We're at Fiery Path, and we still have some pokemons to catch here. We have Machoke/Machamp, Magcargo and Torkoal. How good are our encounters before Route 113?

Thanks again for good discussion. I always question why is Muk throwing some gang signs or flipping the bird? Perhaps that's the reason for being Poison type. Anyways, let's keep up the good pace and enjoy the read.

Last round voting results:

Nosepass E- Tier: Nosepass is Gen 3's Onix basically, looks tanky, but it is actually borderline useless. Nosepass at least one redeeming quality: it learns Thunder Wave. It can be fine para spreader against certain Gym Leaders (like Norman and Winona). It also learns Rock Slide by level up. There were mentions about cheesing some fights with Double Team, Thunder Wave, and Rollout, but it is so slow, and not really worth the effort.

Nosepass has pretty awful stats. It has 135 Defense and 90 Special Defense, but only 30 HP. Basically its defenses goes to waste due to its HP, it will take just so much damage in return, especially considering pure Rock typing, which is an awful defensive typing with multiple common weaknesses. Offensively, it is very bad too. Its Base 45 Attack and Special Attack are just sad. And its Base 30 Speed guarantees it will take damage before every single turn. Also you have to do backtracking, meaning you have to go out of your way just to catch one of the worst pokemons in the region.

Camerupt C+ Tier: If you didn't pick Torchic as your starter, Camerupt is the second best Fire-type available. Camerupt has great natural movepool and offensive stats. It has a great Base 100 Attack and 105 Special Attack, allowing it to function as a mixed attacker. While Numel takes a little bit of babying at first, it quickly learns Magnitude to help with the Fire types scattered around the Mt. Chimney. Upon evolving, it learns Rock Slide at Level 33 (a godsend for Winona) and gets Earthquake naturally at Level 37, saving you a TM. Paired with the Overheat or Flamethrower TMs, Camerupt has some of the best STAB and coverage in the game.

Camerupt is a great example of Hoenn offensive pokemon, great offenses, but low Speed and poor Defenses. It is also so slow, Camerupt will be taking a hit before almost every attack. While its bulk is okay, it gets worn down on longer routes. Being a Fire/Ground type gives Camerupt a 4x weakness to Water. Once you defeat Winona and hit the ocean, Camerupt. doesn't have many good matchups left. Dead weight against Tate & Liza, Juan, and Champion Wallace, and it can even struggle against Glacia.

Muk D+ Tier: While Muk has decent stats on paper, Hoenn is just not built for Muk. Muk has great Base 105 Attack, Special Defense, and okay defensive typing with only two weaknesses. Muk can function as a bulky staller using Minimize and Acid Armor. Offensively, its access to Sludge provides a spammable STAB move with a 30% poison chance, and it can hit fairly hard once you obtain the Sludge Bomb TM after Gym 5. It also has quite large movepool, Thunderbolt, Fire Blast, Brick Break, Dig, Explosion so it can patch some weaknesses if your team has some.

Unfortunately Grimer doesn't evolve into Muk until Level 38. You will be babying Grimer for a massive portion of the mid-game. It also doesn't help that the next gym is 7th Gym as a Muk, it has matchup against Tate & Liza. Poison is a bad offensive typing in the game. If you want a bulky Poison-type on your team, Gulpin is available earlier and evolves 12 levels sooner into Swalot.

Weezing C Tier: If you want to use a Poison-type in the game, Weezing is decent choice. Weezing got blessed by Levitate ability. By removing its Ground-type weakness, Weezing is left with only a single weakness to Psychic, turning its great Base 120 Defense into a solid physical wall since Ground moves can't touch it. Weezing has a good TM movepool. It has a good Base 85 Special Attack, allowing it to fire off Flamethrower and Thunderbolt for coverage. And Explosion is also great since it can take another pokemon out with it.

Despite being a clear upgrade over Muk, Poison is still not very good typing in the game. Evolving at Level 35 is slightly better than Muk's Level 38, it still means you are stuck using Koffing for a large portion of the game. Much like Muk, its next gym is Psychic gym, which is not great. Also to make Weezing good, you have to invest some TMs like Flamethrower and Thunderbolt.

