Return of the Gym Leader challenge: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGONS

[NejinOniwa]

Soooo... yeah. I'm going to fucking do this, man.

DRAGON-TYPE GYM LEADER RUN ON HGSS, FUCK YEEEAH

The main difficulty here is the sheer rarity of these damn things. In G4 (master race of all generations) there are, in total, 6 different non-legendary evolution trees with dragon types. Horsea-Kingdra, Dratini-Dragonite, Bagon-Salamence, Trapinch-Flygon, Swablu-Altaria, and Gible-Garchomp. As if that didn't make things difficult enough, There are NO DRAGON-TYPE LEGENDARIES in HGSS, at least not until you've beaten the whole damn game already.

The only scant luck you have is that ALL of these are actually available for catching in HGSS. Swablu can be found in Swarms at route 47, Horsea is available at multiple spots if you have a fishing rod, Dratini (as I just happily discovered!) is purchasable at the Game Corner in Goldenrod (and if you're decent at math you can get 2100 coins fairly fast), and the others are available in the Safari Zone with some dabbling.

So, how to approach this?

Firstly, the limited roster makes it utterly necessary to A: Breed a shitload of duplicates, and B: Select your Starter/Gifts CAREFULLY.
Duplicates are necessary because that's right, you need some fucking HM slaves there. Very fortunately for you, Dragon types can cover every single HM quite easily - just Dragonite can learn every single one of them except Rock Climb, and Gible handles that one without even evolving.

Of course, having a Dragonite as a fucking HM slave would be a terribly stupid idea, so we're going to go about this in a quite different way.

FIRST: Analyze things. What HM's do we need, and when, and which pokémon can we access at that point in the game?

The good thing is that Dratini, the one dragon-type that's actually fairly easy to mass-produce, is available pretty early on - right in the city where you get the 3rd badge. Since Badges and HM's go hand in hand, there's only 2 HM's you actually need to get to that point (which, I might add, is also the point where you get access to the Day Care center for breeding): Cut and Rock Smash.

Now, keep in mind that by the rules of the Gym Leader challenge, any Gift pokemon or eggs (starter included) you get can be chosen freely (pokesav editing) within your chosen type. Thus, I need 2 dragon pokémon that can A: learn Cut and/or Rock Smash without obscene amounts of grinding (for example, Dragonite can learn all HM's but Rock Climb but Dratini/Dragonair can only learn the Water-type HM's, and grinding your way to Lv55 on lv6 rattatas isn't the best way to spend your time), B: can hold their own against gym leaders and whatever is thrown at them easily enough (not too hard, these are Dragon-types we're talking about), and C: Aren't Dratini (because why waste a free choice on something I can just pick up in Goldenrod).

While Swablu/Altaria might seem like an attractive choice due to being reasonably hard to pick up (Swarms aren't predictable) as well as having an early Flying type against that pesky Bug gym, leveling that little bird from 1 to 35 is definitely not a nice prospect as I see it. In this, Gible stands out as the best choice, having the lowest level evolutions of all dragon types (24 and 48), as well as a handy dual-type (Dragon/Ground right from the start). And then there's the fact that he learns Dragon Rage on Lv7. I don't think I need to clarify just how overpowered it is to learn a move that does a guaranteed 40 damage against ANYTHING, at a point in the game when the beefiest thing you encounter is a Metapod with 20 health. Yeah. Suck on that OHKO for a bit, EVERY SINGLE POKEMON IN THE GAME UNTIL YOU REACH THE SECOND GYM LEADER.

So that's my Starter, right there. Gible the stupidly overpowered land shark dragon thingy. That solves both our HM problems and guarantees a freakishly strong lineup for the majority of the game.

However, I still feel like I'll be grabbing Swablu for my Egg. For a number of reasons: First, it gives me a Flying-type early, which is enormously helpful. Second, she has a vastly superior early movepool compared to all the alternatives. While she gets weaker in comparison as the game progresses, I do need that early power. Third, the only other options are Trapinch, Horsea and Bagon, who are all inferior choices due to a variety of reasons. Bagon is a pure dragon-type which later evolves into a Dragon-Flying duotype, which we already will have in Dratini once we reach Goldenrod. Horsea is by far the easiest to obtain out of all the dragons, only requiring access to the Whirl Islands, and we already have all we need of early Water-type power in Dratini. Trapinch is a pure Ground-type which later evolves into a Dragon-Ground, which we already have in Gible, and being stuck in a SECOND common type just isn't worth it - besides, he is by far the worst stat-wise and movepool-wise.

Most likely I will try to do this after I A: finish my Nuzlocke run, or B: after I finish that and my old Ice-type Gym Leader challenge, which I've been wanting to get back to for a while now. In any case, this is more about the sheer difficulty of having virtually nothing to catch at all, and facing a severe lack of early game power and extremely late evolutions. It's all about Hanging In There and getting your levels up until you can beat the crap out of everything.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS, /OSC/? Also, is anyone else warming up for a Gym Leader challenge of their own? If so, poast threadz.

[Chocofreak13]

i'd like to try again on my psychic challenge, but first i need to figure out how to save 2 crystal files at once. :\

should i make a new thread about it?

EDIT:

And let's not even start about fucking Dragons, because anyone doing a type run with Dragons is a fucking retard, in one way or another.

[NejinOniwa]

And let's not even start about fucking Dragons, because anyone doing a type run with Dragons is a fucking retard, in one way or another.

But we already knew that.

As for multiple save files, depending on your emulator choice your save files are kept in a variety of locations. Commonly however they are either in the same folder as the rom itself, or in the "Battery" subfolder in the emulator's folder. Look for it there. If push comes to shove you can just make a copy of the rom itself and name it something different, and work it like that.

[Chocofreak13]

i might do the second method, since it saves to the same folder as the rom and i think is the same name as it (much as the way .srt files work with vlc).