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ddrox13 February 14th, 2019 7:34 PM

Ice Waves
ddrox13's Monotype Challenge of Renegade Platinum with the Ice type.
https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/bb/471MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/8/8f/478MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/1/12/473MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/f/fc/460MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/9/96/461MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/6/66/365MS.png

Badges: 5/8


Sinnoh's midgame is probably the cleanest execution of the iffy midgame segments (I generally define this as Gyms 3-6, but it varies by gen) in the series, in that it combines just enough railroading with a ton of freedom. Renegade Platinum takes away some of that freedom, but it still doesn't feel too railroady.

That said, the midgame here does have an interesting aspect usually reserved for later - pretty much everything is evolved, and a lot of Pokémon on both sides already have solid movesets. The enemy has some pretty insane coverage at this point. This means a lot comes down to the amount your team can cover for each other's weaknesses. Unfortunately, this is a monotype. Ice has a lot of weaknesses, and basically nothing to cover them other than ye olde "You don't get one-shot if you outspeed them and one-shot them first" strategy. As a whole, the Ice-type is fairly good at executing this strategy - It's the best offensive type in the game, after all.

The thing is, there's basically two main categories of Ice-types. There's the fast and powerful ones, like Lieptr (Weavile) and Gjoll (Froslass) and there's also the slow and bulky ones like Hrid (Abomasnow), Sylgr (Mamoswine), and newcomer Svol (Walrein). An odd case in Renegade Platinum is Fjorm (Glaceon), as she would normally fall into the slow and bulky category but, due to some stat changes, is actually really fast. As a rule, due to the Ice type's unfortunate matchup spread, the former category are just better than the latter. There are some exceptions, the most notable of which is Mamoswine (who's actually way faster than I remembered). However, in a Monotype situation, these are the types of things you need to play around. On one side, this means getting setups where Hrid can get off a big Wood Hammer, or finding a good way to get Sylgr in safely so she can Earthquake things to death, or just deciding when to use Ice Shard versus your other STABs. On the other, this means figuring out how to have someone like Lieptr literally never take damage. It's also important to really identify little details about how your team runs - For example, Fjorm and Gjoll are the only ones who can tank a Close Combat from anything - and come up with plans that work with those attributes - Fjorm has both Dazzling Gleam and Extrasensory while Gjoll has Draining Kiss to remove any Fighting-types they have to fight.

Point is, knowing your team inside and out is incredibly important in such a hard challenge.

---

Let's see, we were at Fantina's gym, right? Excellent.

Renegade Platinum has an extra scene at the Pokemon Mansion, brought to you by Commander Saturn, and yes it is mandatory. However, I do get a Lucky Egg for my trouble (and a Manaphy egg, but who cares). The grunts are fairly breezy - there's a free grind area coming up, so I don't use Hrid very much. Saturn, on the other hand, is fought as a Double Battle with the rival as your partner. Rabinov (the NPC) is thoroughly useless as anything other than an attack sponge, and Saturn's Bronzong and Toxicroak are no fun for me. I did manage to win though.

Solaceon. That little town in mid Sinnoh that you would forget about if it didn't have a Day Care. In this game, there's an easy exp grind trainer in the Day Care. Thanks to Traynee's swaths of Chansey, I decided to level my team to around 40. This, thankfully, meant that Hrid evolved into Abomasnow, which bring his stats up to par with the rest of the group. And by "up to par", I mean that literally every stat that isn't SpA (which is useless) and HP won't be weaker than Leiptr's for like two more lines.

After grabbing the Psychic TM from Lucian of the Elite Four, I head to Vilestone. There's a Fighting gym here. Yay. On the other hand, there's also a Razor Claw just before here, so Leiptr evolved into Weavile.

Maylene's team was pretty much designed to destroy mine, what with my one Fighting immunity and her excessive Fire coverage. That said, I had one major advantage - 3/5 of my team was faster than anything she could throw at me. Leiptr began by contributing by baiting out a High Jump Kick from her lead Medicham, which allowed me to switc. However, because Infernape actually used Close Combat, the SpDef debuff allowed Gjoll to clean up with a casual one-shot Shadow Ball. At this point, Maylene brought out Lucario. I had this great plan to have Sylgr push Earthquake on it, buuuut that failed due to an OHKO Drain Punch. At this point, I opted for my other Pokemon with a Ground attack - miss coverage herself, Fjorm. One Earth Power sealed that match. Her next Pokémon was Machamp, who fell to only a single Extrasensory from Fjorm. Toxicroak met a similar fate. Her last Pokémon was a Gallade, and I decided to let his Dawn Stone counterpart, Gjoll, take the OHKO with Shadow Ball. So to recap, literally nothing that took damage from an attack on either side survived the hit. Badge get.

After helping with some Galactic nerds, I get access to Fly. I then make my way to Pastoria, getting into a grand total of 0 battles because I'm actually overlevelled for once.

Pastoria finally gives me access to the Move Reminder, so I use it to fix up some movesets, including giving Sylgr Ancient Power. This, of course, means that Sylgr (finally) evolved into Mamoswine, meaning my team is now fully and completely evolved unless I decide to fill the 6th slot. Also, these movesets are probably nearly final, so this team isn't going to be changing anytime soon. Fun fact: Lieptr STILL has the highest SpDef on my team, despite being, you know, Weavile. Also the one practical type I don't really have a coverage move of is Electric - and of course the TBolt TM is locked behind Surf. Also I use the Route 112 Move Tutors (all three Plat tutors) to polish up those movesets a bit more.

Somehow Wake made it Rain in his gym, which would have been an issue if not for me wanting to lead Hrid anyway as a Grass-type. Hrid opened the Wake fight by nearly OHKOing Quagsire through the Rindo Berry, which meant she had to eat an Ice Punch before the hail tick finished the job. Poliwrath was my next foe, which Gjoll dispatched of in 3 hits of her fancy new Draining Kiss attack. Wake's counter to my Ghost-type was Sharpedo, so Leiptr was up to use Brick Break, which would have OHKOed if not for Focus Sash. But, like, Hail. Gyarados' subsequent challenge was met by my most physically tanky Pokémon, which is obviously Fjorm. Dragon Dance turn 1 scared me, but Fjorm managed to survive a +1 Aqua Tail and defeated the birb with two Ice Beams and two Hail ticks. I had to let Floatzel take down Sylgr to heal up Hrid, but a well placed Wood Hammer took out Wake's ace the following turn. Leiptr returned to the fray to deal with the final Ludicolo. Badge Get.

After we clean up some Galactic scum and some rogue ducks, I get to Celestic Town. I am immediately challenged by Lucas, who has that Infernape that neither me nor Rabinov picked. The fight was fairly hard, but we won. Also in Celestic Town is Cyrus I, who has a bunch of things I don't like that happen to be weak to Ground, so thanks Sylgr. And with that, I finally get Surf.

First order of business - I need someone to Surf with. None of my current team can... wait... WHY CAN WEAVILE LEARN SURF????? Uh anyway, I drag my original starter out of the box as a temporary Surfer, but only long enough to meet Svol the Spheal. She's going to end up as my HM tank - the only HMs needed to complete the story are Surf, Waterfall, and Strength - but I figure I should get her in fighting shape anyway, So, I went to the trainer at the daycare compliments of my shiny Fly bot, and leveled her up to the rest of the team. Svol evolved to Sealeo and then Walrein in the process. I bench Hrid for now - I still need a Flier for a little while. A little HM hunting and some move tutoring later, I'm fairly happy with Svol's moveset and Gjoll has the all-important Thunderbolt. I think this is a good place to stop. Pal Park next!

The Team
https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/bb/471MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/8/8f/478MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/1/12/473MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/f/fc/460MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/9/96/461MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/6/66/365MS.png

Spoiler:
I'll also be including some tidbits about important changes in Renegade Platinum for these Pokémon

https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/sprites/pt/471.png
Fjorm (Glaceon) (F) @ Scope Lens
Ability: Snow Cloak
Level: 48
Hasty Nature
- Ice Beam
- Dazzling Gleam
- Extrasensory
- Earth Power

Notable changes: Availability increased dramatically. Evolution changed to using an Ice Stone. Level-up movepool increased. Speed (formerly base 65) and Special Defense (formerly base 95) swapped. Gets Earth Power. Later.

https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/sprites/pt/478.png
Gjoll (Froslass) (F) @ Never-Melt Ice
Ability: Levitate
Level: 47
Rash Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Draining Kiss

Notable changes: Evolution to Glalie happens 10 levels earlier (32). Both evolutions gain Levitate. Glalie gains 30 Attack and Defense (now 110 each) at the cost of losing 20 SpAtk and SpDef (now 60 each). Froslass gains 30 SpAtk (now 110) at the cost of losing 10 Atk (now 70). Both result in a 20 point increase to BST (480 -> 500).

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/473-f.png
Sylgr (Mamoswine) (F) @ Soft Sand
Ability: Thick Fat
Level: 47
Gentle Nature
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Iron Head

Notable changes: Gains Thick Fat over Oblivious. Movepool buffs. Bulldoze is in the game now, so it gets that too which is cool.

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/460-f.png
Hrid (Abomasnow) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Snow Warning
Level: 46
Bashful Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Blizzard
- Ice Shard
- Outrage

Notable changes: Gains Soundproof as an alternate Ability. Learns Icicle Crash by level-up.

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/461-f.png
Leiptr (Weavile) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Level: 47
Adamant Nature
- Thief
- Ice Shard
- Ice Punch
- Brick Break

Notable changes: Gains Technician as an Ability. Movepool buffs, including getting Crunch which I don't know why it didn't have before and Icicle Crash. Did I mention TECHNICIAN though?

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/461-f.png
Svol (Walrein) (F) @ Mystic Water
Ability: Thick Fat
Level: 47
Gentle Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Signal Beam
- Iron Head

Notable changes: Nothing really.

Featuring guest appearances by:
ICEBOARD the Piplup as: The Starter
TOTO the Totodile as: The 2nd Pokemon for a mandatory double battle
NOT FALCO the Murkrow as: The trophy shiny and Fly slave

Count February 18th, 2019 10:06 AM

Mission 'Monotype Grass X' completed! I beat the E4 and Diantha on my first try, which I was not expecting at all.



The UM one will have to wait for a while... having trouble with Ultra Necrozma and I'm not really feeling it. I want to complete a new one first:

Forum User Name: Count
Game: X
Pokémon Type: Fire
Mode: Single

ddrox13 February 18th, 2019 7:48 PM

Ice Waves
ddrox13's Monotype Challenge of Renegade Platinum with the Ice type.
https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/bb/471MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/8/8f/478MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/1/12/473MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/f/fc/460MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/9/96/461MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/6/66/365MS.png

Badges: 7/8


So I was redoing my EVs early on in this update, and it really made me appreciate the story of this run. So here's some fun facts:

1. With all EVs set to 0 by berries, Leiptr (Weavile) had the 2nd most SpDef on the team - which would have been the most had I not caught the Pokémon I caught last update
2. At 0 EVs, Fjorm (Glaceon)'s Defense was her only her 4th best stat (after SpA, Spe, and HP) but still good enough to be the best on the team
3. Half my team has -Def natures, including Fjorm. She is Hasty (+Spe -Def) and the two "tanky" members of this team - Sylgr (Mamoswine) and Svol (Walrein) - share the Gentle nature (+SpD -Def). The former actually has the lowest SpDef on the team despite the helpful Nature.
4. Hrid (Abomasnow), being Hrid, had the lowest value for Speed, Defense, and her primary offensive stat at 0 EV. In fact, her Speed was the 2nd worst individual stat on the team after Leiptr's blatantly useless SpA. Also have I mentioned that Abomasnow is garbage stat-wise?
5. And after all that complaining about the other 5 members' defenses, Gjoll (Froslass) actually had the lowest sum of her defensive stats (Def, SpDef, HP) prior to EV training.

Like I said - Monotypes are all about learning your strengths and weaknesses and playing around them. For me, this meant I had to make a few decisions while EVing. I decided to actually invest in Fjorm's Defense, simply because she is my best way of dealing with annoying Physical things, especially those named Infernape. I decided I needed a mixed tank just to act as a pivot, and Svol fit that role nicely. Because of calls like this, I could alleviate Sylgr from her previous role as a tank and move her smoothly into a role that fit better - a second fast Physical attacker to compliment Leiptr. This meant that two previously underwhelming members - Sylgr and Svol, could now provide more help by just doing a different job.

I still don't think I can save Hrid from her statline and typing though.
---

A detour to Pal Park is actually mandatory in Renegade Platinum, as it forces a fight with Darach of the Battle Castle. Again this is loseable, but, like, no. On the 3rd try I managed to win.

Canalave is next and OH JOY RABINOV IS HERE. He leads Staraptor into Gjoll, which was dumb of him. Arcanine is next, who Sylgr disposes of. Gjoll two-shots Heracross, then Fjorm takes out Torterra and Azumarill (but not before Azumarill KOed Gjoll and Svol). Leiptr does most of the damage against Snorlax, then Sylgr helps, and finally Fjorm lands the final blow, becoming the first to hit Lv50 in the process.

As per the pattern, Iron Island is of course mandatory. It's how they justify Bryon being like 10 levels above you. But first, a fight with Riley. Thanks in part due to a healthy dose of good RNG, Fjorm defeats all the things that scare me (Absol, Lucario, Metagross, Ursaring with Close Combat), leaving Gjoll to clean up the Slaking and Saladmence.