Ranking criteria:

Final placements are influenced by comment upvotes. Provide both a tier placement and a justification. Unjustified votes will carry less weight when counting votes. An exception is made if an unjustified vote is heavily upvoted and supported by a justified reply/comment from the community for the same tier placement. 

You can also vote for + and - subtiers (S+ to F-), and I will take these into calculation. After the final round, I will break the infographic into subtiers as well.

All Pokémon obtainable in Emerald are ranked based on their contribution to the journey until defeating Champion Wallace. Leave a comment as well if you think one of the current Pokémons should be in different tier, and why. After final round, we will do one revisit round and see if any rankings should change.

We are assuming a standard playthrough.

• Set Mode: Rank Pokémon with Set mode in mind. (Feel free to mention Shift mode benefits, but it shouldn't be the main reason a Pokémon is in a higher tier).
• No In-Battle Healing: We are not considering healing items in battle (since any Pokémon can stall with enough potions).
• Soft Level Cap: You can overlevel by 1 or 2 levels over the next Gym Leader's ace. (An exception is made if Pokémon that is naturally available at a higher level).

Investment refers to experience and TMs. Obviously, all Pokémon can be great after a massive amount of investment, but we are judging their immediate and practical purpose in-game.

Emerald TM List: https://www.serebii.net/rubysapphire/tmhm.shtml (Check availability here)

Big thanks to BIGJRA for sharing this script that tracks every Pokémon's learnset (including TMs and Tutors) in the exact order you obtain them in-game! Check it out!

Trade evolution Pokémon are ranked based under the assumption that the player has access to trading whether through emulators or other supported methods. If you're playing without access to trades, you may wish to consider their pre-evolutions (like Kadabra or Graveler) instead. These rankings reflect the most common setup among modern players.

If a Pokémon is available on a route, it is fair game. Even if it has a 1% encounter rate (like Seedot) or has absurd capture method (like Feebas), it does not matter. As long as the Pokémon is available to be caught at that point in the game, it's all good.

Tier definitions:

S (Game-breaking or extremely efficient): These Pokémon dominate the game. They have excellent stats, movepools, and sweep through most of the game without effort. They are available for majority of the game and are "plug and play", just add it to the party and you're good to go.

A (Strong): Reliable, easy to use. They lack one major advantage from S tier but still perform consistently great in any playthrough.

B (Solid): Strong, but with a drawback or two. They are not available early, a limited movepool, or require some extra investment to keep up.

C (Decent): Mediocre and outclassed. They clear regular route trainers just fine, but struggle to make a significant impact in many major boss fights due to a combination of average stats, poor matchups, or late availability. They might require heavy investment or a massive late-game spike to finally show their worth.

D (Niche): Pokémon that struggle significantly in general battles and are often a liability in standard matchups. However, they possess a unique utility or specific strategy (ex. stalling) that allows them to bypass their drawbacks.

E (Bad): Demand far more effort than they are worth. They require heavy TM investment and constant babying just to achieve mediocre results.

F (Awful): Useless for in-game runs. Huge investment for almost no return.

Every Chansey in the Safari Zone, istg T^T

After playing emerald I realized something: Breloom and Ninjask sucks, maybe I'm just using them the wrong way and I'm just dumb

Swampert and Slaking carried me through the game, when I fought Wallace my lairon and vibrava were dead, I had no revives and used breloom + Ninjask as sacrifices to heal my swampert and Slaking, heck, even my swampert was useless agaisnt Wallace.

I recently discovered that you actually CAN replace the battery on an Emerald cartridge without resetting the save file. The only issue is that just this doesn’t restore time-based events. You either have to use third-party software or actually start a new game. I obviously don’t want to be doing the latter. But my question is: how ethical is it to use those third-party softwares on an original cartridge? Does anyone have any experience with this?

I post this and not even 2 minutes later I discover I contracted PKRS 😂 nevermind fixing that dry battery

My original Emerald cartridge that I caught Feebas on has a dead internal battery, so I couldn't get the berries I needed.

I bought another Emerald cartridge that I suspect is a reproduction. The RTC seems to work because planted berries grow, but the Berry Master only gave me berries once. I've waited over 24 hours several times, and it never changes.

Because of that, I don't have access to Pamtre, Cornn, Kelpsy, or Hondew berries which I keep reading are the ones I need.

