuckle. It is the set with Substitute/Attract/Toxic/Double Team. It can’t touch Raikou once I set up a Sub, which I of course do instantly. But the Shuckle has Double Team and Substitute, which is annoying. This might become a long stall battle. I set up some CMs while the Shuckle first uses DT, then tries Toxic a few times. I eventually hit it but I don’t KO. I then try a few more times and get another hit, beating it. That was a scary battle.

I had another close battle in round 8. It was another tough trainer battle, I was up against a team of Meganium/Feraligatr/Swampert. The Meganium was no problem, I then misplayed a bit against the Feraligatr and lost Raikou, then I beat it with Heracross. The Swampert was the Curse set which managed to beat Heracross, but it only had a little HP left afterwards so Suicune could finish it off with Surf.

To my own surprise, I made it all the way to Gold Lucy. Before the battle, Heracross/Suicune were at full health while Raikou was poisoned, somewhat damaged, and had lost its Lum Berry. I picked the right room and the maid healed one of my Pokémon, which was Raikou.

Here’s how my battle against Lucy went:

Seviper, Hera EQ OHKO
Gyara, switch to Raikou, DD
TBolt OHKO
Steelix, Crunch for like 10% lol, Sp.def drop, EQ, Raikou at 40 HP
Crunch again brings it to maybe 70%, another Sp.def drop! RS, Raikou dead
Hera, BB KO

I then lost in round 11, room 148. It was in a tough trainer room, my opponent was a Dragon Tamer. My team was at full health before the battle. He started with a Latias, Heracross was faster and OHKO’d with Megahorn. Next was a Dragonite. I switched to Suicune, it used TWave. It then used Outrage which didn’t do much damage, I used CM and then defeated it with Ice Beam. Last out is Kingdra. It uses DD, I use IB which doesn’t do very much. This could be bad if it is the set with Double-Edge. It sets up some more DDs while I CM, then it uses Hydro Pump, confirming the EndFlail set. Once it is out of PP for Hydro Pump, it uses DD to max. I set up CM to max, then use Rest to recover and get rid of the paralysis. The Kingdra now starts altering between Endure and Flail, the latter does very little damage since it is at high HP. I try to predict a bit and I successfully use IB on a turn when it uses Flail. I expect it to faint, but it lives with very little HP left! It then destroys my whole team with a Flail that must have been at full power or very close.

This was a fair loss, I misplayed a bit which cost me the streak. I think I should have either used Surf first to dent the Kingdra, allowing IB to KO afterwards. Or maybe I should have stalled it out of PP for Flail before attacking, but I really thought I would KO with a+6 IB. Doesn’t matter though, the streak is over and it went better than I expected.

I have now made it past the Gold Boss on both Level 50 and Open Level in three different facilities. 15-year-old me would have been amazed. Heracross/Suicune/Raikou have been doing way better than expected. I still don’t think they are a particularly great team, but they are definitely better than I thought at first and I am impressed by them.
And that’s the end of my adventures in the Pike. Another facility I can mark as complete. While it was really fun, I will never return to it.

Afterwards, it was back to the Pyramid. As said last time, I had an ongoing streak for Open Level as well. How would it go? Only one way to find out!

Battle Pyramid (part 3)
It was time to continue on my streak for Open Level. I had an ongoing streak of 21 here. I had beaten Silver Brandon for the first time here and then stopped, just as usual. I have no Blissey for level 100 and I have a rather limited pool of Pokémon to choose from, so I wasn’t expecting to get very far. IIRC I used a Blissey when I played through the first three rounds back in 2006, but that Blissey was at level 60 and it is probably stored on Box R/S now (if I still have it at all). While playing now, I used the same resources as for Level 50. Here’s how it went!

Round 4:

PP stalling. Heracross should be able to take care of half of the wild Pokémon here. The other half are all weak to Dark, so Raikou should hopefully be able to Crunch them away. Then Suicune in the last slot because I couldn’t think of anything better.

Upon entering, I checked my bag and saw that I did not have a lot of items. Some Hyper Potions, one Revive, one Max Revive and 4 Lum Berries. And a few other things, no good hold items though. I gave Lum Berries to all team members for now. Then Heracross immediately got burned by a wild Banette, using up the Berry. I realized that getting burned would actually benefit Heracross a lot, so I did not give it a new Lum Berry afterwards… and it did not get burned again until I was on floor 7.

I expected the trainers to be easy since this is still an early round. However, the first trainer I ran into had a Sceptile which managed to hurt Heracross and Raikou pretty badly, I had to use a Hyper Potion on both of them afterwards. I also realized that Hyper Potions are a lot less efficient on level 100 since they only restore up to 200 HP, which is a lot on level 50 but not that much on level 100.

There were a lot of things that happened along the round, but I didn’t write everything down. I found two King’s Rock along the way, gave one to Hera for now. I made it to the end, but it was not easy. It felt like it cost me more items than I found, which isn’t very good. Playing through the Pyramid without Blissey and with teams that are less than optimal turned out to be harder than I thought.

Round 5:

Pokémon with Levitate. I entered with Raikou/Swampert/Heracross. I thought about using Articuno at first, but Swampert felt like a more solid choice. Raikou has Crunch for the Ghost/Psychic-types while Swampert has Surf/Ice Beam for Claydol and Flygon. Hopefully the wild Weezing won’t be too bad (though after going through the round, I can confirm that they were). Heracross in the last slot since I couldn’t think of anything better. I gave a King’s Rock to Heracross, Lum to Raikou/Swampert.

The first trainer battle I had here was against another Sceptile, same set as in the last round! It beat Heracross and managed to seriously hurt Raikou, costing me one Revive and 3 Hyper Potions in total.

On floor 1, I somehow got into a trainer battle as I stepped on the exit tile.



This has never happened before, I didn’t even know it was possible. After beating the trainer, I had to step off the exit panel, then walk onto it again in order to get transported to the next floor.

One other thing that happened here was that I successfully ran away from a wild Gengar. It defeated Raikou, I tried to run afterwards instead of sending out a new Pokémon, and it worked!

Many other things happened during this round, not going to list them all. It was extremely tough. My team kept getting badly damaged and fainted a lot, to the point that I had to use way more items than I found. But I somehow made it all the way to the end. Upon arriving at the top, Raikou and Swampert had fainted, Heracross was alive with 23 HP left. I had no Potions or Revives left, just some Berries and other items. At this point, I needed a miracle in order to complete one more round.

Round 6:

Trapping Abilities. Heracross in the lead, hoping it will be able to Megahorn the wild Wynaut and Wobbuffet to death even without a Choice Band. The others should be easy, or so I hope. They are just frail Ground-types. Raikou and Suicune to go along with Heracross because I don’t know what else to use. I was expecting to lose here anyway.

I lost Heracross almost immediately in an idiotic situation against a wild Wynaut on the first floor. Megahorn megamiss, the Wynaut uses Destiny Bond. I use BB, hoping it won’t do too much, but it does over half and the Wynaut uses Counter for a clean OHKO. I beat it with Raikou, but Hera stays fainted since I have no Revives. Then I found a Choice Band almost immediately afterwards. And then a Revive! I used it on Hera and gave it the Choice Band. After that, I found 3 Hyper Potions and one Ether. Suddenly, things were looking bright! Maybe a miracle is about to happen after all?

Nope. On floor 3, Heracross fainted again, against a trainer’s Hariyama. I had not given it a Hyper Potion so it wasn’t at full health, the Hariyama got a Crit with Cross Chop which was enough for a KO. I then beat it with Suicune. This forced me to use Suicune in the lead for the rest of the round, but it was okay since it beat all the wild Pokémon. I ran a damage calc against the wild Wynaut and learned that I needed to be at +2 to safely OHKO them with Surf.

Later in the round, I had a trainer battle against an Espeon, the Pokémon which cost me my streaks with this team at the Tower and the Dome. I beat it this time around, but I decided to not let Suicune use Rest. Instead, I used all of the Hyper Potions I had left. I beat the Espeon and then I found another Hyper Potion directly after the battle.

I then finally lost, ending with a streak of 39 floors. I was going to check one area to see if the exit was there, but I got ambushed by a trainer. I had no Revives or Hyper Potions left. This trainer had a Dugtrio, it used Fissure on Suicune and hit. Raikou didn’t KO with Crunch and got OHKO’d by Earthquake.

I lost, but that’s okay. I wasn’t expecting to go very far, my only goal was to complete the streak. I now know that battling in the Pyramid without Blissey and without teams that are optimized is very difficult.

I’ll never try Open Level for the Pyramid again. It is yet another format I can add to the list of ones I am done with. Instead, I went back to Level 50.
I decided to go back and clear a few more rounds here because there was one small thing I really wanted to do… but I didn’t think about it until after I had cleared round 43 last time, and at that point, I was pretty tired of the Pyramid so I did not feel like playing through a few more rounds just for the sake of doing this thing. Instead, I decided to do it now.

Format: Level 50, retail cart

I cleared 7 more rounds now, putting me at 50 rounds cleared, 350 floors in total, still ongoing.

Picture proof:


I went over all the details for the teams and my strategies last time, won’t do it again. Like I did for the last rounds in my previous post, I will only do a short summary of how it went for each round and talk about the notable things that happened, if there were any. Here we go!

Round 44:

PP stalling. I just played through it as round 4 in Open Level, now it is time again! But with a way better team, more items in the bag, and best of all, Blissey! Houndoom/Salamence/Blissey worked last time, so I’m going with them again. Unlike on Open Level, this is serious business. I have no intention to lose here!

On floor 1, I had to explore the entire floor before finding the exit. It was in one of the corners, the very last area I explored. I also had to fight all trainers on the floor, though there were only 3 in total.

On floor 7, I had a semi-scary battle against a DD Latios. Blissey missed with Toxic twice (the Latios had a Brightpowder) but the Latios used unboosted EQs at first, it didn’t start dancing until it was too late, so it became an easy victory in the end.

Otherwise nothing special. It felt like I had to use many Lum Berries here though, Houndoom got hit by status a lot. But there’s nothing to worry about since I still have way over 50 left. I also had to use some Ethers and Leppa Berries (the theme was PP stalling after all), including one I accidentally used on the wrong move, but it doesn’t matter much.

Round 45:

Levitate. And Brandon. Slaking/Starmie/Blissey worked last time, going with them again.

On floor 3, I got into a Multi battle against a Wailord and Granbull. I defeated the Wailord first since it had Fissure, allowing the Granbull to OHKO Starmie with Shadow Ball. But it was a CB set so I auto-won against it afterwards.

Otherwise no problems. I beat all the wild Pokémon, trainers and Brandon with ease. That said, I had to use a lot of Lum Berries here, just like during the last round. And some Hyper Potions too. I met a lot of wild Weezing, several of them decided to use Protect followed by Selfdestruct or Sludge Bomb, the latter poisoned Slaking on two occasions. But I still have over 60 Hyper Potions and over 50 Lum Berries left, so no worries. I also found some more items during this round.

Round 46:

Trapping Abilities. Houndoom/Salamence/Blissey.

Compared to the two previous rounds, this was an easy round on the whole. I found the exits very quickly on the first three floors. I also had a trainer battle against an Arcanine, I switched in Salamence and it got a Crit with Body Slam which caused paralysis. But I beat it with Blissey afterwards. Otherwise nothing worth talking about.

