Completing a "living Pokédex." Is it worth it?

[Sweet Serenity]

I have only completed the Pokédex in Pokémon Yellow, Pokémon Crystal, Pokémon Ultra Sun, Pokémon Sword, and Pokémon Violet. However, despite that, I never completed a "living Pokédex." Is it worth it to attempt? What purpose does it serve? Have you done it? Would you do it?

 

[_confused_piplup_]

Hmm, I have completed the Pokédex in ultramoon and sword. Planning to do the same in Violet. I was always pretty close to finish each regional Pokédex. Livindex is pretty hard and takes much time, so indeed I am not planning it. I think another thing that makes me annoyed is the fact that not every Pokémon is in the game, which makes it way easier indeed, but at the same time, it kinda looses some value, to me, at least. I'd be down to try, but it takes too much time and energy for me.

 

[Devalue]

Never tried to complete a Living Dex. Does not sound fun. Already filled in the Pokedex. What point is there to hatching and leveling Pokemon that will never see the light of day afterwards?

Likens a Living Dex to some large games that update. Eventually reaches the main goal of the game. Enjoys playing. Wants to continue. Finds other, less interesting goals to pursue. Becomes less and less fun as the goals become increasingly dull. Creates an increasingly negative view of the game. Eventually no longer wants to play it, even if a good update releases.

Encourages people who are intrigued to try it, of course. Might be a fun goal for you.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

What is a livingdex?

 

[Lynetté1]

I've done it several times across the generations, and it adds some longevity to the games if you're not interested in postgame or PvP - which I am not - but it's very much a personal satisfaction goal, so your mileage will definitely vary depending on what games you're playing to do it and how much you enjoy playing them. I haven't done it for Scarlet/Violet, and Pokemon Home has interestingly sapped a lot of the fun out of it for me, as has the lack of a National Dex. I have entertained the idea of trying to get a living dex in Home consisting of Pokemon from every generation of games that they're in, but I have no idea if I'd ever have the time or motivation for it. Game Freak's stubborn refusal to release certain Pokemon outside of limited time events makes things frustrating as well because I missed a lot of them due to lack of interest, like the Zeraora event.

 

[Devalue]

What is a livingdex?

A collection of all available Pokemon species. Means owning all of the species in your PC boxes at the same time, not just having one from each evolutionary line.

Uses Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow as an example. Would have Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur, Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, Caterpie, Metapod, Butterfree, Weedle, and so on all the way through Mew in your PC. Considers it "complete" upon having all 151 in your PC.

 

[Amore]

I'm attempting it for Gen 8. But…I got bored in Crown Tundra so haven't bothered with Galarian Articuno and the Regis. I have Pokédex data for all of them (event Articuno, hacked Regieleki / Regidrago from Surprise Trade, brought spares forward of the others from Gen III) but the way I play is that one my first playthrough I SR all my legends, catching them in an appropriate ball too as part of an overall completionist approach. On any subsequent playthrough I just do the bits I recall being the most fun!

I've got one for Shining Pearl, and will assemble on in Legends as that seems to be the point of the game - story-wise, at least. I won't set out one in HOME though. For me it is really about storage. Once I've done them all, I'm going to screenshot it in each game for posterity, then again in HOME, then throw away any level-up evos that don't have special moves / balls so I can keep all my best stuff offline in a game as I - perhaps arrogantly, expect my save files to last longer than the online service, especially considering I have untouched copies of the other paired versions to go at!

Previously when I only had a limited number of Gen III, IV, and V games I did a "Living-encounterable-Dex" where I only captured what I could in each game. In Emerald I gave up because Safari Zone was annoying, but I took great satisfaction in getting as close as possible in LeafGreen, Black, and in particular HeartGold where I was only short Darkrai, Shaymin, Glameow, and Purugly after Pokéwalker and trading with Platinum!

I realised as I finished typing this that I'm actually a bit off my Sword one as I haven't done any of the Dynamax Adventures legends either, as I want to take advantage of that 1/100 shiny chance but I got to it so late there were no players joining online, and the AI keeps fainting out too fast against the legends. Infuriating, I'd honestly much rather they were all hiding in random caves. At least Ramanas Park was a simple grind but tbh, they need to give us less legends as part of this 'Dexit' approach. They won't, as legends are like starters in having much more care and attention to their design, naming (usually the same across languages) and are likely to be people's favourites due to the focus they get. But as a Gen III guy I have to say it would be nice to see Kyogre and Groudon sit out an entire generation's competitive scene given how defining they are (and is vastly preferable to nerfing them completely like is apparently happening to Zacian / Zamazenta).

 

[Duck]

I am currently undergoing a project for exactly that (although a fragmented one across many games because Dexit and I'm not paying them money for Pokemon Home).

I suppose it's just a new project to do new things in games that I play a lot. Some other people might do it because they just naturally gravitate more about the collecting aspects of the game (such as the people that enjoy doing Professor Oak's challenge or shiny hunting) as opposed to the battling aspect.

The purpose is exactly the same thing as "what is the purpose of raising a full competitive team and playing ranked battles in game" - have fun planning and executing something and seeing number go up. It's also not appealing to everybody for much the same reason, which fair enough.

