Zargerth

Downloading patch 10 should fix your problem. The cell door is supposed to be open.

When it comes to spoilers, there should be an icon for it, it resembles an eye. It's on the same row as other formatting stuff, right above the text box.

In my experience if you don't have patch 10, the cell door is closed. You aren't supposed to have the mining kit just yet. I kept playing the save and I managed to get the mining kit, so as far as I know there shouldn't be any problems.

Download patch 10, at least you aren't stuck anymore. Game.rxdata

You need heart scales for the Move Tutor. The thing with heart scales is that if you can't find them anywhere else but by mining rocks, you don't get to use your heart scales as soon as you get them.

Ok, I see. I remember Revenant Keta being way more difficult in the past, so I was a bit surprised to see he was nerfed.

This is my team in my current playthrough. I have some others in reserve.

I'm playing version 9.2 so if Keta indeed had 6 Pokemon in version 8, something must have happened here. His mons' levels were between 28 and 30.

What do you think would improve Team Xen Leaders as villains? You mention they lack personality and would benefit from having more screen time, but what exactly do you mean with more personality? Is it about them having more characteristic or character traits - this reminds me of a video I watched, it was about what makes villains feel real - and they mentioned humor. It makes them, the villains, feel human. As for Melia's "death", do you think some of her hair would have worked looking at you Fire Emblem? Nevertheless, I have plenty of catching up to do but that might take some time since I have an attention span of a goldfish.

I mean, on the top of my head that was the one I can remember. For a short period of time I laddered in Showdown Monotype using Normal-type, and I had Regigigas in my team. Confuse Ray actually saved my bacon a couple of times.

Was he supposed to have only 4 and not 6 Pokemon? It seems to me that his mons' levels were lowered as well.

Does Confuse Ray Regigigas in competitive monotype count?

From what I understand, the development is still on hiatus.

Solgaleo

Radomus. To answer the OP's question, I used to like Shade's battle theme (before the gym leader battle theme was changed).

Guilty as charged. I did reset a few times for Axew - I had to do it twice because I didn't settle for Modest with bad IV's on Attack. But once I got the Axew I decided to keep, Axew (and eventually Fraxure and Haxorus) carried me quite a bit. Dragon Rage, and then Dragon Dance + Dragon Claw was enough to destroy most trainers and leaders. So the time I spent getting Axew definitely paid off. Request-a-mons and injecting the mons you want or need, in my opinion, defeats the entire gameplay aspect of fan-games (with the exception of Monotype runs that would otherwise be next to impossible without a little help). I'm sure there's a good reason or two why the availability of mons is limited - all of that becomes meaningless if you just decide to get yourself good ol' Gyarados or whatever strikes your fancy.

Iirc you get Dark Pulse when you defeat the Dark-type Gym Leader

That really depends on which you prefer. If you like to keep it simple and well, play casually (I'm using the word loosely here) then Awakening could be the choice for you. If you're not planning to play both Conquest and Birthright and just either one, you're going to miss out on some story content - while it might not be that great of a loss (the plot of Fates isn't particularly good), there's no closure to the story Revelations doesn't count. By purchasing Awakening you get a whole story for the price of one game. Conquest in terms of gameplay is leagues above Awakening. Some have even compared it to how Fire Emblem used to be. That also means Conquest, especially on higher difficulties, (and with permadeath) is more difficult than Awakening or Birthright. Some people criticize Awakening for being easily "breakable" but in my opinion Ryoma in Birthright breaks the game as soon as you get him (Awakening's map design and one-sided map objectives have been criticized as well, but I don't know how much you care for things like that).

Concerning Alolan Geodude, fair enough. I just suggested it because it's the only Alolan form to meet your criteria for starters. What do you mean by saying you don't know how to go about Poliwags 2 evolutions? Unless you decide to change when and how some Pokemon evolve, the player needs to acquire evolution items like Reaper Cloth (to evolve Dusclops), Magmarizer and various Stones. Is Poliwag in your opinion somehow different? The way I see it is that should the player pick Poliwag, they can choose either Poliwrath or Politoed - the one they like more or the one that might be available to the player earlier on in the game.

Did you consider Budew as either Grass or Poison -type starter? I'd like to suggest Poliwag as the Water -type starter, you can even choose between Poliwrath and Politoed. Since gen 7 is implemented in your game as well, Alolan Geodude might work as either Electric or Rock -type starter. Edit: I forgot to mention Horsea might be another good alternative as a Water-type.

Special, as in waste of time in order to gain bragging rights? What is this "really have to work for" when all of your work can be completely useless should you miss a move with 90 accuracy? Like I said, awards like beating a gym leader on your first try not only involve lots of grinding - or work, however you want to see it - ,there's no guarantee you get anything out of it.

I agree you on that they hurt creativity. To be honest I'm sick of Gardevoir as well *makes no mention of having a shiny Gardevoir in his team...what a hypocrite*

I'd like to think that there's a difference between "challenging" and "obviously bad (game) design". Just because something could be made "too extreme", that doesn't mean it should.

Because of how popular Gardevoir and Magnezone are, having both of them in your team has become a meme.

Let me put it this way: after playing for 60 hours or so I'm battling against the last gym leader. They manage to defeat my Pokemon because of a critical hit and thus I lost the battle. Should I now have to play another 60 hours or so to reach that point and try again, with the possibility of the same thing occurring again? I don't think you're thinking this clearly. I have "fully restarted" Reborn five times already. I'm not going to "fully restart" who knows how many times because of RNG. In my opinion, that shouldn't be required of anyone. As for achievements becoming grinding, well, you worked - as in grinded - towards something and eventually got it. Is there something particularly wrong in gaining something after putting effort to it? Should you put effort to something and hope you get the reward, because RNG? I'm not saying every achievement should be obtainable during a single playthrough as long as you can continue unlocking them with other playthroughs. Reborn is said to have multiple endings based on choices you make, so the achievements can easily complement Reborns re-play value. However, what doesn't contribute to re-play value and turns the game to nothing but a grind, is if you need to reach a certain point in the game and retry clearing it with your first try. Edit: Of course any gym leader and boss can be beaten on your first try, but that requires you to prepare specific counters. That means you have raise certain Pokemon - and possibly even breed it - and then EV train it. This whole process has to be repeated several times throughout the game. There's a name to all of this, can you guess what it it? Grinding. If anything, fretting over whether you beat a gym leader or not on your first try and then over-preparing for each battle is what turns the game in to a grind.