Round 47:

Ice-types. Slaking/Starmie/Blissey. Sorry Jojo!

This round went very well on the whole. Nothing notable happened. I beat all trainers and wild Pokémon with ease, I also found many great items without having to use any. In addition, I found the exit quickly on most floors, making it a rather fast round.

Round 48:

Self-destructing moves. Slaking/Gengar/Blissey.

During this round, Gengar once fainted against a trainer’s Armaldo. I used EQ with Slaking, the Armaldo used Swords Dance. I switched to Gengar, it tanked a Brick Break like a champ. The Armaldo then gets a QC activation, it uses Rock Slide and Gengar faints. Out with Slaking again, another EQ for the KO.

Other than that, it was easy. It felt like I found a lot of useful items here, especially Hyper Potions (I had a total of 73 in my bag after completing this round) but also several Lum Berries and Revives. And the only item I had to use was one Revive to bring Gengar back to life after it had fainted.

Round 49:

Psychic-types. Slaking/Starmie/Blissey.

On floor 6, I was surrounded by trainers upon entering. I had to fight two of them in a Multi battle, they had Dusclops and Vileplume. The Dusclops was no problem, but the Vileplume was a Double Team set which could have been annoying. It set up several Double Teams, but Blissey still managed to hit it with SToss four times in a row, which was enough for a KO! That was really cool.

Otherwise a very easy round. I found a lot of Lum Berries here, but I didn’t have to use any items. All wild Pokémon were easily disposed of.

Round 50:

Rock-types feat. honorary Rock-type Steelix. And Brandon at the end, maybe he is a honorary Rock-type too? Starmie/Slaking/Blissey.

Easy round on the whole. No problems against the wild Pokémon or trainers.

As for Brandon… I mentioned that there was one thing I really wanted to do. You can’t save battle videos here, but I really wanted to include a video from the Pyramid somewhere. So I decided to do a live recording of my battle against Brandon at the end of this round! It also showcases my team and the items in my bag. Watch it below:


This is my standard way of beating Brandon. It is a bit slow, there are probably better ways if you just want to beat him quickly. But this is the safest way to beat him with this team. I didn’t use Toxic since Zapdos has a Lum Berry and Moltres knows Safeguard.

And that’s the end of Round 50! As well as my adventures in the Pyramid… for now. Maybe I’ll go back to this streak yet once more in the future. If I can win 11 more rounds, I will have the overall highest streak for the Pyramid in this thread, which would be cool. When/if that happens will depend on how it goes with my next project.
With this, I am taking another break from the Pyramid, a considerably longer one this time.
After playing Emerald quite a lot for the past few months, I have (for better or worse) finally maxed out my playtime on the game!



I have had Emerald for almost 17 years now (got it in October 2005, which is when it was released in Europe). While it isn’t my favorite Pokémon game anymore, it is without the one I have played the most. The playtimes for my other games aren’t anywhere close to being maxed out. I know I have over 500 hours clocked on Black, and I have over 400 hours on several other games, though I don’t know the exact playtime for all of my games (and I’m too lazy to check them now). All I know is that none of them are close to being maxed out. I have spent a lot of time on Emerald, yet it feels like I haven’t really done anything serious on it. I didn’t battle that much at the Frontier in the past, sadly. But now I’m making up for that.

One more thing. After all my recent battles, I now have a total of over 2000 BP on Emerald.



I’m not sure if I’ll ever use them on anything though. Maybe I should buy a Snorlax Doll and put in my Secret Base, that would be cozy.

I have also won a total of over 3000 BP according to my Trainer Card.
After all of this, I’m mostly done with everything I had planned to do in Emerald regarding this Battle Facility project. When I started, I had five notable ongoing streaks in five different facilities. I have completed four of them and continued on the fifth. I also went back to a sixth facility and got a new streak there. In addition to that, I have completed all of my other (less notable) ongoing streaks, and I have tried every format I can in all of these six facilities. However, one facility remains.

The Battle Factory. I have yet to obtain the Gold Symbol from there. Though I never really tried it that much it in the past. But now, I have decided to try again. There is a lot more knowledge and resources about how the Factory works nowadays compared to in the past, I have a feeling that my odds of beating it are better now compared to in the past. Since the IVs of opposing Pokémon in the Factory are tied to your streak at the Tower, I have prepared a little by resetting my streaks at the Tower (Single and Double) back to 0.

It has always been my dream to get all 7 Gold Symbols in Emerald, maybe I’ll finally be able to get the last one this time. If I should make it all the way, I will report back about it here.

Apart from that, I have done everything I had planned on Emerald regarding this project. Alongside battling in the Battle Factory, I’m going to move on to Gen 4. I have several ongoing streaks in the battle facilities in the Sinnoh games. Once I have completed the first of them, I’ll post about it in the Gen 4 facilities thread. See you there!
 
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Hello!! Longtime reader of various Smogon articles and threads, first-time poster, this thread is pretty neat and I'm excited to start working on some streaks myself

I just have one question regarding the Pomeg glitch and arbitrary code execution - what's the general consensus on using the Pomeg glitch to obtain Ganlon, Salac, Apicot, and Petaya berries? I had to use ACE to obtain these berries in my save file because I don't own Colosseum and this was really my only means of getting those berries. If they're not allowed to be used for leaderboard streaks, I'll refrain from using them, I just wanted to ask real quick to make sure
 
Hey there. I'm new to Smogon and had time to play Pokemon, so I went back to playing Emerald. After nearly 15 years, I had the time to attempt a Gold Symbol run and did it. Thought I would post this to mainly help out.

View attachment 441875View attachment 441877

This will probably be the only post I make on Smogon bar replies and/or questions to this, but I had enough time to attempt this challenge and note my experiences after beating each Facility. By no means do I consider myself an expert after all of this. I did the research and adjusted to my own weaknesses and what I felt comfortable with. I worked with whatever natures, EVs, and IVs I had. An equal amount of attempts ended due to both bad luck and my own decision making. But I'm glad things turned out well. Credit mainly goes to Werster and Exarion.

So without further ado...
For reference, I played the game back in 2005-2006. Quite a while, and after seeing a few videos with nearly a month of vacation to spare, I found the itch to get back into playing the game for this challenge. My main teams back then revolved around Zapdos, Swampert, Salamence, and Cradily, only ever obtaining the Silver symbols. I don’t remember much about my actual battles since it was so long ago, but I believe many of them bar the Arena were pretty down to the wire. No EV training, no fundamental game knowledge, so in retrospect, it was no surprise that I had great difficulty in getting even the Silver symbols.

There are some basic ground rules I set before I started this challenge. I made it a point when I first opened the VBA Emulator that I would not resort to Gameshark or anything of that sort. Absolutely no glitches, no cheats, no additional save states, none of that. I was planning to beat FireRed after this experience, but if needed, I could pull any Pokemon out of there if required. Also, I decided for the sake of enjoyment, to build a very balanced team pre-Pokemon League, rather than beat the initial game just on the back of Lvl. 70 legendaries and overpowered Water starters as I did before. Whether or not I used them in the Frontier depended on how they were actually raised and how effective I saw them in long run. I ended up beating the game with a fairly balanced team, using Swampert, Gardevoir, Manectric, Heracross, and Salamence to beat the League, and it was quite a lot of fun to do.
I hit the Battle Frontier after getting Latios and Metagross and EV training as best I could to Level 60. I based my initial team off of Werster’s speedrun, but since he himself mentioned that he got extremely lucky during his run, I decided to go out of my way and catch more Pokemon once I knocked out what facilities I could using his team. This was also partially attributed to me botching the natures of both Swampert (Relaxed) and Latios (Gentle), not knowing when their natures were determined in-game. I got a Naughty nature Heracross from the Safari Zone I used to beat the League, but realized it was likely not going to be of much use in any facility due to typing and coverage issues of my initial team. For these reasons did I try to start to catch more Pokemon. I added Starmie during the Battle Pike run, Milotic before the Battle Arena run, Slaking before the Battle Tower, and finally Gengar and Tyranitar for the final run at the Battle Palace. I also used FireRed to acquire TMs (particularly Earthquake, Aerial Ace, Shadow Ball) I could only acquire once in Emerald.

There was a lot of trial and error, particularly in the Battle Factory and the Battle Pike where I really had to think about what I was doing. I still had the tendency to risk a matchup through sheer type advantage and move pool, which ended up having things take much more time than I expected. I ended up thinking my battles through a lot more, so I became a better player in the process, much better than before. However, my teams weren’t completely RNG-proof and not always given ideal EVs, IVs, or nature, so there was a LOT of luck involved on my part as well.
Without further ado, here are the Pokemon I used for the Gold Battles. I will not be including the ones used for the Silver Battles, as they are trained to beat the Pokemon League. Swampert is the only exception to that rule.

Metagross
  • Facilities Used: Dome, Pyramid, Pike, Arena, Tower
  • Method Acquired: From Steven’s house (post-game, Mossdeep City)
  • Nature: Adamant
  • EV Spread: 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Items Used
    • Choice Band (Dome, Pyramid, Pike, Arena)
    • Leftovers (Tower)
  • Moves
    • Meteor Mash
    • Earthquake
    • Shadow Ball
    • Explosion
Latios
  • Facilities Used: Dome, Pyramid, Pike, Arena, Tower
  • Method Acquired: Caught (Route 110, roaming)
  • Nature: Gentle
  • EV Spread: 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Items Used
    • Lum Berry (Dome, Pike, Arena, Tower)
    • Brightpowder (Pyramid)
  • Moves
    • Psychic
    • Dragon Claw
    • Thunderbolt
    • Calm Mind (Dome, Pyramid, Pike, Arena) / Surf (Tower)
Swampert
  • Facilities Used: Dome, Pyramid
  • Method Acquired: Starter Pokemon
  • Nature: Relaxed
  • EV Spread: Unknown (used to beat Pokemon League, so it had a random spread)
  • Items Used
    • Leftovers
  • Moves
    • Earthquake
    • Surf
    • Ice Beam
    • Counter
Starmie (w/ Natural Cure ability)
  • Facilities Used: Pike
  • Method Acquired: Lilycove City (Super Rod)
  • Nature: Rash
  • EV Spread: 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Items Used
    • Brightpowder
  • Moves
    • Psychic
    • Surf
    • Ice Beam
    • Thunderbolt
Milotic
  • Facilities Used: Arena, Palace
  • Method Acquired: Caught (Route 119)
  • Nature: Quiet
  • EV Spread: 252 HP, 252 SpAtk, 6 Def
  • Items Used
    • Leftovers (Palace and Arena battles 1-49) / Chesto Berry (Arena battles 50-56)
  • Moves
    • Surf
    • Ice Beam
    • Toxic
    • Protect (Arena) / Recover (Palace)
Slaking
  • Facilities Used: Tower
  • Method Acquired: Caught (Petalburg Forest)
  • Nature: Adamant
  • EV Spread: 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 6 SpDef
  • Items Used
    • Choice Band
  • Moves
    • Double Edge
    • Earthquake
    • Shadow Ball
    • Aerial Ace
Gengar
  • Facilities Used: Palace
  • Method Acquired: Traded from FireRed (caught in Lost Cave)
  • Nature: Sassy
  • EV Spread: 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Items Used
    • Brightpowder
  • Moves
    • Psychic
    • Thunderbolt
    • Ice Punch
    • Fire Punch
Tyranitar
  • Facilities Used: Palace
  • Method Acquired: Traded from FireRed (caught in Sevault Canyon)
  • Nature: Hasty
  • EV Spread: 252 HP, 252 Atk, 6 Spd
  • Items Used
    • Leftovers
  • Moves
    • Rock Slide
    • Crunch
    • Earthquake
    • Substitute
This was, as I heard, the easiest facility to tackle. My only issues were running into Gardevoirs 4 and 5 (in reference to the Bulbapedia list of Pokemon available) which had access to the elemental punches. But as I said, with access to information on your enemy’s team combined with great overall coverage from yours, this should be one of the easier facilities. I ended up reaching Tucker on the third run to the gold battle. The team I used had fantastic coverage overall and cover the other team’s members very well.

