Armaldo Only - Pokemon Emerald 

Any mistakes regarding the type chart and effectiveness are definitely intentional jokes about Armaldo's typing. I never make mistakes... right?

A suggestion for slow, powerful Pokemon (like Armaldo): you might consider a Speed-boosting nature to outspeed key threats. It might sound silly, but slow wallbreakers in competitive metagames sometimes run the speed-boosting natures just to get the extra speed tier, which is more important than the extra damage. For example, Armaldo could have outsped the Magneton a few levels earlier if it had a Jolly Nature, potentially preventing a lot of grinding. Of course, that comes at the cost of the larger increase to Attack from an Adamant nature, and I’m not sure how critical this is when Armaldo is using weaker STAB attacks and only somewhat strong coverage attacks. All to say: if the problem with a slower Pokemon in its first playthrough is that you’re barely not outspeeding threats, maybe consider the speed-boosting nature for your second playthroughs!

I'm starting to think that Rock Tomb is bugged. The amount of times it misses consecutively is unreal For instance, missing 4 times in a row is a 1 in 625 chances, or 0.16%. And it happened both here and in the Cradilly video. I'm speechless

Small mistake you made at 6:15. Brenden setting up focus energy would be good because you have battle armor. No crits. Love the videos just something I caught.

I think someone else mentioned it, but HP Bug makes more sense for Tate and Liza as you get STAB, and also gives Armaldo its most powerful move with 105 power total. Ancientpower deals with Xatu, and HP Bug is super-efffective against the rest. It also makes the Sydney fight even easier.

Armaldo is probably my favorite fossil Pokémon. I can’t wait to see how the new venomoth performs

A few interesting competitive notes for Gen 3’s Venomoth: In Gen 3, it has a niche as a Knock Off user on certain stall teams, even using Harden of all moves to beat Snorlax. In Gen 4, it even has a small niche as an anti-lead in Ubers for taking on the unequivocal best lead, Deoxys-Speed.

With regards to Rare Candy usage, I often try to keep in mind how stuck a Pokémon is at a certain point. For example, Norman could be a good place to use them because beating Flannery doesn’t open up many trainers, whereas beating Norman does. So if a Pokémon struggles against him, then early Rare Candies can let you get by him and then open up all those trainers for even more experience later on. Also, for an Armaldo redo, I think keeping Mud Sport for Wattson would be a good idea. Weakening Electric moves might be enough to give you an edge against him a bit sooner or at least make him more consistent. Plus at that point, Armaldo doesn’t learn many useful moves and you can override it in favor of Secret Power or Dig.

Great to see Armaldo do so well! This guy's had a special place in my heart ever since my first Emerald Nuzlocke, where my Armaldo single-handedly carried me through the league with Ancientpower and Earthquake.

I love Armaldo's silly eyes. What a fun followup to the more traditional crustacean eyestalks of Anorith. Interesting how its face design seems to be intentionally confusing, with red spots that look like eyes and eyestalks shaped like its neck fins.

I'm so happy that Armaldo did so well in this challenge. He is my favorite fossil after all. My only real problem with Army is its speed, 45 base speed is terrible

Armaldo starting with Walter Gun is something that I never forget because in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky there is a special episode where you play as the Guildmaster (when he was a baby, literaly Igglybuff) and his mentor Armaldo During a scene Iggly put a map on fire and Armaldo panics but get his act together and think "oh yeah, I can use Walter Gun!" then douses the fire Memory unlocked

I don’t have a lot of experience with Armaldo in the core games, but I did run an Armaldo/Milotic deck in the TCG at one point. It was very niche, but it was fun to see folks react to it.

That was such a lucky Steven fight, lol! I'm pretty sure the majority of the time with that strategy Claydol runs out of pp and has to resort to struggle strats like Cradily did. That could have easily been an extra several minutes on the time. Overall, pretty good. Special attackers seem to have a pretty huge advantage in this game with a much better matchup against Steven and not being annoyed by all the random intimidates, but it does seem like most physical attackers have ways to get around the roadblocks. Interesting run!

