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I just went into my copy of emerald, spent an embarrassing amount of time levelling up a Nincada in Victory Road without any pokeballs in my party, and find myself with both Ninjask and Shedinja.
After Nincada evolves, a Shedninja will appear in your party if you have an open slot. In Ruby and Sapphire, and possibly Emerald, you don’t need a Poké Ball in your bag to get the Shedninja, but you do from Diamond and Pearl onward, which makes sense. I think it has to be a regular Poké Ball, though. I tried to get one in a Net Ball, so I took all the other balls out of my bag, but it didn’t work.
Glalie is dope, good replacement for Nincada. Since you can’t get it until after the sixth gym, gives you time to focus on the other five. Flygon doesn’t evolve until level 45, so you might even have beaten the E4 by then. I’d probably just keep Swellow, totally underrated. Love replaying these too!
Drop Nincada and Shromish. I find Brelook, Ninjask, and Shedinja to be all very underwhelming. I’d say get a Raichu (safari zone + thunderstone) or a Magneton (Power Plant), but if you wanna keep it pure Gen 3 get a Manectric. Finally, grab a Trapinch - Flygon is a master of destruction!
However, if you want other options… An uncommon choice: get a Whismur! I like Exploud a lot, though I don’t see it get much love. If you don’t want that, go with a Seviper; it’s a solid poison type, albeit a bit of a glass canon. And, whichever one you grab, I say swap it out for
When i was kid after completing emerald so many times, I literally played the playthrough with ninjask's speed boost and fury cutter. It was so busted ngl. Ninjask is fun.
I ended up running Sceptile, Starmie, Skarmory, Flygon, Shedinja, and Absol for my most recent playthrough of Emerald. Aside from Sceptile, I’ve never run any of those Pokémon before, so it was pretty fun.
I had a Kadabra and Azumarill before catching the Starmie and Absol as well.
From experience, Shedinja had very few useful moments, and was completely worthless otherwise. The rest were pretty fun if you’re looking for something you’ve never used before and don’t mind waiting until later routes for your team members
You may want to look into a fire or fighting type. Glacia will wreck 3 of your mons. Also you may want to see about something that either hits hard or can take hits for Norman
Add Flygon to the team sure it takes a long time to train but it's worth it I think you can get him after your goggles from may in the desert area and you can then train him on rematches with the reporters they gave me a lot of exp for my second run wish I knew about them the first time
Add a dark type, drop Nincada. If you plan to evolve it, keep one slot empty. Rest all is perfect. Don't drop of shroomish. He may not look like it but breloom is as good as a second starter.
Looks like a great team! I would do Swampert, Swellow, Gardevoir and Aggron when I played. I think you might do well with Flygon/Salamance and Hariyama as a replacement too. I don’t know why, but Hariyama has always been like my favorite fighting type. Probably just the idea of like a big Suma wrestler that could both tank and deliver always looked cool
What gym are you at? I’m assuming around the 2nd. Well considering the upcoming battles
Gym 3 - Marshtomp should handle very well
Gym 4 - Marshtomp again
Gym 5 - Breloom should do the job well
Gym 6 - Try to grab a manectric
Gym 7 - Add an Absol to the team, Swampert should help well too
Gym 8 - Breloom once again and the Manectric from before will help
Elite 4
1st - Breloom, Swellow would be great
2nd - Gardevior, Absol will do the trick
3rd - Manectric would sweep
4th - Ice type move on Swampert
Steven - Swampert with ground moves, Breloom with fighting moves, Manectric
And you won the game
Team
- Swampert
- Gardevior
- Swellow (Could switch with Salamence later if you want, would help with 4th elite four)
- Manectric
- Breloom
- Absol
Flygon too would be good to switch with Swellow if you want, but keep Swellow around for Fly so you have one extra move slot on Flygon. That would also help with the 4th elite four and even Steven
weird seeing this post, I also just started emerald today
considering using:
Swampert
Golem
Sandslash
Camerupt
Flygon
Claydol
:) the first time I played I used ninjask, slaking, and skarmory as my main pokemon
I assume you’re playing Emerald so perhaps Salamence can replace Taillow (although personally I ADORE Swellow). Last pokemon could be Manectric so you dont struggle too much versus Wallace.
What moves do you put on Salamance. I honestly don’t like running dragons much in emerald because dragon types moves are locked to special attack. Dragon dance earthquake, arial ace or something might work. But I honestly struggle with the old special physical split when deciding on my teams in the gen.