At this point though, things scare me. I'm only on-level and the next dungeon and gym throw a lot of things I don't like at me. So, training. I opt to just go to the trainer in Solaceon, as she can also help clean up my EVs. That means max Speed and Attack for Leiptr and Sylgr (I've given up on her being a tank at this point), max Speed and SpA for Gjoll, max SpDef with a splash of Def and HP for Svol, max SpA with a splash of Spd and Def for Fjorm, and max HP and Atk for Hrid. Overall the HP bars got a good bit smaller, but now Leiptr and Gjoll are literally never getting outsped ever and everybody does more damage (except Svol). I then overlevel my party a bit because Steel-types and head off to Iron Island, where literally nothing of importance happened.

Honestly I overlevelled too much, so Bryon was kinda trivial. I underestimated how fast Sylgr was. Anyway, Sylgr, Svol, and Gjoll split responsibility here, with Svol taking out Steelix in one shot, Gjoll OHKOing Forretress and Bronzong, and Sylgr pushing Earthquake on Magnezone, Aggron, and Bastiodon. Badge Get.

Lake subplot GO! Valor is a breeze, the whole mission was completed in 6 turns compliments of Gjoll. Leiptr, not to be outdone, puts on a similar show at Lake Verity.

Snowpoint Temple is my next destination (shoutout to Drayano for naming the temple guards Aran and Nephenee), where I solve some ice puzzles to help quell Regigigas. Now it's time to remind Candice who the best Ice-type user in the region is. Leiptr takes out Abomasnow in one Brick Break, Svol deals with Mamoswine, and then Leiptr returns to remove Froslass and Glaceon from the picture. Gjoll drops a couple Thunderbolts on Walrein (is this sounding familiar yet?), then MY Glaceon manages to completely destroy her Weavile. Our teams were literally identical, except that mine was way better. Coverage, yall. And EVs. They help too. Badge Get.

I am distinctly NOT in the mood for dealing with the Galactic HQ right now, so let's leave it at that,

The Team
https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/b/bb/471MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/8/8f/478MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/1/12/473MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/f/fc/460MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/9/96/461MS.pnghttps://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/6/66/365MS.png

Spoiler:
I'll also be including some tidbits about important changes in Renegade Platinum for these Pokémon

https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/sprites/pt/471.png
Fjorm (Glaceon) (F) @ Never-Melt Ice
Ability: Snow Cloak
Level: 61
Hasty Nature
- Ice Beam
- Dazzling Gleam
- Extrasensory
- Earth Power

Notable changes: Availability increased dramatically. Evolution changed to using an Ice Stone. Level-up movepool increased. Speed (formerly base 65) and Special Defense (formerly base 95) swapped. Gets Earth Power. Later.

https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/sprites/pt/478.png
Gjoll (Froslass) (F) @ Never-Melt Ice
Ability: Levitate
Level: 60
Rash Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Draining Kiss

Notable changes: Evolution to Glalie happens 10 levels earlier (32). Both evolutions gain Levitate. Glalie gains 30 Attack and Defense (now 110 each) at the cost of losing 20 SpAtk and SpDef (now 60 each). Froslass gains 30 SpAtk (now 110) at the cost of losing 10 Atk (now 70). Both result in a 20 point increase to BST (480 -> 500).

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/473-f.png
Sylgr (Mamoswine) (F) @ Soft Sand
Ability: Thick Fat
Level: 60
Gentle Nature
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Iron Head

Notable changes: Gains Thick Fat over Oblivious. Movepool buffs. Bulldoze is in the game now, so it gets that too which is cool.

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/460-f.png
Hrid (Abomasnow) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Snow Warning
Level: 57
Bashful Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Blizzard
- Ice Shard
- Outrage

Notable changes: Gains Soundproof as an alternate Ability. Learns Icicle Crash by level-up.

https://www.serebii.net/platinum/pokemon/461-f.png
Leiptr (Weavile) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Level: 61
Adamant Nature
- Thief
- Ice Shard
- Ice Punch
- Brick Break

Notable changes: Gains Technician as an Ability. Movepool buffs, including getting Crunch which I don't know why it didn't have before and Icicle Crash. Did I mention TECHNICIAN though?

https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/sprites/dp/365.png
Svol (Walrein) (F) @ Mystic Water
Ability: Thick Fat
Level: 60
Gentle Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Signal Beam
- Iron Head

Notable changes: Nothing really.

Featuring guest appearances by:
ICEBOARD the Piplup as: The Starter
TOTO the Totodile as: The 2nd Pokemon for a mandatory double battle
NOT FALCO the Murkrow as: The trophy shiny and Fly slave

FactoriesFarAway February 19th, 2019 11:11 AM

Forum User Name: FactoriesFarAway
Game(s): LeafGreen, HeartGold, Ruby, Platinum, Black, Y and Sun
Pokémon Type: Bug
Single/Ultimate/Free Mode?: Ultimate

Going to start off with LeafGreen. Chose Bug as I want to do something challenging, and I'm going to try as best as I can to stick to Pokemon that were introduced in the generation I'm playing (or in HG's case, the generation it's based upon)

Update #1 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 1/8

Spoiler:
https://i.imgur.com/hFzpYrZ.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/L1LDa57.jpg
Gave silly names to my character and rival. I'm going to keep these names throughout the Ultimate challenge.

https://i.imgur.com/2cTnR5l.jpg
I chose Bulbasaur as my starter to make the challenge more difficult. Yes, I'm a masochist.

https://i.imgur.com/bZdzb9V.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/ptTU7hL.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/L7b3hdX.jpg
Here's my first buggy boi, Cu. I accidentally named him as such and plan to change it later via name rater. I was trying to name him Cutiepie. I swear I'll think of a better name by then though. The +Sp. Atk nature is definitely a plus. I then immediately boxed Bulbasaur, as I no longer have any need for him.

https://i.imgur.com/Wjr5yLh.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/cGNtWWU.jpg
And here is buggy boi number 2, who I gave a dumb meme name. He has a neutral nature, which is definitely workable.

https://i.imgur.com/BwWgp8E.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/1VQLm7q.jpg
After some grinding on wild mons and defeating some trainers in Viridian Forest, Barry B. and Cu evolved.

https://i.imgur.com/nMGXvym.jpg
I grinded Cu up to level 10 to get Butterfree as well, but I soon realised I wasn't high enough level to beat Brock, especially with Onix's Rock Tomb being able to most likely one shot me at this point. I instead stuck it out and grinded to level 15 until I had Sleep Powder, with intention to use that on the first turn Onyx was sent out.

https://i.imgur.com/mBvJWfC.jpg
I got extremely good RNG in the Brock fight. Even though his Onix woke up the turn after I put him to sleep, he got confused via Confusion immediately upon waking up, and hurt himself twice in a row, securing my victory.

TEAM SO FAR

Cu (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 16
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Confusion
-PoisonPowder
-Sleep Powder
-Tackle

Barry B. (Kakuna) ♂ Lv 8
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Poison String
-String Shot
-Harden


Update #2 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 2/8
Spoiler:
After I defeated Brock, I went to the mart to stock up on supplies before entering route 3, namely potions, antidotes and pokeballs, the latter of which I don’t particularly need, but I bought them to be on the safe side.

https://i.imgur.com/M3HyIfO.jpg
After defeating a couple of trainers on route 3, our buddy Barry B. became fully evolved. I skipped several of the trainers in route 3 following this, only fighting the necessary ones.

https://i.imgur.com/51wVxvu.jpg
And on route 3, I caught my favourite bug type, Spearow. Nah, just kidding. I picked up Spearow here with the intent to make the in-game trade later for Farfetch’d, as it has access to both Cut and Fly. I then entered Mt. Moon, going down the first ladder due to Paras’ 100% encounter rate in this room in FR/LG

https://i.imgur.com/qvgTGCP.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/wtZoI1q.jpg
Here is our third buggy friend, and first buggy girl, Mush. I’m not particularly creative with names, as you can see. Her nature is pretty mediocre, but it’s passable.

I went back and defeated the trainers I hadn’t yet on route 3 to grind Mush’s level before entering Mt. Moon again. In the bottom left of the main floor in Mt. Moon is a TM for Bullet Seed which I taught to Mush. Whilst it’s not a particularly great move, it’s the only STAB Grass move Paras will be learning for a long time. Paras and Parasect don’t have great special attack either, but at the moment, it’s our best option for taking down rock, ground and water types.
Most of the trainers in Mt. Moon were fairly easy to deal with, and Bullet Seed made the hiker and the Rocket Grunt with a Sandshrew a breeze. I choose the Helix Fossil, though have no intent to revive it as it has little use to me in this playthrough, and left Mt. Moon. I was fairly sure the Karate dudes wouldn’t be of much use, and I was right. None of my Pokemon can learn Mega Kick or Mega Punch.

After hitting Cerulean, I healed, stocked up on items, and now it was grind time. I knew for a fact I wouldn’t be able to beat Misty OR Buggly at my current level (15-17 across my 3 mons), so first of all I went to go beat the trainers in Misty’s gym, and then proceeded to grind Mush on wild Pokemon until she hit level 20. I taught Leech Life over Stun Spore on the off chance that it may come in handy. Paras learns better moves than Stun Spore later on anyway.

https://i.imgur.com/dcNXFNb.jpg
Misty was fairly easy to take down with Bullet Seed at level 20, with only one Super Potion needed. 2 badges down!

TEAM SO FAR

Cu (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 17
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Confusion
-PoisonPowder
-Sleep Powder
-Tackle

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 16
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Poison String
-String Shot
-Harden
-Fury Attack

Mush (Paras) ♀ Lv 21
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Scratch
-Leech Life
-Bullet Seed
-PoisonPowder

Spearow (Temp, Not for use in battle) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Careful
Moves:
-Peck
-Growl
-Leer


Update #3 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 3/8
Spoiler:
After defeating Misty, I knew my other Pokemon would be nowhere near high enough level to fight Buggly. I grinded everyone to level 20. In the meantime, Cu learned Supersonic, which I replaced with Sleep Powder, as Paras learns Spore later on anyway if sleep is required. Barry B. also learnt Twineedle, giving me my first (and probably only, in this generation) half decent bug STAB.

https://i.imgur.com/c9PUsFS.jpg
Cu took down Buggly’s Pidgeotto with three confusions, whilst taking a relatively small amount of damage himself. He confused Pidgeotto fairly early on, leading to it hurting itself the second turn. Charmander went down in two hits, with the second one being a lucky crit. Ember didn’t do too much damage, but that teamed up with Pidgeotto’s damage meant I had to use a Super Potion on Cu.

I then sent out Barry B. to deal with Buggly’s Abra, getting to see Twineedle in action for the first time. Twineedle ripped through Abra, one-shotting the poor little guy. I kept Barry B. out to deal with Rattata. All in all, Buggly was a fairly easy fight after some grinding. Now down Nugget Bridge!

The trainers on route 24 and 25 were a breeze given how overleveled I needed to be to get past Misty and Buggly. Cu’s access to Confusion and immunity to ground, Barry B.’s access to Twineedle, and Mush’ access to Bullet Seed and resistance to water and electric mean that each Pokemon in the party fulfilled a niche and was surprisingly useful at this point. Each Pokemon having clear strengths made getting through trainers a breeze. Still, I needed those levels as the mid-late game is going to be particularly difficult. None of these Pokemon have particularly strong stats compared to a lot of what you see by the end game. Either way, I got the S.S. Ticket from Bill and now I’m ready to go to Vermillion!

Before I got to Vermillion, however, I went around defeating all the trainers on route 6. I don’t need to save any experience for now as my next party member won’t be arriving for quite some time. The only trainers who were much of a challenge were the two at the bottom, due to having pidgeys and spearows. Luckily, flying types won’t be that much of an issue in this game, with the exception of Buggly’s Pidgeot(to).

https://i.imgur.com/KyljCfb.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/Udg1zLU.jpg
Now we’ve reached Vermillion, it was time to trade the Spearow we picked up earlier for Ch’Ding, the Farfetch’d, who will be our cut and fly slave for this run.

Following this, I went to route 11 to beat up more trainers. The Electricians here were really annoying due to me not really having anything to deal with Steel types at this point, which are luckily very few and far between in this game. I ultimately decided to leave the electricians for now.

https://i.imgur.com/DZSG8cQ.jpg
And then, after reaching Lv 24, Mush evolved into Parasect, who is our strongest mon so far statistically, albeit only by a little bit.

Now it was time to get on the S.S. Anne, and beat up even more trainers. The Trainers on the S.S. Anne mostly have water, poison and fighting types, which are fairly easy for Mush and Cu to deal with.

I picked up the TM for Rest here, and decided to check my TM Case. I noticed I’d received the TM for Dig from the Rocket Grunt earlier, and it hadn’t crossed my mind how useful that could be against Surge. Since Mush is the only one who could learn it, she was the one who received it. One of the mons I will be picking up later has access to dig too, and would be a much better user of it, but I need something to deal with electric types right now, especially those pesky Magnemite. Fortunately, that Pokemon can learn Earthquake too, so nothing really lost there. The only other TMs I had on me that any of my Pokemon could learn were Rest and Attract, neither of which I wanted to teach. I picked up Brick Break later on in the ship too, teaching that to Barry B.

https://i.imgur.com/zhESIib.jpg
After grinding on the S.S. Anne trainers, it was now time to fight Buggly. Two Buggly fights in one part, exciting! His Charmeleon was the only somewhat tricky part of this fight. Butterfree two shot Pidgeotto, and did a decent chunk of damage to Charmeleon before dying to its super-effective hits. Charmeleon hits quite a bit harder than Charmander. Beedrill finished off Charmeleon and proceeded to sweep the rest of Buggly’s party. Another rival victory in the bag!

I picked up Cut from the Captain, teaching it to our lovely HM Slave Ch’Ding. With everything done here, it was time to watch the S.S. Anne set sail.

