Gotta Train 'Em All Part 1 - Gym 4

ROUTE 34 - GYM 4

The trek to Ecruteak City via Routes 34, the National Park, 35 and 37 were pretty uneventful. I just played the type alignments to win battles. No particular type has given this team a tough time yet except for Flying. The lack of an effective Electric type means that birds take a couple of moves to beat. Slugma does know Rock Throw, but his increasingly unimpressive Atk stat makes that move less useful on Flying types than Ember.

Sudowoodo didn't put up much of a fight against Psyduck, who learned Water Pulse at lv 22. A few other worthwhile notes: Shuckle learned Wrap at lv 22 (not a very good move, but another way to slowly drain an opponent's health) and Ekans evolved into Arbok at lv 22, learning Crunch right after. His stats got a 10 or 15 point boost, and he is definitely my most effective physical Atk Pokemon.

I battled my rival again in the Burned Tower. He added a Mangemite to his team. Slugma easily beat him.

I planned on using Arbok's Dark type Bite and Crunch to power my way past Morty, but some success. He took out a Ghastly and Haunter in a single hit. His lv 25 Gengar got the better of Arbok. I made an error in judgment and tossed out Drowzee next, and Gengar killed him in one Shadow Ball. Psyduck finally killed him off, but with only 8 HP remaining. Morty had one Haunter still to use, and Psyduck's low Speed ensured his death. So I switched to Slugma, hoping he could power through the final opponent. In a stroke of luck, Slugma burned Haunter on the first move. I thought then that Shuckle could just take a bunch of hits and wait for the burn to finish it off. However, this Haunter knew Night Shade, which did 23 damage to Shuckle every turn. I changed once again to Skiploom, and the combination of Bullet Seed and well timed Synthesis won the battle.