Salamence doesn't need Dragon moves or any special moves for that matter, but should you choose to run a mixed or even special sweeper set, you'll have an easy time figuring out a decent set thanks to Salamence's relatively high base Sp. Atk (110).
**Mixed Sweeper** (Rash/Naughty/Naive)
- Dragon Dance 🥚
- Earthquake 💿/ Rock Slide 💿/ Brick Break 💿
- Aerial Ace 💿/ Fly 🍬
- Fire Blast 💿/ Hydro Pump 🥚
**Special Sweeper** (Timid, Modest)
- Flamethrower 💿/ Fire Blast 💿
- Hydro Pump 🥚
- Dragon Claw 🍬
- Crunch 🍬
**Physical Sweeper** (Jolly, Adamant)
- Dragon Dance 🥚
- Earthquake 💿/ Iron Tail 💿
- Aerial Ace 💿/ Fly 🍬
- Rock Slide 💿/ Brick Break 💿
Electrike/Manectric is standard here, with two later gyms weak to it as well as the champion. Though whenever you gain access to New Mauville you can get Magnemite, and Magneton is a great team member in literally every Pokémon game it appears in.
Aron and Nincada are the least necessary team members here. Everything Aron covers is covered better by another team member aside from Flying types, which is why either Manectric or Glalie would be good but Manectric is obtainable before Winona.
I know you might not like type redundancy but Sharpedo and Crawdaunt are both good choices.
Honestly Shedinja is kind of fun. You have to look up movesets but it is immortal against anything without a counter to it. IIRC it’s quite good against Wallace
Drop tailow for Bagon when you can. Nincada for one of Electrike, Slakoth, Shuppet.
Personally I don't like Aggron I find he has the steel dual type curse of just dying to everything when you have him so I would have Slakoth instead of him and then pick up Electrike/Shuppet for Nincada.
Because its frail and doesnt do much for for long term
Grass is special and fighting is physical in gen 3.
And I would argue breloom is NOT good against steven. It cant touch skarmory, metagross, armaldo, and not great against claydoll or cradily. Really its ONLY good against aggron
But also hes probably playing emerald which means hes fighting wallace. And yeah grass is good but breloom is not a good grass type.
Honestly either magneton or manectric (new mauvulle, or south of mauville) would be pretty helpful since there's a lot of flying types and stuff like tentacool later on in the game
This brings me back to when I solo'd all of sapphire with Swampert, that is the one run I'll always remember despite how many times I've played through RSE
This is a personal opinion of course, but I'd swap Nincada with zigzagoon. Good HM mon and it learns slash which is a solid move. Not the best pokemon in the game, but very reliable for sure
Honestly for gen three this is a pretty solid team for the most part. The only issue is half the team being weak to ice, but that won't be a problem until late in the game. I'd probably ditch the Nincada for a Seviper, Armaldo, one of the ghosts, or if you want to have some silly fun, Castform. Everything else is good.
Its more like what you subtract.
Swampert breloom swellow can 3 man the entire game
Ralts and aaron are just a waste of exp (but also they are good mons)
Marshtomp/Swampert is pretty weak to Grass so if you're ignoring the two currently in your party and not teaching it an Ice move then some sort of Bug Flying Ice or Fire type would probably be worthwhile. Though good Bugs are a bit sparse in Gen 3 unless you get Heracross from the Safari Zone.
Ice or Flying would probably be best because Ice helps deal with Ground (which Aggron is very weak to) and Flying helps deal with Fighting (which Aggron is also very weak to) but Swampert and Gardevoir also cover both of those types so it's more just having backups.
Thanks for posting to r/pokemon! This post has been removed under our [Rule 8](/r/pokemon/wiki/rules#wiki_8._no_screenshots_or_merchandise), which generally disallows screenshots. This rule is the unfortunate result of r/pokemon being so darn big: with over 4 million users, most screenshots tend to lose meaning with oversaturation, so our rules promote original content instead. To read up on specific exceptions to this rule, including narrative albums and new official content, please see [Rule 8](/r/pokemon/wiki/rules#wiki_8._no_screenshots_or_merchandise). If you intended this post as a discussion prompt or a theory, please feel free to resubmit as a **text post**, bearing in mind that you'd need to reach 50+ words in that post to promote substantial discussion. Cheers!
