The next day, Irene met up with Sarah again to asks some more questions regarding league sponsorships.
“So, how do the gym challenges work anyway?” Irene asked.
“It’s complicated and varies from gym to gym, but generally, you must defeat a series of gym trainers to prove your competency. If you defeat them, you qualify for the final gym challenge, which is to defeat one of the challenge administrators, who will be using a league issued team.”
“Wait, so the gym leader doesn’t use their own team?”
“Of course not dummy. The gym leader is one of the strongest trainers in the region. Even their worst Pokemon would destroy any ordinary teams with no effort. In fact, gym leaders rarely make an appearance at all. There are a lot of gym challengers, you know. Only if the challenger is really popular or has shown great potential will the gym leader decide to make an appearance and administer the challenge themselves. Those challenges always draw huge audiences.”
“People can watch the challenges?”
“Yes, but only the final battle for each gym. Nobody really watches the gym challenges until the 5th gym though, as they do cost money to watch. After that the battles become really popular.”
“What about the battles themselves. How do they work?”
“Do you really not know this? The format is decided beforehand, as well as the total amount of Pokemon both sides will use. 1v1, 2v2, 6v6, it’s all possible, you should be prepared for all of them. In the battle itself, Pokemon fight until one side feints, and trainers can send more out if available.”
“Do trainers call out moves? Make plans with Pokemon beforehand? How smart are Pokemon anyways?”
“Hmm… well I talk to my Pokemon and they understand me just fine. Sometimes I feel they’re even smarter than me, but they like to act dumb to get what they want. I’m sure you could come up with some weird battle strategies, but most trainers choose to shout out their moves. Not sure why really, it’s just that everyone does it.”
“What about switching Pokemon in battle?”
“Switching is possible, though most people don’t really do it. Pokemon can’t be recalled instantly or appear instantly, so you’re basically just giving your opponent a free opportunity to set up an attack.”
After being checked up on the doctor again and having been cleared for her injury, Irene, along with Sarah left the hospital and headed to the Pokemon center.
One thing different from the Pokemon games is that, in addition to healing, the Pokemon center takes care of a lot more things related to the Pokemon league. Scheduling gym battles, paying fees, trainer battles, training, lodging, etc. All are available at the Pokemon center.
“Alright, I’ll let you sign up by yourself.” Sarah said. “I’ll pick up my healed Pokemon and go train in the back. Just come find me when you’re done.”
After speaking with the receptionist, Irene was led into a separate room where she met with three other boys for the orientation.
“I heard from my uncle that the Rustboro gym is easiest for newer trainers, so that’s where I’ll be heading for my first challenge!” Irene overheard one of the boys say.
“Well I’ll be starting mine at the Lavaridge gym” Another boy said. “I’m getting a Psyduck as my starter, so that should be an easy win.”
“What about you, new girl?” The first boy asked.
“What?” Irene turned her head.
“What starter are you getting?”
“Umm. I don’t know. I thought we supposed to decide that today?” Irene replied.
The boy gave her a dismissive look. “Wow. I didn’t know that people could be so dumb. Did you seriously not request for a specific starter? You’re gonna be stuck with the bad starters now. Good luck getting past even the 2nd gym with any of those.”
“Bad starters?” Irene asked.
“Yeah. For any the starters that aren’t complete trash, you must request them months in advance. Even then, you have to take a test to prove your competency in battling and taking care of Pokemon. If you don’t then the league will just give you one of the inferior starters. Here, let me show you the list.”
The boy walked over to a PC at the corner of the room and navigated to a page showing all starters available. Most regular starters such as Machop or Corphish had waiting times over a month long and required completing a beginner level test. For rare starters such as Abra or Ghastly, the waiting times were over 3 months and required completing intermediate level tests. The super rare starters took even longer and required even harder tests. Bagon apparently had a waiting time of over 5 years and needed the trainer to pass an expert level test.
Irene did wonder how they determined what the tiers of starters were. Were they just based on popularity? They certainly didn’t match her memories of competitive pokemon. Treeko was classified as one of the best starters, despite Sceptile being completely unviable competitively in the Pokemon games. However, Shroomish was considered just a regular starter, while Breloom actually was quite good competitively.
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Irene had deduced from Sarah’s explanations earlier that held items didn’t exist in this world, though abilities did exist. Some Pokemon had several possible abilities however, and those abilities could drastically change the viability of certain Pokemon. For example, Breloom was only good competitively because it had a strong ability in Poison Heal. Effect Spore was considerably weaker. Azumarill was only good because of its access to the ability Huge Power. It didn’t have any real offensive power with any of its other abilities.
Pokemon could also learn more than 4 moves, though they usually only mastered a few. This meant that, in comparison to the Pokemon games, Pokemon that were already strong and had diverse movepools got even stronger, while Pokemon with bad movepools didn’t change much at all. Furthermore, diversity and utility would be more important than sheer power. With such a diverse movepool, gimmicky strategies become somewhat more viable, as they don’t take away moveslots from traditional strategies.
“Wait, how does anybody get the super rare starters then? I thought you had to be 10 to register?” Irene asked.
