Pokémon Sapphire 100%
This is a project that I have been working on for about a year now, and finally completed today, after lots of hassle, but i'm so glad I did it.
Defining 100%
So what is involved in a '100%' run of Sapphire? While technically I didn't do absolutely everything in the game, I did everything I could without losing my mind.
Here's a list of what I completed:
- Beat the Champion
- Catch all available Legendary Pokémon
- Complete the Hoenn Dex*
- Complete the National Dex*
- Complete both, but in Living form*
- Collect all Overworld items**
- Beat the 50 trainer challenge at the Battle Tower
- Beat the 100 trainer challenge at the Battle Tower
- Come first in all five contest categories (Master Rank)
- Complete the art gallery in Lilycove
And various other things not mentioned, such as completing the Trick House or defeating every trainer.
*My final Pokédex count is 380, meaning there are six missing. These are impossible to obtain using the five GBA 'mainline' games which I have access to. The missing Pokémon are as follows: Mew, Ho-oh, Lugia, Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys.
**This includes all pokéball items found in the overworld, as well as collecting all TMs, HMs, and items from NPCs.
The Journey:
To begin, I started by creating a new file on my original Sapphire cart, which was the first Pokémon game I ever played, probably about 12 years ago. I played through the game as I always have, choosing Treecko as my starter. I spoke to every NPC, defeated all the trainers, collected all the goodies, including hidden items I already knew the locations of. As far as a playthrough of Hoenn goes, pretty standard stuff. My final team after beating the Elite Four was as follows:
- Sceptile 'Edge' - Level 50
- Swellow 'Mistral' - Level 47
- Azumarill 'Pikablu' - Level 49
- Flygon 'Mirage' - Level 50
- Absol 'Midnight' - Level 50
Now that the easy stuff was done, I would usually stop playing and move on with my life, but instead I continued for 100% completion.
My first goal was to complete the Hoenn Dex. This is pretty simple in the grand scheme of things, as I could obtain every Pokémon over the three Hoenn games, which I had, so I did exactly that. This involved playing through Emerald once, and part of Ruby to obtain some version exclusives.
Since I had the end goal of having a Living Dex of Gen 3, I had to catch multiple versions of some rare Pokémon, which was annoying in some cases, mainly when it came to evolving them.
As for grinding levels, I chose to mainly use the top floor of Sky Pillar, as the highest level wild Pokémon in the game could be found there, peaking at Level 60. My method was to have Absol at the front of my party, as I had used many PP UPs and he was the highest level with the best coverage. Shadow Ball for the ghosts, Thunderbolt for Golbats, and Strength for everything else. I would also have Swellow and Azumarill in my party for surfing and flying. The last three spots were reserved for the Pokémon I was training, each with an EXP share attached. From all the EXP shares I obtained over all the games I played through, I ended up with 9, because why not.
As with anyone attempting to complete the Hoenn Dex, of course Feebas would be the most difficult. It probably took me about an hour or two of mindless fishing on Route 119, checking each tile three or four times.
- My Feebas Location.
After all that effort, the only two Pokémon missing from the Hoenn Dex were Jirachi and Deoxys, which were only obtainable through promotional events back when these games first released, so sadly I won't be able to obtain them. Nevertheless, I carried on.
The National Dex:
Now we get to the tricky part. The National Dex. The Final Frontier... or something. For the most part, this isn't much more challenging than the Hoenn Dex, it just requires lots more trading. Through Emerald, Fire Red, and Leaf Green, I was able to obtain the majority of Kanto and Johto Pokémon relatively easy. Some tough ones included those found in the Safari Zones, including Chansey, Tauros, and Miltank to name a few. But these guys pale in comparison when it comes to some of the Legendary and starter Pokémon available. To get the Kanto starters, it wasn't as simple as starting a new game, choosing the starter I need, get up to the first Pokémon Center then trading it the Sapphire, oh no. In order to trade from Kanto to Hoenn, you not only need to beat the Champion, you also need to complete the events in the Sevii Islands, and only then are you able to trade. And in order to get to the Sevii Islands in the first place you need to have owned 60 different species of Pokémon, which became tiring after my third play through of the games.
When it comes to the Legendaries, there are three in particular which were particularly annoying. Raikou, Entei and Suicune are all obtainable in Kanto, but you also have to complete the events in the Seviis to have the opportunity to catch them. Depending on the starter you choose will result in a different dog to roam. So after a lot of grueling hours and replaying through the Kanto region three times was probably the most annoying thing, but I got there in the end. Then came the trading nightmare.
