Twist

Mining Kit is all the way back to the caves where you rescued Victoria. You need Rock Smash.

Into a powerful Star-... ..Sta-.... Starly.

Garde Psychic is 40. Also to find Victoria in the cave place, just explore the different possible paths you can take when sliding down those ledges.

Too bad the time you put into getting those is a waste since it's quicker just to spam Pickup with speedhack to get like 60 rare candies in a few minutes.

Mawile. I always liked it, don't really know why. It's a giant pea with teeth. Not sure how I feel about its Mega-Evolution... but meh, I'll take it.

Honestly this question is so relative to each individual because it really depends on the Pokemon you decide to use. If you just go with the "mainstream" strong pokemon you'll always have a pretty easy time defeating the gyms, although it also depends if you're willing to train Pokemon that have type-advantages. All in all, you yourself decide how tough each gym battle is: you can decide to make it super easy, or super hard.

I would (and I did) pick Empoleon. He has good resistances due to his Water/Steel dualtype which will help you a lot against Aya, Serra and Noel. Once you get your hands on a Heart Scale you can get Swagger which will complement his/her defensive-ness really well. You can also use Bide to get rid of the nasty pokemon some bosses have, or just use him/her to heal up your other Pokemon. In the end Empoleon is great mainly as a supportive Pokemon. Having at least one bulky Pokemon is a good idea, in my opinion. Leveling it up will also be easy once you get to the Volcano. The Macargo there will help you keep your Empoleon at a good level even if you use it only minimally outside of boss battles. Its not that great offensive-wise because even though it has good Sp.A. it doesn't learn any strong Sp.A. moves until Hydro Pump and unfortunately you don't have access to good TMs like Ice Beam YET. However it does have a nice diversity when it comes to moves, including Drill Peck which makes it reliable against Fighting Types even if it has a x2 weakness to them (although obviously it would be more of a last resort scenario.) You're also probably thinking that Aqua Jet and Drill Peck are pretty useless since they're Physical and Empoleon has shit Physical Attack damage, but you can make it re-learn Swords Dance if you want to have a mixed build. Everyone and their mothers go for Torchick, so I hate it 'cause I'm a hipster trainer. Turtwig is a good alternative, though.

Excluding the fighting types then: Kricketune can OHKO Cradily or 2hko it if you use Fury Cutter to swipe some of her other pokemon beforehand. Magby has STAB Flame Burst, it will at least weaken it. Trubbish can set up with Acid Spray so it can OHKO Cradily even if it recovers to full health. Flobot aint a big deal.

For the second gym try out Scraggy (Slums after you beat Fern), Kircketune, Makuhita (Slums), Magby, Trubbish. Not gonna need all of them obviously, but yeah any of those should help you win. As for a starter team, chances are you won't have a solid team that'll carry you through the entire game anyways. Chances are you'll switch your team up eventually.

Sweet, thanks.

If you're going for underused I'd take Adamant Dodrio, I think. It's not the wisest choice obviously. It has a weak movepool, but you can probably get it to work. It's a cool pokemon in my opinion, and it will help you out against Bugs.

You can only get one Dusk Stone at this point in the game, to my knowledge. I got it from the Underground Railnet. There should be two doors that the tracks can open: one to advance the plot (the one that leads to Chrysolia) and one that lets you save a boyfriend. Go through the latter, and go down the stairs. There's a Dusk Stone somewhere there. Edit: Got ninja'd. GG Delhezi

And here I thought I was the only one hearing what the Tepighead-on-a-stick was saying...

Did the same thing. Does it say version 9.5 on the title screen? Cause it just says version 9 for me. I'm preeetty sure it updated though, cause like... moving NPCs and stuff.