I never thought it was possible.
From the very first gym leader to the final battle between us and May, every single victory was hard won. Trainers on the side of the road, gym leaders, evil organizations, everything was a matter of life or death for little Worminator. This bug has struggled through heavy storms, arid desert, volcanoes, deep ocean, and quite soon, deep space. All to gain this one token of victory.
Our nice pre-elite 4 battle was with Wally, the sweetest rival to have ever existed. We had the levels on his team and though he fought bravely, he stood no chance against our worm overlord. It's always a lot of fun to battle him despite what team I play through generation three with.
Now onto the elite 5.
Sidney, the only guy to ever run a dark team in the main games. I have a lot of respect for the type but to Worminator they are nothing but bug chow. Dark has a major weakness to bug types as I'm sure Archie learned well. The match was over before it started. Great beginning to our Hoenn conquest.
Phoebe was always going to be a challenge type wise but what really killed me was her Dusclops. The first pokemon in her party had Curse and the battle was over every time Worminator was successfully hit by it. I had to get lucky with resetting and fainting it before it managed to curse. After that the battle went well and we finally got a win.
Glacia represents our third challenge in the elite four and she is one cool customer. I kid honestly, she was a very easy win. Mostly one hit kills and the ones that didn't used hail. We slid to victory faster than a drunken trip on the ice floors!
Drake posed quite a threat with almost all of his pokemon. Each one required every trick Worminator had from poisoning, potion use, to waiting on luck. His salamance in particular had a nasty reputation for bug squishing and it took many tries to take him down. It was difficult but we did eventually manage a win here as well.
Now for the champion, Steven Stone!
Believe it or not the most challenging part of this battle wasn't with mega metagross, his aggron, or any of his elite psychic pokemon. It was once again Skarmory, his very first pokemon and the bane of my existence. I was only able to make it through his league becaude of elixers and pokemon like Skarmory are exactly while I needed them at the ready. Against all odd Worminator beat him on our first attempt.
I really didn't expect to get this far but once Worminator kept going I really couldn't stop. To get this far is utterly amazing to me. I didn't expect this either but we actually
won the rival battle after the end game credits.
I'm amazed, I'm thrilled she made it this far, and I had a lot of fun.
It was also really hilarious to watch the end credits roll with all these epic pokemon fighting a very tiny wurmple. I wish I could show you, I'll have to make some examples later.
Journey Complete
Update [August 13]
8th Gym Defeated
The most photogenic gym leader is as useful as splash attack on a rhyhorn
Oops wrong stock photo!
This character is truly the definition of beauty. His team, however, leaves much to be desired. Worminator had become so incredibly strong that at level 83 his team were all one hit KO'd apart from his Milotic.
Though Wallace didn't pose as much of a threat as I was hoping I believe the exciting battle between Worminator and the Primal Feebas had me entertained. I went through a mock battle to see Worminator beat him then I did a little reset and eventually caught him. I had no idea he has his own surf animation and honestly it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. Look at this thing.
Such a cute little
HM slave titan of the sea! I can't wait to swim with him all the time from now on. Specifically the big swim to make it to Evergreen City which has a population of one nurse joy. Let's be bold and go where no wurmple has ever gone before with all eight badges at our hip!
We have one more battle with Wally, the elite 4, and an after credits battle with May. The idea of fighting the super chicken scares me but as long as we beat everyone else that counts as a game won in my book.
Update [August 12]
7th Gym Defeated
The easiest gym by far
Two one hit KO's brought down the solrock and lunatone duo. Bug happens to be super effective against psychic. Methinks they really should have seen this coming, but could you blame them for not believing the visions of a god worm ascending from the first route to take over the Hoenn region?
Worminator is now at an incredible level 82 and why is her level so ungodly high you may ask? Blaze kick is why. May, our dear sweet rival, has once again proven herself to be vastly superior to her anime counterpart. Her blaziken absolutely devastated and devastated time and time again which is why this gym defeated ended up taking so long. Her blaziken is no joke with the constant one hit kills. There was no way to defend, no poison stalling, only stacking on the levels could down this fire bird.
