Emerald II - The pitfalls of Happiness, plus Mossdeep Gym and EV training

Now that I'd figured out what I wanted to do with Sancho and Roland, I took them to the Move Deleter to get rid of their HM moves.

"......Hm!  Your Sancho doesn't seem willing to forget Surf," the old man told me.  Whaaat?!

I had a sudden sneaking suspicion that I'd run into the same problem my sister had with a Bibarel of hers, who refused to be released or traded.  A couple other Pokemon have since displayed the same behavior, and we've been trying to figure out why this happens.  To further the experiment, I saved my game, then tried releasing Sancho.

"Sancho came back!  Was it worried about you?"

Yep, same message as with that Bibarel.  On the theory that this behavior is related to high Happiness, I went to see that lady in Verdanturf, and showed her Sancho.

"Oh!  Your Lotad...It adores you.  It couldn't possibly love you more," she gushed.  "I even feel happy seeing it."

Ah hah!  It seemed that once a Pokemon reaches max Happiness (250+), it would stubbornly refuse to abandon its trainer, or forget the HM moves its trainer gave it.  But this was a problem -- what if I couldn't trade Sancho over to the original Emerald game, much less adjust his moveset?

I scooted over to the medicinal shop and bought some nasty bitter herbal remedies, which are supposed to lower happiness, then went out into the grass in search of Oddish to inflict damage and status conditions.  Feeding Sancho some of the herbs didn't seem to help, however.

While I mulled over the problem, I evolved Roland, then took him and Knives through the Mossdeep Gym.  The battle with Tate and Liza was a near thing -- that Xatu of theirs, jacked up on Calm Mind, took out most of my team.  Good thing this wasn't a Nuzlocke run!  Badge in hand, I wrapped up Roland's training with some rematches.  I even wrote some Mail for him to hold.

With Roland ready to go, I finally just went for the trading, and what do you know, Sancho went over without a single complaint.  Apparently they didn't introduce the happiness-prevents-trading feature until Gen IV.

With Sancho's Happiness thus re-set to the default, I was able to adjust his moveset in the original Emerald game, and evolve him to a Ludicolo.   That gave me 'Dex credit for four more Pokemon (Sancho and Roland plus the final evo's of Tabasco and Samson).

Forgetting completely about the Mossdeep Space Center, I then set about training my new team members.  So far I've gone for Attack and Defense EVs for Jamie and Drama, via the combination of Macho Brace and Exp Share.  It looks like Drama will need much more Defense, as that's her weakest stat, and Jamie will be needing some Speed.  Haven't started with Joelle.  It's going to take a while before any of them are up to resuming the game storyline, that's for sure.

11/9/2010 -- Turns out that Macho Brace only doubles EPs for the Pokemon holding it, and this doesn't transfer via Exp Share.  So if Jamie's holding Macho Brace and fights a Zubat, he'd gain 2 Speed EPs, but poor wee Drama only gets the normal 1 EP from holding Exp Share.   That's going to slow things down a bit...