"I finally got ALL 7 GOLD SYMBOLS IN THE EMERALD BATTLE FRONTIER. Story of how I did it and advice on how the people of /r/pokemon can do it, too."

Hi so a bit of a preface first. I used no emulators and no gameshark on a legit emerald cartridge. It took me over a year and a half of real time and over 400 hours of game time to do this. I experienced countless demoralising defeats and bad luck so severe that I had to sit there and take a good few minutes to register that I had actually just got THAT unlucky. That said here it is, I've seen a few battle frontier guides around but I finally feel fully qualified to give my own advice and add to what is already known.Proof of gold symbols and pic of trainer card: http://ift.tt/2pt8NhV I'm going to go through my pokemon pool, rank each pokemon's success and then go through my own little guide for each facility. So, without further ado:Pokemon:I started out the battle frontier with a team of 3 pokemon: Metagross, Milotic and Latias. However, despite this team's strength they did end up faltering and I started to train other pokemon to take their place in certain facilities. My pool grew and grew until I ended up with no less than 12 pokemon to choose from, each painstakingly ev trained and some bred for natures and egg moves. I always checked for good ivs but wasn't patient enough to go for complete IV perfection, it's not totally necessary in the battle frontier. My pokemon in the end were:Heracross, adamant nature, level 60, 252 attack 252 speed 4 hp, megahorn/ earthquake/rock slide/brick break. Ability: guts, bred, item: lum berry, choice band or brightpowderStarmie, mild nature, level 60, 252 special attack 252 speed 4 hp, thunderbolt/psychic/surf/ice beam. Ability: Natural Cure, wild caught, item: shell bell or mystic waterLatias, calm nature, level 60, 252 hp 252 defence 4 special defence, calm mind/double team/recover/dragon claw. Ability: Levitate, wild caught, item: lum berry or leftoversSlaking, adamant nature, level 60, 252 attack 252 speed 4 hp, return (pyramid) or double edge (tower)/earthquake, shadow ball, flamethrower (tower) or hyper beam (pyramid). Ability: Truant, bred, item: choice bandRegice, modest nature, level 60, 252 hp 252 special attack 4 special defence, thunderbolt/ice beam/rest/toxic. Ability: Clear body, wild caught, item: chesto berry/lum berryRegirock, sassy nature, level 60, 252 hp 252 attack 4 defence, earthquake/explosion/rock slide/superpower. Ability: Clear body, wild caught, item: White herbBreloom, hasty nature, level 60, 252 attack, 180 (or so) speed, 70 (or so) hp, spore/focus punch/leech seed/substitute. Ability: effect spore, wild caught, item: leftovers/brightpowderMilotic, quirky nature, level 60, 252 hp 252 special attack 4 defence, recover/surf/ice beam/toxic. Ability: Marvel scale, wild caught, item: leftoversMetagross, quiet nature, level 60, 252 hp 252 attack 4 special defence, meteor mash/shadow ball or psychic/earthquake/aerial ace. Ability: Clear Body, obtained from Steven, item: Choice band, brightpowder or lum berryAlakazam (traded with ruby to evolve), timid nature, level 60, 252 speed 252 special attack 4 hp, psychic (offensive) or trick (utility)/fire punch (offensive) or thunder wave (utility)/ice punch (offensive), calm mind (setup offensive) or reflect (utility)/thunderpunch (offensive) or kinesis (utility). Ability: synchronise, bred, item: lum berry or brightpowder (offensive) or choice band (utility). The utility options are for the trickband strategy for the tower, which I tried and lost to a quick claw tyranitar, I know it works for some people but i personally wouldn't recommend it.Sceptile (traded from ruby), timid nature, level 60, 252 special attack 252 speed 4 hp, leaf blade/thunderpunch/dragon claw/crunch. Ability: Overgrow, bred, item: scope lensRegisteel, quiet nature, level 60, 110 hp 100 attack 100 defence 100 special attack 100 special defence (gonna be honest I just wanted to ev this one quick and vitamined every stat but speed), thunderbolt/ice punch/earthquake/explosion (damage output) or aerial ace (evasion counter), wild caught, item: lum berry or brightpowderSo there are all my pokemon, the next list is those pokemon "tiered", ranked by usefulness on how many of my symbol-winning teams they were on. Some notes are that sceptile was probably my most useless pokemon, it would probably have been stronger as a subseeder but I had unfortunately already used my substitute tutor on breloom so i went offensive. I wanted to use it because i like sceptile and think its design is cool, but it was very weak in frontier. Additionally, just because some pokemon are only on 1 or 2 symbol winning teams doesn't mean they're weak per se, just that they may be very strong only in specific facilities. Also, the max symbols possible for any pokemon to be on the team of is 6, seeing as the factory uses rental pokemon.6 symbol wins: None5 symbol wins: None4 Symbol wins: Metagross (dome, pyramid, pike, palace)3 Symbol wins: Latias (dome, pyramid, tower), Milotic (dome, arena, palace)2 Symbol wins: Starmie (pyramid, pike), Regirock (Arena, Palace)1 Symbol win: Alakazam (Arena), Regice (Tower), Heracross (Pike), Slaking (Tower)0 Symbol wins: Sceptile, Registeel, BreloomI suppose judging by this chart Metagross would