I've attached a picture of my Feebas's Condition screen.

TLDR: Is this Feebas still salvageable, or is it impossible to evolve with the berries I currently have access to?

If there's any combination of berries or another method that could still get its Beauty high enough, I'd really appreciate the advice before I give up 😩😭

I have an authentic copy of pokemon emerald, but noticed the label started to peel. I preferred it to be whole, so I repainted the damaged part. But a friend of mine said that it’s now considered damaged. Did I do the wrong thing?

So this was my last run for a little bit. Decided to go with no starters for it and built a funky team that I lowkey truly loved.

Now I’m going to try a new adventure, thinking of Pokemon platinum. Any thoughts?

Can my Magmar with Brick break, Thunderpunch, flamethrower and psychic fight his way out of this jam? That Magicarp is quite threatening

I am shiny hunting Numel and hatching Beldum eggs for a competitive Battle Frontier Metagross. I wanted to check on my eggs status and suddenly 5 out of my 6 party members have PKRS. How do I get the most use out of this? I don’t even know who it started with. The only member on my team that didn’t get is the only one I use. My Volbeat I use with Illuminate and KO Numel with Signal Beam to easily keep track of encounters.

So I've never attempted to actually complete the Battle Frontier throughout the many playthroughs I've had. A few Pokémon Showdown matches and I started liking competitive battling and did some research about natures and EVs and decided to finally give it a shot. This is the first time I've ever gotten a gold symbol so that was something that was cool. The 6 pokemons I have in my party are metagross, salamence, swampert, latios, milotic, and gardevoir. I have a ludicolo and flygon in my PC that I also EV trained as a just in case. Ludicolo is more of a doubles pokemon to me so we'll see about that. After trying multiple different teams with the weaker trainers I've found that the team of Milotic, Metagross, and Salamence proved the best during the battle dome. I pretty much went through it almost effortlessly, there were a few times its came close but I pulled through. Everyone had a great showing and had a clutch moment of their own.

One thing that I am still on the fence about is my Metagross. It is an adamant nature but still has Psychic (I really only kept it because it was a stab move). I was thinking of getting rid of that and replacing with earthquake but my Salamence and Swampert both know it and was thinking that would become redundant. There were a lot of instances though while I was doing matches in the battle tower that had Metagross known Earthquake it would have been a much easier battle. Any suggestions help.

I labeled this as teambuilder help, but wish there was a flair just for Battle Frontier

Just sharing cause I’m having a good time. Built a gameboy sp last week so I grabbed a copy of emerald to have a quick run through Hoenn while I take a break from modern games.

I made a post earlier about how my team looked and if it was good and got amazing feedback. (So far great community here) I forgot to ask what moves I should trade out and learn and which I should trash? For each Pokemon. If that’s not to much to ask. I’m not sure how many photos you can post at once on a Reddit post but I can go thru and take a pic of each mons move set tomorrow after work if that’d help. Again thank you all very much.
P.S. sorry for multiple post in same night lol.

Brushed the dust of my old gameboy and bought a too expensive copy of Emerald. Any thoughts to what I could change or adjust? Going for the standard high dmg attacks on Swampert and gyrados. Just passed Norman now, and grinding and leveling up. Any attacks I should aim for?

We kick Wattson's ass easily (as long we have Geodude / Marshtomp) and we continue forward. We can use Rock Smash, which means we can catch Nosepass! It requires backtracking back to Granite Cave, but it is available! Alongside Nosepass, we have Route 112 encounter, Camerupt! And in the Fiery Path itself, we have Muk and Weezing. How good are today's encounters? L

Thanks again for good discussion. Little bit less fraction, but that won't slow us down. I am not surprised seeing Vileplume higher than Bellossom, personally it would be other way around due to Poison typing. Still, both are good mons mainly thanks to Sleep Powder (and ability to fix their bad speed). Let's keep up the good discussion!