Always happy to see bugs get their moment to shine and Armaldo here is my favourite of the Hoenn Bugs. This video is only 32 minutes long so I hope to assume things go very well for Armaldo. 1:11 - Armaldo has good options to deal with the Rock and Steel types that are super effective against it. The major challenge it faces is Water types, which are rather common in Hoenn. 2:25 - That's new; I don't think I've seen Roxanne send out Nosepass early before. She saw your Pokémon was named Shrimp and suddenly feared for her Geodude. Given how easily it went down to negative Special Attack Water Gun, I can see why though. 3:26 - I do happen to love that book series and the movie is entertaining. Kind of surprised to see it pop up here but Armaldo's loss to Roxanne was definitely a series of unfortunate events. 6:19 - You see, this is the sort of play you should have done in your Cradily run. When your opponent is weak, just use the more accurate move like Scratch in this case (and Acid in Cradily's case). 11:58 - Misfortune, followed by fortune, followed by misfortune. Given your negative history with Rock Tomb, I'm surprised you chose to keep it over Metal Claw. I feel the 10% chance to raise your Attack, which will benefit you throughout a fight, and the higher accuracy would make it the better move to keep. 13:38 - I feel you could taken on Brawly earlier as well. Bug resists Fighting so he only does neutral damage and Armaldo has plenty of Defence. He could of at least been an additional spot of training to aid in besting Watson. 16:46 - It does enough... but you still went through two whole sets of Ancient Power and never got the stat buff. A good win that you accomplished despite the poor luck. 17:18 - Happy to hear Bug's resistance to Ground get a mention. The resistances that Bug has tend to get overlooked but they can be pretty handy. 21:32 - Also around this 8th Gym mark, you've got a fair key fights, which tend to have many Pokémon per team. Being able to secure one-shots whilst fighting against better EXP granting teams seems rather efficient. 23:36 - I think I'd have gone with Ancient Power at this point. Keep two or three of them for the Altaria and Salamence, but try to use this Shelgon as an opportunity to try and get that stat boost off. Oh, what do you know, at 24:11 you literally do my exact advice. 27:03 - Oh wow; a first time win against Wallace was unexpected given the disadvantage Armaldo has to Water types. I figured he'd be your biggest obstacle of all. 30:26 - Holy flip! I wanted Armaldo to do well and saw you making some wiser choices here learned from your Cradily run but having it as your new top of the list S-Ranker was quite a surprise. Fantastic job, Shrimp the Armaldo! Nice to have a Bug type do so splendidly.

This Light/Bird type did a great job of overcoming it's low Speed! The earlier candy usage definitely helped Armaldo here, but it would hurt something that struggles more with Steven. Also, for what it's worth, standard speedruns backtrack and do Brawly 4th. No harm in trying the battle on other runs if you can manage it when you first get to Dewford, ideally well above Level 14!

32:06: Ninjask runs into it's worst possible match up vs.Roxanne, but it will be fine afterwards. Beautifly however is the complete opposite to Ninjask in a way, that the early game is actually not too bad but the late game is so unkind to it, that i doubt it can even beat Steven. Shedinja will "just" require Lv.38 for Roxanne because it will learn Shadow Ball and it is the only reliable way to beat her. The only advice i can give you for a Shedinja solo run, is to max out it's Attack ev as soon as possible because it will either die or one hit every threat.

That double omniboost on Steven was so clutch lmao

Another suggestion: the Substitute move tutor is available on the roof of the Lilycove Department store. Where I see this being useful is when you have access to a setup move - especially Bulk Up - because that means you can set up very safely against Phoebe’s first Dusclops, Drake’s Shelgon, and Steven’s Skarmory. Alongside making these fights easier, it should free up Pokémon from being required to run Hidden Power Ghost to muscle past Phoebe in favor for another Hidden Power type.

Armaldo is clearly steel bug type. Very much like venomoth

Ninjask has both speed boost and swords dance so I think it'll be quite good actually. great video Scott!!!

ARMALDO! MY BOY! I rocked this thing in my mono-Bug run of Emerald along with a Ninjask, a Heracross, a Beautifly, and two carefully bred bugs: a Volbeat, son of the earlier mentioned Ninjask and an Illumise for special coverage, HP ice and Growth. This thing combined with Baton Pass strats absolutely destroyed; I remember it cleaned up half of Steven's team by itself. I actually did use Rock Blast over Ancientpower for the higher attack, and it worked surprisingly well. I also have a soft spot for it because of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon but the Bug-type run was the first time I had ever really used it, and I still love it to this day. I'm happy to see it here, and pleasantly surprised it took the top spot.

