I (barely) beat Storm Silver!
After beating FireRed Omega about a month ago, I mulled over which game to do next. I don't think I'm quite ready to take on a Kaizo game yet so I stuck with Drayano. I chose SS/SG because I felt the most familiar with Johto. I chose Storm Silver because I wasn't sure what the differences were and I like Lugia more than Ho-Oh so... Storm Silver it is!
There was a massive learning curve for this ROM I wasn't expecting. I played the first few runs without documentation because I just wanted to see how far I could get off of vibes and out of about a dozen attemps, I made it to Goldenrod once.
A few things I learned along the way:
-Once I got serious, I started naming my runs alphabetically. Going to do this moving forward so I don't have more "countless attempts" and I'm too lazy to tally them.
-Beating the 5th gym is pretty straightforward after a while, but it feels like it's only a 3rd of the game. From Jasmine to the Champion is so incredibly dense with boss battles. Each individual fight isn't necessarily hard but runs could spiral out of control very fast if I lost the wrong mon at the wrong time.
-My previous furthest attempts were losses to the rival in Goldenrod Underground and I actually lost to Lance's Garchomp on the attempt before this because my team was much too slow.
-There are a couple of fights in the run that are honestly well-designed traps. A couple of forced doubles that you can't just speed through, and a Wobuffett in the rocket hideout in Mahogany that took away my Scizor in a previous run. The hardest lesson I learned is there is no prize for playing ignorantly blind.
-How I optimized this run was to hold off on as many encounters as possible in case I wanted to go after a roamer later. Glaceon solos Falkner and getting a Geodude in Ruins of Alph made the Bugsy fight easier (which I didn't know you could do until way too late)
-My box was always pretty well stocked, which occasionally lured me into a false sense of security. Mamoswine, Lucario, Crobat, and Staraptor were all crucial members of my team and my calcs that I lost because I decided to steer at random times. Magnezone, for example. was a really dumb death - I sent him out to fight the Red Gyarados and I got aqua tail critted in the rain and died before I could even attack.
-I would also spend too much time trying to dodge spinners only to forget which ones I'd fought and have to fight with an unprepared team. There were many close calls throughout the run. One of the swimmers on route 30 has a level 33 Gyarados and I had no electric moves on my team. Somehow I made it out with no deaths by chipping away at him and carefully switching.
-I got the choice items in this run as soon as I could, which was a massive help for some fights that were on the borderline of riskless.
For the E4, the way I calc'd it, basically everything was completely fine and I wasn't expecting to have any trouble. Raikou would setup sweep Will, and then my plan was to use choice specs Psychic Alakazam on Koga after killing the Venomoth. What I didn't notice while calcing was that his Crobat outsped and one-shot my Alakazam. From there it was a HARD pivot, but ended up being fine as long as I didn't drop another unecessary death. I sent in Raikou who one-shot, which then brought in Toxicroak. I hard switched Heracross and got poisoned, which I thought was fine because I could Guts and Aerial Ace but I calc'd it as +2 instead of +1. I lowrolled and I lost Heracross too!!
Starmie swept the fight and basically singlehandedly dealt with Bruno. Infernape was my backup for Karen and ended up putting in work there.
My rule for the Champion was I could only level one mon to level 60 for the Champ fight, and Starmie could reliably outspeed and one-shot everything on Lance's team without specs. I was so excited to get back to the champion that I clicked thunderbolt on his Gyarados, out comes Garchomp, I clicked ice beam... and I forgot to take off Choice Specs.
I swear to god I almost quit right there. I ended up sac'ing my own Garchop so I could switch back into Starmie and kill with ice beam, which I did until I got to Charizard and then had Raikou finish him off.
Even though it was incredibly messy, I know I improved a lot as a player. My biggest area for growth is consistency - for many fights, I'd overprepare or try to find a perfect line or try to find a way to solo a trainer with one mon. Other times, I'd just walk into a spinner flippantly and be totally caught off guard. I'm sure there's a happy medium, if not just generally leaning toward preparation.
Anyway, on to the next one! Though, I might try to make it to Red just for fun.