After we finally managed a win over our rival we completely dominated Team Aqua. That didn't stop them from stealing some submarine though. I mean did they need one? Dive is a thing.. Ahem anyway! Enough about that plot thing. Team aqua happened to share the same weakness for our creepy crawly main protagonist of this run so they never stood a ghost of a chance.
One badge later we hightailed it underwater, following a submarine into an underwater cave system whereupon beating Archie for the millionth time we awoke the very god of this magnificent game. Kyogre the rain sweeper master of thunder accuracy has awoken and now waits for us at our last gym location. Will we have what it takes? Worminator seems determined with this in our badge case.
Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to our badge collecting journey. Then we will have to test our might against the elite 4.
Update [August 7]
...training.
Update [July 29]
6th Gym Defeated
Victory was.. a breeze
This gym was actually not as difficult as I first expected but where it was difficult it was both time consuming and my least favorite part of Pokemon as a whole. With an abundance of potions and a lot of time to kill waiting on poison, victory here was the most tedious so far.
Worminator entered this gym at level 49 and left on level 52. Winona proved herself to be a formidable opponent but not because of her star Altaria, which lacked any significant damaging moves, but because of her Skarmory.
The typing, steel flying, and a terrible combination of defense and speed makes it no wonder you're seeing Skarmory so much in competitive battles. Spikes were hardly an issue here but what really did a number on us was poison immunity and spamming sand attack. Things got pretty dirty in this fight and at the end of the day victory was due to poisoning Altaria and the use of way too many potions in a stall game. Altaria also had cotton guard and roost so it was constantly slow damage and healing the entire battle.
Finally though, badge number six is ours!
I'm hoping the next two badges will be more fun than this one, I suspect I should have trained a bit more but I figured if I could sneak away with this win the rest of the gyms would be fairly easy.
I even tried to sneak past all the trainer with the creeping feature but alas we were spotted every time.
This is why I play pokemon and not assassins creed
Update [still July 28]
5th Gym Defeated
The proudest father in pokemon history
Our rival May decided to walk us on over to our dad's gym so no trainers in between. Its a very quick walk over to good ol' dad's place. I'm sure he heard from our mom that we're off on a little pokemon journey but boy is he in for a surprise at just how powerful his son has become.
Worminator is now level 48 and easily ready for this fight. This is actually the first gym we're fighting that doesn't throw a curve ball for our bug typage. Beating everyone on the way to dear papa was actually fairly easy with a few OHKO. I figured we'd be able to take this one easily but he actually put up a good fight with retaliate. I was going to take a little break to train a bit more when he took Worminator down but I tried out a second battle and wouldn't you know it? No retaliate. We managed a win.
because of luck His slaking is no joke though, I can see where we got our fighting spirit.
Draw me like one of your Hoenn girls~
It was actually after the battle was over, however, that things between us and our father became apparent. Is he proud? I'd like to think so. Is this not the look of a proud parent?
Naturally what everyone said before this journey began but look at us now, in our prime. Almost level 50, 5 badges down, 3 to go. Of course not before a final moment with dear dad
before we inevitably never see or speak of him for the rest of our journey.
Truer words have never been spoken.
I dont know about you but I feel invigorated, inspired, and untouchable. It's only a matter of time before we protect the world from devastation and unite all bug catchers within our nation.
Our next gym is out with the new and in with the old, weaknesses galore. Bird versus bug. Who will win?
Update [July 28]
4th Gym Defeated
Our strongest foe yet
Guys I'm dying here. This battle was so hard, so tedious, and I played it over and over and I just barely managed a win once again solely thanks to friendship.
Arceus give me strength
Our favorite Worminator is now level 46. She was absolutely overleveled for this fight because fire happens to be the worst thing on the planet ever. Flannery absolutely spammed Sunny Day and Overheat which completely destroyed Worminator every single time I tried the battle. After a lot of training I managed the most amazing luck based defeat ever. Flannery has an epic torkoal but thanks to Worminator holding on with
1hp I was able to potion us up a victory.
Begone fire turtle, you're banished.
