Q: What is this?
A: The main problem with the Naughty mudkip that Emerald has always used is its low attack IV at 23, which results in a lot of really costly ranges throughout the run. Previously, we could mitigate this by picking up a protein, but that lost about 20 seconds. Recently, themathgenius developed an RNG manip to get a different mudkip with better attack (basically equivalent to 1-2 proteins on the Naughty), so I'm trying it out. 

Q: How is the route different?
A: The route is functionally identical. It just has different offensive and defensive damage ranges, and you speedtie Wattson's Voltorb. In general, your moves hit a bit harder but you take more damage.

Q: What are the details of the new mudkip?
A: Frame 5822, Lonely, 25/28/31/30/22/27

Q: Is it better than the Naughty?
A: I don't think its better than the Naughty, but I also don't necessarily think its worse. Dealing more damage on Ben zigzagoon, Flannery camerupt, everything in Norman's gym, and Rival 3 grovyle are all huge, but taking more damage on the Roxanne, Norman, and True Double/Archie splits is really bad. The ideal mudkip would be the 1026 naughty with better attack, but that unfortunately doesn't exist in Emerald. Overall I call it a wash within margin of error. If nothing else, its good enough to get world record so I'm giving it a shot.

Q: Is there really nothing better than the bad attack Naughty or the bad defense/speed Lonely?
A: There's a Lonely on frame 3253 with 31 IV attack but it has even worse speed which causes significant problems on TnL and True Double, while still having the bad defense problems. There's a carbos we can pick up to try to mitigate the speed issue but it takes too long and doesn't do enough. Every other mudkip we can get without losing time in the intro isn't viable.

Q: Why does mudkip manip look so weird now.
A: The Lonely mudkip doesn't arrive until about 96 seconds after resetting, compared to 23 seconds for Naughty. In order to not lose 70+ seconds waiting for this mudkip, we have to reset super early so that we progress through the intro while waiting for the mudkip frame to arrive. Because of this, we need to time several inputs to manipulate NPCs to move in specific ways so that the RNG stays aligned all the way to mudkip.

Q: Why are you running the Lonely instead of the Naughty.
A: I feel like it.