Before going to fight Surge, I went back to deal with those electricians, who were now trivial with the use of Dig.
Now time for my favourite gym, Surge’s. That was sarcastic, by the way. Seriously, screw this gym puzzle.
Before we got onto the puzzle though, I swept through the trainers in Surge’s gym. Mush learnt Spore, which I replaced PoisonPowder with. Spore is more accurate and just generally more useful in my opinion. The gym puzzle was quite kind to me thankfully, as I got it on my first attempt. Now it was time for the face off against Surge.

https://i.imgur.com/OYSyniE.jpg
Now, you might be looking at this image and wondering why Barry B. is in the picture and not Mush. Well… I messed up. I could’ve sworn I bought 5 paralyze heals before heading into this gym, and as it turns out, I bought 5 antidotes instead. Surge’s Pikachu paralyzed and Double Teamed Mush to death after his successful takedown of Voltorb, leaving Barry B. to sweep the team. Lt. Surge down, 5 more badges to go!

TEAM SO FAR

Cu (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 27
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Confusion
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Tackle

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 27
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Poison String
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Fury Attack

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 27
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Scratch
-Dig
-Bullet Seed
-Spore

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut


Update #4 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 4/8
Spoiler:
This will be the longest part. I wanted to get as much of the story elements out of the way as possible, as well as grinding on all trainers available to me, before fighting the gym leaders. I will be picking up my last two party members this part though, and more importantly, renaming Cu. Unfortunately, there’s only 5 bug types available to use per game in gen 1 and their remakes, due to Scyther/Pinsir being a version exclusive. The following parts, with the exception of the last few, should be fairly short with that considered though.

Continuing on with my bug monotype run, however, the first thing I did was actually pick up paralyze heals this time, and then pick up the bike ticket. Not only does this mean faster movement, but it’s basically a requirement for getting my past two Pokemon as fast as possible. It was a good thing I bought the paralyze heals, as I was immediately paralyzed by the first picnicker on route 9. Below said Picnicker was a TM for Aerial Ace. Everyone in my party could learn it, so I decided to leave it for now and decide later.

Butterfree learnt Gust which I taught over Tackle. Not a particularly great move to learn at this point in the game, but still better for him than Tackle. Route 9 and 10 were pretty trivial, but I used several potions throughout Rock Tunnel mostly due to silly choices I made. I fought every trainer in each area, or at least I believe so in the rock tunnel. Admittedly, I got slightly lost which I have no excuse for with how many iterations I’ve played of gen 1 and how many times.

https://i.imgur.com/mDen62i.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/oJK16U4.jpg
After reaching Lavender town, it was finally time for Cu to get an actual name, and I decided to give him one befitting of royalty. Well, he’s named after a species of butterfly.

Immediately leaving Lavender town for now, I headed for Celadon, ignoring all the trainers on the way there for now except the one required one, and picked up the tea, then went into the game corner to complete Rocket Hideout. In there, Barry B. learnt Pursuit, which I taught over Poison Sting. Even with STAB in consideration, Poison Sting just isn’t very good and isn’t worth keeping.

Due to only having 3 Pokemon, grinding early to beat the early objectives and fighting almost every trainer in the game up to this point, I was nearly 10 levels overleveled here, so this whole dungeon was fairly easily, that was until…

https://i.imgur.com/ZpVhAtG.jpg
Giovanni. And yes, I took the screencap late because I forgot. Giovanni was tricky. Well, his first two mons weren’t. They went down with Bullet Seed. His Kangaskhan? That thing hit hard. Both Emperor and Barry B. died to its Mega Punch, and I managed to take it out with Mush just about. Now we have the Silph Scope, it’s time to meet with our good old rival again, Buggly, in Lavender Tower.

I forgot to take a screenshot of defeating Buggly, but it was a fairly simple fight. His Charmeleon and Pidgeotto still aren’t hitting hard enough to really be a problem. What was a problem, however, was Gyarados. This may be the first Pokemon I’ve seen so far other than Magnemite where I haven’t had a clue how to go about it. His Gyarados took down Barry B, but I don’t really need him for Lavender Tower, and Emperor finished him off. I’m definitely going to have to use X items to deal with Gyarados later on though, which is not something I’ve really had to abuse yet due to how overleveled I am.

Lavender Tower was a fairly simple sweep with Emperor, who learnt Psybeam during that time. I taught it over Confusion. It was about time he learnt a better psychic type move, honestly.

https://i.imgur.com/braFXDd.jpg
Unfortunately for Cubone’s mother, she couldn’t stand a chance against Emperor, with her only attacking moves being ground type!

https://i.imgur.com/t1nMV3s.jpg
Now, thanks to this item, we have free reigns of mainland Kanto, making me able to pick up my other two mons! Well…

https://i.imgur.com/GyPCVlB.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/jxgEn3x.jpg
Actually, as it turns out, I had enough money to straight up buy Pinsir from the Game Corner, instead of screwing around in the Safari Zone. Whilst that took away most of my funds, money isn’t exactly hard to come by in this game if needs be, and I have a ton more trainers left to fight anyway. I wanted to name her Spike, but Spike isn’t much of a girl’s name, so Spikette it is.

I immediately taught her Rock Tomb, though it’s pretty weak at this point in the game. It was still better than most of her current moveset. With a few more levels and some better moves at her array, Spikette should be the strongest of the bunch. It is also worth noting, however, that he will level up the slowest of all of them.

https://i.imgur.com/kD8GM3R.jpg
Now time to deal with Snorlax, head down to Fuschia, and pick up my last Pokemon! Snorlax was not a problem, but before leaving for Fuschia, I decided to pick up a dozen Lemonade from the top of Celadon Dept. Store.

I made my way down the cycling path, fighting a few trainers along the way, Spikette gaining a few levels, but after reaching Fuschia, it was time to catch my final party member

https://i.imgur.com/f06UO8A.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/967ZM2R.jpg
And here she is, with a fairly good nature to boot. Her names not very fitting right now, but should be soon enough.

For now, it’s pure grind time. From this point on, I went to grind on every non-gym or Silph Co. trainer in mainland Kanto, with the exception of the trainers I had left to fight in and around Cycling Path, which I’ll do when I pick up Fly. I’m not going to talk through all of that, and I’ll only post changes that happened during that time:

-Spikette learnt Revenge over Bind
-Mothra learnt Leech Life over Foresight

https://i.imgur.com/ooOQ0S0.jpg
-Mothra evolved into Venomoth and learnt Gust over Leech Life
-Spikette learnt Brick Break over Revenge

With all of that done, I ended up in Saffron City, picking up the Psychic TM, leading me check my TMs. I taught Psychic to Emperor over Psybeam as Mothra learns it later anyway. In the end, I decided to teach Aerial Ace to Barry B. over Fury Attack. Nothing else in my TM case was worth teaching other than those at those.

I swept through the fighting dojo for more experience. Again, this was fairly trivial as at this point all of my mons were between Lv 34-38, and Aerial Ace in particular made it very easy. I still planned to deal with all of the trainers in Silph Co. before tackling the next Buggly fight.

First thing I did in Silph was pick up the Card Key, and then cleared every room, starting from the lowest floor, one by one. I accidentally taught Slash over dig, when I meant to teach it over Scratch, on Parasect. Oh boy…. This will make Blaine a tad more difficult (though I do have another, superior idea anyway). At least Pinsir learns Earthquake later on, right? Mothra learnt Psybeam over Confusion too.

After beating all of the trainers in Silph Co, I quickly realised I was not in a position to be fighting Buggly yet, due to my decision to let him have Charizard. So for now, I figured I should get Erika out of the way.
After heading back to Celadon, I swept through Erika’s gym trainers who at this point were a total joke.

https://i.imgur.com/34yVylT.jpg
Erika herself, my mons were all nearly 10 levels above her strongest, Vileplume, meaning the entire thing was just a bloodbath. I got Giga Drain though, which I taught to Mush over Bullet Seed. We have half of the badges in our hands, and the next one should be fairly easy too!

TEAM SO FAR

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 39
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 38
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Pursuit

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 38
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Scratch
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 38
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-PoisonPowder

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv 39
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Vice Grip
-Rock Tomb
-Brick Break
-Seismic Toss

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut


Update #5 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 5/8
Spoiler:
After picking up Fly and teaching it to Ch’Ding, I fought all of the trainers on and surrounding the Cycling Path, preparing myself for Koga’s gym.

I never really understood why Koga’s gym was filled with Pokemon trainers that weren’t specialising Poison types, but nonetheless, the psychic types weren’t particularly difficult to deal with either.

https://i.imgur.com/c0OYw8H.jpg
Koga was a fairly simple sweep, using Emperor on his first two mons, and Mothra on the rest. The journey to badge 5 was a fairly short part, with not much really changing aside from levels

TEAM SO FAR

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 40
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 39
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Pursuit

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 40
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Scratch
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 40
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-PoisonPowder

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv 39
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Vice Grip
-Rock Tomb
-Brick Break
-Seismic Toss

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut
-Fly


Update #6 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 6/8

Spoiler:
First thing I did upon leaving Koga’s gym was enter the Safari Zone, to pick up the Gold Teeth and Surf. I caught a few Pokemon along the way for dex entry sake. Unfortunately, none of the Pokemon I caught could learn Surf, and whilst there is an NPC who gives Lapras away earlier, I needed a HM Slave for Surf ASAP as a means to grind. I picked up the Good Rod and went fishing off the coast of Fuschia and picked up…

https://i.imgur.com/xIbRiPe.jpg
This little guy. I temporarily boxed Ch’Ding, but will bring him out again soon enough. For now, I planned to fight all the trainers in the water south of Fuschia, as I really needed experience.

Upon finishing that, I went back to the Pokemon Center to temporarily switched Krabby for Ch’Ding again. I needed to Fly to Pewter to pick up Flash, making Rock Tunnel easier to navigate. Why do I need to go back to Rock tunnel, you might ask? To pick up Rock Slide to make Blaine much easier.

I unboxed Bulbasaur, in replacement for Ch’Ding, for the first time in who knows long, and taught him Flash. I went into Rock Tunnel, picked up a few items I missed, then used the move tutor there to teach Rock Slide to Spikette.

I switched Bulbasaur for Ch’Ding again, and flew to Viridian City, where I boxed Ch’Ding again in exchange for Krabby. I made my way back to Pallet Town, then surfed downwards towards Cinnabar, fighting all the trainers along the way. I went and made sure I fought every trainer surrounding the island itself, including those to the right, before entering my least favourite part of this game, Pokemon Mansion.

Again, I went through it trying to soak up all of the trainer experience I can, and picked up all the items including the Secret Key. I escape roped out upon acquiring it. I then switched Krabby for Ch’Ding and flew back to Saffron to finally face Buggly.

Buggly’s Pidgeotto went down without much of a hassle using Mothra. His Alakazam and Exeggcute were one shots to Barry B.’s Twineedle. Charizard was still a pain. I had to burn a Max Revive on Spikette as Rock Slide missed and she got one shot by its Flamethrower. After she was revived, she one shot Charizard back, and then one shot Gyarados.

https://i.imgur.com/3MkH5VS.jpg
Compared to my last fight against him, Gio was a total push over this time Emperor dealt with his poison types, Mush with his Rhyhorn and Spikette with his Kangaskhan. Nothing really showed me any trouble. The rival fight was more difficult, no doubt about it.

https://i.imgur.com/xey6Pc2.jpg
Sabrina was the easiest gym by a landslide so far. Her gym trainers were swept entirely by Barry B., Mothra and Mush, and every Pokemon of Sabrina’s were one shot except for Venomoth, who took two Psybeams from Mothra to take down. In the meantime, Parasect learnt Growth over Scratch, and Barry B. learnt Endeavour over Pursuit.

TEAM SO FAR

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 43
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 45
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Endeavour

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Growth
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-PoisonPowder

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv43
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Vice Grip
-Rock Slide
-Brick Break
-Seismic Toss

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut
-Fly


Update #7 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 7/8

Spoiler:
After leaving Sabrina’s gym, I took to Cinnabar to take on Blaine. Blaine’s gym trainers were easy to deal with, but I figured Blaine himself wouldn’t be so trivial, so I picked up a bunch of healing items before my fight against him

https://i.imgur.com/ppTOn2i.jpg
As it turns out, I was wrong, and Blaine was just as easy as his gym trainers. All of his Pokemon were one shot by Rock Slide except his Arcanine, who oddly used Agility on his surviving turn.

TEAM SO FAR

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 43
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 45
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Endeavour

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Growth
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-PoisonPowder

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv46
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Vice Grip
-Rock Slide
-Brick Break
-Seismic Toss

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut
-Fly


Update #8 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype - Badge 8/8

Spoiler:
Upon exiting Blaine’s gym, I was offered to go to the Sevii Islands by Bill, but for now I chose to turn that offer down. I may take it if I figure I need the experience before the Elite 4.

https://i.imgur.com/00co4gZ.jpg
Giovanni’s mons went down in one or two hits each, either from Psychic or Giga Drain. I’d honestly say some of his gym trainers were more challenging than he was.

TEAM SO FAR

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 43
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-SuperSonic
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 45
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Endeavour

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Growth
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 43
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-PoisonPowder

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv46
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Vice Grip
-Rock Slide
-Brick Break
-Seismic Toss

Ch'Ding (Farfetch'd) (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 7
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Peck
-Sand-Attack
-Cut
-Fly


Update #9 - Leaf Green Bug Monotype – Victory Road + Elite 4 FINAL PART

Spoiler:
As it turns out, I was not ready to fight Buggly yet due to his very powerful Charizard. I decided to take Bill’s offer to go to the Sevii Islands as I need experience. I also needed to go back and pick up Strength, as I forgot to get it when I was back in Fuschia.