I was impressed with the results but I have a bad feeling that it will be far worse in follow up playthroughs since to beat steven you needed 2 omni boosts which is about a 1 percent chance of happening. This also ignores that the Skarmory was doing enough damage with steel wing that if it had crit with it you would have lost. In addition it outspeeds you which is very bad. Without the omniboosts you would not have enough damage to kill the Claydoll with that current moveset and it is faster without the omniboosts which means it can reflect before you hit it.

Heck yeah, a Bug-type takes the first place finish! I didn't discover Armaldo's usefulness until much later on in my playthroughs, but holy cow, what a beast it is.

After this amazing run with the dark/steel type Armaldo, you state: "I haven't done any bug types yet". Butterfree is crying at the bottom of the Bruno tier.

27:11 Scott's Thought's channel misspells Gametime: 6:07 for "Gameitme: 6:07" not a big deal but this is the first major misspell in his entire channel. I watch all of your videos religiously, so this was a big deal to me. I love you Scott, keep doing what you're doing. So after watching further, I noticed there is a 2nd typo in the same video! @ 30:24

This might be a moot point, but giving Brendon the torchic line 100% is letting yourself off easier than giving him mudkip. High base defenses, resists your main STAB option, and has super effective damage against you.

I think giving the rival mudkip would have been harder for armaldo, supereffective moves and resist armaldos stab Giving it insect HP woulf have been great since it is stab and still effective against psychic Anyway great content as usual !

Buddy, I don't comment often, but I do watch every video and live. Can say many things but i'll keep it short. Thanks for these videos and all the work. it is very entertaining! Looking forward to all that comes next. (Especially anything Goldeen related)

Love this for the giant shrimp. Good video as always Scott!

I'm glad you started doing Gen III challenges, it's my favourite generation!

I love Armaldo beeing the Venomoth of this generation, since it is also originally a Bug/Psychic type

Armaldo is such a cool design. Fits his Rock/ -Steel- Bug typing

Great Armaldo run, now the S tier is filled with primary physical attackers. A pokemon candidate that u may want to put on your list for potential fast solorun will be zangoose, with early lv10 swords dance and a erratic lvling group, it may just have a decent chance of being the best pokemon in the S tier.

Loved the reference to "A Series of Unfortunate Events!" That series never gets enough love.

It took me all the way to 3D sprites when I noticed that Armaldo's ears are actually its eyes...

Love seeing this Armaldo to this day is still my favorite fossil pokemon sense it's release

Armaldo truly was a Venomoth to me when I was a kid. I always thought it was water/bug but also somehow steel? As a child I didn't have the patience during play throughs, when it comes late at level 20, to actually learn what it was but now it is definitely a top 3 fossil for me!

Man 2 videos in 2 days! You made my weekend 👌 keep up the amazing work

This is how Scott Celebrate the Entrence Of the New Mincraft Mob

Been looking forward to the day my favourite Pokemon gets a go in Emerald, my favourite Pokemon game. Needless to say... very pleased with Armaldo's results ;p

awesome video keep up the great video Scott always enjoy them I used an armaldo in my pokemon emerald about 3 months ago it was really good

Great to see Harden pop off in the final fight! If you ever go back to Crawdaunt, I think it could benefit from this tactic against Steven as well.

Fun fact, the armaldo line is one of the very few that learns mud sport but is /not/ already a ground type immune to electric

I've got to say, Armaldo had quite a stellar performance! I think the moveset as well as the fact that Cradily was part Grass hurt it more during that Pokémon's run.

I used manectric in my only emerald play through, and I think it’s because it’s the only new electric type besides plusle and minun close to the beginning of the game. I don’t love it, but it served me well. I have always been impressed with how difficult Wallace is for a monotype trainer. He really earned his champion title IMO

I've always felt like _being_ fossil Pokémon replaces one of their natural types with rock type, something about the process of reviving them from fossils changes them. Like, back when they were naturally alive, kabuto might have geen bug water instead of rock water, or something like that.

I'm a child lol. I laughed at him during the Wynona fight when he said he needs his small PP to go the distance lol

"I haven't done any Bug-Types yet." Literally this run! ...Wait, nevermind, forgot Armadillo is a Steel/Faery.

Gametime is misspelled at the end. Great video as usual my man.

Armaldo is one of my favorite gen 3 mons, so glad to see its time to shine here

Thank you for another amazing video! Your videos were the highlight during the weekend

Next Challange: A team of 6 Pokemon that only can use Rocktomb :D.

