Emerald II to Petalburg

As I suspected, the Lavaridge Gym was really tough.  Not so much the other trainers, but Flannery.  I really needed to either have more super-effective attacks, or have the team levelled way higher than they were.  I only beat Flannery by dint of using nearly all my potions, which didn't feel like much of a victory.  Even worse, Roland -- who was the only one of the team who had the Defense to really stand up to Overheat -- stopped obeying me as soon as he hit lvl 31.  In the end, my poor little Tabasco, who was still a Torchik at the time, managed to pull out the win.

So now Roland will listen to me again for a while, and Samson will obey me as well.  At least until lvl 50.

To really deal with the Desert, though, Sancho should have Surf.  And to get Surf, I need Petalburg's badge.  However, a battle or two with the Petalburg Gym trainers confirmed my suspicion:  the team just isn't levelled enough.  This is the classic problem with overlevelling...you coast along one-shotting everything, and then run into a wall when you reach a point where it becomes obvious you haven't needed to train as much as you should have.

Petalburg Gym is one of those points.  Because normal-types don't really have any type advantages, the whole gym is a strategic showcase:  really high Speed to strike first, for example;  or confusing opponents, or tank-like Defense, etc.  In my first game, I remember that even some of the warm-up trainers were tricky, and Norman was really strong.

So I've been taking some time out to level-grind like crazy, with an emphasis on levelling to evolve.  I made a point of battling a humongous horde of Zubat in Meteor Falls, too, to get some speed EVs for Roland and Sybil.  Also spent a bunch of time one-shotting Spinda, to get Sybil a higher Sp. Attk.

Tabasco is finally a Combusken, and I'm working to get Sybil up to lvl 40 so she can learn Future Sight and evolve to a Gardevoir.  Because I'll want Tabasco to evolve again in a couple levels, I'll need to do a few quick rotating trades to get 'Dex credit in the original Emerald (and I should fix Roland's name).  I should probably spend a little time levelling up Sancho and Twitter as well, just to keep the team sort of even.

And then, look out Norman!