I had to do the side quest before I could fight many of the trainers, as I still had Ch’Ding in my party. Once I did the side quest, I switched him for Krabby so I could Surf around. In the meantime:

-Emperor learnt Silver Wind over Supersonic
-Taught Strength to Krabby over Leer
-Taught Bulk Up to Spikette over Seismic Toss
-Taught Earthquake to Spikette over Vice Grip
-Taught Toxic to Mothra over PoisonPowder

Unfortunately, after grinding out all the trainers, there was not much more I could do, unless I was to abuse the VS Seeker. Instead, I figured the best option would be to stack X Items on Pinsir and hope for the best, and give her the 4 Rare Candies I had. In doing so, Spikette learnt Sword Dance which I taught over Bulk Up.

https://i.imgur.com/4PBu6R0.jpg
With the exception of Brock, this was without a doubt the toughest fight in the game yet. Buggly’s other mons weren’t much of a concern once I’d buffed myself up a bit with X items, but of course I missed Rock Slide on Charizard and fainted. I revived Spikette and prayed not to miss again, and luckily I hit it. I switched Ch’Ding for Krabby for the last time and set out for Victory Road, or so I thought.

It became soon clear I was understocked on items, and needed to go back to another town to pick some up. After that minor setback, I continued on my journey to the Indigo Plateau. Victory Road was the toughest challenge so far, with most of the trainers being tougher than the gym leader battles. Still not too much of a problem however. But now, the real challenge begins. Before entering the Elite 4, I boxed Krabby and stocked more items.

https://i.imgur.com/KbrUY7A.jpg
Lorelei was the most difficult fight so far, and required juggling quite a few items. Her Slowbro was the particularly bothersome one, as nothing I did really seemed to do much damage to it, forcing me to put it to sleep with Spore.

https://i.imgur.com/etfRGM7.jpg
Honestly, I expected Bruno to be totally easy, but he was not. Almost all of his Pokemon had a rock or fire move, meaning I had to do a lot of item juggling again. His Hitmonlee’s Mega Kick was brutal too, but that quickly drained of PP.

https://i.imgur.com/sFOEAFl.jpg
Agatha was pretty easy. Her only problem Pokemon was Gengar, who just kept hitting Hypnosis, leading me to wasting a lot of Full Restores.

https://i.imgur.com/iW0WjrW.jpg
Lance was by far the easiest. I set up a Swords Dance and a couple of X Speed’s, and Spikette swept the team with ease using Rock Slide and Earthquake.

https://i.imgur.com/vOrUxQM.jpg
Wow. Finally. I did it. This was the hardest fight in the game, and I used all of the rest of my healing items to do it. Constantly juggling items between Pokemon to PP stall his Charizard and Alakazam. It was awful. But I did it.

https://i.imgur.com/YZ7jrlt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gTlcRWO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qJ29zgX.jpg
Here are some screens of end game and a screenshot of my party. If any more info is required, please let me know. I’m not an avid user of bug type mons, so this was definitely a unique experience. Pinsir was the carry, but I completely expecting that with it being the strongest of the bunch.

TEAM IN THE END

Emperor (Butterfree) ♂ Lv 50
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Psychic
-PoisonPowder
-Silver Wind
-Gust

Barry B. (Beedrill) ♂ Lv 49
Nature: Quirky
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Twineedle
-Brick Break
-Endeavour

Mush (Parasect) ♀ Lv 49
Nature: Gentle
Moves:
-Growth
-Slash
-Giga Drain
-Spore

Mothra (Venomoth) ♀ Lv 51
Nature: Timid
Moves:
-Psybeam
-Supersonic
-Gust
-Toxic

Spikette (Pinsir) ♀ Lv55
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Earthquake
-Rock Slide
-Brick Break
-Swords Dance

Leaf Green Bug Monotype FIN!

alisaie February 19th, 2019 12:29 PM

ok so five-six years ago i finished a water monotype run on firered. i think i'm going to continue the trend and move onto heart gold for another water monotype! i mayyy turn this into an ultimate but let's see if i finish heart gold before dedicating myself to the rest of the generations.

Forum User Name: Ash
Game: Heart Gold
Pokémon Type: Water
Mode: Single (for now)
Additional Rules: Cannot use any Pokemon I used in my Firered run.

FactoriesFarAway February 21st, 2019 6:04 AM

Ruby Bug Monotype – Introduction/Analysis

Spoiler:
For the first part of this challenge, I’m actually going to discuss potential party members, as unlike Kanto, Hoenn presents us with a decent array of Bug types to choose from. I’ll talk through them one at a time, then say which ones I’ll be using at the end. I’m not including ones from other generations (such as Heracross) which are in this region’s dex, as I want to stick strictly to Pokemon introduced in generation III. There’s 8 Pokemon that fit my criteria overall, and I can obviously only choose 6 for my party.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/f/f1/Spr_3r_348.png
Armaldo is one that I definitely want to pick up. It’s the strongest of the bunch statistically, and its good typing makes it durable against a lot of bugs common weaknesses. Its only real let downs in this generation is its lack of decent STAB until fairly late, as well as evolving late.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/2/23/Spr_3r_267.png
Beautifly is honestly pretty mediocre. Its stats are poor and it doesn’t have a particularly strong level up moveset, although it not too bad. It has potential to decent if taught TMs, however.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/7/75/Spr_3r_269.png
Dustox has an even worse stat distribution than Beautifly, being on the tanky side and slow. It’s not bulky enough to be a tank, nor is its type particularly great for the job. It has a similar learnset to Beautifly with worse stats to back it up. I personally do not think Dustox is worth using.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/9/94/Spr_3r_291.png
Ninjask has pretty good attack and is incredibly fast. Unfortunately, it doesn’t learn any useful STAB moves in this generation, with the exception of Aerial Ace. Still, it has access to some decent physical TMs such as Dig, Shadow Ball and Return. It also learns Baton Pass, as well as Double Team and Swords Dance, and has the ability Speed Boost, meaning it can give some amazing stat boosts to its team mates.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/9/9b/Spr_3r_292.png
Shedinja is really difficult to talk about. Its stats are downright terrible except for its attack, but it has the niche of not taking damage from anything but Super-Effective moves due to its ability, Wonder Guard. It learns STAB Shadow Ball through level up but otherwise, its movepool is a worse version of Ninjask’s. I’m unsure whether or not Shedinja would be more of a nuisance than it’s worth, or an interesting trump card to pull in certain situations given its ability.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/c/ca/Spr_3r_284.png
It's hard not to see Masquerain as just a better Beautifly. Its stats are superior across the board except for in Attack and a tie in Special Attack. They have similar learnsets via TM, except Masquerain has access to Ice Beam and Water Pulse, which I think gives it a slight edge there too. Its level up movepool is far worse than Beautifly’s however, and Beautifly’s isn’t particularly good to begin with.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/1/1c/Spr_3r_314.png
Illumise is an all-rounder. Her stats are all fairly average with her attack being her only really bad stat, but none are very good either. Pokemon distributed like this tend to not be too good at anything. Illumise is the special attacking oriented one of the two fireflies. Its level up move pool is absolutely pitiable, and its only real niche against the other special attacking bugs is its access to Thunderbolt.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/2/27/Spr_3r_313.png
Volbeat has a similar stat distribution to Illumise, only more physical attack oriented. I think its physical orientation makes it by far the better of the two. It has access to STAB Signal Beam, which in this generation, is both physical and the strongest bug type move in the game aside from Megahorn. Its access to this makes up for a lot of its weaknesses in my opinion. Unfortunately, it’s got a 1% encounter rate in the version I chose to play. Yippee.

In the end, after weighing up the good and bad, my choices were:
-Armaldo (fossil)
-Ninjask (Route 116)
-Volbeat (Route 117) (1% encounter rate)
-Masquerain (Route 102) (1% encounter rate)
-Beautifly (Route 101 with good enough luck, and if not, Petalburg as a Silcoon)
-Shedinja (Evolve Nincada with Pokeball in bag, has to be a Pokeball)

As you can see, this one will be much more grindy and RNG heavy than Leaf Green. Bless me with good RNG, game!


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 1 – Badge 1/8

Spoiler:
Once again, I named my character Beetlia. I cannot name my rival in this game unfortunately, so Buggly will not appear here. I went through all the early game stuff, such as setting clock, talking to rival, etc, before picking my “starter”.

https://i.imgur.com/xY2zoXx.jpg
Once again, I went with the grass starter, in this case Treecko, to make the rival harder. The rival in this game is nowhere near as present as in other Pokemon games and you barely fight him throughout most of the game. This will only make the early game more difficult.

https://i.imgur.com/9rSqbGI.jpg
The first rival battle, I had to get through with Treecko due to not having balls yet. Once this is done, I’ll be able to catch my first bug, who, knowing my luck, will not evolve into the mon I want. Whether or not Wurmple evolves into Silcoon or Cascoon may as well be random.

https://i.imgur.com/vuv2b83.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/flkuzKX.jpg
Here’s BlessRNG. He’s named as such as we’re hoping he evolves into a Silcoon. I boxed Treeko immediately upon catching him and stocked up on potions, as I knew grinding would be difficult given how low my level was. We’re also looking for Surskit whilst grinding. Just an FYI before we continue, I'll be referring to Pokemon by their species name this time around, as I found it was confusing to refer to them by their nickname. I will continue this habit throughout my subsequent playthroughs.

https://i.imgur.com/jhwxclp.jpg
Unfortunately, we did get a Cascoon. So I caught another Wurmple. I’m not screenshotting that, as it will basically be identical to my other catching Wurmple screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/aW5ubZK.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/RHAnoMD.jpg
I eventually did find Surskit, who I gave a completely obnoxious name. It has an awful ability, but I wasn't willing to grind for another with that 1% encounter rate. With this, I decided to abandon levelling up Wurmple, as the 50-50 chance is not worth the risk. I’d rather catch it as a Silcoon in Petalburg Woods instead.

I made my way through the trainers in Route 102, mostly using Surskit with a little help from Cascoon every so often. Surskit hit level 6 after this, and now it’s time for Wally to teach us how to catch Pokemon, which in this game, is bizarrely late.

https://i.imgur.com/KIeuXsn.jpg
I finally get my Silcoon. He’ll be fairly useless for a while as he’ll only have Harden until level 10, unfortunately. Our third main party member will be coming up soon though, so I’ll need more money for balls. Time to fight those trainers!

After fighting all of the trainers in Route 104, Surskit reached level 10, and I had enough money to shop for various healing items and half a dozen Pokeballs.

https://i.imgur.com/FCHPWy7.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/wKlHjFB.jpg
Nincada gets a weeb name because she’s a ninja. I cleared out the trainers on route 116 and Roxanne’s gym, and realised Surskit really was not high enough level to be dealing with Roxanne yet. So I grinded on route 116, and caught a Zigzagoon whilst doing so, as Pick-up is useful and Zig is a good early game HM slave.

https://i.imgur.com/0Tr1TgJ.jpg
I figured the only way to actually beat Roxanne would be to grind Surskit until it became Masquerain, as its Sp. Atk is doubled after evolution. Bubble just does not hit hard enough in itself. Luckily Zigzagoon picked up a rare candy making the process not quite as bad.

https://i.imgur.com/35xB7WV.jpg
Even with the massive stat boost, Masquerain really struggled against Roxanne. I tried to fight her, saving before her, but reset when I realised it wasn’t going to go well. I had Masquerain help grind Silcoon into Beautifly as well, giving my access to 2 super effective moves.

https://i.imgur.com/jNcadwW.jpg
Even with all the grinding, Roxanne was still extremely difficult. Her Geodude was a total pushover, but her Nosepass seemed to take no damage and deal a lot back. She also kept healing it a ton. I managed to get it down to very low health with the help of both Masquerain and Beautifly, and Nincada finished it off.

After I finished off Roxanne, I deposited both Cascoon and Wurmple as they’re not necessary anymore, and I need a spare slot on my party for later.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 22
Nature: Jolly (bad nature lol)
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Sweet Scent
-Water Sport

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 10
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Harden
-Absorb

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 9
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Scratch
-Harden
-Leech Life
-Sand-Attack

Zigzagoon (to be HM Slave) ♀ Lv 6
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Tackle
-Growl
-Tail Whip


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 2 – Badge 2/8

Spoiler:
It was now time to get Peeko back from the Magma grunt, which was pretty easy with Nincada’s Leech Life tackling it fairly well. I received the letter from the President of Devon Corp, and picked up Cut from the Cutmaster. I taught this to Zigzagoon, of course, and proceeded to go fight the trainers behind the cuttable tree on route 116. After that, I headed back down to Petalburg Woods, picking up a few items beyond the cuttable trees there, and then took the boat to Dewford Town.

I was in a position where beating Brawly wasn’t really possible or a viable option at the moment due to how weak most of my moves were, despite the type resistance, so I went through Dewford Cave and gave the letter to Steven, giving me access to Slateport City instead.

I defeated the trainers on the beach of Slateport, and Beautifly learnt Gust which would be massively helpful for Brawly’s gym. I also picked up the Soda Pops from the beach house, which are pretty good healing items for this point in the game.

I then spoke to Dock and entered the museum, where the Magma grunts weren’t a problem at all, and picked up Thief.

