Pokeniuko: up to six badges now. Haven't had a chance to post about it to date due to being on vacation, so time to catch up.
The earlygame was pretty rough for a while unsurprisingly, due to all the weak Pokemon I was trying to raise simultaneously with Exp Share disabled. I couldn't afford to bench my starter until my first Wurmple evolved into a Dustox and I finally got something strong enough to switch in for a weaker Pokemon, take a hit, and finish the battle.
DexNav was a godsend for its ability to easily get extra copies of stuff you’ve already caught. My first Skitty had the wrong ability and my first Surskit had Fell Stinger override Bubble, but I got replacements for them easily enough despite the 5% and 1% encounter rates for those two respectively.
Dustox/Beautifly made random battles run smoothly for a while, but eventually random trainers starting getting fully evolved stuff with decent stats like Sandslash and especially Hariyama (damned Knock Off is really OP this gen) and my slightly underlevelled team ends up taking a beating. Thankfully Team Aqua all suck (even the Admins) and I had strategies in place for all the gym leaders.
Gym leader notes thus far:
Roxanne was pretty scary on paper: Rock Tomb is buffed in gen 6, her Nosepass is pretty durable for this early in the game, and my best damage dealers vs her (Surskit and Beautifly) were weak to Rock. Thankfully, the AI was dumb enough to waste two turns on Harden vs Poochyena, which helped it pull off 5 Sand Attacks before fainting. That (+ a lucky Brightpowder from a random Wurmple) was enough for Surskit to slowly Bubble Nosepass to death without taking a single hit.
Poor Brawly got curbstomped by Beautifly and Dustox, who hard counter him.
Volt Switch made stat downs useless vs Wattson while Electrics are immune to all paralysis now. That could've made it a rough fight, but I got really lucky on the first try; Mightyena flinched Magnemite with Fire Fang while 2HKOing and Magneton missed every attempted Supersonic. Volt Switch still caused a bunch of havoc in the meanwhile, but eventually I got him down to just a Voltorb which was easy enough.
Flannery's Numel got OHKO'd by Bubblebeam and Slugma just sucked, leaving Torkoal as the only real threat. I was dumb and forgot about White Smoke, but it was 6v1 at that point and T-wave+Dig spam to waste its Overheat shots got it down to the range where Surskit could safely finish it off.
Norman took the most planning to date. His opening Slaking has Yawn, so it wasn't safe to attempt a Quiver Dance setup against. Instead, Delcatty spoiled its opening turn with Fake Out, T-waved it on the first truant turn, and then slowly trolled it to death with Dig. The Vigoroth ate 6 Sand Attacks, 2 Intimidates, and 2 Charms before Masquerain went for Quiver Dancex4. Amazingly his last Slaking barely survived a triple power Bug Buzz, but missed the OHKO in turn and went down afterwards.
Winona was a bad matchup for Masquerain, so I retaught Plusle Charge Beam for the sweep instead. Got a boost off her opening Swellow, which was enough to 2HKO the incoming Altaria with Discharge. Plusle could've had an easy sweep of her remaining Pelipper and Skarmory, but I opted to feed some exp to my lower levelled Pokemon instead.
