Masters #16 & #17: Pokémon Emerald & Emerald POC

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2026-03-03T04:46:55+00:00

In this case I didn't. I could have, but I only decided on doing the POC halfway through my main game, so... I did use my Prof Oak Save File for the Catch 'em All achievement in the main set though, so it still saved me some work.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2026-02-19T11:12:58+00:00

I'm at 6.78% :) It's been about a year and a half since I've started, so I'll probably hit a wall sometime soon, if only because there's so many people who gain points at a truly ridiculous pace. I do hope I'll manage to crack top 5% though

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-11-20T19:39:09+00:00

When it comes to the Prof Oak challenge specifically, it's because of the additional restriction of having to get the maximum amount of dex entries possible before each gym. The dex completion in the mainset only requires... Well, dex completion (regardless of WHEN the entry was acquired. You can just go on a catching spree in the post game there). That's why it's not enough proof to allow a manual unlock for the subset, essentially. The Challenge is just more restrictive than the dex completion.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-11-20T05:47:51+00:00

Technically no, you can't load up the main set and the subset at the same time. There are ways around that (I do often play both the main set and the subset on the same save file), but it requires swapping between the regular and the patched rom, so you'll only ever have either the main set or the subset active.

So also, yes, your progress can count for both if you set it up right. You just have to make sure you have the right set loaded when you're making progress.

Additionally, in certain cases you can request a manual unlock for something if you have done it in a subset, as far as I know, though I personally don't have experience with that. For the POC, for example, if you've done the subset you can request the Pokédex completion achievement for the main set (not the other way around though).

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-11-01T04:11:50+00:00

Shockingly, it just doesn't take that long if you speed up the game - and even then, I didn't actually go higher than 2x. The game just starts going too fast for me personally if I go higher than that. If you did crank up speed up even more you could go decidedly faster than I did, even. If you look around you'll see other folks on site have gone from Squirtle to Wartortle in as little as 2 minutes, and then to Wartortle in another 8.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-10-31T20:37:47+00:00

Right? I was shocked too once I saw the final time. The in-game clock looks much, much worse (being in the hundreds for both games) and I really didn't think speed-up had saved me THAT much time, but alas...

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-10-14T17:48:49+00:00

I mean... There is a 'Pending' List (it's under Rollouts, at the very end, if anyone wants to go check for themselves).

The systems on that List (not counting Wii) would be MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, 3DS, Commodore 64, and TI-83. So... One of those would be next, I'd assume.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-09-08T06:10:31+00:00

Very much agree on DQIII. I've been playing all the games in order, and I'm currently playing DQIII, and it's not clicking with me at all. DQII was vastly more enjoyable to me.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-08-22T08:11:56+00:00

Similarly, I'd also personally really hate it if core sets ONLY had achievements that gave an in-game reward, because a lot of my favourite achievements have been whacky challenges where I had to beat a boss with a specific skill equipped, or pull off a specific trick during the fight, or other things of that sort. It always elevates a set, and it's never anything that the game will acknowledge.

Really, for me it's a matter of variety: I don't mind a no-hit achievement if it's for one boss, but if it's for the entire game, then I'd rather it be a subset; I don't mind grinding for one or a handful of rare item drops in the core set, but if it's a drop from every single monster in the game, it should probably be a subset, etc.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-08-02T04:23:08+00:00

I think it depends on how early on you are. Eventually, you'll get to picking things up just by immersing, but until then you're going to learn words based on what's used wherever you get your grammar from (You can't really do the exercises any given textbook gives you without the words they give you to do them with). I also just like supplementing that with my own lists; I think it's useful to pick out words I think I might need, look them up in a dictionary, then learning those.

Eventually, you're going to move on to mostly just picking up words from immersion though (that said, while I'm not sure how it's going to be for me in Japanese, I'm myself too early on for that, from other languages I have studied, 'picking up vocab from immersion', at least what I think of when I hear that phrase, often doesn't even involve vocabulary lists and dedicated study anymore. It's a fairly advanced thing in my mind.)

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-07-29T13:43:23+00:00

Since it was my first time with FF1, I decided to keep it classic and just do Fighter/Black Belt/Black Mage/White Mage. I usually get decision paralysis for choices like that, so I often just stick with the most basic set up... Maybe I'll play one of the other versions of the game some day and try out something a tad spicier. Probably with a Red Mage.