As for the Gold battle itself, I decided to lead with Metagross and anchor with Latios. Thought process was to potentially pivot into Latios if he led with Swampert, to avoid a potential Earthquake, and then max Calm Mind to sweep the rest of his team (Swampert will for whatever reason prioritize Mirror Coat). I could cover the other two mons using Shadow Ball or Earthquake. I double EQ’d the Metagross, and got finished off by a Latias Thunderbolt. Sending Latios out, I knew I had the battle in the bag since Tucker’s Latias didn’t have Dragon Claw or Ice Beam as a countermeasure. After two Dragon Claws, I got my first ever Gold symbol.

Team Used: Metagross (1st), Latios (2nd), Swampert (not chosen in battle).
This ended up being the easiest facility for me by far, rather than the Dome.

Since I had a much stronger team than 2005-06, I knew I could take this a bit easier, but with that I ended up trying something I didn’t when I first had Emerald: heal less and use less items until the rounds following Brandon’s Silver battle round. This paid dividends, and I was lucky enough to win Brandon’s Silver Battle easily without healing in-fight. I also knew that there were rounds where the wiser option was, in fact, to engage wild Pokemon rather than not even in rounds I didn’t need to. The two main reasons were to help in gaining more items (especially Revives), and to avoid unnecessary damage as I already had an exorbitant amount of Ethers to refill key moves such as Meteor Mash, Shadow Ball, and Psychic. Having Metagross lead off due to its diverse moveset and Steel-typing led to me not having many problems with wild Pokemon in the Pyramid.

As for the battle with Brandon, I knew I would probably get the symbol anyway due to the fact that I could use items and I got more revives in this round than many of the previous, plus I also already had the held items I wanted (Choice Band, Leftovers, and Brightpowder for Latios). I led off with Metagross, and ended up botching Meteor Mash twice and eventually got Crit’d due to Articuno’s Scope Lens. I landed two Surfs on Articuno before deciding to fully revive Metagross and heal up Swampert due to a few missed Blizzards and an Articuno reflect. Funny enough, Swampert ended up sweeping his team after that point, first Surf spamming Articuno and Moltres before Ice Beams took down Zapdos.

I’m still honestly surprised at how much luck I had here. Examples being a warp tile being immediately right next to me after spawning on a tenth round floor, the amount of Revives I picked up in the latter two rounds, and the plethora of Hyper Potions I picked up throughout (a boon at Lvl. 60 or below). This was really the only facility in the entire playthrough I did where I went straight to the gold Battle without a single defeat.

Team Used: Metagross (1st), Latios (2nd), Swampert (3rd).
Easily one of the harder facilities, as you’ll need a good amount of luck later rounds considering a terrible opening Pokemon pool will ruin you no matter how diverse your typing is. An example of this being one sixth round run where my open round starting pool consisted of not one, but TWO Quagsire with no access to Water attacks. This was also one of the two facilities (the other being the Pike), as previously mentioned, where I learned to play smart. Strategies such as sacrificing mons and avoiding unnecessary switching for simple type advantage really helped me become a better player here.

I can say with complete certainty that you can get by the first 20 battles (maybe even the first 27) through sheer knowledge of type advantage alone bar the bad luck I mentioned previously. The AI isn’t terribly great until the 21st battle, Noland or not, but you’ll still eventually have to play a bit smarter third round onwards. The real challenge truly begins in the fifth round onwards, where Pokemon do not have a set moveset for the round and can have anywhere from between 4-8 possible movesets. I ended up settling for a pretty diverse team after the 31st battle consisting of Suicune1, Snorlax7, and Zapdos3 (swapped for Latios4 in 33rd battle on). I was just as lucky in the sixth round, immediately getting Vaporeon2, Snorlax6, and Moltres2 (later Latias5). Before the Noland fight, I had the dilemma of swapping out Vaporeon with Suicune3, but ended up deciding against it due to the fact that Vaporeon did the exact same thing but also had access to Rest. I also wanted to highlight how absolutely broken Snorlax was for me in both the fifth and sixth rounds, being an all-around buzzsaw and easily sweeping a number of battles by itself.

The battle with Noland started out with him sending out Golem, which immediately got eliminated with a Vaporeon Surf. He then sent out a Tyranitar, which fell to two Surfs, but not before lowering my health to about half with an Earthquake. His final Pokemon was Articuno. I attempted to Rest, but surprisingly went down to a Double Edge, which inadvertently helped out due to Vaporeon’s massive health pool. I sent out Snorlax next since I could potentially whittle away his health with Shadow Ball, but he used Swagger. I luckily landed Shadow Ball despite being confused, hitting it to red, and I knew the battle had been won since the Articuno was an Articuno5 with no self-sustain with Sand Stream still up. I swapped next turn to Latias and Articuno fell to Double Edge recoil.

Team Used: Vaporeon (1st, used 2nd moveset), Snorlax (2nd, used 6th moveset), Latias (3rd, used 5th moveset).
This was the facility that really led me to divert from Werster’s speedrun team. Status conditions were costing me battles in the sixth and seventh rounds of my first few runs and I was not very happy with Swampert’s performance in latter rounds. I decided to stick to Metagross, and added Starmie to best utilize the Natural Cure ability and Heracross to take advantage of its Guts ability. That led me to losing to fire types, so I decided to remove Heracross and add back Latios. This would be a crucial decision since due to similar movesets and speed, I would win any double battle barring Regice and bulky mons like Slaking or Snorlax.

The strategy I followed was simple, using the advice given by the lady in the odd-numbered rooms to avoid the “Is it a trainer…?” or “Nostalgia” status affect rooms. For my Gold-winning run, I believe I got through both the seventh and the ninth rounds without facing a single battle. I did decide to take a chance at times due to Latios’ Lum Berry and Starmie’s Natural Cure. I was fortunate enough to have either Poison as my status — sparing Metagross — or having the “Nostalgia” room as the fourteenth room for the seventh and ninth rounds.

In the tenth round leading to Lucy, I didn’t face a single battle until a double battle in the twelfth room (room before you are warned about the Pike Queen). My opponents were an Exeggutor and a Wailord, but Metagross got hit with Fissure from Wailord, so I headed into the final two rooms with only Latios and Starmie.

In the fourteenth room, two of my Pokemon were healed, but Metagross still remained out, so it was just Latios and Starmie against the rest of her team. I was hoping that type coverage provided by both of their movesets would be enough for the win. Seviper fell to one Latios Psychic, and then two Thunderbolts took care of Gyarados (the first Paralyzed it, which was the best possible thing that could have happened given its moveset). Although Steelix was left and I still had Starmie, I was worried for two reasons: Steelix’s Brightpowder and its access to Explosion, which would lose me the challenge if Starmie somehow couldn’t land Surf in the absence of Latios. My only tactic at that point was to not swap to Starmie and instead spam Psychic. However, I got particularly lucky that Steelix missed Screech and Rock Slide, and even attempted EQ, so I whittled away at its health without any issues. Despite being hit by a Critical Rock Slide, Latios was still at around half health by the time the fifth Psychic ended the battle.

This was the most satisfying win due to the fact that everything that could possibly have gone wrong went wrong before the battle, and I got all the luck I needed in the battle with Latios and Lucy’s Steelix not prioritizing Rock Slide against it.

Team Used: Metagross (1st, was fainted at start of Lucy battle), Latios (2nd), Starmie (3rd).
Boy, oh boy. The Arena looks pretty simple on paper, but the inability to switch in-battle eliminates a lot of potential team-based strategies, and you will have to fight your way out with what you have if the opposing mon counters yours. This facility is really, really good for either sweepers with good offensive coverage. Think Latios, Metagross, Salamence, Starmie, and Heracross. I’ve read from another post that this is the Tower on Hard mode, and while I didn’t yet face the Tower, I could pretty much understand the sentiment.

For my first run, I initially started with the lineup of Latios, Metagross, and Starmie, losing in the first battle of the fifth round (the 29th battle). Note that I used Salamence instead of Latios in the fourth round because its movepool of Aerial Ace/Fire Blast/Dragon Claw/Brick Break completely counters Greta’s silver team. I didn’t have the ideal nature or moveset for it outside of that, so that was really its only use for me. A key weakness for me to cover was Electric and Fire types in the late-game, so I dropped Starmie for Swampert. Unfortunately, Swampert’s offense was extremely lackluster in later rounds, so I experimented with Metagross, Latios, Heracross. My Heracross, however, couldn’t cover Latios’ weaknesses very well. That’s when I eventually decided on going with the original Latios-Metagross 1-2 order, but now adding Milotic to anchor my team.

Milotic is an interesting choice here, because despite being weak to Electric types, it was both sturdy and tough enough to beat simple Electric types like Manectric and Jolteon after Metagross was able to damage to them. I had a Modest Feebas in my PC, but I eventually decided on a Quiet Nature, given the Sp.Atk boost and my plan to eventually use it as a potential counter to Suicune at the Battle Palace. It paid dividends, using a standard Surf/Ice Beam/Recover/Toxic moveset. However, after losing to a Shiftry with Explosion, I decided to replace Recover with Protect. . Against the Greta round only, I swapped Leftovers for a Chesto Berry to counter Gengar’s Hypnosis and Breloom’s Spore, just in case Metagross wasn’t able to win against either.

My final lineup ended up being pretty strong, but what really pushed me over the edge was the fact that I needed to change how I played with a point Latios since I couldn’t switch out. Having access to Calm Mind meant that I could either defeat the enemy in one shot right away, or I could Calm Mind the first two turns. If you are running a point Latios à la Werster, be able to identify against what mons you can safely CM multiples time into.

My victory against Greta depended on whether or not Latios survived against Umbreon, as Gengar had a very dangerous moveset against the rest of my mons. Having watched Werster’s match, I knew that I had to at least win the Mind judging category, so that meant using Dragon Claw for all three turns under the assumption that Latios would be confused after the second turn (the first turn confusion being negated by Lum Berry). On the third turn, Dragon Claw landed and Umbreon responded with Rest. As Latios was safe and sound the entire round, I managed to tie on the Skill judging category, which tipped the judging in favor of Latios. Gengar was sent out, but Latios snapped out of confusion that turn and outsped Gengar to OHKO’d it with Psychic. Breloom fell similarly, thus marking the second Brain in a row that was swept by Latios in the gold battle.

