I haven't seen the Gen 3 starters in the wild anywhere, but the Gen 1 and Gen 2 starters are available in some specially added grass tiles that can be found in towns. I got my Charmander in Oldale Town (Cyndaquil is there too). Squirtle and Totodile are in Petalburg City, and Bulbasaur and Chikorita are in Rustboro City (the grass there is a bit out of the way, you have to go right and hug the fence right before entering town).

 

Pokecommunity thread says they're in Evergrande City. Thanks for the tips, gonna get started soon.

EDIT: Problem. Downloaded it, followed LTs directions to open it, aaaaannnd nothin'. VBA says it's an unsupported file type? Suggestions?

 

Git gud maybe?

For real though email yourself the rim and download "My Oldboy" from the play store. It's more stable and then you have it on your phone.

 

Can you do the old 'hold spacebar to play at 1000% speed' trick for this?

 

Norman got the dad dick. Took a few tries, but only because it was necessary to get a high damage roll with Breloom's Sky Uppercut to get rid of his Kangaskhan in one hit so that he couldn't switch it out. Too much potential for his Fake Out + Crush Claw to do too much damage otherwise. Ursaring was the finisher here. I deliberately saved the Stall Room for last so that I could get the bear poisoned and wreak havoc with Facade. It worked like a charm, taking out Slaking on a truant round and then OHKO'ing Snorlax to end the battle.

Now it's time to make some team changes. Xatu has been such a boss so far that I almost hate to get rid of her, but Metagross beckons now that I can get a Beldum. Charizard is likewise getting replaced with a Salamence. It's going to take a little work to grind those two up, but it'll be worth it.

 

Fortree Gym down. Pretty much had to resort to overleveling Winona (thanks, half dozen Lucky Eggs the game gives you right before this!) because now she's a double battle and comes packing Legendaries. Had to get Manectric high enough to be able to outspeed most of her team so that I could kill them with Thunderbolt before they killed me.

...It took me to level 65 to do this. And I still couldn't outpace her Aerodactyl or Crobat.

 

Started a run there. Glad I'm not nuzlocking because even the grinding is difficult and the encounter rates are low as hell as mentioned above.

BogWarrior the Mudkip lvl 10
Farthing the Vulpix lvl 10
Something the Gulpin lvl 8

I caught a charmander too but in the end I went with Vulpix because while Charizard is cool I've never used a ninetails properly and I have a feeling the confusion and burn hax will be vital. Oh and I'm willing to bet everything has rock slide in this game.

Gulpin might sound like a strange choice but I've used Swalot before and it is beastly. Most underappreciated gen 3 Pokémon by a mile.

 

Confusion maybe. Burn not so much. By the time you can reliably inflict it (Will O' Wisp) pretty much anything you'd want to use it on will be holding a Lum Berry.

Earthquake is ubiquitous by midgame. If you really want a poison type, I would recommend either a mixed grass (though that opens you up to the also everywhere Ice Beam coverage) or a Nidoking. Using the move relearner to teach that thing Poison Tail gives you a 120 power STAB with no recoil or other inconvenience.

Anything at or north of Petalburg Woods has better encounter rates for the early game. You'll want to put in the time to get a Tropius on the route north of Slateport to be able to effectively grind beyond that though.

 

Is there anyway to play this on an iPhone?

 

Game is trying super hard to make me quit right now. I'm at like 500 uses of Sweet Scent at Mt. Pyre. I have not found a single Kadabra.

It's supposed to be a 2% encounter. You'd think I was trying to farm for a Shiny.

 

Just a little progress update. My team is now Swampert, Breloom, Manectric, Salamence, Metagross, Alakazam. Everything is leveled between 70 and 72. I'm still slogging through all the Team Magma/Aqua crap before getting to Mossdeep. I can't wait to get there and do my always least favorite gym with Liza and Tate. God damn I hate double battles.

 

Just beat Roxanne. LT wasn't lying, I thought I went in overlevelled but she straight up beat me three times.

In the end, Gulpin was the MVP. His moveset of Sludge Bomb, Giga drain, fire punch and yawn is OP for a Pokémon that wasn't even level 20 going into the battle and yawn and fire punch whittled down her shuckle.

Gruesome battle though.

Marshtomp lvl 20
Gulpin lvl 22
Nuzleaf lvl 22
Vulpix lvl 20

 

Tate and Liza are down. I made the battle a little harder than it needed to be because of a few bad plays, but I was able to overpower them in the end. Also did the Maxie/Tabitha double battle at the space center. That took a second try because Steven brings nothing of worth as a partner, aside from being an occasional target for the other team to beat up on. Alakazam/Salamence/Swampert (barely) pulled through.

