When I started, I did not know what competitive battling was and thought that the game was about collecting wealth (shiny/eggs).
So after I had finished the e4 I started camping at safari. I had been told that safari is a goldmine for beginners. Good iv poke and lucky eggs could be found for cheap money (500 pokedollars/trip). All i caught were over 100 chansey and tons of exeggcute. Here I met on one my best friends ok the game Zixmarquiz. We hunted together and then I found a sick modest exeggcute. I nicknamed it Modest (xd) and spammed in trade to get my first lucky egg. I was approached by Amanu and Frosh iirc. Frosh was the first to pay me an egg and I sold it to him.
So as every noob I thought a lucky egg could get me anything... Man was I wrong. I tried buying a shiny growlithe for an egg and didnt get any responses. So I started to learn about values and merchanted/hunted good iv poke to get wealthier to buy a growlithe.
Fast forward I had joined my first tourny and doctorpbc lend me a very nice gengar. I got to 2nd round and lost to Neslie. I still regret not letting Amanu use my poke at that tourny (sorry #1).
So i kept battling and trading and will probably continue doing that on BikeMMO
*there are tons of people that I did not mention on my journey that did help me out a lot, so shoutouts to them*