Team Used: Latios (1st), Metagross (2nd), Milotic (3rd)
Even after completing this challenge, I still cannot decide between the Tower or the Arena as to which facility is harder. The Arena prevents switching, but the Tower has 14 more battles to fight, which means 14 more battles you could possibly lose to anything ranging from RNG to being hard-countered or even being legendary/pseudo-spammed. Those last 14 battles were the most stressful I faced, since they were already pretty high up in the win count column and way more than I ever did in any Pokemon game I played prior.

After the Arena, I realized that it would be next to impossible to win other Gold symbols with my current team, so I decided to bring some TMs and additional reinforcements from FireRed. With the Earthquake and Shadow Ball TMs, it was now possible for me to build another physical sweeper. Slaking was the obvious choice. I’d read about it, but didn’t really realize how dangerous this guy was until actually laying hands on it. A Choice-Banded juggernaut capable of indiscriminately OHKOing legendaries, walls, and other lethal threats. If you EV train Slaking in Speed, you’ll be able to outspeed most setups, but more importantly in the later rounds, outspeed almost all of the Latios/Latias setups. For reasons I discuss later in this section, I experimented with Flamethrower and contemplated Fire Blast, but ended up giving Slaking Aerial Ace as the fourth move. I can say with certainty that I wouldn’t have won the Gold Symbol here if I didn’t invest time in training a Slaking in this manner.

The strategy I used was simply to defeat the first opponent as fast as possible, and then switch into Latios/Metagross depending on the matchup and finish the battle off from there using those sweepers. If neither was able to get the job done, I still had access to another Double-Edge without fainting to recoil. Prior to the runs, I swapped Latios’ Calm Mind for Surf to counter ground and fast-Fire types, as well as Quick Claw physical attackers like Rhydon and Armaldo that could potentially OHKO you. Metagross’ Explosion still remained the ideal finisher for each battle, as it still eliminated the correct Pokemon even without having Choice Band.

There are a few glaring weaknesses to this setup, however. Scizor and Forretress are two big culprits. Slaking’s Flamethrower can take out Forretress, but not Scizor, who has the capability to wipe your whole team if running the Swords Dance / Silver Wind setup. I ultimately thought it best to sacrifice Metagross and send out Latios to outspeed Scizor and eliminate it, as Slaking’s Earthquake takes it to red, while still having the ability to still use Double-Edge safely if it’s ever needed again. Non-point Reversal users are another problem. If you mistime your pivot from Slaking, Medicham or Blaziken can setup Endure/Reversal the turn after switching. Medicham can wipe your whole team, but a Critical Hit Reversal from any of the users can OHKO even Latios. Double Team users are also a problem if Truant is used on a turn they intend to use DT. As I could safely deal with Scizor, I decided to give Slaking Aerial Ace, replacing Flamethrower, to deal with DT users. Finally, Special sweepers that either have high speed or use Quick Claw are a threat. I had one unfortunate encounter with Lapras2 that ended up outspeeding both Slaking and Latios with Quick Claw and OHKOing both through consecutive Critical hits. Surprisingly, I never had any terrible instances with setups like the Lapras8 that had Quick Claw + Sheer Cold / Fissure / Horn Drill; however, make it a habit to get on your knees and pray that you never, never encounter any of those setups, because they are normally executed properly when encountered and there is absolute nothing you can do about it.

The Gold Anabel battle ended up being a lot easier than expected. Despite Raikou having EVs in HP, Def, and Speed, Slaking outsped and easily OHKO’d it, showing that the EV training in Speed paid off. I ended up switching into Metagross after Latios was sent out and began setting up Calm Mind. After the second CM, Shadow Ball took Latios into exactly half health so I would need to use Shadow Ball 2 more times, maybe more since Latios had Recover. While a Dragon Claw took me down to half health, the subsequent Shadow Ball was a Critical hit, taking down Latios and leaving Snorlax. Metagross’ Explosion was enough to end the battle without much trouble.

Team Used: Slaking (1st), Latios (2nd), Metagross(3rd)
Before I discuss my experience, a bit of theory and reasoning behind my team for this facility. For starters, I completely moved away from the general speedrunning Pokemon such as Latios and Metagross. My Latios’ Gentle Nature meant it could only attack less than 20% of the time when it’s half health or higher, but at 90% otherwise. Thus its combination of high speed and relatively low defense would be a major liability for the Palace since it would more likely skip the first turn after it is sent out. Had it been a Timid Nature, I would have easily included it in this squad. As the nature of both Metagross and Slaking was Adamant, I probably would have been able to let it slide, but without Latios’ coverage, I decided to leave both off. This basically meant I would need to construct a new team from scratch.

For starters, I needed a general special sweeper. Taking my lessons from the Battle Tower and already used to swapping to out Earthquake, I decided first on Gengar, equipped with Brightpowder to try to keep it in its Sassy Nature attack probability range. This essentially put Fighting types out of the picture, and made only one of Spenser’s Slaking’s moves effective on it, being Shadow Ball.

My next Pokemon needed to be a physical sweeper that could tank Slaking’s Shadow Ball. Perusing through Pokemon capable of learning Earthquake through level up while still having wide coverage, I eventually decided on Tyranitar. Now I didn’t have Dragon Dance on this one, but Sand Stream was the perfect out to any Double Team users. Nature-wise, I had a Sassy Nature Larvitar, but eventually decided on Hasty Nature. As I still had a chance to use a defensive move early due to the nature’s profile, I decided to use a Substitute/Leftover combination, particularly to also take complete advantage of the enemy’s chance of having a non-action turn. A fair number of my victories were due to this exact strategy, as Tyranitar even swept matches even during the Gold-winning run.

The final Pokemon needed to be a specific counter to Spenser’s Suicune. I initially decided to use Vaporeon over Milotic, due to the fact that Water Absorb took Suicune’s only STAB move out of the equation. There were three glaring weaknesses I saw when using Vaporeon, however. The first was its near abysmal Def combined with its decreased speed, getting OHKO’d and outsped by a Marowak without a Quick Claw or without a critical hit. The second was the Sassy Nature’s knack for choosing the move that did the most damage, as I found Vaporeon using Surf and Ice Beam when I needed it to use Toxic against certain opponents. Finally, by virtue of the previous point, Water Absorb would be nowhere near as beneficial a counter to Suicune. For this reason, I decided to swap for Milotic prior to my winning 6th round of battles to get to Palace Maven Spenser, Vaporeon being nothing but mere spot removal for Fire, Ground, Rock, and Dragon types in battles 1-35.

This facility will go by very fast with the Sassy Nature, but Gengar wasn’t able to finish the job at some points due to lack of STAB moves, even though its SpAtk stat actually slightly rivaled that of Latios. This did cost me 1-2 runs, and 1-2 of my other losses were due to me being completely hard countered. I actually lost the 14th battle of my very first run through the facility, since the opponent ran a Choice Banded Absol, Modest SpAtk-based Metang, and a Stantler (Absol for some reason, decided to choose Iron Tail over Shadow Ball, and I switched into Tyranitar predicting the Shadow Ball). But if your team is raised correctly, you will breeze through to even the sixth round to face Spenser easily, as you will almost very likely not be facing Legendaries or Dragonite/Tyranitar.

My immediate plan when starting the battle against Spenser was to pivot into Tyranitar immediately, set up Sand Stream, and hopefully drop Substitute before facing the rest of his team. It went exactly as planned, and Arcanine did around quarter damage before I defeated Arcanine with an Earthquake, with Substitute already active before Slaking was sent out. If Slaking defeated my Substitute, I had the ability to set up another one and draw out the match longer due to taking advantage of Truant. Slaking missed Hyper Beam, but it did take me a while to eventually take him down and he was able to eliminate my Substitute before that. When he sent out Suicune, I did a bit of math and thinking first. His nature was the same Hasty nature as Tyranitar’s, but I decided to assume that due to its EV spread not containing SpAtk, I knew I could live two Surfs since the Leftovers recovered its HP back to near max. If I landed at least one hit plus Sand Stream’s active effect, I could change its nature such that it wouldn’t be able to Calm Mind repeatedly to the point of seriously threatening Milotic. On the other hand, if Suicune’s health got too low, Gengar would be able to end the battle with Thunderbolt. Suicune landed Surf and Tyranitar countered with Rock Slide, but Suicune was still over half health. However, it spent the next two turns using Calm Mind, swapping its attacking probability as expected after another hit landed from Tyranitar. Tyranitar eventually fell to Surf, and I decided to send out Gengar, hoping to win the battle with either Thunderbolt or the following Sand Stream hit. I won with Thunderbolt.

And there it is, my final gold symbol. I was so excited at checking off something from my childhood bucket list, that I forgot to record my final battle on my Frontier Pass.

Team Used: Gengar(1st), Tyranitar (2nd), Milotic(3rd)
Here are the available streaks that I have made. Streaks in the Tower, Factory, and Dome are not current. I ended up finishing the entire challenge in around one month total.

View attachment 441863View attachment 441864View attachment 441865View attachment 441866View attachment 441867View attachment 441868View attachment 441869
As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, there was a lot of luck involved in this challenge. RNG or a bad matchup at any point could end your streak just as it had for me many times. It takes a lot of perseverance to beat this, whether it be going through the streak itself, EV training, or even finding a Pokemon of the correct nature. Even if I didn’t botch natures, I strongly advise having multiple copies of other Gen III games to get the tools you need should you want to finish this challenge faster.

My only goals left are to win all the contests and reach 105 wins in the Battle Tower. Will probably do something with Gen IV, but not going to Gen V, since stopped playing after Diamond and Pearl.
Just wanted to let everyone know that I started a new streak in the Battle Tower and managed to reach 105 wins! This took a fair amount of tries since I wasn't immediately motivated in getting this after completing my initial run with the Gold Symbols. This is pretty much a near carbon copy of an earlier poster's team. Since I already had most of the team, I thought I might as well give this challenge a go with held-overs from my original run.

Without further ado, here are the Pokemon used for this challenge. I did not calculate IVs for this, I pretty much caught my team with ideal natures and trained to the best of my ability.

As you might notice, I now have a Latios with the Modest nature. Due to the mechanics behind this team, I thought it best to maximize Sp.Atk and use a four-attack setup over a Calm Mind setup. This Latios was acquired by playing a new Emerald run on emulator (a run that involved beating the League with the same balanced team concept using a low level Alakazam and Golem to better balance training). I got the Modest Latios on my first spawn after beating the League. Definitely saved me time and brain cells. The other two are the same Slaking/Metagross I used in my original run.