Trading Pokémon
Luckily for me, I already owned two GameBoy Advances, and a link cable, so that wasn't an issue. But trading takes a very long time in this generation, and you can't access your PC when in the trading room, you can only trade what you have in your party, which meant I had to enter and exit the room over a hundred times for all my trades. Whilst i'm talking about trading, it's hard to avoid the nine Pokémon I was still missing, the Johto starters and their evolutions. These guys can only be obtained in Pokémon Emerald, as a gift from Professor Birch after completing the Hoenn Dex. At least I had a Living Dex, so I could just trade the Pokémon back and forth until I had 200 registered Pokémon on Emerald, then I could claim one of three rewards. Yep, you only get one of the starters, so I had to beat Emerald three times, as well as make over 600 trades to get everything safely back to Sapphire.
And here concludes the Living National Dex. By far the hardest part of 100% in Hoenn, and definitely the most time consuming. The other four Pokémon that I'm missing are Mew, Ho-oh, Lugia and Celebi. I believe I can obtain the Johto mascots through Colosseum and XD, but I don't own these games (yet), but I hope to in the future so I can further complete my dex.
The Battle Tower
I've only ever delved into the battle facilities in Pokémon games to see what they're all about, and I never get very far. But this time, I was determined to get a 100 battle streak, and to my surprise it wasn't even that difficult.
Building my team was relatively simple, heavily inspired by
Werster's All Gold Symbols Speedrun of Emerald.
I didn't concern myself about the IVs, just the EVs. I also don't have perfect natures on these Pokémon, as you can probably tell. I would have liked Modest on Latios and Brave on Swampert, but I had already soft reset many times to catch Latios and hatched over thirty eggs, so I settled on 'decent' natures instead.
The EVs obtained are as follows:
- Latios: 252 speed / 252 spAtk
- Metagross: 160 hp / 252 attack / 96 speed
- Swampert: 100 hp / 202 attack / 202 spAtk
Once I had the team ready, I traded them from my Japanese copy of Emerald (where i caught & trained them) onto Sapphire to challenge the Tower.
As I previously mentioned, the Tower was pretty easy. Leading with Latios made most things a breeze, setting up one or two Calm Minds would allow me to sweep the rest of their teams, so long as their lead wasn't something like a Walrein. In fact, i rarely even used Metagross or Swampert, only when Latios fell.
After beating the 50 trainer challenge I got that third star on my trainer card, as well as the Silver Shield for my secret base, which was pretty awesome. I decided to carry on to 100 trainers as it seemed simple enough, and I had my eyes set on that Golden Shield. Everything went just as smooth as before, and I never even lost once. My final streak was 105, meaning I can continue and increase that streak at a later date if I so choose, but i most likely won't.
Contests
These were always strange things to me when I was younger. I never really knew what was going on, and I would never do very well. It was actually quite fun to learn what all the moves do and learning strategies to combo moves and manipulate positions was fun too. I only really got frustrated when other contestants would make me nervous or make me lose a load of appeal points. Anyway, below are the five Pokémon I used, all maxed out with the appropriate Pokéblocks.
- Beauty: Milotic - Surf / Dive / Surf / Dive / Surf
- Cool: Manectric - Shock Wave / Thunderbolt / Quick Attack (Any Order)
- Tough: Regirock - Ancientpower / Superpower / Curse / Rock Throw (Any Order)
- Cute: Whiscash - Amnesia / Rest / Snore / Rest / Snore
- Smart: Claydol - Cosmic Power / Ancientpower / Cosmic Power / Secret Power / Explosion
After completing Master Rank in all five categories, as well as getting enough points to warrant a painting being made, the Lilycove Art Gallery would be completed. This was another thing I've always wanted to do, and some of the paintings made look really funky. Completing the gallery nets you the final star on the trainer card, turning it gold in the process.
Overall, Contests were a fun divergence from the main game, and didn't take up too much time.
Shiny Pokémon
During the 100% run, I found two different shinies, Oddish and Sableye. Oddish was found in the Safari Zone, and Sableye at the top of Sky Pillar. I evolved Oddish into Bellossom, and transferred both to Sun, so that in the unlikely event of my save becoming corrupted, I would still have the shinies.
Conclusion
So, if you read this entire post, thanks a lot. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time now, and again, I'm very happy that I did it. I want to do the same kind of thing on my copy of Diamond, which still has my file from 2007.
I highly suggest you check out this album I made of the main parts of this run:
https://imgur.com/a/Qz04o