I fought the trainers on Route 110 and the Trick House. After this, I felt I was high enough level to deal with Brawly’s gym.

https://i.imgur.com/gfOqBuH.jpg
With Gust at my disposal now, both Brawly’s gym trainers and Brawly were an absolute cakewalk. The next gym is the one that I’m worried about, however.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 23
Nature: Jolly (bad nature lol)
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Sweet Scent
-Water Sport

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 18
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Gust
-Harden
-Absorb
-Stun Spore

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 15
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Scratch
-Harden
-Leech Life
-Sand-Attack

Zigzagoon (to be HM Slave) ♀ Lv 6
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Tackle
-Growl
-Tail Whip
-Cut



Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 3 – Badge 3/8

Spoiler:
https://i.imgur.com/HIqdTgm.jpg
I went back to Slateport to head for Mauville Town. I had a feeling the rival fight would be really difficult, but Beautifly had a pretty easy job dealing with all his mons due to Combusken being half Fighting type and having a weakness to Flying.

I reached Mauville, and it was now time to search for Volbeat. Oh boy! I found Illumise and caught it for the sake of having it, but do not intend to actually use it. I taught Morning Sun to Beautifly over Harden, and Mega Drain over Absorb.

https://i.imgur.com/qENJ5vK.jpg
After lots and lots of encounter grinding, I finally found Volbeat, who I named Louie. Since I named the Illumise Louise. Now that I had him, I was ready to grind levels on the other trainers. Volbeat having Moonlight and Beautifly having Morning Sun saved a lot of potions. Volbeat seemed to hit incredibly hard for its level and for this point in the game too. I taught him Quick Attack over Tackle.

https://i.imgur.com/5lJFw5R.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/WUG7FRC.jpg
I grinded Nincada to level 20 on wild mons. I really wanted it to evolve before Wattson. It also learnt a bunch of new moves, so I just decided to post a screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/OwzNyfS.jpg
This little guy is the main reason I wanted to get Nincada to level 20. I might be able to deal with Wattson via stalling him with Shedinja, assuming he can’t hit me.

Wally in front of the gym was obviously a total joke, and the gym trainers were fairly easy but Wattson… I needed to grind before fighting him. Again. Or devise a strategy.

https://i.imgur.com/TpCh1Tp.jpg
And the only strategy I could come up with was to Double Team 6 times, Screech Magnemite 3 times and then spam Fury Cutter with Shedinja. And it worked surprisingly well. I didn’t even have to use any items. What should’ve been an infuriatingly difficult battle was not that bad with evasion hax. I get the feeling this may be a recurring theme… Whilst I thought Wattson was difficult, I completely forgot what was next… Flannery.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 25
Nature: Jolly (bad nature lol)
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Sweet Scent
-Water Sport

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 24
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Gust
-Mega Drain
-Morning Sun
-Stun Spore

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 20
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Scratch
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Screech

Shedinja Lv 21
Nature: Lax
-Scratch
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Screech

Louie (Volbeat) ♂ Lv 17
Nature: Quiet
Moves:
-Quick Attack
-Confuse Ray
-Double Team
-Moonlight

Zigzagoon (to be HM Slave) ♀ Lv 6
Nature: Rash
Moves:
-Tackle
-Growl
-Tail Whip
-Cut


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 4 – Badge 4/8

Spoiler:
I picked up Rock Smash from the man in Mauville City, teaching it to Zigzagoon. I also taught Shock Wave to Volbeat over Confuse Ray. I intend to switch that for Thunderbolt later. I taught Ninjask Thief over Scratch. I bought a few healing items before heading up north.

I grinded on all of the trainers going up to Fallarbor town and Volbeat learnt Tail Glow over Double Team in the process. This will be useful later on (it actually wasn’t, lol). I picked up Dig after exiting Fallarbor Town to the left, teaching it to Sakura over Double Team. Masquerain learnt Gust over Water Sport, but it got me thinking that maybe I should’ve kept it and taught Gust over something else.

After clearing out every trainer currently accessible to the left of Fallarbor Town and speaking with Team Aqua, I headed for Mt Chimney, and made sure to stock up on Repels for this trip back down. As it turns out, I was really not ready to fight Maxie yet, and needed to grind.

In the meantime:
-Volbeat learnt Signal Beam over Quick Attack
-Sakura learnt Swords Dance over Screech

https://i.imgur.com/UL8hv1q.jpg
And after lots of grinding, Maxie was still challenging. With Swords Dance + Fury Cutter on Ninjask, his Mightyena was no big deal, but his other Pokemon… He kept healing his Camerupt. I mostly dealt with it with my Masquerain, but had to finish it off with my Beautifly. His Golbat, I used Volbeat’s Shock Wave against, but I still barely survived against it, as you can see.

My bag was full, so I gave my Miracle Seed to Beautifly, whilst heading down to Lavaridge Town. I knew Flannery was going to be tough, so I sold a bunch of items I didn’t need and bought 11 revives before fighting her.

https://i.imgur.com/sHodQ8d.jpg
The Flannery fight was pretty tough but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting it to be. I had to juggle reviving mons until she had used a few Overheats and crippled her Sp. Atk on all her mons, and otherwise used Dig on Ninjask to deal with them. Her spamming of Overheat makes her overwhelming at first but fairly forgiving after a while. I expected her to be more difficult. Well, maybe she would be if she had better moves.

I forgot to do the Team So Far summary. That or I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t remember.


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 5 – Badge 5/8

Spoiler:
When I left the gym, Brendan came out and gave me the Go-Goggles, giving me access to my last party member. Well, kind of.

I picked up the Claw Fossil, fought the trainers in the surrounding area, and then headed back to Mauville and picked up the bike. I went down the cycling road and did the Trick House a couple of times before heading back to Petalburg. I was going to rename Shedinja, but I forgot. After reaching the dock, I headed to Rustboro and boxed Zigzagoon for now, albeit I will need him again later.

https://i.imgur.com/x9meECV.jpg
I revived the fossil to get my last party member. He’s pretty underleveled and moreover, I’m not in any position to be fighting Norman right now. The level curves in this game probably didn’t expect you to have a party full of a 6 mons at this point, nevermind 6 bugs. Even with that said, I still think the level curves in this game are much more drastic than other games in the series, which is why I’ve always considered Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald the hardest of all of them. With that said, it was once again time to conceive a way of cheesing the gym leader. And I did.

https://i.imgur.com/4ZbIBaQ.jpg
I had a Double Team TM which I taught to Volbeat over Moonlight. Why Volbeat? It has my strongest STAB move right now, Signal Beam. I spammed Double Team until full evasion and then spammed Signal Beam. Unfortunately, Volbeat was taken down by his last Slaking, which at this point had lost most of its PP, so I switched in Anorith who slowly whittled it down. These fights are turning out to be much more difficult and much more needed to be cheesed than Leaf Green’s so far, and it’s likely because LeafGreen is more open world, and therefore I could get more experience from trainers easily.

From this point on, I decided to take a break from the challenge for a bit as I had other things to do. I also needed to prepare myself for tackling the second half of game, as I despise it. RSE are probably my least favourite in the series because I hate everything after Fortree City, in all honesty, and the remakes are only slightly better in my opinion.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 30
Nature: Jolly
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Sweet Scent
-Gust
(Please learn some new moves)

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 30
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Gust
-Mega Drain
-Morning Sun
-Stun Spore

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 20
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Thief
-Dig
-Fury Cutter
-Swords Dance

Shedinja Lv 29
Nature: Lax
-Scratch
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Screech

Louie (Volbeat) ♂ Lv 30
Nature: Quiet
Moves:
-Signal Beam
-Shock Wave
-Double Team
-Tail Glow

Arnold (Anorith) ♂ Lv 21
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Scratch
-Harden
-Mud Sport
-Water Gun


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 6 – Badge 6/8

Spoiler:
I picked up Surf from Wally’s parents, but none of my Pokemon can learn it. I had to take Zigzagoon out of the PC and teach Surf to it. I boxed Beautifly for now, and taught Surf over Tail Whip to Ziggy. I surfed back to Slateport using the shortcut on Route 103 and renamed Shedinja to be called Yato.

I decided to do the New Mauville side quest when I reached Mauville, as I needed Thunderbolt. Once I was done with that, I boxed a bunch of items I didn’t need at the moment, but still wanted to keep. I also taught Thunderbolt to Volbeat over Shockwave, Rock Tomb to Anorith over Mud Sport and Façade to Shedinja over Scratch.

It was time to head to Fortree City, but before doing so, I took down all the trainers on the way there, and there was a certain HM Slave I needed to pick up. Anorith learnt Metal Claw over Harden.

https://i.imgur.com/0d6Jwab.jpg
And here she is, the HM slave I was looking for!

https://i.imgur.com/om1f4jC.jpg
And through the Weather Institute I went. Magma Admin Courtney was a total joke. I could barely even call this trainer a boss, honestly. Before leaving, I switched Zigzagoon out for Beautifly again using the PC in the corner.

https://i.imgur.com/zka1Rxh.jpg
Rival on the bridge was almost as much of a joke. As I said, he falls off later in the game pretty hard, never gains a full party or a fully evolved starter.

Before fighting Winona (this region has some really unkind gyms for bugs, wow), I needed to get the Silph Scope (?? I don’t know what it’s called) from Steven. So I did so, fighting all the trainers on route 120 in the process. The camera crew there were legitimately more difficult than both Courtney and Rival, by the way. There may be some in the south of the route that I missed, but I went back to fight them later.

Before entering Winona’s gym, I stocked up on some healing items and repels. Honestly, I thought this gym was fairly easy… Until Winona brought out Skarmory. It was time to grind again. Luckily, there was lots of trainers left to grind on, and I made my way towards Lillycove, fighting every trainer in between including Mt Pyre.

In the mean time:
-Ninjask learnt Slash over Thief
-Shedinja learnt Confuse Ray over Screech
-Switched Shedinja for Zigzagoon temporarily to get across the water
-Beautifly learned Silver Wind over Stun Spore

I believe in the end I fought more or less every trainer currently available to fight in the game. I then replaced Zigzagoon with Tropius, and taught it Fly over Growth, before realising I couldn’t Fly without Winona’s gym badge, and had to trek back. I picked up the HM for Strength on the way there. I boxed Zigzagoon again so I could get all my party members together. I’d picked up several TMs, so I taught them as such:

-Ice Beam over Sweet Scent on Masquerain
-Focus Punch over Tail Glow on Volbeat for Double Team + Focus Punch abuse
-Shadow Ball over Fury Cutter on Ninjask as Shedinja will be learning it in 3 levels anyway

https://i.imgur.com/5FX7hCJ.jpg
In the end, Winona wasn’t easy, but was also the first gym leader in quite a while I didn’t have to cheese. Masquerain’s Ice Beam dealt with both Swellow and Altaria, and Volbeat’s Thunderbolt with Pelliper and Skarmory. I had to revive a few times, but overall much easier than Wattson, Norman and Flannery. It was also worth noting that my play time had already nearly surpassed that of Leaf Green’s, as proof of how much more difficult and grindy this one is.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 34
Nature: Jolly
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Ice Beam
-Gust

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 35
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Gust
-Mega Drain
-Morning Sun
-Silver Wind

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 35
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Slash
-Dig
-Shadow Ball
-Swords Dance

Yato (Shedinja) Lv 35
Nature: Lax
-Facade
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Confuse Ray

Louie (Volbeat) ♂ Lv 34
Nature: Quiet
Moves:
-Signal Beam
-Thunderbolt
-Double Team
-Focus Punch

Arnold (Anorith) ♂ Lv 35
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Scratch
-Metal Claw
-Rock Tomb
-Water Gun


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 7 – Badge 7/8

Spoiler:
I sold a bunch of items, bought more healing items, and taught the Aerial Ace TM Winona gave me to Ninjask over Slash, due to it being the Pokemon with the highest attack stat that can make use of its STAB.

https://i.imgur.com/bv8oCjF.jpg
I headed to Lillycove to end our rival’s legacy. I seriously can’t believe this is the last fight against him. It’s a total joke. Half of his Pokemon aren’t even fully evolved.

It was now time to tackle the Team Magma Hideout. I hate this part, but the worst is yet to come. I had to box Ninjask before doing it, as it of course requires Surf.

https://i.imgur.com/hcvMRg0.jpg
And here we have another total joke of a Magma Admin.

I headed towards Mossdeep, fighting all the trainers along the way, and I caught a Tentacool as it will be needed later on as a slave.

I grinded on all of the trainers in the water, or as many as I could find at least. In the meantime:
-Armaldo learnt AncientPower over Rock Tomb
-Shedinja learnt Shadow Ball over Confuse Ray
-Beautifly learnt Giga Drain over Mega Drain
-Learnt that it’s very easy to get lost at sea.

https://i.imgur.com/6K2YYem.jpg
I went to fight Liza and Tate, who were a total joke, which is funny as I always remember finding them incredibly difficult as a kid. I’m taking a break until tomorrow now, as I am not even close to mentally prepared to deal with the rest of the game. I absolutely cannot stand the next part of the game, to say the least.