be the MVP, but I have to say there are several issues with this tiering list. Firstly, pokemon I obtained early have an advantage as they had more time to accrue symbols, as clearly shown by the fact that my first three pokemon obtained are the three highest scorers. Additionally, there were several pokemon that only got credit for the symbol because i used them on the last pass due to their strength against the brain's team. Examples of this include Alakazam in the arena and Latias in the tower. Registeel deserves a special mention because it was hugely valuable in the arena getting me to the final run through, it beat the first 49 battles practically single handedly with its awesome bulk and coverage, it's not much good in the other facilities but very strong in the arena. Now for the guides on each facility:My experience and tips on each facility:Factory:A lot of people have trouble with the factory, but it was my first gold and so long ago I don't even remember my team except that it had a latios on it. What I do remember is it took a LOT of tries to beat, I just really really enjoy the battle factory and so didn't even really realise how much time I put into it until I got the gold symbol. Some tips though: if in doubt, swap. Don't swap every single battle without even thinking but if you're unsure whether to swap because the pokemon is kinda good but you're not 100% about it, make the swap. The more swaps you do the stronger your pool of potential rental pokemon becomes. Also, some great pokemon on the early streaks are milotic and kingdra, I always have one of these on my team if I can, no kidding I'll take one of these over a salamence.Dome:My second gold symbol and in my opinion the easiest gold in the frontier. Also the most fun facility in my opinion (except maybe the factory), you get the massive advantage of seeing your opponent's team before battle, bring a balanced team and look at your opponent's team before every battle and you should be golden. You might lose a couple of times but there isn't really any special strategy required to beat this one.My team to beat the dome: Metagross, Milotic, LatiasBrain Battle: Dome Ace Tucker: Tucker's team is Swampert, Metagross and Latias. A decent team but the AI on his swampert seems a little broken in that it just spams mirror coat. I set up calm minds with latias and swept him.Palace:My third symbol and the quickest one for me, though this was luck rather than the ease of the facility. I picked my team for this based on their natures, Regirock's sassy nature, Metagross's quiet nature and Milotic's Quirky nature each have a high % chance to cause the pokemon to attack rather than be "incapable of using its power". There's a chart on bulbapedia which can help immensely with choosing good natures for the palace, and I definitely recommend it to anyone challenging the Palace. I went straight from a streak of 0 to 42 and beat the brain in this one, because my team was quite strong due to the good natures. I did have some trouble with Spenser however and the battle for gold was the closest call of any of my battles with the frontier brains.My team to beat the palace: Metagross, Regirock, MiloticBrain Battle: Palace Maven Spenser: Spenser has a team of Arcanine Slaking and Suicune. Arcanine and Slaking are solid pokemon but Suicune is terrifying, and probably one of the strongest possible opponents in the battle frontier. Luckily his has no form of recovery but is still a menace with its tendency to spam calm mind. This battle was intense, I beat arcanine with regirock easily and got a couple of earthquakes off on slaking before regirock got taken down by a crit earthquake. Metagross then finished off slaking but was easily dispatched by suicune making it 1 on 1 suicune vs Milotic. Milotic rolled surf and recover nonstop and only after Suicune had like 4 calm minds up did it finally roll toxic. After suicune was toxiced Milotic suddenly stopped rolling recover, and was slowly whittled away by suicune's surfs. Even with Milotic's bulk Suicune had set up enough to be doing damage, and Milotic survived with only 7 hp the turn that Spenser's Suicune finally fell to toxic. It was an ecstatic victory and the best piece of advice I can give for this battle is: bring something to handle suicune, that thing is a monster. I recommend either a bulky water with toxic e.g. milotic or a fast electric type to hit suicune before it can get set up e.g. manetric or (if you have a fire red or leaf green to trade from) jolteon.Pike:This was my fourth gold symbol and it's appropriately called the facility which tests luck. A lot of the pike is randomised and if the RNG fucks you over enough you can lose no matter how well prepared you are, though this is true for much of the frontier. After a lot of running through the pike this is the strategy I settled on, and it was very effective. Basically, talk to the woman every time before you choose a room (you can maybe get away with not doing this on the first few passes since it's so easy but definitely do it every time from pass 4 onwards). If she says something along the lines on "is it... a trainer? I sense the presence of people" then DO NOT GO IN THAT ROOM. 75% of the time this means a 3 on 3 trainer battle after which YOU WILL NOT