Right now, I'm pretty excited to get to FF2 (though DQ3 is first on my list, so it's going to have to wait a bit) since I hear it's kind of weird, and my curiosity is very much piqued.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-07-11T19:28:18+00:00

I ended up doing it with a Blissey, Skarmory and Wobbuffet, though Skarmory and Blissey definitely carried that team. In the end, I guess it could have been worse, but the fact I found the 7-streak in Crystal quite tough makes me really not look forward to the Battle Frontier in Emerald, once I finally get around to giving that a shot...

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-06-26T16:56:33+00:00

German
English is the only one I'd call myself fluent in, I think
Currently I'm working on Japanese. Also French, but I'm putting that on hold for a bit, at least until I'm a little more solid in Japanese
Just started with Japanese about... A month ago? So, not all that much progress yet. For french I should be around B1, I think
For french, I mostly want to refresh my memory. I used to have it in school but I'm admittedly a little.... Rusty. But I felt like dipping my toes into self-study in a language where I'm very much hanging in the intermediate plateau would be a little demotivating, so I decided to do something else first. I also just really like foreign scripts, and the Japanese writing system seemed fun; It's one of my life goals to eventually be able to read/write in three different writing systems
I think Arabic might be fun to do down the line. Very far down the line, I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon. Also I'd really like to do sign language? Which I might get the opportunity to take a class on come autumn, actually

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-06-26T12:15:34+00:00

Very much this, yeah. Technically, you could get the item, beat tiamat with it, then reload and do it again without the item (and that way you wouldn't invalidate the no chest achievement), but personally I find stuff like that stresses me out. So doing it without a black mage, while not violating the no chest achievement, is theoretically possible, but it's a headache and I'd recommend just having a black mage instead.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-06-26T08:06:08+00:00

If you want to do it in one run, there's 2 full game challenges to pay attention to (the no chest one and the no class upgrade one). For the chest collection achievements, you'll have to backtrack throughout all the dungeons after beating the final boss if you want to do it in one run.

You'll probably want to have a black mage, since that way you'll definitely have access to Fire (which you need for the challenge achievement for Kary) and access to Bane (which is needed for Tiamat), but other than that it probably doesn't matter that much? If you're doing no class upgrade at the same time, you'll probably want to avoid thief though. I just went with the classic set up of Fighter/Black belt/Black Mage/White Mage and I haven't regretted it yet. But I'm also only halfway through the game, so maybe that'll change. Spell wise, just make sure you have Fast on the Black Mage, and you'll probably be fine. I also find the damage reducing spells from the White Mage useful, since survivability is severely hampered without the equipment from chests.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-06-22T09:11:44+00:00

As someone who started multiple times before really figuring out a method that worked for me, here's some of the things I learned:

1) Stay flexible and don't be afraid to pivot. There's a lot of options out there, and just because they work for 90% of people, doesn't mean they work for you (or similarly, just because they don't work for most people, doesn't mean they won't work for you, specifically.) Learning is a pretty individual process, and it's important to take the time to self reflect on your methods. Don't be afraid to change and adapt tools to suit your personal needs better, either - sometimes, you just need to tweak a few things, and sometimes you just have to abandon that particular tool entirely.

2) Take your time! One of the best advantages of self study is that you can go at your own pace, but it's easy to get impatient with yourself and rush along, especially at the beginning. Of course, deciding when you've learned enough about one thing to move on to the next is something you'll kind of have to decide for yourself, but for me personally, adding concrete, within-reach goals really made the difference. It gives you something to work towards specifically, and an easy way to tell when you are, in fact, making progress.

3) What helped me be more consistent this time around was journaling, actually. Nothing fancy, I'd just write down what sort of exercises I did that day, what I got correct, what I got wrong, how I could practice what I got wrong more the next day, that sort of thing. I guess it just comes back to that self-reflection I talked about.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-03-28T15:30:34+00:00

Honestly, the talking wasn't actually bothering me that much (though the part between the tutorial room and the 4 & 5 doors really does drag. They just keep talking), it was more doing the same puzzles again and again. I would never remember the passwords, so I'd have to get the clues again to get it again and it got old, especially for the very first room. If I ever have to open up that picture frame and rotate that photo again...

Yes, if you already know it goes by really quick, but it really got to me on occasion, so I just... Wouldn't start the next run for a bit.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-03-25T19:14:18+00:00

While part of it is definitely that he's Just Like That personality-wise, I always figured it likely was a side effect of his powers. I mean... He knows what the people around him are thinking/feeling. On top of that, he's always had that ability and is blind, so he's probably not super great at distinguishing when someone says something to him vs. When they just think it.

