May 26th: Shocking Progress

It's been over two weeks since I last picked up on this Sapphire playthrough. I spent a lot of time on Aar's Minecraft server because there was progress I wanted to make on there. Sure, Sapphire has been good so far, but is it anywhere near as important as building a Steve's Lava Chicken recreation about twenty blocks in front of my good friend's house?

- I last saved in a Pokemon Center. A portly man to the left gave some dialog advising players to not overlevel one Pokemon and rely on it as the one true Pokemon of the party. Unfortunately, that tends to be the most efficient way to do things.
- Ah, yes. I'm in Slateport.
- Worked my way through Route 103, as that seemed like the way to go. I can't get on the bike road because I don't have a bike.
- Apparently, Route 103 dead-ends at a coast. I don't have Surf yet, so I guess I'll need to find another way to go.
- I don't remember where I needed to go next.
- Damn, the perspective was playing tricks on me. I hadn't moved far enough to the right to see that the bridge wasn't also a wall.
- Started down the path that continued to the next city.
- Ran into May right after I had put Annie in front so she could get some XP. Time for a battle!
- May led with Wailmer, which was helpful in a way.
- Forgot what type Numel was until it used Ember.
- I played too risky with Finger against her Grovyle. He got knocked out, but he got a Mud Slap that reduced its accuracy.
- Played Fitz next and did an uproar that hit twice. Grovyle's moves took him down to one health.
- Sredsa managed to finish the job without too much issue.
- Got the Itemfinder from May.
- Oh, what the fuck. She already has a bike?
- After some more trainer battles, I was almost to Mauville City.
- Gary picked up a Full Heal at some point.
- Made it into Mauville.
- Tried to pick up an item from the ground (an X Speed) and was told my bag was full. What? I didn't realize that was a thing. I mean, it makes sense, I just haven't seen it in a Pokemon game. That's likely a result of me playing newer titles.
- Found I had a Silk Scarf and Miracle Seed, which I gave to Fitz and Annie.
- Went to the Pokemart and sold all of my X boost items since I never end up using them anyway.
- Walked into some guy's house and talked to him. He gave me Rock Smash (HM06).
- The TV was on. It played back some responses I gave earlier about my feelings on first receiving my Mudkip/Marshtomp (I chose "Adore") and what Pokemon meant to me (I chose "Forever"). Neat to see those choices coming back up in a spot later on.
- Went a bit farther North and finally found the damn bike shop.
- I was faced with the decision of choosing the Mach or Acro bike. This is where researching anything about these games in particular might have helped.
- Chose the Acro bike. Apparently, I can just go back to him and switch bikes if I need to. Cool.
- The city also has a gym and the game corner.
- Went into the game corner and was greeted by slot machines and roulette tables. This game was made back in ye olden days when this could just pop up in a kids game and not immediately raise the eyebrows of content rating boards.
- A lady accidentally bought two of the same doll, so I offered to take the other one. It was a Mudkip doll! How nice.
- I was directed to the lady next door for a coin case.
- She wants Harbor Mail from the Pokemart in Slateport. Guess I'll run back and get that. It's as good an excuse as any to clear out trainers on that road.
- Now that I have the bike, it really wasn't too bad to run back and get that item.
- All the trainers I ran into on the bike road had Magnemites, Voltorbs, and nothing else.
- Got the Coin Case.
- Can't play any of the games yet because I don't have coins.
- Talked to one of the people at the front desk. Apparently, 50 coins is 1,000 Pokedollars. Ridiculous!
- Talked to some random guy who handed me 20 coins for free. I'll take it!
- Tried the Roulette table. Apparenly, the message for losing is "Nothing doing!" which I don't know how to interpret.
- Voltorb Flip in HG/SS was better.
- Decided to head to the gym next. The person standing in front of the door and blocking the way was Wally!
- He challenged me to a battle to show that he had become stronger. Slapkins one-shot his Ralts and I felt bad about it.
- Wally's uncle gave me an invitation to spend time with Wally and the family in Verdanturf. Once I get there, I'll pay them a visit.
- Mauville's gym leader is Wattson. It's an Electric-type gym. Unless something really crazy happens, this is just going to amount to Slapkins using mud to destroy everything.
- That went exactly as expected. It looks like I'll want to have all the Pokemon I intend on using be at or above level 20 before moving much farther into this.
- Oh, Gary picked up a Protein. I'm never giving up on Gary. He will almost certainly never be used in a battle but he's great anyway.

If I'm picking two Pokemon besides Slapkins to keep reasonably leveled, I think one of them would absolutely be Annie. I don't use Grass types enough and I'm feeling good about Shroomish and Breloom. That leaves me with one spot to choose either Fitz, Finger, or Sredsa. I could choose to have all of them leveled to the same extent, but that's going to be even more grinding for levels. As my last playthrough made evident, I tend to stick with having three Pokemon that do all the heavy lifting anyway.

I've always liked the designs for Aron and its evolutions, which makes me want to keep Finger around. Sredsa feels like she could be in a similar position to Annie, giving me a good candidate for a Bug Pokemon that I can actually see myself using. Fitz seems like a solid Pokemon. I'll think about this more later, but for now, I'll keep moving.

- Began heading to Verdanturf on Route 117.
- Immediately found the Day-Care. I'm not going to put anyone in it right now.
- The trainer fight with Pokemon Breeder Lydia was actually interesting. She had a full team and it wasn't just composed of one or two species. She had a Wingull, Shroomish, Marill, Roselia, Skitty, and Goldeen (I looked this up again after the fact). Weird that a battle more interesting than most was given to a seemingly average trainer, but this was a welcome change of pace.

I checked the Pokemon that Lydia had after the fact using this data sheet I found somewhere:
Pokemon Gen 3 Trainers DataSheet - Google Sheets

[I forgot to write down the end for this date. Using an approximation for the time and reconstructing the other two numbers from previously recorded information.]