Tropius Only - Pokemon Emerald

Rules:
1. Only my starter in battle
2. No items in battle, except held items
3. No glitches, exploits, save states, or RNG manipulation
4. No evasion moves before level 100*

Rule details:
-- *In gen1, evasion boosting is allowed if the Pokemon does it through means other than learning the move by level up or TM. For example, using Mimic or Mirror Move to boost evasion is allowed. (This exception is to keep ranking consistent with my legacy videos.)
-- I am allowed to manipulate my starter
-- I play the game at 4x game speed
-- For fair comparisons all my Pokemon have perfect (or near perfect) DVs / IVs
-- I am allowed to catch HM users - I can use all field moves
-- All in-battle glitches are allowed in generation 1
-- In generation 1, I'm allowed to skip Marowak with the Poke Doll
-- Surge's trash-can-puzzle is automatically solved
-- The bike is allowed in gen1, banned in gen2, and allowed for bypassing terrain in gen3
-- Saving between league members is allowed
-- If the solo Pokemon faints and I choose to blackout it counts towards my reset counter
-- I can pause the game and timer to take breaks
-- The footage is sped up / slowed down to match the pace of my narration
-- The ability Pickup can only be used if the starter has it

YouTube memberships:

[Mozumin]

Banger video as always. Here's a tip: If you have both Sunny Day and Solarbeam, and the sun isn't up, there's little reason not to use Sunny Day rather than Solarbeam. It takes the same number of turns and sets you up for later into the fight. For example, on your first attempt against Steven, when you were facing Aggron (49:42), you would've oneshot the following Metagross with HP Fire if you used Sunny Day and then Solarbeam rather than using a 2-turn Solarbeam. Not only that, but Thunder has 50% accuracy in the sun, so Sunny Day into Solarbeam was the objectively better play.

[RichardBlaziken]

The reason Fly isn’t given after Flannery is that they want you to backtrack with your newly acquired Go-Goggles and explore the desert

[dafsvad]

In gen3, the game does a pre attack and roll to see what does the most damage (like you stated) but once it decides, which move to choose, it rerolls and checks if it hits and how much damage it does. It helps in some rare occasions like if it sees a kill with two moves, it’ll randomly choose one of those two, but if it chooses the weaker move and then rolls a lower damage, it might not actually KO

[skyninegaming]

Fun run to watch. If you're ever running solar beam/sunny day, there is almost no reason to ever charge. Since Tropius has chlorophyll, watching you choose to charge solar beam instead of setting up sunny day, and then losing a speed tie against the next Pokémon (or when you almost KO'ed the Metagross with hidden power after you chose to charge solar beam against Aggron instead of using sunny day) was definitely frustrating, but it was a joy to watch nonetheless. Great stuff Scott.

[andersonantunesdeleu]

My second time watching this run, and you know what? Tropius isn't really that bad, defeating Steven at the match level, well, I would say a pretty bad Pokemon would do the same at the nineties... Such as sableye or Delcatty. Taking this into regard I could say Tropius, in the end, did a good job! Great job, Scott!

[Smarvinmartin]

Scott, not sure if you'll read this, but I just wanted to say that your videos help calm me so much with my anxiety. Loving the new gen 3 content can't wait to see more

[JFarenci]

Hoenn's loamiest approaches, prepare the tropium

[jas_nah]

One of my most treasured Pokemon memories is meeting this goofy dinosaur in the wild for the first time. It's never been the best pokemon competitively, but it's an amazing HM friend and always earns a team slot in my Hoenn playthroughs.

[ashclaw]

Tropius always looked like an interesting pokemon to use.
Already wanting to see how this one unfolds!

[shanoc]

While I get that you probably used Solarbeam by itself a lot for grinding as it helps with PP, using Solar-beam without the sun takes 2 turns, using Sunny Day+Solarbeam also takes 2 turns, plus it gives you the speed advantage thanks to Cholorphyll. If you need to manage PP, worried about getting hit with Encore or out sped and hit with Taunt, have your sun immediately overwritten by another weather, or don't want to get hit by a sun-boosted fire move before using your final solarbeam of the battle are all reasons to charge up for Solarbeam in a major battle but if you aren't afraid of a specific interaction with Sunny day from your opponent like those Sunny day will always be better than charging up. It even comes with the side-benefit of letting you change your mind like if you get hit by Destiny bond after using Sunny Day/charging up, you could choose to waste a turn with Growth while Solarbeam would force you to attack and potentially take yourself out too.