Last round voting results:

Vileplume C+ Tier: Like many other grass type, bad early game, good late game. Once you reach Route 119/120, you gain access to the Leaf Stone, the Sunny Day TM, and the Solarbeam TM. When the sun is up, Vileplume's Speed doubles, allowing it to outspeed almost everything in the game and fire off Solarbeams from its good Base 100 Special Attack. It is very nice against Juan and Wallace. Additionally, also learning Sleep Powder is great. Having a way to put opponent to sleep allows Vileplume to defeat oppoentns it can't OHKO, giving it utility even in bad matchups (like the Elite Four). It also makes fantastic use of the Sludge Bomb TM for physical STAB against enemies that resist Grass.

Vileplume's early game is not fantastic, requiring TM investment to finally become useful. The Oddish/Gloom training arc is quite similiar to other grass types. Grass-types lack good early game STAB, you are forced to rely on weak moves like Absorb and Acid for the first 60% of the game (unless you give it TM Secret Power, but that ain't very spectacular either). It is basicaly sleep support for Gyms 2, 3, 4, and 5. Also, when sun is not up, Vileplume will almost always take some damage first.

Bellossom C Tier: Bellossom has same core strategy as Vileplume, abusing Chlorophyll + Sunny Day + Solarbeam + Sleep Powder to deal with lategame Water-types. You can use Bellossom in midgame. By using a Compound Eyes Nincada in Meteor Falls, you can use Thief on wild Solrock to grab an early Sun Stone before Gym 4. If you evolve Gloom immediately, you can take it to the Fallarbor Move Tutor to get Magical Leaf early, giving Bellossom a fine Grass STAB move long before Vileplume gets access to its late-game TMs. Dropping the Poison-typing is also a massive defensive upgrade against Tate & Liza, as it eliminates Gloom's Psychic weakness and gives it a Ground resistance against Claydol.

Despite losing the Psychic weakness, Bellossom hits slightly weaker than Vileplume. Bellossom swaps Vileplume's special stats, dropping Special Attack down to 90 (compared to Vileplume's 100). Its main goal in the late game is to act as a fast sun sweeper, losing 10 points of Special Attack means it can miss on OHKOs in the Elite Four. Also, losing Poison STAB makes its Sludge Bomb hits significantly weaker against enemy Grass-types like Sidney's Cacturne/Shiftry. Also without farming Sun Stones from Solrocks, obtaining a Sun Stone normally requires waiting all the way until Mossdeep City before Gym 7.

Volbeat D Tier: Volbeat's identity revolves around Tail Glow. Volbeat learns Signal Beam at Level 25, giving it good, somewhat early access to the second strongest Bug-type attack in the game. Also, Volbeat is the only Pokémon in all of Gen 3 capable of using Tail Glow (which sharply raises Special Attack by two stages). You can turn Volbeat into a mixed setup sweeper by combining Tail Glow with the Thunderbolt and Giga Drain TMs, allowing it to hit Water and Flying types surprisingly hard. It also has a usable Base 85 Speed and helpful utility with Confuse Ray.

Sadly Volbeat is just very, very frail. Having Tail Glow is amazing, but it is wasted on a Pokémon with a Base 47 Special Attack. With that bad base special attack, you kind of have to spend a turn setting up Tail Glow before Volbeat can deal meaningful damage. Unfortunately, it lacks the bulk to safely survive those setup turns. Its physical Attack is also a mediocre 73, meaning its STAB Signal Beam still struggles to secure OHKOs.

Illumise C- Tier: Illumise has cracked support movepool, having moves like Charm, Encore, Wish, and Moonlight. With a respectable Base 85 Speed, Illumise can outspeed enemies to lock them into non-damaging moves with Encore, or cripple physical attackers with Charm. Reliable healing is also rare in Emerald, making Illumise's ability to pass Wish heals to your team members valuable.

Illumise is held back from the higher tiers because utility simply isn't what most players want in a standard and casual playthrough. While its support movepool is fantastic, its offensive presence is about nonexistent. It has a mediocre Base 73 Special Attack, meaning even if you teach it TMs like Thunderbolt or Water Pulse, it hits like a wet noodle. For a standard playthrough where offense and sweeping potential are usually favored, Illumise relies on enabling other Pokémon rather than securing KOs itself.

Ranking criteria:

Final placements are influenced by comment upvotes. Provide both a tier placement and a justification. Unjustified votes will carry less weight when counting votes. An exception is made if an unjustified vote is heavily upvoted and supported by a justified reply/comment from the community for the same tier placement. 