Slaking
  • Method Acquired: Caught (Petalburg Forest)
  • Nature: Adamant
  • EV Spread: 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 6 SpDef
  • Item Used
    • Choice Band
  • Moves
    • Double Edge
    • Earthquake
    • Shadow Ball
    • Aerial Ace
Latios
  • Method Acquired: Caught (Route 110, roaming, acquired in new Emerald run on emulator)
  • Nature: Modest
  • EV Spread: 252 SpAtk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Item Used
    • Lum Berry
  • Moves
    • Psychic
    • Dragon Claw
    • Thunderbolt
    • Surf (Tower)
Metagross
  • Method Acquired: From Steven’s house (post-game, Mossdeep City)
  • Nature: Adamant
  • EV Spread: 252 Atk, 252 Speed, 6 HP
  • Items Used
    • Leftovers
  • Moves
    • Meteor Mash
    • Earthquake
    • Shadow Ball
    • Explosion
I kind of explained the mechanics behind this team in my original post, and the original post by Alex_Super_Tramp also explained it pretty well. Slaking will usually lead with Double Edge, and your pivot depends largely on what is sent out after. For this reason, Latios or Metagross need to take care of the next Pokemon if possible, hence the Modest nature on Latios. Surf on Latios also takes out Rock and Fire types on the switch, and is also an important out to threats like Shuckle or Regirock(4)/(5) with Double Team that Slaking's Aerial Ace cannot immediately and effectively solve. If all else fails, you have access to one final Double Edge without fainting to recoil. I found myself using Metagross’ Explosion on non-point targets like Slowbro (among other Quick Claw users), bulky Normals, and OHKO Water types just to take them out of the equation before any critical hit or Quick Claw shenanigans take place, if ever the opportunity arose. As much as possible, if you know that you do not have to use Double Edge or Explosion to KO, by all means use other moves to save HP.

Problems still pretty much remain the same. Scizor and Forretress are your two of your biggest culprits, since you will need to pivot around quite a few times. If any of these Pokemon are point, stick with Slaking and EQ first. How they react will determine what movesets they have and what you will switch into. Out of these threats, Scizor(4) is usually the one you never want to run into due to having Brightpowder. Any Reversal users can also be a problem. Thankfully, luring out the Endure is usually not a problem if you can play smart. An example scenario would be facing off against a Typhlosion(3)/Blaziken(3), after taking out their first Pokemon with Slaking. Swap to Latios to lure out the move. If it’s an Overheat without the White Herb, you’ve confirmed Typhlosion(3)/Blaziken(3). Swap back to Slaking, and take another Overheat now weakened. You should now be able to Earthquake for the elimination. This team is also pretty weak to Brightpowder, since a Slaking miss can set you back a few turns.
Here's a report of the 98th to 105th battles used to get me to this streak. The Anabel battle mainly played out as it did in my Gold symbol run. It also provides an example of how I deal with Reversal users. Team of enemy trainers is listed in order sent out.

Battle 1: Cool Trainer Alonzo
Team: Meganium, Gyarados, Metagross

-> Slaking Double Edge KOs Meganium (around 80% of HP bar left after recoil), Alonzo sends out Gyarados
-> I swap to Latios, Gyarados Rain Dance (confirms Gyarados 3)
-> Latios Thunderbolt KO Gyarados, Alonzo sends out Metagross and I decide to not to switch
-> Latios Surf (amplified by Rain Dance) to around 40% of HP bar, Metagross Light Screen (confirms Metagross 1 w/ Leftovers)
-> Latios Surf to red HP, Metagross Meteor Mash to Latios (survives on red HP)
-> Latios Surf for KO

Battle 2: Pokemaniac Layton
Team: Metagross, Snorlax, Dragonite

-> Slaking EQ KOs Metagross, Layton sends out Snorlax
-> Swap to Metagross, Snorlax Double Edge. 2/3 of Metagross HP left. Snorlax 4 confirmed.
-> Snorlax Curse, Metagross Explosion for Double KO.
-> Latios vs. Dragonite. Latios Dragon Claw for OHKO.

Battle 3: Bug Maniac Avery
Team: Parasect, Armaldo, Masquerain

-> Slaking Aerial Ace OHKO Parasect, Avery send out Armaldo
-> Swap to Metagross, Armaldo Brick Break for around 1/3 HP damage.
-> Metagross MM for OHKO, Avery send out Masquerain
-> Metagross MM for about 3/4 damage, Masquerain Stun Spore
-> Masquerain Hydro Pump, Metagross Shadow Ball for KO

Battle 4: Battle Girl Kay
Team: Nidoking, Blaziken, Marowak

->Slaking EQ OHKO Nidoking, Kay sends out Blaziken
->Swap to Latios, Blaziken Overheat does 1/3 damage (no White Herb, confirms Blaziken 3)
-> Swap back to Slaking, Blaziken overheat to around 1/3 damage
-> Slaking EQ OHKO Blaziken, Kay sends out Marowak
-> Swap back to Latios, Marowak fails EQ
-> Latios Surf for KO

Battle 5: Picknicker Ruth
Team: Slowbro, Cradily, Miltank

-> Slowbro Quick Claw, Surf for 1/2 damage. Slaking Double Edge OHKO Slowbro (1/4 HP left on Slaking post-recoil). Ruth sends out Cradily
-> I swap to Latios, Cradily Giga Drain for minimal damage
-> Latios Psychic for 1/3 damage, Cradily toxic (neutralized by Lum Berry)
-> Swap to Metagross, Cradily Mirror Coat fails
-> Metagross MM OHKO Cradily, Ruth sends out Miltank
-> Miltank Curse (set 4), Metagross Explosion for Double KO

Battle 6: Triathlete Gloria
Team: Golduck, Lapras, Dewgong

-> Slaking Double Edge KOs Golduck (around 80% of HP bar left after recoil), Gloria send out Lapras
-> Swap to Latios predicting Surf, Lapras Surf for minimal damage (approximately 1/6)
-> Latios Thunderbolt for around 1/2 HP. Lapras Surf for minimal damage, recovers damage from Leftovers
-> Latios Thunderbolt for around 1/2 HP. Lapras Surf for minimal damage, recovers damage from Leftovers
-> Latios Thunderbolt KO Lapras, Gloria sends out Dewgong
-> Latios Thunderbolt for 2/3 damage, Dewgong Sheer Cold miss
-> Latios Thunderbolt for KO

Battle 7: Salon Maiden Anabel
Team: Raikou, Latios, Snorlax

-> Slaking EQ OHKO Raikou, Anabel sends out Latios
-> Swap to Metagross, Latios CM
-> Latios Dragon Claw for 1/3 damage, Metagross Shadow Ball for around 1/2 damage (in yellow)
-> Latios Dragon Claw for 1/3 damage, Metagross Shadow Ball KO, Anabel sends out Snorlax
-> Metagross Explosion for Double KO
This streak is current and I have no plans to continue any time soon.

Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 12.12.44 AM.png
I still have the contests left, so it will be some time before I do end up working on any further challenges. Since I have another copy of Emerald run to acquire Modest Latios, I could potentially go back to do another run on there. Should I accomplish any wild streaks there, I might detail it in this run. I reached pretty high streaks in the Factory and Dome, and it's a shame I didn't get to record or note any of it (I know how I lost, but I'll just leave it at that).

Cheers!
 
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Hello!! Longtime reader of various Smogon articles and threads, first-time poster, this thread is pretty neat and I'm excited to start working on some streaks myself

I just have one question regarding the Pomeg glitch and arbitrary code execution - what's the general consensus on using the Pomeg glitch to obtain Ganlon, Salac, Apicot, and Petaya berries? I had to use ACE to obtain these berries in my save file because I don't own Colosseum and this was really my only means of getting those berries. If they're not allowed to be used for leaderboard streaks, I'll refrain from using them, I just wanted to ask real quick to make sure
No issue at all! If you are glitching for items, I don't mind you use them on your team and they would be valid for leaderboard purposes
 
Quick question: do Tower runs in Ruby/Sapphire count towards this leaderboard? Because I was hoping to get the Gold Shield on my cart of Ruby, and might post my team if I feel like it.
Main reason why I don't have an RS leaderboard is due to the extremely terrible AI that you get on the R/S Tower compared to the one in Emerald. There are cases where the AI will continue to use Earthquake against a Pokemon with Levitate and such to the point where it would just be a race until someone who gets an insane amount of hax against loses. The AI differences are too significant for me and I wouldn't consider an RS Tower streak to be on the same level as an Emerald Tower streak.

If someone wants to run an RS leaderboard, they are more than welcome to do so! I think whoever is interested will need to contact Eisenherz so they can create a space for that.
 
Apologies for any delays I have taken on updating your streaks Sh0suk3, Suspicious Derivative, Alex_Super_Tramp and JoebertIII. I have been busy for quite some time but I just finished reviewing your posts and added your streaks to the leader-board. Please let me know if there's any mistake I might have done so I can correct it and thanks once again for sharing!

I would like to give a huge shout-out to Suspicious Derivative for hitting the #1 spot on the Battle Pyramid Lv.50 leader-board! I'm sure Jump would be proud of you if he watched this thread. I do have some questions though, since I noticed that you continued using the same Salamence / Slaking / Starmie core on your first post, I wanted to ask you if you'd consider this a continuation of the previous streak or a re-run. So far I've added it as a 2nd run but I would like to know your thoughts on this.

Also another huge shout-out to a Factory King like JoebertIII who also claimed the #1 spot on the Open Level mode!! You and Wildcat Formation are the absolute best and I'm happy to see you leading the Factory leader-boards on both formats. Once I'm done with some pending work assignments I need to get you both together on a Community Factory!
 
I would like to give a huge shout-out to Suspicious Derivative for hitting the #1 spot on the Battle Pyramid Lv.50 leader-board! I'm sure Jump would be proud of you if he watched this thread. I do have some questions though, since I noticed that you continued using the same Salamence / Slaking / Starmie core on your first post, I wanted to ask you if you'd consider this a continuation of the previous streak or a re-run. So far I've added it as a 2nd run but I would like to know your thoughts on this.
Thank you so much! As I said on the Discord channel regarding the streak, I consider it a continuation of my 70 streak. Strictly speaking, it is the same streak since I had won 70 floors in the past and I just continued on that streak now. So it should be listed as one streak.

I also noticed that you made a slight mistake with my Open Level streak for the Battle Pike. You listed my team as Slaking / Starmie / Blissey, it should he Heracross / Suicune / Raikou.

And don't worry about the delay when it comes to updating the thread! I know all too well how busy real life can be sometimes.
Main reason why I don't have an RS leaderboard is due to the extremely terrible AI that you get on the R/S Tower compared to the one in Emerald. There are cases where the AI will continue to use Earthquake against a Pokemon with Levitate and such to the point where it would just be a race until someone who gets an insane amount of hax against loses. The AI differences are too significant for me and I wouldn't consider an RS Tower streak to be on the same level as an Emerald Tower streak.

If someone wants to run an RS leaderboard, they are more than welcome to do so! I think whoever is interested will need to contact Eisenherz so they can create a space for that.
Wow. I didn't know that the AI in the R/S Tower was so bad. I don't have that much experience with the R/S Tower and it has been a very long time since I last played it. Either way, that's an understandable reason as for why there's no leaderboard for it.

And while I'm here, I might as well give a slight update regarding the Factory. I have yet to beat it, but I did get a new record streak of 40 wins for Level 50! If I had won 2 more battles, I would have beaten it. But I'm still very happy about this streak. I'll keep trying and we'll see how it goes.
 
Thank you so much! As I said on the Discord channel regarding the streak, I consider it a continuation of my 70 streak. Strictly speaking, it is the same streak since I had won 70 floors in the past and I just continued on that streak now. So it should be listed as one streak.

I also noticed that you made a slight mistake with my Open Level streak for the Battle Pike. You listed my team as Slaking / Starmie / Blissey, it should he Heracross / Suicune / Raikou.

