Day 2: The Long and Winding Road

Current location: Saved in the Cyllage Pokemon Center just after beating Grant. The party is all level 27, and the current team is as follows:

Honedge (Shadow Sneak, Rock Smash, Aerial Ace, Return)
Shedinja (Shadow Claw, Return, Thief, Leech Life)

Drifloon - Brave (+Atk, -Speed) - Aftermath
- Hex
- Gust
- Thief
- Focus Energy

Surprisingly versatile (SA is just slightly above Atk and the nature will help), and the fact that his Ghost STAB just doubled in PP is a godsend. Levelled up quickly on Route 8 since I got a lot of the Zangoose/Seviper hordes, so that's 800exp a fight right there. It's about to evolve, so I can't wait to see what happens with his HP count.

 Golett - Lonely (+Atk, -Def) - Iron Fist
- Shadow Punch
- Magnitude
- Rock Tomb
- Strength

It took a while to get Golett up to speed, as Bulldoze's Speed-lowering effect isn't that noticeable when he keels over and dies in two hits from anything. The Defense penalty doesn't help. But once it clawed its way to Magnitude, suddenly he started doing some more damage. Is largely going to serve as an HM mule, but it's going to keep Shadow Punch for the duration.

To say I was flat bloody broke when I picked the game up this morning would be quite an understatement - so much so that I ducked into the Battle Chateau. It turned out to be an extremely profitable venture and also helped with getting Golett leveled as I'm now a Countess and have unlocked some high experience Pokemon (Skarmory? Seriously?) that have put my cash reserves at about 150k. At two badges.

The Route 8 complex is one of the most irritating parts of the game because you're not yet financially independent enough to afford Repels, and you have some pretty heavy Hordes to deal with - notably that Zangoose/Seviper one if you're going to catch everything on the route. Glittering Cave is a bit annoying for the same thing, but there's a healer outside so you can eventually get everything in there.

Cyllage and Route 10 isn't much to write home about, but the gym... I thought Grant would be quite easy, but I either underestimated their stats or over-estimated what I'd be going into that fight with. It took a couple of attempts to get past Amaura, and then Strong Jaw Tyrunt with a super-effective Bite had quite a long lunch with the rest of my team. I ended up using a Honedge/Shedinja combo to get past Amaura and Golett was able to survive one Bite and hit with Magnitude 9 (!!!) to set up Drifloon for a win.

The next Gym is Fighting, so long as I can beat down all Machokes with prejudice I should be able to get past that tomorrow (work permitting). I'll have Sableye to play with as well, so we'll be pretty close to a full squad.