TEAM SO FAR

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 38
Nature: Jolly
Moves:
-Bubble
-Quick Attack
-Ice Beam
-Gust

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 38
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Gust
-Mega Drain
-Morning Sun
-Silver Wind

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 38
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Dig
-Shadow Ball
-Swords Dance

Yato (Shedinja) Lv 39
Nature: Lax
-Facade
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Shadow Ball

Louie (Volbeat) ♂ Lv 39
Nature: Quiet
Moves:
-Signal Beam
-Thunderbolt
-Double Team
-Focus Punch

Arnold (Anorith) ♂ Lv 38
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Scratch
-Metal Claw
-AncientPower
-Water Gun


Ruby Bug Monotype – Part 8 – Badge 8/8 + Elite 4 (END)

Spoiler:
After a some strategizing and a decent night’s sleep, I was ready to come back to this. The reason I caught Tropius and Tentacool was because those two Pokemon can learn every HM between them, but this means I have to box two Pokemon for the Underwater Cavern dungeon. These two Pokemon are going to be Shedinja and Beautifly, as neither will be particularly useful against Maxie, who is our main concern here.

https://i.imgur.com/QS4erpq.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/iYV7Eav.jpg
I taught them the HMs as such, remembering to pick up Dive in the middle of it all. It was now time to head to Sootopolis. But first, I picked up a bunch more repels. Once I reached Sootopolis, I picked up the Brick Break TM from the man in the house there, and taught it to Anorith over Scratch. I then headed to the Seafloor Cavern.

https://i.imgur.com/Qi73itt.jpg
I don’t know my way around this place to say the least, but I found Courtney and figured I was going in the right direction. She was honestly no harder than the other grunts.

https://i.imgur.com/StOYLTK.jpg
Maxie honestly wasn’t as bad as I was expecting him to be, though his Camerupt was fairly difficult to deal with. I ended up taking it out with AncientPower. Crobat went down with a Thunderbolt and an Ice Beam and Mightyena couldn’t really do much so I digged it to death with Ninjask.

https://i.imgur.com/ide116f.jpg
Once I got back to Sootopolis, and went through the Cave of Origins, I defeated Groudon for the experienced. I didn’t need to catch him so I figured I may as well. He wasn’t too hard to defeat.

Funnily enough, I remember this whole part of the game being a lot longer, harder and more gruelling. It wasn’t that bad in actuality, but I’m still not a fan of it. It was now time to deal with Sootopolis gym, either way. Despite being one party member down due to needing access to Surf, I knew Wallace wasn’t going to be particularly difficult.

https://i.imgur.com/XkjptW7.jpg
His Milotic was an absolute pain, but otherwise he was fairly simple with Beautifly’s Giga Drain and Volbeat’s Thunderbolt.

It was now time to head to Ever Grande City to do Victory Road. I obviously had to teach Waterfall to Tentacool in the process. Unfortunately, once again, it meant boxing 2 party members.

I evidently was not ready to deal with Victory Road as I whited out to the first trainer. It was time to grind again. I was massively underleveled for some reason. I temporarily boxed my HM Slaves and grinded in the beginning of Victory Road.

https://i.imgur.com/z1VsDhU.jpg
Whilst grinding, Anorith evolved into Armaldo.

In the meantime:
-Taught Water Pulse to Masquerain over Bubble
-Taught Earthquake to Armaldo over Water Gun

What I decided to do was take the first 4 that reached level 45 along with me, which may seem counterproductive, but I have Rare Candies.

https://i.imgur.com/4wD17j0.jpg
Making my way through Victory Road wasn’t too bad, and neither was Wally. I was prepared for a really difficult fight but… No. It wasn’t. He was one of the easiest so far, honestly.

Once I hit the Pokemon League, I decided to go back and pick up all the TMs I missed. I’m not as confident about the Elite 4 as I was in Leaf Green, frankly, due to my lack of funds. I may not be able to learn all of these, but it’s primarily for money’s sake anyway. This included:

-Dragon Claw in Meteor Falls
-Roar on Route 114
-Toxic in Fiery Path
-Bullet Seed on Route 104
-Sunny Day in Scorched Slab
-Return in Pacifidlog Town
-Sludge Bomb in Dewford Town
-Attract from Verdanturf Town
-Rest from Lillycove City

There were more, but the rest were a bit too out of my way to bother with. And out of what was in my bag, I taught the following moves:

-Iron Tail over Metal Claw to Armaldo
-Psychic over Gust to Beautifly
-Toxic over Quick Attack to Masquerain
-Return over Gust to Masquerain

I headed back to the Pokemon League, sold the rest of my TMs either because I couldn’t learn them or they weren’t good, sold all items I didn’t need including my minor healing items as they took up bag space, took all of my items from the PC and used PP Ups on Giga Drain and AncientPower. I then bought a LOT of healing items, and gave 3 Rare Candies to Beautifly and 4 to Shedinja.

https://i.imgur.com/ZuqnWBc.jpg
Sydney was disgustingly easy with Signal Beam. I needed to use an ether on it afterwards though.

https://i.imgur.com/DDw1Hcz.jpg
Phoebe was fairly simple too, mostly using Ninjask’s Shadow Ball to deal with her Ghosts. He fainted at the end, so I used Thunderbolt on Volbeat to deal with the last bit of health on her Banette

https://i.imgur.com/oqeiB0H.jpg
Glacia was pretty difficult. Her Walrein was actually kind of a pain. Whilst most of her other Pokemon were easily taken down with AncientPower/Brick Break on Armaldo, Walrein defeated Armaldo in one shot, and barely took damage from Volbeat’s Thunderbolt. I slowly whittled it down to secure victory, however.

https://i.imgur.com/LVCAOh4.jpg
Drake was the hardest trainer in the game so far, and I’m not exaggerating. My only real ways of dealing with him were Armaldo’s AncientPower and Masquerain’s Ice Beam, and all of his Pokemon had moves capable of one shotting a lot of my Pokemon. I used most of my absurd amount of healing items on Drake. I did not expect what was coming up next, I’ll say that much.

https://i.imgur.com/USdUzhD.jpg
I take back anything I’ve ever said throughout this challenge. THIS was the single most difficult fight in any RPG I’ve ever played. I had to PP stall the majority of his Pokemon with the few remaining healing items I had as they hit way too hard until he sent out Metagross/Aggron, who couldn’t hit Shedinja because of Wonder Guard. It was by pure luck that Skarmory didn’t use Spikes too. You have no idea how many times I reset on this fight. It is the worst thing I’ve ever done and I’m so glad it’s over

https://i.imgur.com/2XoZslQ.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/osCb9aI.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7H0osrX.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gxDEMaj.jpg
And here we are. The end. I love the credits in this game, showing what Pokemon you’ve caught throughout your journey. Shedinja was MVP. He wasn’t very useful throughout most of the run but he made what should’ve been an impossible fight totally possible, and his gimmick was game-changing at times. In seriousness though, Volbeat or Armaldo were probably the most helpful, but this was a game where I felt all party members contributed at least a little, but the least useful of the bunch by end game was Beautifly.

I cannot get over how much harder this was than Leaf Green, and it terrifies me for the upcoming games.

FINAL TEAM

Sk8r Grl (Masquerain) ♀ Lv 47
Nature: Jolly
Moves:
-Water Pulse
-Return
-Ice Beam
-Silver Wind

Monarch (Beautifly) ♂ Lv 45
Nature: Calm
Moves:
-Psychic
-Giga Drain
-Morning Sun
-Silver Wind

Sakura (Nincada) ♀ Lv 48
Nature: Lax
Moves:
-Aerial Ace
-Dig
-Shadow Ball
-Swords Dance

Yato (Shedinja) Lv 44
Nature: Lax
-Facade
-Double Team
-Fury Cutter
-Shadow Ball

Louie (Volbeat) ♂ Lv 50
Nature: Quiet
Moves:
-Signal Beam
-Thunderbolt
-Double Team
-Focus Punch

Arnold (Armaldo) ♂ Lv 51
Nature: Bashful
Moves:
-Brick Break
-Iron Tail
-AncientPower
-Earthquake


Ruby Bug Monotype FIN!

alisaie February 21st, 2019 7:24 PM

Water Monotype Challenge - First Update
Heart Gold | Marko

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/4/4a/Zephyr_Badge.png/40px-Zephyr_Badge.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/0/08/Hive_Badge.png/40px-Hive_Badge.png

So the journey through Johto begins! I once again named myself Marko as it is what I had named myself in the previous run. Started the game and picked out my starter Pokemon and the first member of my team Tortilla the Totodile. Then I set off to do Professor Elm's errand. Easy enough. Fought against my rival who I later named Polo, once again as it was my Rival's name last run.

The first gym was easy and so was the Bellsprout Tower. Tortilla basically bit everything in his path. He evolved into a Croconaw just after the fight against Faulkner. I picked up the secret Wooper egg to become my second team member, but I found it quicker to just catch a Wooper on the route ahead. Enter Burrito the Wooper! Used the cave ahead to grind Burrito up and once that was done moved on to Azalea Town where I'd fight Team Rocket, the next gym, as well as find my third Member.

After Team Rocket was taken out of Slowpoke Well you guessed it, I went and caught a Slowpoke to be the third member. Enter Chimi the Slowpoke (Chimichanga wouldn't fit Heart Gold's letter limit rip) where I then once again spent time grinding him in the cave. I also trained Tortilla up until he learned Ice Fang so facing both Bugsy and my Rival were both easy wins between Chimi's Confusion and Tortilla's Ice Fang. Caught an Oddish for a HM Slave so I can Cut my way through to the next city. Now I'm in Goldenrod City having just finished evolving Burrito into a Quagsire. Figured with her being the same gender as Miltank and having a resistance to its Rollout Whitney shouldn't be an issue. We'll find out next time, won't we.

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/croconaw.png
Tortilla (Croconaw) ♂ | Naughty | Level 23
Ice Fang, Bite, Water Gun, Rage

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/quagsire-f.png
Burrito (Quagsire) ♀ | Hardy | Level 20
Water Gun, Headbutt, Slam, Mud Bomb

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/slowpoke.png
Chimi (Slowpoke) ♂ | Bashful | Level 17
Curse, Yawn, Confusion, Water Gun

HM Slaves
https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/sun-moon/icon/oddish.png

adzpower February 22nd, 2019 3:23 AM

Forum User Name: adzpower
Game(s): Omega Ruby
Pokémon Type: Grass
Single/Ultimate/Free Mode?: Single

Spoiler:
My adventure in Hoenn begins! Or I should say Blossom the grass trainer's journey begins, she wants to be a grass type master and after just having moved to Hoenn, a region full of grass types, she will be able to achieve her dreams!

We settled into the house and searched for Prof. Birch, who was being chased by a wild Poochyena, grabbed our Treecko and begun our adventure, we named him Forrest and went to battle out friend Brendan, then received the Pokedex and headed to Petalburg City.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/n5pyGCG.jpg[/IMG]

On the way I caught my second team member, Flora the Seedot, she will make a great addition to the team once she evolves.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/9k6Kv9F.jpg[/IMG]

I also traded over a Lotad egg from my Alpha Sapphire, no idea what nature or IV's it will be, makes it more exciting, and Lotad is just too good, the water coverage will be especially helpful against Flannery.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/agrJOEh.jpg[/IMG]

After helping Wally get his Ralts we continued on into the Petalburg Woods where we caught our next member, Fungurl the Shroomish! Breloom is just too good, and Blossom loves its high attacking power.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/bUHyFOC.jpg[/IMG]

We headed up to Rustboro City and basically creamed Roxanne, our team is literally made to demolish her with no problems, it was at this point that Forrest hit lv 16, however I know that if I keep him a Treecko until he hits lv 21 he will learn Giga Drain, so I'm delaying evolution until then. As we rescue Peeko from the Team Magma grunt Flora evolves into Nuzleaf!
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/RcClcZL.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/6nBxdoT.jpg[/IMG]
We set sail to Dewford, beat the trainers around Granite Cave and then took Brawly on, he wasn't too difficult, I used Fungurl for most of the battle, using Stun Spore to paralyze and then heal with Mega Drain, also drained their health with Leech Seed, a good tactic.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/1E67rNz.jpg[/IMG]

We delivered the letter to Steven and set sail for Slateport!

FactoriesFarAway February 22nd, 2019 6:48 AM

HeartGold Bug Monotype – Introduction

Spoiler:
Unlike with Ruby, this is not an analysis section. This is simply an overview and run-down of what I plan to do in this playthrough, as it’s a little different from my others so far. First of all, I’ll be playing on console. The 2DS, specifically. This means there’ll be limited pictures, as I have no way to capture images other than to photograph, and I’d rather take as few photos as possible, and will probably only take photos of new Pokemon caught, evolutions and the final battle which according to the rules is Lance. That doesn’t particularly satisfy me, and I may do to Red after I’m done with the other bug monotype playthroughs.

The reason I’m playing on console is so I can trade two Pokemon. One being a Ledyba from SoulSilver due to it being a version exclusive. This is something I need to set up though, as I currently don’t have a save file in SoulSilver, never mind a caught Ledyba, but that’s fairly easy to do. The other being Scyther to Scizor. Which brings us onto the next part.

This will be the first time we’ll be using side mechanics and mini-games exclusive to the specific game we’re playing. This will be coming in one of the other playthroughs later too. In this game specifically though, we’ll be entering the Bug Catching Contest to get Scyther, and the Pokeathlon to grind for the Metal Coat. Honestly, I haven’t done much of the Pokeathlon, so I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but it’ll certainly be something new. We’ll also be using the Headbutt mechanic to get Pineco and Heracross, which as far as I’m aware, is exclusive to GSC and their remakes.

I’ll need to change my 2DS clock a few times most likely, as time and days of the week are fairly important elements to this playthrough.

Last thing I’m going to mention here is that one Johto introduced Bug Pokemon won’t be used in this playthrough, and it’s Yanma. Yanma isn’t particularly good as it is and is difficult to get, and since Yanmega is technically a gen 4 Pokemon, I’m not counting that towards my rule. I’ll be using Yanmega in Platinum instead.


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 1 – Badge 1/8

Spoiler:
Once again, to start my journey off, I chose the grass starter, as this will make the rival more difficult. I went through the beginning of the game including the first rival fight, with Chikorita. After I was able to catch Pokemon, I picked up a Rattata as a potential HM slave, a HootHoot and of course, Spinarak. I traded the HootHoot with my SoulSilver game to get Ledyba. I boxed the Rattata and Chikorita for now, leaving only Spinarak and Ledyba in my party.