And don't worry about the delay when it comes to updating the thread! I know all too well how busy real life can be sometimes.
Thanks for letting me know, I just finished fixing your Open Level entry and it should display the correct team now!
 
Do IVs matter for people who want only 100 wins (in a row) in Emerald's Battle Tower?
Is Milotic viable in the Battle Tower? If yes, what is its best nature? If no, why not?
 
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I haven't posted in a long while here. Main reason is because I'm still stuck on team building. I've had some interesting attempts with a Grumpig disabler, DT BP Zapdos and Medicham Bulk Up team, but the team is far from decided yet due to me not being sure on the EVs on Medicham. Speed is the main issue for it. It absolutely wrecks anything with Brick Break + Shadow Ball, but if you can't outspeed, that's a problem. Thinking about running Salac on it so I can Sub up on faster threats like Starmie.

Anyway:
Team #2:

I decided to drop the gimmicks and see how I could make the most out of Armaldo. Its signature features Battle Armor and Knock Off go a long way on this team. I managed to get to round 148 but made a bad play turn one that gave me a completely unnecessary loss.

(I decided to Earthquake a Metagross lead instead of switching out to Suicune, who rarely loses to Metagross. Armaldo was needed later in the match after Suicune beat Metagross.)

That's right, another busted Suicune team. Water types synergize best with Armaldo, and Armaldo helps pokemon setup and sweep very well. Level 50 because we don't want Sand Stream.


View attachment 443564View attachment 443568
Armaldo (M) @ Bright Powder
Ability: Battle Armor
Level: 50
EVs: 52 HP / 4 Atk / 4 Def / 236 SpD / 212 Spe
Careful Nature
- Knock Off
- Mud-Slap
- Rock Tomb
- Earthquake

Knock Off Quick Claws and spam Mud Slap. Defensive EVs avoid OHKOs from most Water type attacks, which will never crit! Defensive EVs live every Surf and some Hydro Pumps. Speed EVs outspeed base 70s making Armaldo faster than most OHKO move users and Metagross, and Heracross after Rock Tomb. Armaldo is able to live many hits from most pokemon due to bulk, Battle Armor, and accuracy drops. Resistance to Normal type attacks is nice to have as well.

Rock Tomb is sometimes used to KO Flying types, who are immune to Mud Slap, or to give Suicune a speed advantage. Earthquake notably OHKOs Houndoom (fast Grass type user - not good for Suicune), hits Electric types hard (with some OHKOs), and is useful for revenge killing pokemon such as Calm Mind Espeon later in the match if they managed to defeat Suicune or Raikou. Setting up with Armaldo is often unnecessary, and you can use him later in the match at full health by switching out turn one. In certain matchups, you can still debuff the opponent and be at full health before you switch in Suicune / Raikou which is always nice.

Bright Powder because Sitrus Berry doesn't let Armaldo live two Cross Chops from Machamp. It also gives Armaldo markedly improved odds of dodging attacks. In other words, after Armaldo lands a Mud Slap, he has much better odds of landing another one when holding Bright Powder.

Chance to hit Armaldo at -1 Accuracy: .75
Odds of hitting: 3 to 1

Chance to hit Armaldo at -1 Accuracy with Bright Powder: .75 * .9 = .675
Odds of hitting: .675 / .325 = 2.08 or roughly 2 to 1

View attachment 443887

View attachment 443888



View attachment 443572View attachment 443559
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 148 Def / 124 Spe
Bold Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Substitute
- Calm Mind

An offensive take on the magic Suicune set we all know and love. Sometimes Suicune can switch in turn one and set up without Armaldo's aid, preserving his health. The rest of the time, Suicune can set up on almost anything that Armaldo has debuffed.

The idea is to get to +6 (very easy) and sweep with Suicune's near perfect coverage. When faced against a Water Absorb user that just won't go down, you can PP stall and then have Raikou set up and sweep instead.



View attachment 443574View attachment 443575
Raikou @ Lum Berry
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Substitute
- Calm Mind

Raikou is here since it has an easier time setting up against Electric types than Suicune does, especially Zapdos who is immune to Mud Slap. It can also take advantage of "status spammers" quite easily. Outside of those, it is fast, has near perfect coverage (looking at you Shedinja), and has Calm Mind.


This team is still new but here are some threats:

These guys can cause Suicune to run out of PP then KO Armaldo and Raikou:
- Registeel / Wailord / Quagsire + Amnesia / Curse
- Blissey / Chansey + Double Team / Calm Mind

Lanturn threatens Armaldo with Water type attacks, Suicune with Electric type attacks, and Raikou with its resistances. PP stalling it can be difficult. Fortunately, Armaldo can live any attack from Lanturn and do heavy damage in return with Earthquake, or go for a Mud Slap.

Starmie has Water / Electric coverage like Lanturn but between Mud Slap and Calm Mind, you can usually win.

Heracross outspeeds and 2HKOs Armaldo, is faster than Suicune, and can OHKO Raikou with Earthquake. STAB Megahorn can be too much for Suicune if Rock Tomb misses and Megahorn keeps hitting.
Whenever I have been team building, Armaldo was on my mind. I have in fact done attempts with a SD set that gains Speed from a BPer and it is good. Just not perfect. And for BT you need perfect. However, this second set of yours. I love it! I think it strikes a perfect balance between disabling things and doing damage. I really want to try it out now. Running Suicune in tandem is also great, however, I will definitely pick my favorite set, which is the Sub/CM/Protect/Surf set. Yes, things that resist Surf are a problem, but I don't have to worry about the PP stalling aspect at all! I've said before that I like that set so much because it's just so damn effective.

The hardest part for me would be to decide the third member. I'll admit that Raikou sounds like a great idea and I definitely wanna run it some time, but I'm not sure I would for this. Cool team, for sure!

I wish I could use more Shell Armor/Battle Armor Pokémon, but most of them have at least one big issue like longevity or lack of power. I would love to run a Lapras for example, but it's just not really that strong. I don't know for sure, my mind isn't clear about that part yet haha. There's one Pokémon I really wanna use, but it requires lots of setup but if it does, it destroys everything. And that 'mon is Clamperl! With Rain Dance up (probably not gonna happen):

+6 20 SpA Deep Sea Tooth Clamperl Surf vs. 0 HP / 255 SpD Blissey in Rain: 332-391 (100.6 - 118.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Naturally, you would never run only 20 SpA EVs and Clamp needs a serious ton of Speed EVs to outrun things at +6 Speed, but the problem is finding an opportunity to get BOTH +6 SpA and +6 Speed. Although, I suppose if it's at +6 Defenses, then Speed is not as needed. But that's not easy either since you'd probably want Sub/Surf/HP Elec/Ice Beam lest you are walled by something. I need to check the calcs again sometimes. Maybe have para support as well. Who knows. :) Just passing stats without a disabler is tough as well, so yeah.

Also wanna have some attempts at my Moltres/Steelix/Shedinja core, but that team struggles with the EVs for Steelix. Right now, it's a "fast" variant, but losing the bulk is a thing.

And hm, in my notes, I have written down the following set for Lapras:
Lapras Lum Berry
Timid nature
Ability: Shell Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 188 Def / 68 SpDef
- Surf
- Perish Song
- Protect
- Toxic / Substitute

I'll be honest, I don't remember why I made this set but my guess is that it wrecks last 'mon setups and can tank quite a few hits because of the guaranteedness of surviving specific hits. It might have something to do with an non TrickBand Zam I wanted to use, but I'm not sure lol.

Do IVs matter for people who want only 100 wins (in a row) in Emerald's Battle Tower?
Is Milotic viable in the Battle Tower? If yes, what is its best nature? If no, why not?
I think IVs help a lot, but I don't think they are extremely important once you know what you are doing. There's a factor concerning hitting benchmarks whether that's outspeeding something, surviving specific attacks or dealing guaranteed OHKOs on things, but these things are generally team-dependent.

As for Milotic, yes, it's definitely viable! I've used it with great success all the way to Battle 140. I would argue that the best nature is Bold since it needs it's bulk to withstand attacks and well, let's face it, almost all SE attacks will easily 2HKO even if you invest heavily. Well, maybe not heavily, but why are you leaving it in on a Grass or an Electric attack lol? I went for Surf, Ice Beam, Toxic and Recover, but there are definitely options in Light Screen, Hypnosis (if you dare, I wouldn't), Icy Wind for speed control, etc.
 
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I used the same team in all buildings of Battle Frontier.
I started with my Alakazam with TwistedSpoon
His moves are Psychic, Thunder Punch, Fire Punch and Ich Punch (he learn theses punchs via breeding with a Hitmonchan)
in second I have a Scizor with Metal Coat
His moves are Quick Atack, Silver Wind, Steel Wing and Wing Attack. Silver Wind Scizor learns via bredding with a Buterfree.
And third is my Swampert with Soft Sand
His moves are Surf, Ice Beam, EarthQuack and Endeavor.
I almost never use Endeavor, I would like to have Mirror Coat instead (as I used in Showdown) but is a bit hard to have a female Swampert to breed. And Mirror Coat just is possible to have in Swampert via breeding.
 
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I haven't posted in a long while here. Main reason is because I'm still stuck on team building. I've had some interesting attempts with a Grumpig disabler, DT BP Zapdos and Medicham Bulk Up team, but the team is far from decided yet due to me not being sure on the EVs on Medicham. Speed is the main issue for it. It absolutely wrecks anything with Brick Break + Shadow Ball, but if you can't outspeed, that's a problem. Thinking about running Salac on it so I can Sub up on faster threats like Starmie.

Anyway:

Whenever I have been team building, Armaldo was on my mind. I have in fact done attempts with a SD set that gains Speed from a BPer and it is good. Just not perfect. And for BT you need perfect. However, this second set of yours. I love it! I think it strikes a perfect balance between disabling things and doing damage. I really want to try it out now. Running Suicune in tandem is also great, however, I will definitely pick my favorite set, which is the Sub/CM/Protect/Surf set. Yes, things that resist Surf are a problem, but I don't have to worry about the PP stalling aspect at all! I've said before that I like that set so much because it's just so damn effective.

The hardest part for me would be to decide the third member. I'll admit that Raikou sounds like a great idea and I definitely wanna run it some time, but I'm not sure I would for this. Cool team, for sure!

I wish I could use more Shell Armor/Battle Armor Pokémon, but most of them have at least one big issue like longevity or lack of power. I would love to run a Lapras for example, but it's just not really that strong. I don't know for sure, my mind isn't clear about that part yet haha. There's one Pokémon I really wanna use, but it requires lots of setup but if it does, it destroys everything. And that 'mon is Clamperl! With Rain Dance up (probably not gonna happen):

+6 20 SpA Deep Sea Tooth Clamperl Surf vs. 0 HP / 255 SpD Blissey in Rain: 332-391 (100.6 - 118.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Naturally, you would never run only 20 SpA EVs and Clamp needs a serious ton of Speed EVs to outrun things at +6 Speed, but the problem is finding an opportunity to get BOTH +6 SpA and +6 Speed. Although, I suppose if it's at +6 Defenses, then Speed is not as needed. But that's not easy either since you'd probably want Sub/Surf/HP Elec/Ice Beam lest you are walled by something. I need to check the calcs again sometimes. Maybe have para support as well. Who knows. :) Just passing stats without a disabler is tough as well, so yeah.