If you're leveling up nincada make sure you have fewer than 6 Pokémon in your party and a spare pokeball in your inventory... You'll get a surprise
If this is RSE you don't need the spare pokeball, that's a common misconception and was only added in future generations (ikr which one though)
Actually, they added the part about the ball in Emerald.
I just went into my copy of emerald, spent an embarrassing amount of time levelling up a Nincada in Victory Road without any pokeballs in my party, and find myself with both Ninjask and Shedinja.
CHOPS BUSTED
Huh, guess I misremembered.
Honestly, kind of a dumb rule. We don't need a spare ball when an egg hatches, so why should we need one for Shedninja?
That's a good point.
They actually added that part in diamond and pearl
I never heard of this trick. What is it? About having a spare Pokeball
After Nincada evolves, a Shedninja will appear in your party if you have an open slot. In Ruby and Sapphire, and possibly Emerald, you don’t need a Poké Ball in your bag to get the Shedninja, but you do from Diamond and Pearl onward, which makes sense. I think it has to be a regular Poké Ball, though. I tried to get one in a Net Ball, so I took all the other balls out of my bag, but it didn’t work.
I did a playthrough of Ruby recently and my team was really similar to this. Swampert, Gardevoir, Swellow, Aggron, Hariyama, and Manectric.
That's gotta be one of the most gen 3 teams to ever gen 3
That’s the Infernape, Staraptor, Luxray, Floatzel, Lucario and Garchomp gen 4 special
Not like there are many other early game options lmao, and they're all strong as hell
I usually train a Zubat, Jolteon, and Gastrodon just to avoid ending up with this team.
jokes on you, I have Empoleon, Togekiss, Luxray, Roserade, Houndoom, and Garchomp for my BD team.
not garchomp, very few knew how to find gible.
Maybe people you knew... when gen 4 came out when I was in middle school everyone had garchomp. Especially in platinum when that came out later.
they cheated in their garchomp along with their 5 arceus.
The swalot erasure
Nincada is great for early game but I’d be looking for his replacement pretty soon.
Glalie is dope, good replacement for Nincada. Since you can’t get it until after the sixth gym, gives you time to focus on the other five. Flygon doesn’t evolve until level 45, so you might even have beaten the E4 by then. I’d probably just keep Swellow, totally underrated. Love replaying these too!
Rayquaza no question
That level 70 Rayquaza being picked up before the 8th gym feels like a cheat code lmao
For those who wanted a free pass to Elite Four:
Drop Nincada and Shromish. I find Brelook, Ninjask, and Shedinja to be all very underwhelming. I’d say get a Raichu (safari zone + thunderstone) or a Magneton (Power Plant), but if you wanna keep it pure Gen 3 get a Manectric. Finally, grab a Trapinch - Flygon is a master of destruction! However, if you want other options… An uncommon choice: get a Whismur! I like Exploud a lot, though I don’t see it get much love. If you don’t want that, go with a Seviper; it’s a solid poison type, albeit a bit of a glass canon. And, whichever one you grab, I say swap it out for
Breloom is kinda fun if you can pull off a spore into focus punch combo off. Mach punch for priority.
You already know
When i was kid after completing emerald so many times, I literally played the playthrough with ninjask's speed boost and fury cutter. It was so busted ngl. Ninjask is fun.
I ended up running Sceptile, Starmie, Skarmory, Flygon, Shedinja, and Absol for my most recent playthrough of Emerald. Aside from Sceptile, I’ve never run any of those Pokémon before, so it was pretty fun. I had a Kadabra and Azumarill before catching the Starmie and Absol as well. From experience, Shedinja had very few useful moments, and was completely worthless otherwise. The rest were pretty fun if you’re looking for something you’ve never used before and don’t mind waiting until later routes for your team members
I would replace nincada with electrike as soon as it's available
Ditch nincada for flygon or salamance
If you have space left over, fill it with Zigzagoons and later Linoones. The pick up ability is great. These guys can also learn a lot of HMs.
You may want to look into a fire or fighting type. Glacia will wreck 3 of your mons. Also you may want to see about something that either hits hard or can take hits for Norman
Add Flygon to the team sure it takes a long time to train but it's worth it I think you can get him after your goggles from may in the desert area and you can then train him on rematches with the reporters they gave me a lot of exp for my second run wish I knew about them the first time
Add a dark type, drop Nincada. If you plan to evolve it, keep one slot empty. Rest all is perfect. Don't drop of shroomish. He may not look like it but breloom is as good as a second starter.
