Serial Failues

So the decision was made: power level a bit on route 4, then hit up nugget bridge and milk the trainers to the north before coming back for misty. Mankey needs to level the most, and the spearows here are mostly L10, and rarely even use peck. A single hit is only 30% or so of her health, so I'm feeling pretty safe. Oh hey, fury swipes? I recall this move being pretty good, figure I'll give it a try before heading back for healing (Mankey's got about half health).

Did you not see this coming? I didn't. 'Cuz I'm a fool. L12 spearow this time, goes straight for peck, gets a crit. Mankey II goes down- hard. Didn't even hit with the swipes either. Mankeys appear to be terrible luck for me... but I must soldier on.

Nugget bridge is pathetic. Butterfree literally wrecked everyone. Tried to give rattata a little bit of XP, but butterfree was just too good. Confusion gets super effectiveness against poisons, which is about half of the pokemon on that bridge, and the lone high level mankey. Sleep powder combos to take down the rest easily enough. I think she almost gained 3 levels on those 7 trainers (I'm counting the camper on the left too).

Now, more importantly; new route! Again I have the option to wait and swim for some water types later, but I'll defer them to cities and my awesome wartortle. How's the grass? Well, 24% chance of a caterpie/metapod, but otherwise good options. Weedle/kakuna is not actually that bad- I'm a fan of beedrill. Pidgey would fill my flying gap nicely. Bellsprout would finally give me someone good against water, which I desperately need since who knows if I'll ever catch an electric type. And abra, well, kadabra is one of the strongest psychics. So, knowing my luck recently, this'll be a caterpie.

Pidgey! Booyah. Set up wartortle, get a couple bubbles in, but I'm not confident a third bubble won't kill it. Bring back butterfree, and I poison the poor bird. Let that work its health down for a couple turns, then use sleep powder. If it works, this will put the pidgey to sleep, which boosts the odds of capture more than poison and prevent it from dying after I catch it. Of course, sleep powder only works 75% of the time, but it'd have to fail twice (1/16th chance) for the pidgey to die of poison.

Again, can you see where this is headed? I had slept him at the opening of the battle already, so I knew he didn't have vital spirit or anything, but why would that stop me? Two failed attempts, and pidgey is no more. Didn't even get the chance to catch this one... le *sigh*.

Roommate-boy (aka RIP) thinks that since a pokemon can only have one status ailment at a time, one that is already poisoned would be immune to sleep powder. I had always thought that sleep powder would cure the poison and put them to sleep. I can't confirm or deny which it is, so I guess it's crowd sourcing time! Anyone know more?