Great vid glad to finally see this Steel Poison type finally get its time to shine

Armaldo is my favorite fossil Pokemon, he was the first Pokemon I got to level 100 way back on Pokemon ruby when I was 4 or 5 years old, good times

Armaldo dominated. Wow. Always knew he was good but this was insane. Would love to see Armaldo in FRLG. Rock Slide from Rock Tunnel onward... oh boy.

Info for the second eventual playthrough: you can learn Fury Cutter early by going to the tutor in Verdanturf! I've had easy sweeps against Wattson because of it

Its cool to see Armaldo do well, it's pretty underrated and I actually prefer Cradily. With the fossils i always wonder, what type were they before they became fossils. Armaldo was a bug what maybe steel? I always feel like the rock typing is an ohmage to the fact that it came from a fossil. As for the rest of the bugs, Bug moves in gen 3 aren't too great so the other bugs could struggle a bit.

You know how sometimes you accidentally ruin a great battle with one wrong move selected? Player error being of course completely normal to happen. This Steven Stone fight was the opposite of that lol. This was really close and I'm glad you managed to get that final Ancient Power through and not have to rely on Struggle. While nothing big I think it shows how you have improved over time playing this game.

ARMALDOOO! this guy is one of my top 10 favorite pokemon very strong armor boi

I just got asked to review this video for RU-vid. I rated it 5 stars and called it ‘life changing’ 😂. I never knew I cared so much about Armaldo.

So glad to see Winonas Pelipper go down easy. Recently on a Grass monotype run it hit 3 protects in a row. I knew 2 was extremely unlikely, but possible. Didn't know 3 could even happen. Hate that bird lmao

Armaldo, the Water and Dragon type

Scott’s Luck using Rock Tomb is something else lol.

Nice to see harden get some use late game outside of being a gen 1 badge booster.

When I was a kid, I thought the red patches on its head were its eyes, and so I believed its actual eyes were its ears!

“I need items to make sure my small PP can go the distance” 😂😂😂😂 15:52

I would like to point out that not having Cradily know giga drain was an oversight which led to a lot of resets for it

Very glad my favorite Pokemon is in the top spot. Armaldo my goat.

You're brilliant for using Harden against Steven.

27:10 Oh man, Armaldo really did a first for the playthroughs by giving us an offical gameitme. XD

Great gameitme there :D Can't wait to see when you enjoy an Aggron run. Hooboy

Oh boy, just based on runtime I can't wait to see what it manages vs cradily!

Armaldo is my favorite Hoenn fossil pokemon

While Armaldo struggles with it's typing not giving him much of an edge- it's pretty balanced defensively while packing a punch. Always loved a sword dance+aqua jet set, especially with swift swim and rain support. It was pretty unsuspecting but usually managed to not be a deadweight on the team

Glad I'm not the only one whos still terrified of Crits even if I have Battle Armour. (Brendan Battle 2)

Congrats to the all-powerful shrimp

Can't wait to see a shedninja video

Definitely felt that some fights were a bit closer with Armaldo. Wallace Wailord not using Water Spout was quite lucky. Weird how it tried to go for blizzard. And the different Omni Boosts certainly helped to smooth out some problems here and there. Would be excited to see how it goes on a future second run as Ancient Power is not boosting as reliable and could lead to extra resets.

As a kid I always thought that Armaldo was a steel rock type , at least by looking at it design,it is sure looking like one😂. Armaldo has carshed Cardily in every single aspect. Having a more attack,gave it the definitive edge over Cardily. Also Armaldo's level up moves and movepool are way better,and it's ability minimizes the inconsistent part of a solo run in general which is crits. Well, I guess that by changing your approach on the usage of rare candys and having all of the mentioned advantages ,Armaldo's results were surprisingly good. I wonder how it would do in yellow if it was back ported . Because after all both bug and rock types don't have a lot of stab options in this gen .🤔

I remember having a little toy of this fossil for years and years

Talking about how you've never beaten the game with any Bug types right after beating the game with Armaldo is such a Scott thing to do lol

Remember: If it's not 100% accurate, it's 0% accurate. Unless the opponent's using it.

