With Zephyr badge in hand, I rushed back to the Pokémon Center to see what Professor Elm’s assistant wanted to share with me. When I got there, I was given the Mystery Egg and told to keep it in my party until I noticed anything happen. I healed up and decided to press on. Now so far on my journey I have caught a Hoothoot and a Ledyba. My goal now was to catch a Phanpy which would require me to backtrack to Route 29 and then head north to Route 46. Phanpy has a five percent spawn rate, so this would be a challenging catch. It took me about 20 minutes to catch a Phanphy and I moved on. Right when I got onto Route 32, I met with a trainer who rewarded me with a Miracle Seed for beating Faulkner. When equipped, the Miracle Seed powers up a Pokémon’s grass-type moves. Route 32 is a great area to gain money and level up my Pokémon as there are a variety of trainers (eight to be exact). Once I got to the bottom of the map, I met a fisherman in the Pokémon Center who gave me and Old Rod that would now allow me to start fishing. Up next, I decided to head into the Ruins of Alph.

There are four rooms in the Ruins of Alph, but I can only reach two of those rooms at this stage of my journey. There is a puzzle in one of the rooms that when solved, drops me down to the other room where I can catch some Unown. I was conflicted on whether or not I should try to catch every letter or should I just catch one to add to my living dex challenge and move on. I feel like the good middle ground option at this point was to catch three of them so I could get the Unown Pokédex from the guy outside. One complete, I doubled back to Route 32 so I could enter the Union Cave and make my way to Azalea Town. The Union Cave is pretty straightforward: enter the cave and head south to the exit. With that being said, there are a few valuable items to pick up along the way– specifically TM 39 Swift which is a strong Normal attack that always hits. I also picked up a Great Ball, a Potion, and an X-Attack before heading outside. Right outside the exit, there is a man named Anthony that I had to beat and obtain his phone number as he will call me when rare Pokémon in the Dark Cave are swarming. He only had two Pokémon: a level 11 Geodude and a level 11 Machop. I had a challenging time with this battle and just barely made it. Ledyba brought home the win after my Quilava passed out.

As I step into Azalea Town I encounter a member of Team Rocket standing in front of a well. When I speak to him, he gives a sort of vague answer as to why he’s there. I made my way to Kurt’s house where he tells me that Team Rocket are cutting off the tails of Slowpoke to make a profit. I come to find out that the well is called Slowpoke Well and to save the Slowpoke, I need to defeat the Team Rocket member’s level 14 Koffing (after defeating several others Team Rocket members). Once victorious, I meet up with Kurt again who tells me he can make Pokéballs from Apricorns that I find in my travels and that it takes him 24 hours to produce one ball. While talking to Kurt, I get a call that there is a Dunsparce swarm in Dark Cave so I backtrack to catch one. After that, I headed back to Azalea Town to the Pokémon Center to heal and then the Pokémart to check out their goods. The Pokémart in town sells Charcoal which would be great for my starter to hold as it boosts Fire type moves, but it’s 9800 dollars. After restocking my Potions and picking up a few more Pokéballs, I head to the gym to fight Bugsy for the Hive Badge. This gym battle was quite easy as I had my Cyndaquil whose Fire type moves are quite effective against Bug type Pokémon. I make quick work of Bugsy, get my Hive Badge, can now use the HM Cut, and Pokémon level 30 and below will obey me. I headed right to the Pokémart to buy the Charcoal for my Quilava and heal up before battling my rival (which was quite easy) successfully and headed to Ilex Forest.

Generation II Living Dex Percentage: 8.00%
Generation II Living Dex Count: 8/100
National Living Dex Percentage: 15.51%
Played Time: 5 hours and 40 minutes