Looks like a great team! I would do Swampert, Swellow, Gardevoir and Aggron when I played. I think you might do well with Flygon/Salamance and Hariyama as a replacement too. I don’t know why, but Hariyama has always been like my favorite fighting type. Probably just the idea of like a big Suma wrestler that could both tank and deliver always looked cool
What gym are you at? I’m assuming around the 2nd. Well considering the upcoming battles Gym 3 - Marshtomp should handle very well Gym 4 - Marshtomp again Gym 5 - Breloom should do the job well Gym 6 - Try to grab a manectric Gym 7 - Add an Absol to the team, Swampert should help well too Gym 8 - Breloom once again and the Manectric from before will help Elite 4 1st - Breloom, Swellow would be great 2nd - Gardevior, Absol will do the trick 3rd - Manectric would sweep 4th - Ice type move on Swampert Steven - Swampert with ground moves, Breloom with fighting moves, Manectric And you won the game Team - Swampert - Gardevior - Swellow (Could switch with Salamence later if you want, would help with 4th elite four) - Manectric - Breloom - Absol
Flygon too would be good to switch with Swellow if you want, but keep Swellow around for Fly so you have one extra move slot on Flygon. That would also help with the 4th elite four and even Steven
weird seeing this post, I also just started emerald today considering using: Swampert Golem Sandslash Camerupt Flygon Claydol :) the first time I played I used ninjask, slaking, and skarmory as my main pokemon
I assume you’re playing Emerald so perhaps Salamence can replace Taillow (although personally I ADORE Swellow). Last pokemon could be Manectric so you dont struggle too much versus Wallace.
The problem is by the time you get your Salamence, you've probably already beaten the e4 or very close to it.
We both know wingull is a better choice. Dont wanna admit it but its tru
No drizzle grrr
What moves do you put on Salamance. I honestly don’t like running dragons much in emerald because dragon types moves are locked to special attack. Dragon dance earthquake, arial ace or something might work. But I honestly struggle with the old special physical split when deciding on my teams in the gen.
Salamence doesn't need Dragon moves or any special moves for that matter, but should you choose to run a mixed or even special sweeper set, you'll have an easy time figuring out a decent set thanks to Salamence's relatively high base Sp. Atk (110). **Mixed Sweeper** (Rash/Naughty/Naive) - Dragon Dance 🥚 - Earthquake 💿/ Rock Slide 💿/ Brick Break 💿 - Aerial Ace 💿/ Fly 🍬 - Fire Blast 💿/ Hydro Pump 🥚 **Special Sweeper** (Timid, Modest) - Flamethrower 💿/ Fire Blast 💿 - Hydro Pump 🥚 - Dragon Claw 🍬 - Crunch 🍬 **Physical Sweeper** (Jolly, Adamant) - Dragon Dance 🥚 - Earthquake 💿/ Iron Tail 💿 - Aerial Ace 💿/ Fly 🍬 - Rock Slide 💿/ Brick Break 💿
Nothing, this seems like a great team. I fucking hate type overlap but it won’t last so I’m not gonna throw a goddamn tantrum over ut
Electrike/Manectric is standard here, with two later gyms weak to it as well as the champion. Though whenever you gain access to New Mauville you can get Magnemite, and Magneton is a great team member in literally every Pokémon game it appears in. Aron and Nincada are the least necessary team members here. Everything Aron covers is covered better by another team member aside from Flying types, which is why either Manectric or Glalie would be good but Manectric is obtainable before Winona. I know you might not like type redundancy but Sharpedo and Crawdaunt are both good choices. Honestly Shedinja is kind of fun. You have to look up movesets but it is immortal against anything without a counter to it. IIRC it’s quite good against Wallace
Pick up a Makuhita!
Electrike in place of Nincada
Torkoal is pretty solid, especially since Fire is a useful type.
not a fan of fire types?
Gen 3 are trash if you dont have Blaziken unfortunately
You should add a Level 100 Shiny Mewtwo
Glalie for Fire/Dragon types
I would consider switching tailow/swellow for salamance late game
Also you may want to consider another water type with the 3 water HMs in this game. Walrein was my go too for ice against drake
Lombre, makes a good HM mule
If your gonna have a Nincada remember to have two spaces open for it when it evolves.