[grinbrothers]

Tropius time! I used a Tropius in my Pokémon Emerald team so I've been looking forward to this one. It's such a distinctive Pokémon that I'm surprised doesn't get talked about more often. It's Stat spread is certainly strange, as you would think it would have more physical attack given it's size and appearance. Neither it's health nor defences are amazingly high on their own but they work nicely in tandem as all-round defence.

1:55 - The advantage of Pokémon breeding being introduced is that even these later game Pokémon have move-set taking into account if you hatched a level 5 Pokémon. No need to worry waiting 20+ levels for a new attack like earlier gens.

4:57 - I don't think Tropius' Slow Growth rate will be that much of an issue this early point. His Grass and Flying typing allows him to quickly one or two-shot the teams of both the first two gyms, which makes a much quicker early game grind. Water typing is also common in the region so Tropius might do more favourably than expected.

6:05 - Wait, I knew about the Brendan having less dialogue (this is also the same for Heart Gold/Soul Silver) but what's this about him having a weaker team. With potential exception to a gender difference to the Pokémon, I didn't think there was difference between rival Brendan and rival May's teams.

9:46 - How fortunate! I was expecting the Steel resistance to prove a real problem (until you gain Earthquake) so this easier victory over Watson's Magneton was a surprise. An wait, Gen 3 crits take into account Special Attack buffs? Is that the same for physical Attack as well? I had assumed it had worked the same as Gen 1 even to this day.

13:28 - I also did not know this. A bit cheap of the CPU to be able to almost guarantee a hit through such checks, but I suppose it now makes sense why some of these Gym Leader Pokémon still retain weak/less useful moves on their Pokémon. It's a balancing thing.

14:43 - An this is how Swellow became my Flannery destroyer; the only female team member I had in my first Pokémon Sapphire playthrough. I do wonder how much quicker this playthrough could have been if you went with a female Tropius.

21:07 - I was thinking of Hidden Power Fire purely as a means to combat Steel types (Steven waits for you at the end) but yeah, the whole Sunny Day synergy thing makes a lot of sense. After Maxie is dealt with, you don't really have to worry about Fire types so you don't have to worry about Sunny Day being turned against you.

25:11 - I'm now wondering whether you should have kept Razor Leaf for this double battle. Being able to eventually hit Solrock and Lunatone at the same time might have been quite handy (and crits seemed to have been happening fairly often with it). 26:00 - Never mind; Flannery aside, Tropius continues to do well.

28:17 - Unexpected joke but hilarious. Love the Emerald version designs of Brendan and May most of all.

34:28 - It was a gamble... that sadly did not pay off. I do look forward to when your Emerald experiences result in trainers getting the same recognition treatment like the Rapping Lass and Dennis.

38:24 - Planning around the inevitable Will-o-Wisp was certainly an interesting strategy to see unfold but it paid off. It's a good thing there is a favouritism towards Special Attack and Burn doesn't reduce it's damage output.

44:11 - This really feels like something you should have done sooner; the region is pretty much perfectly set-up for Tropius to grind up levels. I'm sure you could get a significantly faster time with the banana dinosaur by levelling up in the bountiful sea more often (if you were to ever do a 2nd playthrough). An yes, Water types are the most common type of Pokémon... really does give Maxie more of a point.

48:12 - Ironic that you finally encountered the Double Team scenario after you got rid of both your infinite accuracy moves. Lucky that Fly hit then.

50:27 - I had forgotten Steven's Skarmory had Toxic. It was quite lucky in that first round that it never used it. Rest seems like almost a necessity... but you need all four current attacks for your solar strategy... tough one.

51:52 - Oh gosh; the build up in this moment. Absolutely brilliant!

[charlessegale]

I always thought that Tropius was an odd Pokémon conceptually, but honestly, playthroughs like this are why I believe nearly any Pokémon can be viable on any team. Good job once again, Scott!

[shimauta]

26:08 - You have that empty space right under where you currently display the opponent's teams. If the opponents during a double battle have only three mons each you should have enough room in that empty space on the right side of the overlay to include both of the opponent's teams. If they have more than three just leave it out. Assuming you can write the code for all of that of course.