I will say that recent games actually do make stuff like Professor Oak's and Living Dexes to be relatively less painful - SV in particular makes finding a lot of Pokemon easier due to the sandwich system, and grinding levels easier because you can just use a Normal Sandwich to grind on Blissey near Ortega's camp + EXP share lets you train 5 ~ 6 Pokemon at once.

And of course, a lot of older games become less annoying if you're playing them on emulator instead of official hardware (5~10x speed-up + autofire makes a lot of annoying things easier to deal with).

 

[Megan]

Just finishing the regular Pokedex in the past was way more than I like to admit. There's no way I'd go for a living dex.

I know of some crazy person who went there. Got the whole thing filled out. But that wasn't enough for them. They also got a living shiny dex. And because that also wasn't enough they also got a living shiny Unown dex. But that same person also has like 30+ (sealed) copies of Platinum...

What I mean, is: some people just have some insane dedication that most of us probably won't be able to comprehend. ^^"

 

[TwilightBlade]

I've completed the Pokedex in: Blue, Yellow, Crystal, Y, Alpha Sapphire, Shield, Legends Arceus, and Violet. I have migrated Pokemon up to Pokemon Home in attempt to complete a Living Dex, but I gave up midway. It would be cool to see every Pokemon in order, but as I was building my Living Dex, there was too much back and forth on obtaining first and middle stage evolutions. I don't think I will attempt to finish my Living Dex. There are a lot of Pokemon I was forced to capture/evolve the first time (to obtain the shiny charm) so I don't want to put in the effort of obtaining their first and middle stage evolutions again. Living Dex serves a purpose for some folks, but I am just happy staring at my favorite Pokemon.

 

[Squirtkipfan01]

A collection of all available Pokemon species. Means owning all of the species in your PC boxes at the same time, not just having one from each evolutionary line.

Uses Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow as an example. Would have Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur, Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, Caterpie, Metapod, Butterfree, Weedle, and so on all the way through Mew in your PC. Considers it "complete" upon having all 151 in your PC.

Completing a pokedex on its own can be a pain, a livingdex just sounds like torture. No thanks

 

[ReKoil]

I got a full Living Dex in Shield and Shining Pearl. And aside from Koraidon I almost got a Living Dex in Violet too.
Honestly the biggest pain in the neck in doing one are the Mythicals. Everything else is perfectly doable, at least in these games.

 

[Corveone]

Never saw any good reason for me to complete a Pokédex period (except in Legends Arceus). I was close once when I played Black plenty of years ago, and it wasn't something fun or particularly enjoyable either since I ended up feeling most of the dex (only some legendaries missing) from random tradings on the GTS.

I allways preferred to just catch Pokémon that might be on my team, or Pokémon that casually get in range for an easy catch, but collecting Pokémon is not an aspect of the experience I play the games for.

 

[Palamon]

To me, it doesn't matter. I've never done a living dex, and never will. It's too much work.

 

[Angel-of-Light-Kelly]

I tried to do it more when I was younger. I would arrange the PCs of 1-30, 31-60 etc, making it easier for me to find Pokemon I'm looking for. But I stopped once I saw Nebby's evolution line...

 

[Sheep]

I tried in some games, specifically gen IV, but just could not do it. Way too much work with how tedious it was to get multiples of certain evolution items or legends/mythicals, especially before I had a working Wi-Fi connection. Not sure I would ever consider it now, especially since we don't have the full dex in main games anymore. :s

 

[Zed01]

In a main series game I've only completed a regional living Pokedex once, in White 2 because it's my favorite game and a save file that I'll never restart so I wanted to do it so I did it. I don't know if it was worth it for an average Pokemon fan since the only reward was an Oval Stone for getting more Eggs but for me it was worth it since I wanted to have a Livingdex of Pokemon native to my favorite region on my favorite game ever so I didn't do it for an in-game reward.

However I do have a full living National Pokedex on Pokemon Home that I started to collect back in Pokemon Bank during Gen 7 but gave up after getting to Sinnoh part of it, but then I finally came back to it and completed it about a year ago on HOME. The reward was a cool special colored Magearna that's definitely cool to have in your collection but I don't think starting from scratch would be worth it. For me it was worth it since I already had over a third of it complete from back in Gen 7 and I also played and transferred a lot of random Pokemon over the years so once I sorted them all out it was pretty much almost 80% of the Lviningdex already comlete so getting everything else wasn't that difficult for me, especially since I followed and collected a lot of the events over the years (from late Gen 5 to today) so I had almost every mythical already (multiple of some of them) so it wasn't that hard finding trades for the couple of mythicals that I was missing. Having a full living Pokedex in HOME is kinda cool to have imo so completing it was worth it for me but I would never do it again if I had to start from scratch. Keeping it up to date isn't hard now since we don't get a huge amount of new Pokemon every generation and I already have every new Pokemon from Gen 9 ready and waiting for HOME compatibility.

 

[ShyRayq]

For me, completing the pokedex has always been the main point of the games, with the old slogan "Gotta Catch 'Em All" and what-not. And having the completed pokedex isn't enough for me, so I've got a bunch of living dexes, about 2 each generation. I've gotten used to all the grinding and breeding and catching and all that that it's kind of therapeutic for me.