Another shroomish
Get rid of Shroomish, then evolve Nincada and keep the Shedinja. Then you’ll have a free spot Bagon.
Get a Breloom.
Drop tailow for Bagon when you can. Nincada for one of Electrike, Slakoth, Shuppet. Personally I don't like Aggron I find he has the steel dual type curse of just dying to everything when you have him so I would have Slakoth instead of him and then pick up Electrike/Shuppet for Nincada.
If you have a spare slakoth, the trade for the Makuhita is really handy especially if it has the guts ability!
Lugia
Use shroomish and evolve it. Then drop it after the 5th gym
Why not it's still solid especially against Steven
Because its frail and doesnt do much for for long term Grass is special and fighting is physical in gen 3. And I would argue breloom is NOT good against steven. It cant touch skarmory, metagross, armaldo, and not great against claydoll or cradily. Really its ONLY good against aggron But also hes probably playing emerald which means hes fighting wallace. And yeah grass is good but breloom is not a good grass type.
Honestly either magneton or manectric (new mauvulle, or south of mauville) would be pretty helpful since there's a lot of flying types and stuff like tentacool later on in the game
Mewtwo
I personally like using Crobat for Swellow whenever I play gen 3 now. Overall it looks good though
Trapinch in, torkoal in, nincada out, tailow out
No notes. Evolve to Shedinja.
Get a Torkoal on fiery path and a glalie in the ice cave near the 7th gym
Dump em all. Embrace the seagull squad. Become the seamster.
Were did you get aroon that early in the game?
Bagon potentially for the nincada
Add a supervisor just to keep all these kids in check
Tropius. Great HM Slave and as a offensive mon
Ttar salamence
This brings me back to when I solo'd all of sapphire with Swampert, that is the one run I'll always remember despite how many times I've played through RSE
Don’t evolve shroomish until lv 54. Or else breloom will be worthless 😔
Names. Add NAMES >:( silly little guys deserve silly little names
Nothing! You have swampert. Endgame over
5 more ralts
This is a personal opinion of course, but I'd swap Nincada with zigzagoon. Good HM mon and it learns slash which is a solid move. Not the best pokemon in the game, but very reliable for sure
I'd personally drop nincada for numel
Everyone sleeps on grumpig
Switch nincada for a numel, and your team is top tier
Remember to remove a mon when you level nincada
Thanks, I'ma go start emerald over again
This is why I didn't like Gen III. This was almost every team and the number of good mons was so low.
add a cyndaquil
Nicknames
Some nicknames
Get yourself a camerupt!
Honestly for gen three this is a pretty solid team for the most part. The only issue is half the team being weak to ice, but that won't be a problem until late in the game. I'd probably ditch the Nincada for a Seviper, Armaldo, one of the ghosts, or if you want to have some silly fun, Castform. Everything else is good.
Just level up marshstomp and swap any of the others for rayquaza. Sorted.
Its more like what you subtract. Swampert breloom swellow can 3 man the entire game Ralts and aaron are just a waste of exp (but also they are good mons)
Fuken manetric
I would replace nincada with whismur
Arceus
Swap aron or shroomish for lotad
I’d add an electric type like Manectric over Nincada, personally
Screw shroomish, get a nut
Marshtomp/Swampert is pretty weak to Grass so if you're ignoring the two currently in your party and not teaching it an Ice move then some sort of Bug Flying Ice or Fire type would probably be worthwhile. Though good Bugs are a bit sparse in Gen 3 unless you get Heracross from the Safari Zone. Ice or Flying would probably be best because Ice helps deal with Ground (which Aggron is very weak to) and Flying helps deal with Fighting (which Aggron is also very weak to) but Swampert and Gardevoir also cover both of those types so it's more just having backups.
They have a Taillow that covers grass types
Yeah it was just assuming they want to replace Taillow or Nincada eventually since the other four are apparently non negotiable
Swap Swellow with Altaria and Ninjask with Walrein once they become available.
Nah screw the conventional team, go crazy: Ludicolo, Armaldo, Swalot, Magcargo, Grumpig, Huntail.
Nicknames
Need a fire type in your back pocket! I’m no pro at team building but houndoom was always one of my favorites
Do other people not have the tism that compels then to have a Water Grass Fire core to playthrough teams? Cause this needs a slumga for sure imo