BE HEALED. This is the worst case scenario, basically if she says anything other than that phrase, go to the room she told you. If she says that phrase, go to one of the other two rooms. If you do this, the only trainer battles you will encounter are double battles which are rare and 3 on 2 in your favour, and trainer battles where you will be fully healed afterwards. Wild pokemon are essentially a free room as you can just run from every battle, and it's not like the pyramid, so long as your lead has reasonable speed you will successfully run away every time. "wave of nostalgia" means a status affliction or rarely a random number of your pokemon will get healed. Another note about this is that if you get this room and all three of your pokemon are already statused, go for it because there's a 100% chance of healing if every pokemon already has a status affliction. This strategy won me the pike pretty quickly and another thing to note is that while 10 consecutive passes are required for the gold symbol, a pass takes very little time and this is probably the quickest facility timewise to actually reach the gold battle not factoring in streak restarts from losing. Also, Starmie and Heracross are great here because natural cure and guts are a huge help with the statuses that get used constantly in the pike.Team for beating the pike: Starmie, Heracross, MetagrossBrain Battle: Pike Queen Lucy: Lucy's team of Seviper, Steelix and Gyarados is not very impressive for a gold symbol battle and definitely the easiest for any brain. I beat this whole battle with Heracross after Seviper unexpectedly KOd my Starmie. I just earthquaked Seviper, brick breaked Steelix for an easy 2HKO, and spammed rock slide and took out Gyarados in a couple of turns. Lucy is definitely the easiest brain, and if you're taking down the legendary spamming, curselax and pseudo-using trainers you've faced in the later passes, Lucy should be a pushover. The only reason I could foresee anyone losing to her is if your team is extremely weakened and you get unlucky and get the room where your team doesn't get healed. I actually got this room but won easily anyway, so even this probably won't tip the odds in her favour. I do think her pre-battle speech is pretty cool though.Tower:Hoo boy the tower, I definitely burned more hours here than at any other facility. I have been fucked over so many times by RNG at this place that I can't even count it, and the range of enemy pokemon you could face is just so huge that you simply can't be sure that you'll win, no matter what your team is. I've had the trickband alakazam strategy recommended to me by other guides on reddit and on other pokemon forums and gave it a try but it didn't work for me as I lost to a quick claw tyranitar. I used a trick band alakazam, a pp stalling variant of my registeel with rest and protect to stall out the move it was locked into, and then set up calm minds and double teams with latias as it struggled, but like I said my trick failed on the first turn thanks to quick claw. Even this strat can be fucked over by hax as quick claw can outspeed you or brightpowder can make you miss, and if your trickband fails then you're basically fucked, so I don't really recommend this strategy. What worked for me was persistence and Slaking. Slaking is HUGE here, and after putting it on my team it only took me 2 tries to get the gold symbol (and I tried probably upwards of 100 hours before that). Seriously give it double edge and slap on a choice band, and it'll OHKO pretty much everything it gets sent against except Skarm and some Lapras sets. I put Latias on my team because it was strong against the brain and Regice because it's a good answer to Starmie and Zapdos which are two pokemon I often struggle against.Team for beating the tower: Slaking, Regice, LatiasBrain Battle: Salon Maiden Anabel: Anabel has a pretty solid team and is probably the strongest brain overall except for maybe Brandon. How I beat her was I just set up 6 calm minds against her Raikou with my Latias. It set up a couple of calm minds of its own but wasted a few turns thunderbolting me. I then beat it with dragon claw, and it was thankfully still in 3HKO range even with the calm minds, so rest didn't save it. I then just OHKOd Latios and 2HKOd Snorlax (which used its one turn to set up a curse) with my +6 dragon claw.Arena:The Arena is basically the Tower on hard mode. No switching which makes confusion and attract even more annoying than it was already, and if you have a bad type matchup (which believe me you will because the battle frontier loooooves to pit you against really specific counter teams) then too fucking bad you can't switch out. The only reason it didn't take me as long to beat as the tower is because it only requires a 56 streak to get to the brain rather than a 70 streak, plus registeel is very strong in the judging element. Speaking of judging here's how it works: mind is judged on who uses a damage dealing move more often, if you both use a damage dealing move the same number of times you tie. Skill is based on how often your moves hit and their type effectiveness. Missing your moves lowers your skill rating (yes this makes double team, which was already super OP, even more OP) as does using not very effective