Also wanna have some attempts at my Moltres/Steelix/Shedinja core, but that team struggles with the EVs for Steelix. Right now, it's a "fast" variant, but losing the bulk is a thing.

And hm, in my notes, I have written down the following set for Lapras:
Lapras Lum Berry
Timid nature
Ability: Shell Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 188 Def / 68 SpDef
- Surf
- Perish Song
- Protect
- Toxic / Substitute

I'll be honest, I don't remember why I made this set but my guess is that it wrecks last 'mon setups and can tank quite a few hits because of the guaranteedness of surviving specific hits. It might have something to do with an non TrickBand Zam I wanted to use, but I'm not sure lol.


I think IVs help a lot, but I don't think they are extremely important once you know what you are doing. There's a factor concerning hitting benchmarks whether that's outspeeding something, surviving specific attacks or dealing guaranteed OHKOs on things, but these things are generally team-dependent.

As for Milotic, yes, it's definitely viable! I've used it with great success all the way to Battle 140. I would argue that the best nature is Bold since it needs it's bulk to withstand attacks and well, let's face it, almost all SE attacks will easily 2HKO even if you invest heavily. Well, maybe not heavily, but why are you leaving it in on a Grass or an Electric attack lol? I went for Surf, Ice Beam, Toxic and Recover, but there are definitely options in Light Screen, Hypnosis (if you dare, I wouldn't), Icy Wind for speed control, etc.
Shell Armor / Battle Armor is nice no matter what I guess. Armaldo is probably better suited to speed boosts rather than defense anyway. Getting a pokemon to +6 in both defenses is likely too difficult for the tower with all the crits, Quick Claws, and OHKO moves flying around.

I have some more insight on why I like Ice Beam on Suicune. It takes care of Latios/Latias and is better against dangerous Dragon Dancers such as Salamence, Kingdra, and Gyarados. I guess that's my reasoning. I'm not sure how your set matches up against these but I thought I would mention it.

I imagine the Lapras set is equipped to take on pokemon that like to boost with Double Team, Calm Mind, Curse, and Amnesia alongside Rest. It seem that's Perish Song's main use anyway. Then Shell Armor protects from BS.

I want to say that Armaldo probably wants Hidden Power Bug over Earthquake. I have been experimenting with it and it is useful. It hits things like Latios / Latias which are terrifying leads since they are immune to Mud-Slap and can carry coverage for both Suicune and Raikou. HP Bug also hits Claydol which is similarly immune to Mud-Slap and carries Explosion. There aren't enough EVs left to outspeed and 2HKO Claydol after EV'ing Armaldo to live Hydro Pumps from Lanturn though. Lanturn is still bad for the team and giving up Earthquake is tough so it's a trade-off I guess. NB: HP Bug is great for revenge killing Psychic types including Gardevoir, Espeon, Alakazam, etc., however, if these pokemon lead, it is better to debuff them since they aren't dangerous if debuffed enough (outside of Calm Mind + Bad Luck even at -6 accuracy).

As for Raikou, all I can say is that it works. A +6 Raikou is better than a +6 Suicune for example. It is able to save a match in case your main strat fails since it can sweep even at +1. It's also a great matchup/switch-in against Electrics. That's all I can really say about Raikou. Perhaps Blissey would be a better fit than Raikou, barring things like Electabuzz with Cross Chop (although Earthquake from Armaldo does OHKO without much Attack investment). Oh wait a sec, I forgot another big problem and that's Clear Body users - Metagross, all Regi's, and Tentacruel. I would heavily consider them in teambuilding. I am not sure if Blissey would do well against them.

Anyway, I'm glad you like the set! It's actually really fun and effective too. I would even consider Armaldo top tier (or the tier below where Latios and Suicune lie) if Rock Tomb wasn't 80% accuracy.

PS: Clamperl is just waiting to get a spot on a viable team :)
 
I used the same team in all buildings of Battle Frontier.
I started with my Alakazam with TwistedSpoon
His moves are Psychic, Thunder Punch, Fire Punch and Ich Punch (he learn theses punchs via breeding with a Hitmontop)
in second I have a Scizor with Metal Coat
His moves are Quick Atack, Silver Wind, Steel Wing and Wing Attack. Silver Wind Scizor learns via bredding with a Buterfree.
And third is my Swampert with Soft Sand
His moves are Surf, Ice Bean, EarthQuack and Endeavor.
I almost never use Endeavor, I would like to have Mirror Coat instead (as I used in Showdown) but is a bit hard to have a female Swampert to breed. And Mirror Coat just is possible to have in Swampert via breeding.
I like this team a lot. Fire / Psychic coverage is awesome. Scizor is awesome. Ground / Water is awesome. Congrats on your success.
 
I like this team a lot. Fire / Psychic coverage is awesome. Scizor is awesome. Ground / Water is awesome. Congrats on your success.
Ohhh thanks ;)
I think the great star of this team is Alakazam, with 321 STAK he can hit strong, since all the punchs are special in this generation.
About Scizor, once I read we need to use the Pokémons we like, and I'm a bug enthusiastic.
And each pokémon cover the weakness of the other. For example Alakazam is psychic, it's weak to dark. Scizor is bug and defeat dark. But Scizor is weak to fire, so I have Swampert to switch.
 
Ohhh thanks ;)
I think the great star of this team is Alakazam, with 321 STAK he can hit strong, since all the punchs are special in this generation.
About Scizor, once I read we need to use the Pokémons we like, and I'm a bug enthusiastic.
And each pokémon cover the weakness of the other. For example Alakazam is psychic, it's weak to dark. Scizor is bug and defeat dark. But Scizor is weak to fire, so I have Swampert to switch.
Scizor is really good with Swords Dance and some speed investment. I run mine with Substitute and Leftovers. You could also consider Choice Band as your item since you are running four attacks anyway.
 
Scizor is really good with Swords Dance and some speed investment. I run mine with Substitute and Leftovers. You could also consider Choice Band as your item since you are running four attacks anyway.
I think moves as Sword Dance, Agility and Baton Pass are better in competitive battles. The Emerald battle frontier is not that hard and my Scizor, as it is, was enought to defeated it.
The problem to teach Baton Pass to a Scizor is he can't learn also Silver wind (and I really like this move).
But I will try breed another Scizor in Emerald to his know moves as Sword Dance, Agility, Baton Pass and Double Team.
But the best baton passe of this generation is Ninjask, I don't know with Scizor will worke that well. Scizor can be more bulk, but Ninjask have the speed boost.
 
Another Ruby question: I’m training a Metagross for the Battle Tower, and I was wondering; what does Metagross have to outspeed (AKA how much Speed should I have on it). I’m obviously gonna max out Attack, and I was thinking of putting whatever EVs are left into HP.
 
Another Ruby question: I’m training a Metagross for the Battle Tower, and I was wondering; what does Metagross have to outspeed (AKA how much Speed should I have on it). I’m obviously gonna max out Attack, and I was thinking of putting whatever EVs are left into HP.
Metagross is not that quick, if you are wonder about his speed, I suggest you to teach him Agility.
 
Metagross is not that quick, if you are wonder about his speed, I suggest you to teach him Agility.
I’d be tempted to, except I’m going for the Lv. 50 Tower (should’ve specified that honestly), and Metagross doesn’t learn Agility before then (I’m already holding it back until that level so it can learn Meteor Mash as a Metang). Still though, perhaps it’d be an option in Emerald, where I don’t have to be Lv. 100 if I’m not Lv. 50.
 
After lurking in this thread for a long time, but posting here for the first time, I would like to submit a Battle Pike streak. It's not the best streak ever and not the best team ever, but it should suffice for the leaderboard in Kommo-o's post.

Battle Pike
221 rooms cleared, 15 challenges won
Open level
Cartridge, no emulator
Latias, Flygon & Milotic


I am playing on a game cartridge. No RNG manipulating (I don't even know how that works), no emulator, none of that stuff... Good old Emerald, the real deal.

Anyways... As a child, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, but I got some silver symbols by using Pokemon with high stats. Then, in a playthrough years ago, I had EV trained Pokemon I used in-game and won silver symbols with fun cuties like Whiscash and Altaria. However, I never made an attempt to get all the gold symbol, despite wanting to. I just though that I could never do it.

Until now. I recently restarted Emerald and got some proper Battle Frontier Pokemon. If needed, I have resources to get more Pokemon than the ones Emerald has to offer, since I have LeafGreen, Colosseum and XD.

As a child, my first symbol was Lucy's silver symbol. And so, I decided to start my Battle Frontier challenge with the Battle Pike.

I had to do open level, since Flygon and Milotic were already close to lv.60 when I reached the Battle Frontier. After all, I used them in-game. When starting this playthrough, I speedran towards the Day Care and started breeding with Pokemon I sent over from LeafGreen, or even Pokemon from an old Emerald file which I traded over to Colosseum and then traded to this Emerald file. Then, I EV trained Flygon in LeafGreen, while EV training Milotic in Emerald after finally reaching Lilycove and evolving Feebas into Milotic.

Since I plan on tackling the Battle Pyramid soon, I might keep them at lv.60 for now, instead of training them to lv.100 right away. After all, you find Hyper Potions in the Pyramid. Those are useless when your team is lv.100, but they are still useful now.

THE TEAM

IMG_6145.jpg


Ruby the Latias @ Lum Berry
Timid, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Dragon Claw
- Calm Mind
- Recover
- Thunderbolt

Pretty self-explanatory. Thunderbolt is a great coverage move alongside Dragon Claw. I might consider using Substitute over Thunderbolt for other facilities, but for now, this worked nicely. The Lum Berry was a lifesaver and often got rid of the status issues that were inflicted by the Gentleman's Kirlia's or Dusclops's moves.

When I kept soft-resetting for Latias, which was a pain, I eventually got this Timid Latias with a 31 Speed IV. Special Attack is 26 if I recall it right. The other IV's are average, but of course you can't go wrong with a Latias with such a nice SAtk IV and literally perfect Speed.

IMG_6147.jpg


Emerald the Flygon
Adamant, 4 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Double-Edge
- Fly

I mostly just use Earthquake and Rock Slide. Adamant STAB banded Earthquake is fucking amazing. Flygon's Hidden Power is Bug and seems to be quite strong, so that could also be worth considering over Fly, but so far, the two filler moves had their occasional use. Double-Edge is a nice strong move against Pokemon that are immune to or resistent to Earthquake, while not being weak to Rock Slide. Of course Return is also an option instead of Double-Edge, but so far, I like the extra power that Double-Edge offers. Fly is mostly useful against Heracross and Breloom, but also against Grass Pokemon in general.

Luckily, I was able to breed a Flygon with high Attack and Speed IV's quite easily. One of my first eggs! But yeah, I had parents with great IV's, so that helps.

IMG_6146.jpg


Sapphire the Milotic
Bold, 252 HP, 252 Def, 4 SAtk
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Recover
- Toxic

For a while, I was doubting whether I should go with the standard set I have seen in this topic as a lurker... The moveset I used in-game for many years before even reading this topic... Or going with RestTalk, to get rid of status and not worry about getting Toxic stalled. In the end, I decided to go with this. Spamming Recover freely is just too nice to pass up on. And with a RestTalk set, I would have to sacrifice either Ice Beam or Toxic, which I really don't want to do drop.