Update: FAILED. Quit the game and deleted the ROM from my computer so that I couldn't go crawling back to it later.

Just could not get through Shelly and her absolute fucking cheating bullshit rain team at Seafloor Cavern. I refuse to invest more time into grinding, or raising alternate pokemon to advance further, or anything else. I quit. If Seratin or anyone else can slog through this shit to the end, then congratulations to them.

To anyone still trying to do this, the best idea I have to somehow deal with the Aqua/Magma endgames and their forced weather battles is to maybe bring a Cloud Nine Golduck to get rid of the rain or sun. Not sure if that even works, but it's worth testing at least. I didn't think to try it before I ragequit past the point of no return. Oh well.

I do look forward to trying again sometime, using what I've learned about the hack and its various and sundry bullshit to make the second go smoother and hopefully be a success. But not right now. I put a lot of hours into this in a short period of time and slammed hard into a wall, and I need to go play something else for a bit.

 

That's fair, weather based teams can be extremely hard to take down once they get the ball rolling. Out of preparation for my own run though, what types of stunts were they pulling?

I keep telling myself that I'm overlevelled but as you said, now that I'm on Dewford I've noticed an extreme drop in the encounter rate. Currently looking for a magic guard clefairy on Dewford to replace my Vulpix who just isn't cutting it so far.

@LT2000 In your experience so far, would a bulky clefable benefit more from magic guard or infatuation in this game?

 

For the sun teams, you'll see Chlorophyll grass types all over the place and you can more or less assume anything and everything you face will be packing Solarbeam. This will happen in Flannery's Gym and also in the Team Magma Hideout. And naturally, super powerful STAB fire moves and quite a lot of Arcanine (which is almost never not a bitch to deal with when it shows up). Camerupt is a good counter for these places, since it resists fire and only takes neutral damage from Solarbeam.

Same sorts of things in the rain. Swift Swim everything, and if something can use Thunder it will have it. But that's less of an issue than the boosted STAB Hydro Pumps that will tear gaping holes through your team regardless. I was particularly not well suited to dealing with rain because the only things I had that could resist water would be wrecked instead by Ice Beam. And in the dungeon that finally broke me, I was having to run on a shorthanded team because the place requires a full array of HM moves (Dive, Surf, Strength, Rock Smash and Flash) to navigate through and that requires either bringing a slave or gimping your team with shitty moves that you will have to spend your very limited supply of Heart Scales to replace later. On a do-over I might try something like Water Absorb Quagsire, but there's enough Giga Drain coverage about that it's not a perfect counter.

Probably Infatuation. CPU does like to use status, but in my experience it's usually more of the paralysis and sleep variety than poison. You'll see some Toxic/Protect/Rest trolls, of course. Generally whenever you see Dusclops or Shuckle, assume this is in play.

I never saw any use of entry hazards when I was running the game (Stealth Rock wasn't even in the game in Gen 3), so that's not something Magic Guard would help with.

 

Got as far as Maxie at Mt. Chimney and was planning to savescum so I wouldn't lose cash, just to check out his team. Well somehow I managed to accidentally load into a save state from before Watson at Mauville.

My team was:

Shiftry 45
Swampert 48
Clefable 46
Electabuzz 46
Swalot 49

Now they're all back to their early 30s and I'm just done. Really fucking annoyed by this.

 

Ouch. I've had that happen to me on VBA before too. It always sucks.

 

It's especially annoying because I'm convinced that Swalot is actually the best Pokémon in Kaizo. By lvl 25 its moveset was Giga Drain, Yawn, sludge bomb and earthquake.

It thanks everything and hits hard.

By the time I lost the save yawn was replaced with ice punch and Sludge bomb replaced by gunk shot.

 

It certainly seems like a good choice for where you were in the game, at least. I don't think its stats would have held up to the end, though. You basically almost have to build a whole team of OU-tier Pokemon to be competitive lategame, and sometimes even that doesn't work.

After beating Norman, the game more or less goes into full out Fuck You mode. There's a reason why you're given a whole clutch of Lucky Eggs at that point. And why getting Surf unlocks access to a wild route where Bagon and Beldum can be caught, among other things.

 

I noticed that after Watson the game took a sharp curve in difficulty. Well, not difficulty exactly but I noticed Nuzleaf and Clefable were struggling almost every battle until I got their stones in Fallarbor. I expect to have to replace them with beldum and bacon eventually.

Even Swampert was struggling but I'm telling you man, Swalot was pulling me through battles like nothing else and of all my Pokémon he's staying to beat the Elite 4.