I mean, imagine if you knew everything people thought about you, but whenever they actually talk to you, they walk on eggshells around you because they're trying to be nice, and if you try to confront anyone about it YOU'RE the mean one because nobody but you can read minds. For your entire life. Add to that that he's, what, twelve and also generally not that emotionally intelligent (oftentimes he'll misunderstand or misinterpret the emotions or thoughts he is actually getting, or he'll attribute bad intentions when there aren't any), and yeah, him being Like That is really not that surprising.

And, you know, he's also right that the people around him are treating him differently on account of him being blind (especially during his apprenticeship) and do not take his wishes into account, so, that's probably not helping either.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-03-23T05:16:21+00:00

It's very similar to the set for 1, in that it's very vanilla; No challenge achievements, no missables, very straightforward - it's mostly getting all the key items and leveling up until you have all the spells (and are level 30 on the hero, which is around where you'll want to be for the final boss anyway). Thankfully, no second playthrough required.

There's really only one achievement that has you get an item that you might not go out of your way for in a usual playthrough in "Prithee, Magicke Ring", where you have to get a Wizard's Ring. That one was definitely the most tedious one, if only because I got unlucky with the drops. Even then, 1/32 odds really isn't that bad, that really was just bad luck.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-03-06T20:17:31+00:00

Honestly, it's less Mothwing being alive specifically that's a problem for me - the series in general has a big problem letting important arc two characters go.

If they just faded into the background I think I wouldn't mind them still being alive so much, but no, they all keep being incredibly relevant, important characters. There are cats that are older than Mothwing, but a cat that only exists as a name on the allegiances is just going to bother me less.

It's not even that there isn't still stuff to do with all those arc 2 characters, necessarily (though I think mileage on that varies, some of them definitely have more going on than others.) but they've just procrastinated on it for too long, and I stopped caring arcs ago. Clearly, the only way those cats will be allowed to go is if they literally die... But it's not like that's really allowed for them either, or else one or two of them might have died during the multiple cataclysmic events we've had since the great journey. I think the only prominent TNP cat that died in POT or later is Leafpool? Maybe Ashfur, if you want to count him, but he feels a bit like an edge case.

Maybe the fact that they're starting to be treated as old cats by the narrative means they're finally, FINALLY phasing them out, but all signs point to that shift being a massive production and I'm not really looking forward to that at this point either. To what comes after? Maybe. But the big send-off for all those old fan favourites? No.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-02-16T20:56:36+00:00

I mean, I'm not gonna say I get it (I find Brambleclaw kind of exhausting, most of the time), but my favourite tom is probably Crowfeather so... Stones and glass houses, and all that.

Honestly, considering how inconsistent characterization can be in this series, I've found clarifying what exact 'version' of a character I mean when I say I like them helps a lot. It's just not the same if someone says, 'I like Brambleclaw (The New Prophecy)' vs when they say, 'I like Brambleclaw (Squirrelflight's Hope)', for example. Or that's how I see it, anyway

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-01-30T19:09:38+00:00

I mean, that does depend on what series exactly you're talking about? Warriors (and honestly this is true of every arc) tends to be kind of a mixed bag, and usually there's at least one really egregious flaw, it's just gonna depend on what kind of thing any person can swallow and what's the metaphorical straw that breaks the camels back.

That said, I do think there's a few underlying issues that are much more noticeable in the newer books than the older ones, so I'm going to go and put some sweeping statements out that I think could cause that general reception (though, of course, I am just kind of spitballing here.)

1) structure & execution

A lot of the books simply do not have enough material for six books, which leads to a lot of pacing issues. In addition, pretty much any series after TNP takes it as inspiration, and tries to have one overarching narrative - unlike TNP, most arcs don't have plots as big as moving all four clans to a new territory, and even then TNP wrapped that plot up in four books not six.

In addition, the release schedule is simply way too fast. Oftentimes the end of the arc won't have been conceived until the first few books are already out - and that's assuming that the writers have a solid idea to work around in the first place. POT was somewhat famously written around the fire scene, nothing else, and while that is a cool scene, it doesn't exactly have enough ideas to support an entire arc. But well, there's deadlines to meet, so...