Flannery's slugma and numel were actually both beaten in one hit by Worminator but the high defense her torkoal had made this fight difficult beyond what I could have anticipated. Challenge accepted. After all this challenge, all this struggle, we finally have our fourth badge. I feel physically tired after this battle haha.
Our next gym match is against our father, but will daddy be proud of us?
I somehow doubt it. (,:
Update [July 26]
3rd Gym Defeated
Our third siege
Let me just stop to say that Wattson here was poultry compared to a trainer I had to battle to get to him. Which trainer you may ask? Well that trainer happens to be our esteemed rival, May.
I gave her torchic like an idiot!
May having a combusken in our battle was extremely difficult but Worminator made it through simply because May decided to use her weaker attacks instead of her stronger fire attacks. Boy do I love luck!
I didn't stop there either. I decided it would be fun to take on another kind of challenge. Worminator is now the proud winner of the Clever Normal Rank Contest. That's right, she's a star.
Now that we've accomplished quite a few goals and Worminator is now proudly on level 27, we tackle our third gym. Electric isn't so bad, right? Well yes and no. Electric itself isn't bad at all against bugs but steel happens to be the most difficult for Worminator to overcome. My strategy in the event of bug weaknesses is to poison them with poison sting. Guess who's immune to poison? Steel types. Watson has himself two steel types including magneton.
Every gym just has to be overly challenging doesn't it. Luckily for us, Worminator is not shy to a challenge like this. She did manage to overcome the volt switches and she was the
literal luckiest pokemon I've ever seen dealing with thunder wave. She was paralyzed twice in battle and immediately shook it off thanks to her friendship level. It took a bit longer than the average battle but eventually Wattson ran out of juice and conceded defeat.
A shocking victory! Looks like Wattson couldn't handle our voltage.
I'm sorry
Update [still July 25]
2nd Gym Defeated
Our second conquest
The second gym is literally right next to the first gym story wise. There's not even a trainer battle in between so I'm going to jump right in here with the now level 21 Worminator.
I forgot bugs are not very effective against fighting.
To my surprise, despite bugs being weak against fighting types, Worminator made quick work of the array of all the gym jockies working out in the dark. Why are they working out in the dark again? I mean they do them, I don't judge. I don't gym.
Brawly is our main foe here with his epic makuhita, which was the only real threat to our overpowered insect overlord.
This aptly named fighting type gym leader Brawly brought out our first real stat reducing threat. Considering wurmple only has four moves in the entirety of the game it's very important I use everything possible in my tiny, itty-bitty arsenal. So with that in mind, I was able to beat Brawly with the use of poison sting.
This battle was not as easy as I'm making it sound. I had to use potions to survive and by all rights makuhita still should have beaten me. That is, however, if not for the power... of friendship. That's right.
Friendship. During the five days I was preparing Worminator for this epic siege of the Hoenn region I got her friendship level to maximum. Not only does that give her
extra experience at the end of a battle, it also makes it so she can get
rid of status effects faster AND it increases the chance of an attack missing. Aka, Makuhita's would-be finishing blow. Hehehe.
So thanks to some poison and a lot of luck- I mean friendship, we have our second badge.
Another one bites the dust.
Update [July 25]
1st Gym Defeated
Our first triumph
So this gym was essentially the big test for me in seeing if this run is even possible. I'm sure with a lot of luck and patience anything is possible but I'm here for the fun part. So! Worminator 1 was an absolute beast, raised up to a powerful level 17 for an epic battle against Roxanne, the first gym leader of Alpha Sapphire.
So I forgot rocks are super effective against bugs.
I absolutely crushed all the rock pokemon before the entrance of her impressive nosepass so color me surprised when she turned the tables and oneshoted Worminator.
I tried again and again to see if there was any way to sneak in a victory of any kind but our insect hero was not up for this challenge. I decided it was time to get serious.
I got a wonderfully bred wurmple, this one will do it. Also called Worminator, she is essentially the same just with better IV/EV/Nature. I also decided to train her up to level 20 for this fight. Turns out the stat increase was more than enough and her nosepass fell in two hits. (Well she actually used potions but I don't count those when the battle is essentially over k) So the bug terminator has taken her first badge.
Whew. Onto the next one.