Anyways, Milotic is amazing in the Battle Pike. He can stall out a lot of opponents and even won some battles on his own. And thanks to Marvel Scale, Milotic doesn't mind some status conditions as much. For example, when Kirlia's Thunder Wave strikes, paralysis is not always a huge problem for Milotic.

I have two dragons, but this is not a problem. After all, Latias is able to handle most non-STAB ice moves. And of course I have Milotic, who can take ice moves with ease and outstall the bulky waters who use those moves.

After spending a shitload of time on breeding, I ended up with this amazing Milotic. +25 IV's in HP, Defense, Special Attack and a 31 Special Defense IV is amazing. Even a high Attack IV, even though that is not really relevant for Milotic. Speed IV was around 10-15, I think. Not great, but for a wall, it's not as problematic as it would have been for Latias or Flygon.

THE STRATEGY

The strategy? Well, avoiding battles as much as possible, of course. You don't want to end up facing a difficult trainer when your Pokemon are damaged or dead. No speedrunning and rushing into the middle path, but asking the woman for hints and then deciding whether I want to pick the room she mentions or enter another room. Wild Pokemon are not an issue when you have a blistering-fast Latias and, when Latias dies, a quite fast Flygon. At least, I never reached the rooms with Wobbufet, so the wild Pokemon that did appear were easy to run from.

When I end up battling, Latias is a great lead. She outspeeds a lot of opponents and can often set up at least one Calm Mind. And I can switch to Flygon or Milotic if needed. When I end up in a Double Battle, Latias and Flygon are a great duo, since Latias's Levitate allows Flygon to spam Earthquake.

I was able to reach Lucy's Gold Symbol battle quite comfortably. There were some difficult battles, but I was able to overcome those without hax. Lucy was a pushover. I decided to lead with Flygon in my 10th challenge, Lucy's round, to get the upper hand vs. Seviper.

Vs. Lucy:
- Flygon uses Earthquake, Seviper dies.
- Gyarados comes out and uses Dragon Dance while I switch Flygon out and switch Latias in.
- Despite the DD, Latias outspeeds Gyarados and uses Thunderbolt for like 95% damage. Gyarados DD's again.
- Gyarados uses Rest and Chesto Berry activates. Latias uses Thunderbolt again.
- Gyarados uses Rest again, this time without Chesto Berry. Latias uses Thunderbolt.
- Gyarados stays asleep and gets killed by Thunderbolt.
- Steelix comes in. Latias uses Dragon Claw several times in a row until she is gone, so Milotic can finish Steelix off with Surf. Eventually, Latias gets Steelix down to about 40% of its HP before she succumbs to Screech + two Rock Slides, including a crit Rock Slide.
- Milotic kills Steelix with Surf.

And so, I reached my goal. However, there was no reason why the fun would have to end. I wanted to see how far I could take this streak. And so, I comfortably got through some more challenges. There was one lucky battle though, when Latias was dead and Milotic was heavily damaged. I was up against a Lapras. Flygon managed to 2HKO it with Rock Slide and avoided dying himself by flinching the Lapras. Then, Milotic was able to outstall the rest of his team.

THE END

Sadly, after 221 rooms and 15 challenges, my team met its demise. When trying to avoid a trainer, the Gentleman's Dusclops froze my entire team with Ice Beam. Then, when trying to avoid a trainer again, I ended up battling a guy with a strong Ursaring. The bear's Double-Edge took out the frozen Latias and Flygon before they could move. Milotic managed to beat Ursaring by spamming Surf and Recover. However, the opponent's next opponent was Ampharos, whose Thunderbolt took out my damaged Milotic.

Proof of the streak:

IMG_6144.jpg


Of course I was sad that my streak has come to an end, but I was not devastated. After all, I wanted the gold symbol and I got it. The continuation of my streak was a nice bonus. And of course I appreciate the shitload of Battle Points I won at the Battle Pike, easily my favourite Battle Frontier facility.

What will my next challenge be? Well, probably getting a gold symbol at the Battle Dome. As a child, my second silver symbol was the one I got from Tucker, so it would be cool to go after his gold symbol now.

Spr 3e 380.png
Spr 3e 330.png
Spr 3e 350.png
 
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Posting here for the first time to post a painful end to my Tower streak and just show my attempt. I am trying to Ribbon Master a Raikou from Colosseum. It doesn't have good IVs but they were good enough to work with. It was already Lv50 and I didn't want to reset for a new one, so I had to EV using vitamins, which explains the random spread.



I started reading this thread to get some ideas and some tips on how to build for Gen 3 Tower and ended up building a team with Salamence, one of my favorite Pokémon, and Snorlax as the glue: https://pokepast.es/c819c1b47b7b40da



I haven't played Emerald Battle Tower since I first beat the game over 15 years ago. In fact, I don't think I ever got the Silver Symbol, let alone conquer the Tower. So I went for my first attempt and was really surprised with how well the team worked even in battles against stronger trainers and hax-based opponents. Unfortunately my run was cut short by a very evil Latias in my 68th battle. The combination of Dragon Claw threatening Salamence and Thunder Wave and Attract stopping Snorlax from moving almost every turn ensured my defeat. But I have to say, I never expected to have so much fun playing in the Battle Tower and going this far on my first attempt.

Since my main goal was to get Raikou the Winning Ribbon and that was already achieved, I am considering swapping it for a Suicune since I had some issues with stuff like Whiscash and Swampert or Ground-types in general, since they tend to have strong Rock/Ice coverage for Salamence and wall Raikou. But I don't know if I want to take the time to reset for a Suicune, so I may try something else like Starmie to glue the team together. Ideas are welcome! I feel a strong Water-type would help the squad.

Also just want to say that I really enjoy reading people's teams and runs on Battle Frontier. Maybe someday I have something to submit for the leaderboard!

Here's Raikou and its pretty ribbon:
raikou.png
 
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Spr 3e 330.png
Spr 3e 350.png

I would like to submit a Battle Dome streak for the leaderboard in Kommo-o's post.

Battle Dome
Single Battle
22 tournaments won
Open level (lv.60)
Cartridge, no emulator
Latias, Flygon & Milotic


This is the same team I used in my Battle Pike streak, posted here. The comments on the movesets are copy/pasted from that post, but edited to fit this challenge.

IMG_7329.jpg


THE TEAM

Spr 3e 380.png

Ruby the Latias @ Lum Berry
Timid, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Dragon Claw
- Calm Mind
- Recover
- Thunderbolt

Pretty self-explanatory. Thunderbolt is a great coverage move alongside Dragon Claw. I might consider using Substitute over Thunderbolt for other facilities, but for now, this worked nicely. The Lum Berry was a lifesaver and allowed Latias to set up a Calm Mind or two against Pokemon she could never set up on without this berry.

With this Latias moveset, you have to watch out and not be cocky and greedy. I mean, I love setting up Calm Mind as much as I can at the start of a battle. This is amazing, but can also be risky. If you Calm Mind all the time against a bulky water with a non-STAB Ice Beam, you are risking a critical hit and, if the Lum Berry has already been used, a freeze. You have to outweigh whether the risk of that is worth setting up Calm Mind or not.

Spr 3e 330.png

Emerald the Flygon
Adamant, 4 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Double-Edge
- Fly

I mostly just use Earthquake and Rock Slide. Adamant STAB banded Earthquake is fucking amazing. Flygon's Hidden Power is Bug and seems to be quite strong, so that could also be worth considering over Fly, but so far, the two filler moves had their occasional use. Double-Edge is a nice strong move against Pokemon that are immune to or resistent to Earthquake, while not being weak to Rock Slide. Of course Return is also an option instead of Double-Edge, but so far, I like the extra power that Double-Edge offers. Fly is mostly useful against Heracross and Breloom, but also against Grass Pokemon in general.

Spr 3e 350.png

Sapphire the Milotic
Bold, 252 HP, 252 Def, 4 SAtk
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Recover
- Toxic

For a while, I was doubting whether I should go with the standard set I have seen in this topic as a lurker... The moveset I used in-game and in the Battle Frontier on my Milotic for many years before even reading this topic... Or going with RestTalk, to get rid of status and not worry about getting Toxic stalled. In the end, I decided to go with this. Spamming Recover freely is just too nice to pass up on. And with a RestTalk set, I would have to sacrifice either Ice Beam or Toxic, which I really don't want to do drop.

Anyways, Milotic is amazing in the Battle Frontier. He can stall out a lot of opponents and even won some battles on his own. And thanks to Marvel Scale, Milotic doesn't mind some status conditions as much. Poison is a huge problem, but being burned is manageable, even though it's annoying. Paralysis can even be beneficial when the hax is not too extreme.

I have two dragons on my team, but this is not a problem. After all, Latias is able to handle most non-STAB ice moves. And of course I have Milotic, who can take ice moves with ease and outstall the bulky waters who use those moves.

THE STRATEGY

The strategy? Well, using this page on Bulbapedia and the tourney tree to check an opponent's possible movesets, then choosing my Pokemon. Fairly straightforward.

Latias is amazing when she can set up on strong special attackers without super effective moves, or on Pokemon that can barely touch her. She can even set up against some bulky waters with non-STAB Ice Beam! So yeah, I like to lead with Latias and set up if possible.

Milotic is great against teams with ground, rock, steel and fire Pokemon, of course. And against other bulky waters, who he can outstall with Toxic.

Flygon's Choice Banded Earthquake is fucking strong. But you need to be mindful of the Choice Band, and not send him out against teams with lots of fliers or levitators. Unless they are weak to Rock Slide, of course...

My goal was to reach the gold symbol. Well, the fight against Tucker was easy. His Swampert was easily Toxic Stalled by Milotic, and his Metagross could not hit the beautiful serpent either. Alternating between Surf and Recover did the trick.

If Tucker would have used Latias, no problem. Since his Latias does not know any Dragon moves, my Latias could easily set up on her and kill her with Dragon Claw. And because Tucker's Latias lacks special attack EV investment, Milotic could tank Thunderbolts and do some Toxic stalling if his Latias would not use Calm Mind too often.

Anyways, I comfortably reached a very long streak. My goal was 10+ tournaments, at least winning the gold symbol. But my streak got even longer than that. Sadly, everything has to come to an end at some point.

THE END

Quick Claw. Rhydon. Horn Drill. What else needs to be said? The opponent started with Rhydon. Meanwhile, I sent out Milotic. Of course I was hoping to take the rhino out with Surf, but the opponent's Quick Claw activated and Horn Drill took out Milotic. Then, I sent out Latias, who met the same fate as her teammate. There is not much you can do about such extreme bad luck, aside from using a Pokemon with Sturdy.

Earlier during the tournament, opponent's OHKO moves pretty much always hit and never missed. Luckily, I was able to turn things around and win during earlier battles. Sadly, this time, luck was not on my side. And of course my team lacks a way to counter this shit (read: someone with Sturdy).

Anyways, it was a good streak. I wanted the gold symbol and I got it, and was able to carry on with this streak for a long time. And that for my first attempt at a Battle Dome streak!

What gold symbol am I going to try to win next? I don't know yet. Battle Pyramid? Battle Tower? I'll think about it and will attempt to start a streak later today or tomorrow.

Proof of the streak:
IMG_7125.jpg
 
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