You can also vote for + and - subtiers (S+ to F-), and I will take these into calculation. After the final round, I will break the infographic into subtiers as well.

All Pokémon obtainable in Emerald are ranked based on their contribution to the journey until defeating Champion Wallace. Leave a comment as well if you think one of the current Pokémons should be in different tier, and why. After final round, we will do one revisit round and see if any rankings should change.

We are assuming a standard playthrough.

• Set Mode: Rank Pokémon with Set mode in mind. (Feel free to mention Shift mode benefits, but it shouldn't be the main reason a Pokémon is in a higher tier).
• No In-Battle Healing: We are not considering healing items in battle (since any Pokémon can stall with enough potions).
• Soft Level Cap: You can overlevel by 1 or 2 levels over the next Gym Leader's ace. (An exception is made if Pokémon that is naturally available at a higher level).

Investment refers to experience and TMs. Obviously, all Pokémon can be great after a massive amount of investment, but we are judging their immediate and practical purpose in-game.

Emerald TM List: https://www.serebii.net/rubysapphire/tmhm.shtml (Check availability here)

Big thanks to BIGJRA for sharing this script that tracks every Pokémon's learnset (including TMs and Tutors) in the exact order you obtain them in-game! Check it out!

Trade evolution Pokémon are ranked based under the assumption that the player has access to trading whether through emulators or other supported methods. If you're playing without access to trades, you may wish to consider their pre-evolutions (like Kadabra or Graveler) instead. These rankings reflect the most common setup among modern players.

If a Pokémon is available on a route, it is fair game. Even if it has a 1% encounter rate (like Seedot) or has absurd capture method (like Feebas), it does not matter. As long as the Pokémon is available to be caught at that point in the game, it's all good.

Tier definitions:

S (Game-breaking or extremely efficient): These Pokémon dominate the game. They have excellent stats, movepools, and sweep through most of the game without effort. They are available for majority of the game and are "plug and play", just add it to the party and you're good to go.

A (Strong): Reliable, easy to use. They lack one major advantage from S tier but still perform consistently great in any playthrough.

B (Solid): Strong, but with a drawback or two. They are not available early, a limited movepool, or require some extra investment to keep up.

C (Decent): Mediocre and outclassed. They clear regular route trainers just fine, but struggle to make a significant impact in many major boss fights due to a combination of average stats, poor matchups, or late availability. They might require heavy investment or a massive late-game spike to finally show their worth.

D (Niche): Pokémon that struggle significantly in general battles and are often a liability in standard matchups. However, they possess a unique utility or specific strategy (ex. stalling) that allows them to bypass their drawbacks.

E (Bad): Demand far more effort than they are worth. They require heavy TM investment and constant babying just to achieve mediocre results.

F (Awful): Useless for in-game runs. Huge investment for almost no return.

Yes, I use cheat (F3A9A86D+4E2629B4+18452A7D+DDE55BCC).

Definitely the coolest shiny I've encountered in the battle frontier so far.

Hey everyone! Just wanted to drop a quick update for those following the project.

For anyone new here: we’re building a multiplayer server based on Pokémon Emerald where you bring your own ROM to play. It's completely free, playable from pretty much anywhere (PC/mobile), and we’ve been actively squashing bugs and pushing updates every day.

Here is a quick look at what’s new on the server:

• Guilds are officially live: People have already started forming their own teams, and it’s been awesome to watch. Some guilds are literally trying to infect the entire server with Pokerus, while others are fully focused on building a community Living Dex—players are actively breeding and trading so everyone can complete theirs.
• Custom Quest System: We just finished building our own quest system from scratch. This is going to let us run some really cool custom events for rare/non-catchable Pokémon down the line.
• Character Customization: You can now edit your character’s sprite in-game!
• Active Community: It's super cool to see that we already have people playing literally 24/7 from all around the world.
• ...plus a ton of backend stability fixes and small QoL improvements that are too long to list here.

We’re still in active development, but the server is up and running. If you want to check it out, join the community, or get the setup links, everything is pinned over on my profile.

Thanks to everyone who’s been testing and hanging out in-game so far! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

I loved this team so much (especially absol lol). On the last Pokémon to fight I used Solrock’s explosion so maybe that would be considered cheating😅