moves. using super effective moves and hitting your moves raises your skill rating. Body is pretty simple, it's whoever has more HP. One super important thing about body is it's not judged on fraction of total HP vs fraction of total HP. It's the fraction of the health the pokemon had when they entered the current matchup. For example if a pokemon with 60% HP KOs and pokemon and then goes up against a fully healthy pokemon, at the end of judging the pokemon which originally had 60% HP would win on body if it had 50% HP remaining and the previously healthy pokemon had 70% remaining, because 50/60 > 70/100. Registeel is strong here because thunderbolt/ice punch/earthquake has very good type coverage and hits a lot of things super effectively, aerial ace deals with evasion spam to prevent losing skill rating and registeel is bulky enough to survive the 3 turns and reach judging with a high body rating. I just didn't use it on the last pass because I needed its slot for AlakazamTeam for beating the Arena: Regirock, Alakazam, MiloticBrain battle: Arena Tycoon Greta: Greta's team is probably the least threatening brain team except for Lucy's, with Umbreon, Gengar and Breloom. That said she's by no means a pushover, her team is super annoying with status and can RNG your ass big time. I beat her by bringing an Alakazam in my second slot, which is an easy answer to Gengar and Breloom. Obviously it's not very strong against Umbreon, which is why I led with Regirock and just used explosion on turn 1, OHKOing Umbreon and paving the way for Alakazam to one shot Greta's other two mons.Pyramid:I left the pyramid til last because it intimidated me, but it's actually deceptively easy. It takes the longest of any facility to accrue a streak, but trainers only have one pokemon each and will give you very useful hints. In order to find the exit tile the method I used was: when you spawn walk in one direction until you find the boundary, then stand as far as you can away from the wall while still being able to see the outermost tile, even if it's just a fraction of the tile. Then, walk around in a big circle around the whole floor, diverting from your path only to pick up items or obviously exit the floor if you see that flash of blue. If you get back to your starting point, walk a few more tiles out so that the outermost tile you can see is the first one you could not see in your previous circuit and then circle around again. Continue this cycle until you a) find a trainer who gives you a specific direction to check or b) find the exit tile. Speaking of trainers a helpful tip is that if you see a cluster of 3 or more trainers in one place unless you just spawned in it, there's a 99% chance the exit tile is in the middle of them or very nearby. Fighting trainers is a calculated risk that you should take based on the health of your team, their hints are useful but they can be tough especially at higher streaks. Also, on your second pass try pick up every item you can as if you're lucky (like I was) you might find a choice band which you can equip to Slaking in order to decimate wild pokemon and most trainers.Team used to beat the pyramid: Starmie, Metagross, LatiasBrain Battle: Pyramid King Brandon: This battle is fresh in my mind as it happened today. Brandon has a very strong but poorly balanced monotype flying team consisting of the three kanto legendary birds. I used Latias in this round because of its strength against the birds except for articuno, and Starmie because the wild pokemon are rock type in the 10th round (Bulbapedia has a very helpful page on types of wild pokemon in the pyramid). Metagross was similarly picked for its type advantage against rock types and its good matchup against articuno. I fully healed my team before battle thanks to the item stockpile I had in my battle bag. Starmie 2HKOd Articuno with Thunderbolt and the ice bird missed the one attack (Blizzard) it managed to use against me. Zapdos then KOd Starmie with thunder but not before losing a good chunk of health to ice beam. I then brought in Latias and set up 4 calm minds and 2 double teams before taking it out with a dragon claw. Moltres then spammed aerial ace, critting me as I landed my first dragon claw and getting me a bit low. I thought it was OK because I could live one more and Moltres was on red health, I went for dragon claw and it went for aerial ace. I missed my dragon claw thanks to brightpowder and its aerial ace got me to the point where a crit aerial ace would take me out. I went for recover but Moltres was faster and KOed me with hyper beam. Thankfully I was able to finish it with Metagross's aerial ace on its recharge turn, but it was never really close as I had multiple revives anyway.So yeah there we are, I hope my information and story was of some help and interest. I just realised this post is really long so thank you very much if you read it, this really was a huge effort for me and it feels surreal finally having all 7 symbols. next up: win all master rank contests. Oh and I still have to go gloat to Scott and get that berry or whatever, so that should be fun.EDIT: Hugely helpful links with Battle Frontier Trainers' pokemon pools and pokemon sets:http://ift.tt/2quLYJg via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2qoiMXi