I grinded the two of them to level 5 with a little help from some potions I bought at the Mart, then fought all the trainers up until Violet Town. Once I arrived a Violet Town, I went through Bellsprout Tower which was very easy until the final trainer, who had a HootHoot with Peck. Luckily I poisoned it on the first turn with Spinerak’s Poison Sting, and with the use of a few potions, I managed to get through it. Now for the actually difficult part: Falkner.

I grinded my Spinarak to level 14 on wild Pokemon before fighting Falkner’s gym trainers. I didn’t grind Ledyba as it’s traded, and wouldn’t obey me if I grinded it beyond level 10. The trainers didn’t prove themselves too difficult.

Falkner himself was a little obnoxious but not particular difficult. His Pidgey just spammed Sand-Attack, so I eventually just Poison Stinged it to death, missing a lot in the process. I switched to Ledyba when he sent out Pidgeotto to reset my accuracy, let Ledyba faint and then switched back into Spinarak where I alternated using Poison Stings and healing with potions. After a few Poison Stings, it was finally poisoned. It didn’t use Roost even once as it was too busy trying to use Gust on me, which dealt less than half health of damage to my Spinerak. It eventually died to poison.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Spinarak) ♂ Lv 15
Nature: Lonely
Moves:
-Poison Sting
-Leech Life
-Night Shade
-Constrict

Lady B. (Ledyba) ♀ Lv 10
Nature: Modest
-Tackle
-Supersonic
-Comet Punch


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 2 – Badge 2/8

Spoiler:
After defeating Falkner, I picked up the egg and made my way towards Azalea Town, fighting all the trainers along the way. It was a total slog for the most part, as the vast majority of them were Hikers with rock type Pokemon.

When I finally reached Azalea Town, I spoke to Kurt and then went to the Slowpoke Well. Slowpoke Well was much easier to deal with than Union Cave, albeit none of my moves hit particularly hard at the moment. Nonetheless, Ledyba reached level 18 and evolved into Ledian.

Before heading into Bugsy’s gym, I stocked up on healing items. I fought all the trainers in Bugsy’s gym before facing Bugsy himself Bugsy. Bugsy himself was rather challenging but not ridiculously so. I poisoned his Scyther which did a lot of damage to my Spinarak. There was no point in healing Spinarak so I let it faint. Scyther did a lot less damage to Ledian, and I rotated between confusing it with Supersonic, using Comet Punch and healing myself, and after a while of that it fainted. The rest of his team is basically just fodder, making me wonder why they even bothered giving Bugsy more than one Pokemon. Regardless, this was our first major Bug vs Bug battle in this series of challenges and it was pretty underwhelming overall.

An update from now on, I’m going to be adding my Pokemon’s abilities to their summaries as it completely hasn’t even crossed my mind until now.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Spinarak) ♂ Lv 18
Nature: Lonely
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Poison Sting
-Leech Life
-Night Shade
-Constrict

Lady B. (Ledian) ♀ Lv 21
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swarm
-Mach Punch
-Supersonic
-Comet Punch
-Light Screen


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 3 – Badge 3/8

Spoiler:
The rival fight was frankly bizarre. His Gastly went down in two hits of my Spinarak’s Night Shade, then I switched to Ledian, who I rotated between confusing his Quilava and dealing damage to him on, but he oddly didn’t use a fire move on me. Not even once. He just spammed Leer and Smokescreen. I’m in utter confusion as to why his AI did that, because I was expecting a legitimately hard fight. Again, his Zubat went down in two hits of Night Shade plus a Leech Life.

I took Rattata out of my PC to learn Cut, did the Farfetch’d puzzle in Ilex Forest (encountering my old friend from LeafGreen in there, Paras, who we won’t be using in this playthrough) to obtain the HM for Cut, to cut down the cuttable tree blocking the path. I then went to the Headbutt tutor passed the tree and taught Headbutt to Ledian. After that, I headed back down to Azalea Town and bought a few more Pokeballs. On the way back, the Togepi egg hatched, not that it’s particularly important.

I went back to route 33 to catch another team member. And after a lot of encounter grinding, I finally found Heracross by headbutting trees! After trekking through Ilex Forest again, teaching Heracross Headbutt as well along the way, I caught my next team member of route 34 also by headbutting – Pineco.

With these two mons now available to me, I grinded on every trainer in the surrounding area, and picked the Bike up from the Bike Shop, before heading to the National Park to partake in the Bug Catching Contest. My 2DS clock was set to Saturday, and I saved before entering just in case I didn’t find the right mon.

And after a little while of searching within the contest, I found Scyther. I would take it regardless of ability, but I’d have heavily preferred Technician, which is luckily the one I got! Now that I’d gotten my Scyther, it was time to grind Pokeathlon events to get enough points for a Metal Coat. Or so I thought. As it turns it, I needed to beat Whitney before I could do that, so I fought all the trainers in the area that I had left to do, and the grinded Heracross on the grass until level 17.

At that point, I bought 5 X Attacks and some Super Potions. I figured this would be my only way of dealing with Whitney without a fighting type move, and without a lot of grinding. Grinding and battles in general are much slower in gen 4 than previous gens, so it’s something I want to avoid where possible. I was going to use Heracross specifically as it currently has the highest attack stat of the team.

I used 3 of the X Attacks on my Heracross whilst I was against Clefairy, as Clefairy isn’t capable of much damage. Clefairy was a one shot with Headbutt after that, but Miltank was still a 3 hit kill, and I had to juggle healing with dealing damage, as every time she used Stomp twice I needed to heal, and unfortunately Stomp can sometimes cause flinching. This made the battle both time and item consuming but overall it wasn’t too bad using this strategy.

For tonight, I’m done, and likely won’t come back to the challenge now until the weekend is over.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Spinerak) ♂ Lv 20
Nature: Lonely
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Poison Sting
-Leech Life
-Night Shade
-Shadow Sneak

Lady B. (Ledian) ♀ Lv 23
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swarm
-Mach Punch
-Supersonic
-Headbutt
-Light Screen

Joan (Heracross) ♀ Lv 18
Nature: Naughty
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Headbutt
-Leer
-Horn Attack
-Aerial Ace

Bugsy (Scyther) ♂ Lv 16
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Technician
Moves:
-Leer
-Focus Energy
-Pursuit
-False Swipe

Woodie (Pineco) ♂ Lv 15
Nature: Calm
Ability: Sturdy
Moves:
-Take Down
-Protect
-Selfdestruct


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 4 – Badge 4/8

Spoiler:
It was the next day now and from this point onwards I was just doing Pokeathlon events. Here I’m just going to write down my scores and general statistics:

1. Speed – 326 – 1st – Spinerak, Ledian, Heracross
2. Power – 372 – 1st – Heracross, Spinerak, Scyther
3. Skill – 332 – 1st – Pineco, Spinerak, Scyther
4. Stamina – 352 – 1st – Pineco, Heracross, Ledian

After this my 2DS needed charging so I decided to go back to it later. And then I went back to check my points only to realise I wouldn’t be able to get a Metal Coat at the Pokeathlon dome until I had the National Pokedex. Fun… Well, if I ever still need those points for anything later, they’re there at least.

This meant my only other way of getting a Metal Coat before beating Lance would be to use Thief on wild Magnemites. This would take a long time, especially since I was quite the way off of being able to get Thief anyway. So I went off to get the SquirtBottle instead and continue my journey.

I headed up to Ecruteak City, fighting the three trainers I had yet to fight on the way there, and then also headed to Olivine City, once again, fighting all of the trainers on the way there. I wanted to do the Lighthouse section as early as possible for the experience. I also picked up Kenya the Spearow, but removed his mail and boxed him as soon as I got to Ecruteak. I plan to possibly use him later to Fly with.

The Lighthouse was pretty tricky, given most of the trainers there use Flying type Pokemon for some reason, but after I was done with that, I headed back to Ecruteak, fought the Rocket Grunt in the Dance Hall to get Surf. It was now time to fight rival in Burnt Tower, but I picked up a bunch of healing items before taking him on.

Rival wasn’t too difficult. His AI seemed to actually be functioning this time, however. His Gastly was a fairly easy kill with Pursuit on Scyther, but his Quilava was a little tricky. I got it down fairly low with Headbutt on my Ledian, but Flame Wheel knocked out Ledian in 3 hits. I sent out Spinarak, who dealt one Night Shade too it before the Quilava fainted. I then sent out Scyther to deal with his Zubat using Pursuit, which was really no issue, and Heracross to deal with his Magnemite using Brick Break which was a one shot.

I then fought Morty (and his gym trainers) who I actually expected to be a lot harder than he was. With a combination of Ariados’ Shadow Sneak and Scyther’s Pursuit, Morty went down without much trouble.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Spinerak) ♂ Lv 23
Nature: Lonely
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Fury Swipes
-Leech Life
-Night Shade
-Shadow Sneak

Lady B. (Ledian) ♀ Lv 25
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swarm
-Mach Punch
-Supersonic
-Headbutt
-Light Screen

Joan (Heracross) ♀ Lv 20
Nature: Naughty
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Headbutt
-Leer
-Brick Break
-Aerial Ace

Bugsy (Scyther) ♂ Lv 24
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Technician
Moves:
-Leer
-Wing Attack
-Pursuit
-False Swipe

Woodie (Pineco) ♂ Lv 20
Nature: Calm
Ability: Sturdy
Moves:
-Take Down
-Protect
-Selfdestruct
-Bug Bite


Aleimon Thimble February 22nd, 2019 7:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FactoriesFarAway (Post 9982291)
-snip-

Mono Bug on R/S/E is probably the single hardest Monotype Challenge out there. All of the Bug types out there suck. It's also the only one I never completed. I should try it again some day, but I'm still currently struggling through a Black 2 Nuzlocke. My team keeps on dying and the number of encounters left is shrinking, so the prospects of actually winning this time are somewhat bleak...

In contrast, Mono Bug in Black 2 was very doable. Lots of strong options there, but it's still a lot of fun, so you'll have something to look forward to if you plan on doing all games. :)

FactoriesFarAway February 22nd, 2019 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aleimon Thimble (Post 9982658)
Mono Bug on R/S/E is probably the single hardest Monotype Challenge out there. All of the Bug types out there suck. It's also the only one I never completed. I should try it again some day, but I'm still currently struggling through a Black 2 Nuzlocke. My team keeps on dying and the number of encounters left is shrinking, so the prospects of actually winning this time are somewhat bleak...

In contrast, Mono Bug in Black 2 was very doable. Lots of strong options there, but it's still a lot of fun, so you'll have something to look forward to if you plan on doing all games. :)

It was very difficult. I was honestly tempted to give up at Steven. I must've reset about 20-30 times before finally defeating him. It was one of, if not the hardest battle I've ever done in an RPG, nevermind in just a Pokemon game, and if it wasn't for Shedinja being pure cheese I wouldn't have been able to do it. As far as I'm concerned now that that one's out of the way, the others can't possibly be harder. I get the feeling Platinum will be pretty unforgiving too though.

adzpower February 22nd, 2019 11:29 AM

Spoiler:
Made our way up through the Slateport beach and into the city proper, as we were on our way to the museum our Lotad egg hatched! I decided to call him Lilypad since nothing else jumped out at me.

We battle Team Magma spamming mega drain until Forrest hit lv 21 and finally learnt giga drain and evolved, we met this weirdo called Alisa who likes contests I guess and continue up towards Mauville.
As we approach we face our rival Brendan again, his Combusken was scary, Lilypad wasn’t anywhere near ready to take that beast on, I got super lucky by sending out Fungurl and effect spore poisoning the Combusken, just a case of whittling it down after that.

We hit Mauville and face off against Wally, after beating him easily Lilypad evolves into Lombre! Not minutes later after defeating a gym trainer in the Mauville gym Fungurl evolves into Breloom, a Pokemon that will be very effective for use against Wattson, we did well and within a few mach punches we received our third badge.

I opted to skip the path to Verdanturf for now because there are trainers there that will be useful to train up any future team members, before leaving though we tried an Inverse battle and earned ourselves a water stone for Lilypad!

We made our way up to Fallabor through the ash to rescue a professor from Team Magma, we met Archie and then I continued up the cable car to defeat Maxie, just before battling him I evolved Lilypad into his final form Ludicolo, figuring now would be a good time because of Maxie’s Camerupt. Thanks to this he was pretty easy.

We then go down to Lavaridge and demolish Flannery’s gym thanks to Lilypad, definitely the MVP of my team right now.

Current badges: 4/8, Stone, Knuckle, Dynamo, Heat

Current team:

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/x-y/normal/grovyle.png
Forrest the Grovyle, Male, Rash, LV 32
Moves: Pursuit, Leaf Blade, Giga Drain and Quick Attack

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/x-y/normal/nuzleaf-f.png
Flora the Nuzleaf, Female, Hardy, LV 31
Moves: Feint Attack, Leaf Blade, Cut and Growth

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/x-y/normal/breloom.png
Fungurl the Breloom, Female, Naive, LV 31
Moves: Mega Drain, Force Palm, Rock Smash, Headbutt

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/x-y/normal/ludicolo-f.png
Lilypad the Ludicolo, Male, Naive, LV 31
Moves: Fake Out, Nature Power, Bubblebeam, Absorb

jdthebud February 22nd, 2019 4:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FactoriesFarAway (Post 9982701)
It was very difficult. I was honestly tempted to give up at Steven. I must've reset about 20-30 times before finally defeating him. It was one of, if not the hardest battle I've ever done in an RPG, nevermind in just a Pokemon game, and if it wasn't for Shedinja being pure cheese I wouldn't have been able to do it. As far as I'm concerned now that that one's out of the way, the others can't possibly be harder. I get the feeling Platinum will be pretty unforgiving too though.

Platinum really sucks at the start of the game since Kriketune is the only option for Roark, but it gets better as you get access to Vespiquen, Yanmega, Heracross, and Scizor.