Should have just used metal claw in the Watson battle, it would have given you an attack buff

Emerald videos mean comments from this guy! I think your mid and late game were much better than your early game. Later on, you played really well and made some smart choices. I agree with the new approach to Rare Candies. The results of that were very visible. Now, I'm always wanting to provide useful, constructive advice for you, so now I want to comment on your earlier battles. You could have avoided that one reset against Roxanne by using one Harden on the first Geodude. You know that Rock Tomb isn't going to be used once you're slower. You also know you can't be crit, ignoring your boosts. Harden will mean that the first Rock Tomb you take deals less damage, giving you more HP to play with for the rest of the battle. I think you would have won first try had you done that. Next up, and this is your biggest mistake - I think you made a huge moveset error against Wattson, and paid the price for it big time. Having seen the Cradily video, I was hoping you'd see the long-term value in Armaldo's rare move, but you did not. You deleted Mud Sport early, after saying Water Gun was no longer useful to you, and then went on to never use it. Armaldo has a fairly weak SPDEF stat and, unlike Cradily, is not of a typing that resists electric. With this information, you know that Shock Wave is a major damage threat, alongside Sonicboom. You can't do anything about Sonicboom, but Mud Sport reduces the base power of incoming electric moves by 50% and lasts until you switch out. By taking one turn to set up Mud Sport, you effectively gain a resistance to electric on a Pokemon that does not do this by typing. Considering you're going for the long game, you can expect to take multiple Shock Waves over the course of the battle, and so your one turn of setting up gives you roughly +3 or +4 turns of additional value in the form of HP. That's huge. In future runs, you can do the same with Water Sport. You can delete the move early, but then re-learn it with a Heart Scale collected from a lone rock on the beach, directly east of the bike shop. Bug types like the Surskit line or water types lacking STAB like the Goldeen line would greatly benefit from this approach to Flannery. Finally, I think Drake could have been made a little easier and less luck-reliant had you saved your White Herb for him. You know you have Aerial Ace for Sydney, and, even though you get Intimidated, your ability to ignore accuracy checks and most of his damage being normal type means you're almost guaranteed to win that fight. The White Herb can then be saved for Salamence, as the only things you need to dodge are Rock Tomb and Smokescreen. That's all the advice I have for you today. As time progresses, the comments I'm writing get smaller and smaller, so that's a sign of growth. Good job!

I think rock tomb is a /lot/ more palatable when it's not your primary attack. All the times you missed 3 times in a row at less than 1% chances: highly unlikely if you use it against a dozen trainers, but quite likely if you use it against 100!

When you die, you should have a tomb made of rock. Then when they try to lower your body, it will somehow end up missing and reviving you.

Very late here, but I think instead of resetting on lost gym battles you should route to put your HM Pokémon in the box so you can blackout train in between attempts. You’d lose a little bit of time running back to the gym leader each attempt, but you might make it up if you end up needing to grind levels anyway. Obviously this would be a case-by-case sort of deal if you go into the battle with consumable held items or for runs like the Buneary line where the friendship stat matters, but I feel like in general it could end up saving a couple of minutes for certain runs and could help to conserve rare candies for the post-gym endgame against the elite trainers.

Damn. Armaldo Turn Beast Mode On Against Steven

Can't wait to see the Munja video

It shows that an erratic growth can be very good if the pokemon has strong early game match ups

During the winona fight, 'I need items to make my small pp go the distance'.... PHRASING SCOTT!!!

Also fun fact, its not precisely that combusken comes in because it has a type advantage. All of its attacks are neutral. /but/ there are rounding errors involved. Its something like a pseudo roll of 5 damage is tested, which gets doubled to 10 by fire vs bug and halved to 5 by fire vs rock. But the order the types are checked is just based on some internal list, so if its fighting vs bug and then fighting vs rock then /rounding/ kicks in, and its halved to 2.5->2 and doubled to 4. Note that the number ive picked and the exact type orders are just intended to illustrate and i dont remember the exact specifics of this situation off the dome This all only comes into play cuz none of their mons have a super effective move

Gotta love 80% accuracy, ever since I was young I've had the mindset that moves with less than 100% base accuracy are useless because I have terrible luck. If a move has 95 accuracy it might as well be 0 accuracy, heck I even made a ROM hack where any move below 100 accuracy was changed to have 99 accuracy and I was still missing multiple moves in a row. Less than 100% accuracy moves? Not even once, in my books.

The problem with the bug-type is that most bugs look like they can fly, sting, and resist hits with their exoskeleton. They look like they have 3-4 types, so remembering them is tricky.

I like watching you and Jrose.

I can't believe how good Armaldo's Gameitime was! It's a shame it's movepool is kind of awful because it's such a neat pokemon.

Armaldo, my favorite fire/psychic type

Would hidden power bug not be a good choice? Stab and offensive it is quite decent.

This run should be named: " can I beat Pokémon emerald with Rock Tomb on my moveset?"