Wattson, without a question, is the hardest early game fight for even a casual playthrough of Pokemon Emerald. From his self-destructing Voltorb to his ace Manectric, his team is full of Thunder Waves and Supersonics which send your Pokemon running in circles. To make things worse, there's basically no Pokemon at this point in the game that can consistently outspeed his Magneton, whose high damage output can sweep entire teams.
And we're going to beat him with this.
[warning: fair amount of Pokemon jargon ahead. i think]
Now, there's a few factors that make this fight difficult for Steven's team in particular.
Late evolution levels means that Wattson's team is far greater than mine in terms of sheer stats. The highest BST on this team, Metang, is 420 - while Wattson gets the fully evolved Magneton and Manectric at 465 and 475 respectively.
This team only has one electric immunity in Baltoy! Also, Steel doesn't resist Electric, so Lileep with its Grass typing is my only resist.
Because Steel-types are largely designed with their high defenses in mind, they have very low HP on average. You can expect that Beldum/Metang rarely takes more than 3 HP on any given attack on enemy trainers and wild Pokemon because of its typing and defenses. For Steel-types, being hit for neutral is almost as bad as getting hit for super-effective.
Wattson's Magneton sports the move Sonicboom, which does a flat 20 damage. It cannot be resisted.
So. Much. RNG. Between Thunder Wave para and Sonicboom selfhit, you are almost never guaranteed to attack on any turn. And don't get me started on the amount of times that a tenuous late fight was ended by a crit.
Additionally, this run had the rules of set mode (no free switches after KOs) and no using items, including heals, during battle.
Gulp.
So here's how I finally did it.
The basic strategy is to lead Baltoy on Voltorb, then immediately switch to Aron in case it Self-Destructs. Aron takes care of it through Headbutt, then chunks half of Electrike's health before Metang comes in to take the KO. This is so it can be in position for Magneton.
Magneton is chipped down through repeated Rock Smash, a HM obtained from a house in Mauville right before this fight. In this gen, it's only 20 base power, so the damage isn't very good. We're fishing for defense drops to make it easier.
Metang's 70 health is pretty easily chipped down by Magneton's Sonicboom and Shock Wave. Once Metang is too low, Lileep is switched in on a resisted Shock Wave. She continues the stall by setting up regen with Ingrain and spamming Constrict (best move I have. I've attached Lileep's level-up moveset below. it's. certainly something.)
Eventually Magneton goes down with Lileep on low health; Baltoy was able to switch into an immunity on the final Manectric and take it down with a Psybeam and a (necessary, but sad) Self-Destruct. Hey, it's not a nuzlocke.
And that's Wattson! We're out of the early game... see you tomorrow to cover the reason I thought this run would never make it to the Hall of Fame: Flannery.
Or; what if you used Steven's team to beat Pokemon Emerald?
Hello! This post is the first of a series where I'll cover fights from my Sterling playthrough, a vanilla Emerald run with some help from save editor pkhex.
Firstly, the setup is as follows:
Put Beldum in the Oldale PC, to be picked up as soon as you enter the town. This is your new starter; your elemental starter is boxed or released.
Baltoy is picked up second in Petalburg, then Lileep in Rustboro. I set their levels to 5 and 10 respectively. (This is so you have options other than spamming Take Down, Beldum's only move for the 20 levels before it evolves.)
Every other encounter is vanilla. (Aron in Granite Cave before Brawly, Skarmory on rt. 113 before Flannery, and Anorith from the Claw Fossil before Norman.)
This starting trio matches the plot of Sterling's journeyfic, the second arc of the AU (denoted by a [2]). Beldum from his father, Baltoy from his mother, Lileep from Roxanne.
Starting today, I'll cover a notable fight from this playthrough daily! Every gym leader is automatically considered; if skipped, it's not because the fight was boring, but that it simply couldn't match up with the rest. Roxanne and Brawly will be skipped because, as early game fights, it's difficult to make them interesting with limited resources.
As a challenge runner and nuzlocker, this run has some of my favorite fights and strategies ever, of any Pokemon game. Look forward to it :D
Thank you for reading, and expect the next post soon!
