SS - The Elite Four are down

Yay!  first current post!

By dint of sheer stubbornness and too many wild battles to contemplate, I finally got Sheepish and Cynder caught up to the rest of the team.  With everyone at lvl 50, I finally went for the Elite Four.

The funny thing is, the trouble was not where I'd anticipated.  I'd been thinking that Lance's lvl 50 Dragonite would be the Poke to beat, but instead it was Bruno's Machamp and Lance's Aerodactyl that gave me the most trouble (along with a few tense moments during the battle with Karen's Dark team).

Machamp was a problem mostly because it hit so dang hard.  But Aerodactyl exposed a real weakness in my team:  none of them can stand up to Rock-type attacks.  And with Vermillion down, no one else had something super-effective.  I was reduced to using hasty Max Revives just to stay in the fight, as one after another of my Pokemon were one-shotted.  Also, Chet really must have crap IVs, because his stats are far lower than everyone else's at lvl 50, and he wasn't nearly as much help as I'd have liked.

Still, once I finally got Aerodactyl down by reviving Vermillion, the rest of Lance's team went down to Ice Beam, and it was over.  I hit the Hall of Fame with something between 85-90 hours on the game (I blame this on the lack of easy trainer rematches).

Following the credits, the game took me back to New Bark Town.  Mom told me to go see Prof. Elm, who gave me the SS Ticket for Kanto.

Except, I was strangely reluctant to depart for Kanto.  Instead, I bred me that Murkrow.  Took a few tries to get a male with Super Luck.  I named him Rotti -- for Rotti Largo from Repo the Genetic Opera -- and set about raising him.  I also pulled my Larvitar Tremor out of storage to raise him as well, and put away Peya and Chet.  [and I forgot to say, I spent a truly stupid amount of time chasing around to get the whole team their three Shiny Leaves;  except Tremor who was put off by the rain on Rt. 33.]

The next task was to get a Dusk Stone for Rotti.  Research said that one could buy one at the Pokeathlon Dome, or get one by winning the Bug Catching Contest.  However, it turned out that this was only after one has the Nat'l Dex, and a tiny little, easily-missed superscript on Bulbapedia's Pokeathlon page was the only indicator of this.

So I spent a good bit of time trying the Bug Catching Contest.   From Bulbapedia, I found out that the Bug Catching Contest is about only two things:  the stat total, as inferred by rarity and level, and how undamaged the captured Pokemon is.  I'd had no idea that the amount of damage even mattered.  Sure enough, I was able to catch a lvl 15 Beedrill with max HP, which won first place.

Right after that, I stupidly fainted Raikou on a chance encounter on Rt. 32. D'oh. I couldn't find whether the roaming beasties reappear if you faint them, so I was forced to turn off the game and do the Contest again.  I didn't win that time, but since I'd also learned that the Sun Stone was the only pre-Nat'l Dex first prize, it didn't really matter.

Finally, I bit the bullet and flew to Olivine, to see if I could get the Nat'l Dex without boarding the ship to Kanto.  And sure enough, up came Prof. Oak, before I could even talk to the guy at the boarding gate.  So I was able to go back and buy the Dusk Stone from the Pokeathlon Dome.  I just have to check if Rotti gets any more good attacks as a Murkrow -- he's currently got Fly, Sky Attack, Wing Attack, and Night Shade -- because it'll be a LONG while before he learns Night Slash or Dark Pulse.

Only problem is, this leaves all of my current games basically finished, except for after-game stuff.  I mean, I know I still need to do Kanto in SS, but we'll see if I can keep up my motivation.