[AC-xqhh]

The reason they give you fly so late is because they wanted you to backtrack through areas you've already been to, access places you couldn't before with cut, rock smash, strength and surf, all while keeping up with your berries, and find secret base locations etc

Obviously they ran into time trouble though and didn't get to fully flesh out their idea, but it's still mostly there

[JJSSBU]

The tips you got for choosing May only apply for speedrunning, as the reason Brendan teams are worse is because he leads of with a different Pokémon. For example, in Route 110, he leads with Wingull and she starts with Slugma. The speedrun strategy features Marshtomp with X Attacks, so not getting burned while setting up is important. That and his dialogue (that actually matters here) are the two reasons to use May.



Also she looks cooler

[tsawy]

Tropius is incredibly based, tbh. In continuing with my love for grass types, I think it's the coolest one in gen 3. Not like, incredibly powerful, but it's moveset has so much synergy that I can't help but love it. Probably the single best sunnybeamsynthesis user, as the flying damage provides great coverage, tho it's a little '4 move slot syndrome' cuz you also want growth. Also one of the few mons I've personally done solo challenges in: here in emerald! Don't remember my results, but synthesis def played a big role. I think I also used a lot more growth spam in the midgame, esp against flannery.

Also, at 13:35 you may or may not be repeating info that I've given you before about pokemon AI, and uh, I was totally completely wrong. I was kinda just giving my theories following having noted that Misty will use swift if you lower her accuracy. I've learned a ton about gen 3 AI since then, and uh, turns out AI don't check accuracy directly at all.

The way that AI moves are selected for is a very complicated scoring system, whereby each move gets given points or has points taken away based on about a zillion factors, then the moves that have the highest score are selected. The base is that moves that kill you get +4, moves that deal the most damage but don't kill get +0, and moves that deal less damage get -1 (all done using phantom damage rolls as I've mentioned earlier, but no accuracy check).

The misty case is driven by a check for if the opponent has set up accuracy differences enough, and buffs swift if it's accuracy is lowered by -3.

Overheat has a small special check based on if you outspeed and if your health is below 80/60 to give -1, but more importantly it's a 'discouraged move' cuz of the stat drops. The really strong moves with 120+ bp but also big downsides would break the damage roll system otherwise, so they actually don't do the damage rolls at all, sitting on +0 all the time. Similarly, Magnitude is in a category called 'power 1 moves' that are basically the weird attacking moves with weird damage, like magnitude and sonic boom. As a consequence, the only damage move that actually rolls damage normally that the camerupt has is tackle: it's therefore ranked as +0 cuz it's it's highest damaging move. Magnitude gets -10 cuz you're immune, and even tho you're faster than the camperupt, cuz your health is above 80% overheat stays on +0, so the highest moves are tackle and overheat tied. Therefore camerupt will select which one to do randomly.

One way that this info can be helpful is against Wattson's voltob, which we can discourage from exploding by keeping it's HP high. If voltorb has 80%+ HP or is faster 0-> 80% of -3, if voltorb has 50%+ HP-> 80% of -1, then some other randomness, and if voltorb has less than 30% HP -> 80% chance of +1. So the thresholds are 80%, 50% and 30%, tho it's never set in stone what it'll do.

You may or may not recall, but I qualified my last AI comment with a bunch of statements with the effect of me being unsure, but this time, the bones of the system I'm 100% in. This work was all compiled by the emerald Kaizo community, and I found these docs in Pokemon Challenges' discord. The two most important are the following:


They also have some docs in there for switching, but frankly it's not really anything you can ever take advantage of, cuz it's mostly based on the mon that you have out and stuff, which obviously you can't really use.

[InuyashaMaster]

Such a big fan of Emerald runs, Scott! OST and environments are timeless, with considerable challenge.

[C_Train]

You should eventually do a video showing the different evolutions of your overlays.
Also, landing a Fly on a +3 evasion Ludicolo was insane luck.

[CasualVideoGamer]

Tropius is one of my favorites in gen 3 (a gen that I never really cared for in terms of Pokemon designs) and one of my favorite grass-type Pokemon because of its design. It upsets me that it doesn't really have much of a niche compared to other grass-types.
That said, loved the video and definitely going to check out the Chimecho video as it's another of one of my favorite derps.

[andreapareti]

2:37 that's actually a pretty fair reasoning for doing the Starters that way: I was always thinking "if the goal is to go through the game the fastest way possible (with certain rules), why give the Rivals Starters strong against your Pokémon? Especially if not doing it in Yellow (currently)?", but wanting to keep that aspect of the original game's experience is a neat enough reason; I guess, consequently, that means you're gonna always pick the Starter weakest against your solo mon when you get to Gen 6 onward games, since that's how later Rivals go about it.