“No, you can request for a starter at any time, but you can only receive them after 10. You have to pass the test to request, though. The test for Bagon or Mudkip are so hard that only the rich kids with private tutors even have a hope of passing,” the other boy replied.
“Well, that’s a bit disappointing.” Irene sighed. “What are the free starters then?”
The boy pulled up a list on the PC: “These are the ones currently available. Looks like you got a bit lucky. Zigzagoon and Geodude aren’t too bad, I guess.”
Geodude
Zubat
Seedot
Pidgey
Poochyena
Zigzagoon
Oddish
Wurmple
Whismur
Nincada
‘Ok, this is really bad.’ Irene thought. ‘Looks like my entire plan of building a team around Swampert is complete gone.’
“How do you determine what Pokemon are good anyways?” Irene asked.
“It’s simple” The boy said. “You just look at how often the top trainers use them. The more they are used, the better they are.”
“I thought the whole point of trainers was to forge their own path” Irene said.
“Bah. The league likes to preach that and all, but my dad says some Pokemon are just naturally stronger than others. Besides, it’s easiest to just copy strategies that already work.”
“I suppose so,” Irene responded.
Irene took a closer look at the starters she could get.
‘Lets see, Dustox and Beautifly are just not very good. Crobat can be useful as utility. Shiftry, Bellossom and Vileplume can be usable in Sun teams. Shedinja might be usable in gimmicky strategies. Ninjask and Linoone could be decent if they set up a ton of boosts. Pidgeot, Mightyena, Exploud are somewhat mediocre attackers. Golem is a physical tank, though it gets destroyed by special attacks.’
Irene thought for a minute. ‘This isn’t much to work with, but I suppose I have somewhat of a plan’
Just then, the receptionist entered the room and the orientation started.
Irene thought that the overall orientation was rather boring. She learned that she would be given 1000 pokedollars a month as a stipend for training expenses, with the stipend rising for each gym defeated. The stipend couldn’t be used to cover her 8000 pokedollar medical debt, but luckily Irene wouldn’t have to worry about that while her sponsorship was still ongoing.
The gyms in the gym circuit could be completed in any order, though the difficulty of the gym trials would be dependent on how many badges the trainer had already. The first challenge at each gym was free, though subsequent challenges required a substantial fee.
Trainers could not use any previously owned Pokemon. They must start with a league given starter and can only use caught wild Pokemon, traded Pokemon, or Pokemon won from contests for the rest of their sponsorship.
To maintain the sponsorship, the first gym must be completed within 1 month of her starting date or 12th birthday, whichever came first. She would then be given 2 months for the 2nd badge, and so on, reaching 8 months for the final badge. This meant that Irene would need to complete the 8 gyms in 3 years. After that, each subsequent elite four member had to be defeated in 6 months, and 1 year was given for defeating the champion. This meant the sponsorship could last a maximum of 6 years.
While the gym trials were generally done with league provided Pokemon, so that difficulty could be standardized across all 8 gyms, the elite four and champion were a bit different.
Each elite four member would be using their own Pokemon, though they generally used some of their less trained Pokemon to make it fairer. It was also not entirely required for challengers to defeat the elite four members. Simply impressing them was good enough, though they all had notoriously high standards.
Aside from these 13 trials, the trainer could do basically whatever they wanted in the remaining time, though generally if they were not training intensely, they would be unable to keep up with the increasing difficulty of the gyms and quickly fall off track.
All the trainers were given a pokedex, which effectively functions as a smartphone. It had access to a complete encyclopedia on basic Pokemon knowledge, was able to make calls, could scan Pokemon, and most importantly, could estimate Pokemon strength. Pokemon had their strength estimated by a single metric – their level. It was not a perfect representation. Generally, dragon types were stronger than bug types at the same level, but levels helped estimate Pokemon growth and maturity well. Levels were also what the league used to determine the difficulty of the gym challenges. The first gym featured Pokemon around lv 10, the second gym around lv 20, and so on. The scale was also supposedly logarithmic, rather than the linear stat scaling in the Pokemon games.
The pokedex also contained a guide that detailed what Pokemon commonly appeared in the various routes and regions across Hoenn, though Irene noted that nothing was listed on any of the rarer Pokemon. As for appropriately leveled Pokemon to catch and train, virtually all routes contained low level Pokemon, though higher level and fully evolved Pokemon were reserved for areas that were deeper into the wild and farther away from civilization. Newer trainers were advised to stay away from those areas.
Finally, it was time for everybody to choose their starters.
“Any advice you would give to a starting trainer, or advice on what starters to pick?” Irene asked. She already had a plan in mind but wanted to get a second opinion.
“Just choose what you’re most comfortable with. It’s more about how you utilize your Pokemon than what Pokemon you have”
“That’s not what I heard earlier, but alright. Can I at least take a look at the available Pokemon before making my pick?”
“Unfortunately not. Young Pokemon form bonds very quickly with young trainers, so we can’t have anybody that isn’t professionally trained handle them before they are given to you.”
‘Well, that was unhelpful’ Irene thought. I guess I’ll just go with my original decision.
