How Do You Beat The Ecruteak City Gym? (Pokemon Crystal Guides)

The Ecruteak City Gym can be pretty challenging if you don’t know what you’re doing. 

The gym leader, Morty, uses ghost-type Pokemon. His ace, Gengar, uses a nasty combination of hypnosis and dream eater. 

Getting caught in this cycle of not being able to attack and being battered by a strong psychic type move that also heals his Pokemon is frustrating. 

But we’ll help you get that 4th gym badge. In this Pokemon Crystal guide, we’ll cover:

  • Where to find Morty and bring him back to his gym.
  • How to get through the Ecruteak City Gym and Defeat Morty.
  • What to do after beating Morty

Where Is Morty The Gym Leader In Pokemon Crystal?

If you are playing Pokemon Crystal, when you enter the gym you will be told that Morty is not there.

He will then kick you out of the gym.

That’s because Morty is actually in the burned tower which is also located in Ecruteak City. 

To bring Morty back to his gym so that you can challenge him, first go to the burned tower located just north of the gym. Then make your way through the burned tower until you fight your rival. After beating your rival, and watching the legendary dogs cutscene, head back to the Ecruteak City gym and Morty will be waiting there for you. 

Turns out, Morty was helping Eusine out in the burned tower. Eusine’s mission was to wake up the legendary dog Pokemon. 

What Type Of Gym Is Ecruteak?

The Ecruteak gym is a ghost-type gym. In gen 2, ghost is strong against psychic and other ghost-type Pokemon. Ghost is also weak to dark-type moves. 

Therefore, your best bet is to bring Pokemon that know dark-type moves. Bite is a very common dark-type move and if you picked Totodile as your starter you should be set. 

How Do You Get Through Morty’s Gym?

When you arrive at Morty’s gym, you’ll notice that the floor is gone. It’s replaced with a black void and includes invisible bridges. 

When you step into the black void without stepping on an invisible bridge, you’ll be teleported back to the start of the gym. 

Navigating the invisible paths is fairly easy. However, it does force you to fight every trainer in the gym. 

And you should be fighting every trainer because experience points are valuable and trainer battles give you a lot of exp. 

All you need to do is walk down the line of sight of each trainer until you reach the next trainer. Then move up to the next trainer until you enter their line of site. Make sense? 

How To Beat Morty In Pokemon Crystal

As mentioned earlier, Morty is the ghost-type gym leader. You’ll want to avoid using psychic Pokemon and focus on Pokemon that have dark-type moves like bite. 

Unfortunately, there aren’t really any good dark-type Pokemon to catch up until this point. However, plenty of Pokemon will still be able to use dark-type moves. 

Morty’s Gengar will give you the most trouble. He uses a combination of hypnosis and dream eater. This keeps your Pokemon from attacking and Gengar will keep healing himself with dream eater. 

To make things worse, Gengar has a high base speed which means he will almost always outspeed you and put your Pokemon to sleep. 

Make sure to purchase some awakenings prior to the fight. 

A good strategy is to be prepared to switch your Pokemon often. If you switch after being put to sleep, his Gengar will end up not being able to use dream eater because your other Pokemon is awake. Then you can do things like inflict a status change on his Gengar. 

What Levels Are Morty’s Pokémon?

Morty’s Pokemon are the following levels:

  • Gastly – Lvl 21
  • Haunter – Lvl 21
  • Gengar – Lvl 25
  • Haunter – Lvl23

What To Do After You Beat Morty In The Ecruteak City Gym? 

After beating Morty you’ll gain the ability to start using Surf outside of battles. 

To obtain the HM for Surf, head to the dancing hall which is just northeast of Morty’s gym. Beat all 5 of the kimono girls on stage. 

Each one will have one of the 5 Eevee evolutions in this game. 

Then talk to the man in the hat and he’ll give you HM-03 which contains surf. 

After this, you’ll want to head west to route 38 to continue progressing the storyline. 

Leave a Comment