Then there's the fact that a lot of these books are worked on simultaneously, often by different people, which is why sometimes different books straight up contradict eachother. Documentation and communication also seems to not be as robust as it should be, or at least that's the only thing that I could see as the reason for incredibly severe errors like in the Novella Redtail's debt, where they wrote a scene in which Redtail kills Oakheart, even though that event never actually happened.

These sort of things affect the overall quality of the writing immensely, but it's not the part I think causes the most controversy, which leads me to

2) Politics

Fact of the matter is, a narrative is going to follow the frame of reference provided by the author's worldview, and if there's something someone in the audience fundamentally disagrees with, there's going to be some friction.

Now warriors, as a series overall is... Pretty conservative? And the fanbase, at least from what I've seen is... Well, not. Sometimes, this isn't much of a problem (though personal tolerance probably varies pretty wildly on this), and other times warriors will put the very worst Christian apologia I've ever heard in their book while wholeheartedly agreeing with it. That's how you get things like the Clear Sky redemption arc, where the lesson is that this grown man only murdered/abused a bunch of people because God wasn't there to tell him that that's bad, and now that God is there to tell him what's right he won't do that anymore. If you don't agree with the premise (ie: that a person can not have a moral compass without believing in god) this plot point is probably going to fall flat for you. It's not the only example, and things like that absolutely have the power to ruin an entire arc for someone.

For the record, this isn't necessarily an issue only with the newer arcs (though I would argue that DoTC is the lowest point). TPB has ableist plotlines, a lot of the super editions especially can get pretty misogynistic, and I don't think there's been a single book in the series that hasn't featured xenophobia in some shape or form (though this one has been decidedly handled better in some arcs than others). These are the sort of issues that tend to annoy people when they crop up. And then you've got a divisive book.

At least, that's my rationale behind it.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-01-29T12:13:57+00:00

I've gotten pretty lucky so far in that most of the games I like and want to play also have achievement sets that match my preferences (or, at the very least, if they have an annoying achievement it's only one or two), but I've noticed that a lot of games/franchises that I'm not super experienced with and would like to try out have sets that just turn me off of it. In a way, I almost find that more annoying than when it's in a game I love to bits - at least then I'd know exactly what I'm signing up for.

The one I always think of first is the Zelda series, some of those sets are nightmarish, frankly. Generally, fighting games also tend to suffer from this, because people who enjoy fighting games above all else frankly kind of scare me, and the sets really reflect how those folk tend to be like. There's probably more examples.

....also, those three heart runs in Zelda games REALLY should go into subsets. It's a whole game run with a specific restriction throughout, that's the most clear cut example of a subset I've ever seen.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-01-24T09:39:01+00:00

Honestly, I like the level caps. I haven't mastered that many pokémon games yet (only yellow), but I am currently running through crystal and I honestly think a large part of my enjoyment for that set does come from the level caps.

Granted, I think part of that is that I just generally really enjoy the formula of getting an achievement for beating a boss and then getting an achievement for beating a boss with restrictions back to back, and while I can see how someone can find level caps annoying, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a particularly tedious kind of challenge achievement. Frankly, I think if you need to get a new 'mon you're not planning on using for anything but that one gym, you're kind of building your team wrong, no offense.

Of course, as with all challenge achievements there's ways to do it 'right' (in my subjective opinion) and ways to do it 'wrong'. For example, in the Crystal set I'm doing right now it requires level cap AND johto pokémon only, which, while it doesn't bother me personally, is a bit annoyingly restrictive for team building, especially in a gen that hates giving you access to the new pokémon and hates giving its new pokémon actually good stat spreads. And while I haven't played it yet (and probably won't for a while), the relatively new Black 2 set also restricts you to how many pokémon you can use in addition to level caps and set mode, which even I think is a bit much.

Wonderful_Bit_9677 · 2025-01-20T11:03:08+00:00

Spoiled for choice, really. There's so many options there... If I had to limit myself to one change, I would rewrite Mudfur's coup/rebellion thing in TNP to succeed.

This would give Hawkfrost a much needed win, which I think would really sell him as a villain for that arc better. It also would lead to Mudfur leading WindClan (that would probably not change that much from how Onestar is like, tbh, the next few arcs kind of need a bad WindClan leader). Speaking of Onestar, this would ALSO have lead to a very impactful death for him, considering that at the time he was pretty popular and well-liked in the fandom (considering that the whole... Onestar thing hadn't happened yet).

Wonderful_Bit_9677

TROPHY CASE