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you guys are still in denial huh? That’s sad. If you want a timeline of how I played the game:
gym 1 - Combusken lv16, with lotad, slakoth, seedot sitting in my party unused except for when I used seedot in double battles
gym 2 - Combusken around lv22, added aron to my party. Afterward I backtracked to get the exp share from Devon.
gym 3 - Combusken is around lv32-34 at this point, I’m still using it for every battle except I have Aron in the second slot occasionally getting exp from double battles. Seedot and Slakoth still going completely unused and I got a Plusle just to have something that can Flash. Combusken evolves into Blaziken after I go through that tunnel with the fire and poison types on my way to Fallarbor Town. At this point since my starter fully evolved I decide to put exp share on Aron for a while so it can catch up. I also backtracked to the Trick House, let Seedot battle a few times, and it evolves.
gym 4 - Blaziken is lv38-39, sweep the gym leader with Double Kick spam like usual
gym 5 - Blaziken is lv41ish, after taking a detour to the desert to catch a Trapinch (which I move the exp share to) and get the fossil from the mirage tower. Once again I sweep Norman with double kick with him not even being able to use a single move thanks to his Slaking getting critted. At this point Nuzleaf is early 20s, Aron is lv30, Trapinch is lv31ish.
At this point, since I now have Surf, I decide to quickly get the Good Rod, catch a Corphish to shove all my HMs on, and backtrack to every single previous route in the game that had water on the side to collect the items, including battling the long string of Trainers surrounding Dewford and Slateport (during which time Trapinch evolves) and doing Wattson’s errand. When I’m done I continue to that rainy route leading up to Fortree that everyone circlejerks, and Aron evolves at the beginning of the route after battling the first few trainers, at which point I took pic related.