Unova by comparison has so many great options, Nintendo did a good job addressing the low number of of good Bug-types in Gen V.

adzpower February 23rd, 2019 2:42 AM

I'm changing from a single challenge to an ultimate challenge, I feel very motivated to do this.

Forum User Name: adzpower
Game(s): Leaf Green, Heart Gold, Omega Ruby, Pearl, Black 2, Y, Sun
Pokémon Type: Grass
Single/Ultimate/Free Mode?: Ultimate

Currently working on Omega Ruby, have all the games on console so will take terrible phone quality pics of important parts and do a big post when each challenge is complete.

EDIT - Switching to Pearl instead of Platinum

Aleimon Thimble February 23rd, 2019 1:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FactoriesFarAway (Post 9982701)
It was very difficult. I was honestly tempted to give up at Steven. I must've reset about 20-30 times before finally defeating him. It was one of, if not the hardest battle I've ever done in an RPG, nevermind in just a Pokemon game, and if it wasn't for Shedinja being pure cheese I wouldn't have been able to do it. As far as I'm concerned now that that one's out of the way, the others can't possibly be harder. I get the feeling Platinum will be pretty unforgiving too though.

Nah, Platinum is fine. Scyther/Scizor is absolutely amazeballs in Gen 4. Scyther was the MVP in my Christian Challenge on Platinum (meaning no evolution, no Ghost/Dark/Psychic Pokemon or moves, and a couple of other less important rules). I never tried Mono Bug on Platinum but it should be doable.

Black 2 is probably the easiest one out there, which is funny since Black 2 is usually the hardest game for most challenges. I used Heracross, Volcarona, Crustle, Galvantula, Leavanny and (post-league) Yanmega, but there's also Scolipede, Vespiquen, Pinsir, Escavalier, Accelgor, Skorupi (lol) and I guess Shuckle (meh). Even if you insist on using only Gen 5 Pokemon you could get a pretty nice team.

adzpower February 23rd, 2019 2:43 PM

Spoiler:
Made huge progress on Omega Ruby.
  • Steamrolled Flannery with Lilypad, bubblebeam spam ftw
    https://i.imgur.com/0TU6lsq.jpg
    Somehow I forgot to take a pic of defeating Norman but I assure you I did, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get any further!
    Went to the desert and picked up the Root Fossil, went back to Rustboro after Norman and revived it, welcome to the team Turnip the Lileep!
    Next I made my way up to Fortree, on the way I caught my last team member, Froot the Tropius, needed a flyer.
    Turnip had gained a lot of levels between Mauville and Fortree, so he helped me beat Wynona quite easily
    https://i.imgur.com/UkCHK6v.jpg
    Then grabbed Sceptilite from Steven and was able to train Froot and Turnip tons on the way to Lilycove, we cleared Mt Pyre and the Magma hideout, Turnip evolved during this into Cradily.
    Then we decided to surf the entire ocean, battling every trainer we could find, took a while but we got there, with a team full of grass types it was no problem. We then challenged Tate and Liza who were frankly, pathetic.
    https://i.imgur.com/GKJTnRI.jpg
    We then travelled to the seafloor cavern, cleared it out and after Maxie let Groudon loose we travelled to Sootopolis City, Maxie was actually a pretty challenging battle, his Crobat was nasty with its poison and flying attacks.
    We caught Groudon and challenged Wallace, the gym puzzle was making me mad it had been so long since I'd done it!
    https://i.imgur.com/em1Gfc7.jpg

    Onwards to the League!

adzpower February 24th, 2019 3:18 AM

Spoiler:


After making my way through Victory Road we ran into Wally, he was not difficult, then it was time to finally enter the League!

Sydney didn't really stand a chance with Fungurl at my side, super effective hits and a high attack stat, he lost hard.


Next up was Phoebe and I forgot how tanky her Dusclops and Dusknoir could be, wasn't too challenging, I had to heal from confusion a few times but Flora's Feint Attack helped big time.


Next was Glacia, now this was a match I had been scared about the entire run, but actually? Using a combination of Fungurl's fighting attacks and Flora's dark attacks for the two Frosslass, it wasn't too bad.


Next was Drake and with Lilypad's Ice Beam we made short work of his team, I don't even remember him getting a single hit off.


Last up was Steven, now this battle made me afraid, I felt pretty confident going in but first match his Claydol had set up screens and basically walled me from doing much damage to his Mega Metagross, which destroyed me, but I perservered! Went in a second time and KO'd the Claydol before it could set anything up and then it was just a case of Surfing the Metagross with Lilypad, aiming for its lower Special defense.


And that's that!


Final team:


I didn't take a pic but somehow my total gametime only ended up at 12 hours and 1 minute, this might be the fastest I have ever completed any Pokemon game ever, I'm sure even Pokemon Blue took me longer than that, kind of weird. But I thoroughly enjoyed this playthrough and am excited to go onto more challenging games in the future, I think next up I will tackle Heart Gold, Blossom is off to Johto!

FactoriesFarAway February 24th, 2019 2:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aleimon Thimble (Post 9983296)
Nah, Platinum is fine. Scyther/Scizor is absolutely amazeballs in Gen 4. Scyther was the MVP in my Christian Challenge on Platinum (meaning no evolution, no Ghost/Dark/Psychic Pokemon or moves, and a couple of other less important rules). I never tried Mono Bug on Platinum but it should be doable.

Black 2 is probably the easiest one out there, which is funny since Black 2 is usually the hardest game for most challenges. I used Heracross, Volcarona, Crustle, Galvantula, Leavanny and (post-league) Yanmega, but there's also Scolipede, Vespiquen, Pinsir, Escavalier, Accelgor, Skorupi (lol) and I guess Shuckle (meh). Even if you insist on using only Gen 5 Pokemon you could get a pretty nice team.

Admittedly, I'm not as familar with Platinum as I am with other games, but I'm fairly sure you don't get access to Scyther until you have at least 3 or 4 badges. You don't get access to Yanma to get Yanmega until you have 3 or 4 badges either. The early game will be absolutely awful as you only have access to Kricketot, and Wurmple who you basically have to beg will evolve into Beautifly if you pick it up. The earliest decent pick up you can get is Vespiquen, but she requires both waiting around for honey trees to spawn Pokemon, and to specifically get a female Combee.

FactoriesFarAway February 24th, 2019 2:17 PM

HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 5 – Badge 5, 6 & 7

Spoiler:
I’m going to first apologise for doing 3 badges in one part, but I did most of this whilst out of the house during times when I was free/breaks, with no access to my PC. Right now it’s Sunday night and I’m writing it all up at once.

The first thing I needed to do was catch a Krabby, as I needed a HM Slave, so I picked up the fishing rod in Olivine and caught one fairly quickly. I taught it Surf and made my way towards Mahogany Town, getting the HM for Strength along the way, to do the Lake of Rage and Rocket Hideout part of the story. The main reason I wanted to get this out of the way ASAP is so I could get access to the Thief TM. This was fairly uneventful beyond gaining a number of levels. I taught Thief to Ledian and headed back to Ecruteak.

It was now time to grind wild Pokemon for a Magnemite with Metal Coat. I spent an hour on it with no success, so I wanted to figure out an easier solution for this.

After some searching online, I found an alternative. Apparently, the ability CompoundEyes has the added effect of it increasing the likelihood of a Pokemon holding an item to 20% from 5% as long as it’s at the front of the party. Even if it's fainted. So it was now time to catch a Butterfree, one of the two Pokemon available to me currently with that ability, at the Bug Catching Contest. I had to mess around with my date a lot to figure out how to do it, as if you straight up change your date to a bug catching day, it doesn’t work. I set it 3 minutes before the day rolled over (23:57) and caught my Butterfree within 3 minutes of starting the contest, which is superb luck as Scyther, with the same encounter rate, took me 13 minutes to find.

Now that I had my Butterfree, I replaced Krabby with it, put it in the front of my party and continued my search for Metal Coat, now finding it within 5 minutes of looking with the help of CompoundEyes. Thank you, Bulbapedia, for having this information, or I likely would’ve been here for hours. It was definitely a TIL moment.

Despite that, I was going to wait until Level 30 to trade my Scizor, because of the rule about how Pokemon should be level 30 before you trade them to evolve, and even though it says that only applies to Leafeon/Glaceon and Crabominable, I’d rather not take the risk, especially since from now until 30, Scyther doesn’t learn different moves from Scizor.

I made my way to Cianwood Island, avoiding all the trainers I could along the way, boxed Krabby and picked up Shuckie the Shuckle from Kirk, the man on the island who wants you to look after his Shuckle. I decided to go with his Shuckle as I get the additional trade experience from it so it’ll level faster, even if it initially starts off at a lower level than wild ones. Moreover, wild Shuckle have only a 10% encounter rate. I honestly was (and still am) unsure of what Shuckle is going to do though. The only TMs it would be able to use well (Gyro Ball and Toxic) are available only in Kanto.

Getting through Chuck’s gym was fairly easy with the help of Heracross’s Aerial Ace and Scyther’s Wing Attack. It was fairly uneventful with little to talk about. Easy badge get.

Once I had done with the gym and had access to Fly, I flew back to Cherrygrove City and picked up the Exp. Share from Mr Pokemon, giving that to Shuckle to level him up. I fought all the trainers in the ocean between Olivine and Cianwood.

I went to fight Pryce following this, as I figured he would be the easier of the two gym leaders I currently had to beat to progress in the story. His gym trainers were fairly easy to deal with for my Heracross, and after a couple of resets I had a strategy for Pryce too.

Guard Spec x1, X Attack x3, heal up and then sweep his team with Brick Break on my Heracross. Icy Wind’s speed deduction absolutely crippled me without using Guard Spec, but with it, the fight was incredibly easy.

Then I headed to Olivine for what I knew was going to be a fairly difficult gym. I of course had to give Jasmine the medicine first, which I picked up whilst in Cianwood, but after that it was time to face her.

This was tough. Setting up on her wasn’t possible as Thunderbolt did too much damage to Heracross who was the only Pokemon who could deal with her. At this point, I was severely underleveled, despite fighting all of the trainers available to me up to this point with the exception of skipping Mt. Mortar. Brick Break did one shot both Magnemites without any set up, but the issue was her Steelix, which also did a lot of damage not allowing for set up but took little damage in return. In the end, I just ended up juggling between Pokemon, reviving and healing Heracross and slowly whittling it down. It really was the only way I could deal with her without grinding.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Ariados) ♂ Lv 28
Nature: Lonely
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Dig
-Sucker Punch
-Night Shade
-Shadow Sneak

Lady B. (Ledian) ♀ Lv 29
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swarm
-Mach Punch
-Roost
-Headbutt
-Silver Wind

Joan (Heracross) ♀ Lv 30
Nature: Naughty
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Headbutt
-Shadow Claw
-Brick Break
-Aerial Ace

Bugsy (Scyther) ♂ Lv 28
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Technician
Moves:
-U-turn
-Wing Attack
-Pursuit
-False Swipe

Woodie (Pineco) ♂ Lv 28 (Please evolve soon)
Nature: Calm
Ability: Sturdy
Moves:
-Take Down
-Protect
-Selfdestruct
-Bug Bite

Shuckie (Shuckle) ♂ Lv 29
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Gluttony
Moves:
-Wrap
-Bide
-Encore
-Safeguard


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 6 – Badge 8/8

Spoiler:
After I’d received the first 7 badges, it was now time to do the Team Rocket Radio Tower Takeover section, which is by far the worst part of an otherwise amazing game, mainly because it just seems to go on forever. This was fairly uneventful and not too difficult, other than my Scyther hitting level 30, so I traded him with my SoulSilver game to evolve him to a Scizor, and Pineco evolving into Forretress. The only part worth talking is the final battle against Archer, because even the rival wasn’t particularly noteworthy.

This should’ve been a lot more difficult than it was, as I was severely underlevelled vs him and he has a Houndoom. But it wasn’t. Because it used 2 Fire Fangs on my Shuckle whilst it used Bide, which Shuckle could tank with no problem, and was one shot with Bide’s double damage in return. This made me realise Shuckle was going to become the Shedinja of this playthrough – as in barely ever useful but when it is, it does something absolutely miraculous.

After I was done with this part of the game, I headed back to Mahogany and fought all of the trainers on Route 44 and Route 45, making my way through Ice Path and to Blackthorne in the meantime. Even after fighting these trainers, I was severely underleveled, so I went and grinded on Tentacool and Tentacruel next to Cianwood City as they were the easiest to deal with relative to how much experience they gave. After a good 3 or so hours of grinding, I felt apt in dealing with Clair.

I put Scizor in front of my party as it was the highest level Pokemon I had at the time. Clair’s first Pokemon was a Gyarados, who has Intimidate, so I immediately switched to Ariados to reset this stat loss, used Night Shade on Gyarados once and then fainted. I switched back into Scizor and set up 2x X Speed and 3x X Attack, healing every couple of turns in the process. I may have over done the X items a little, but I wanted to be safe. With the X items, Clair was a very easy sweep, using Wing Attack on Gyarados and X Scissor on the rest of her mons.

Of course, Clair doesn’t give you the badge right after you beat her, so I had to do the Dragon’s Den dungeon which is fairly unnoteworthy.

TEAM SO FAR

Wincy (Ariados) ♂ Lv 38
Nature: Lonely
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Dig
-Sucker Punch
-Night Shade
-Shadow Sneak

Lady B. (Ledian) ♀ Lv 39
Nature: Modest
Ability: Swarm
-Mach Punch
-Roost
-Headbutt
-Silver Wind

Joan (Heracross) ♀ Lv 38
Nature: Naughty
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Headbutt
-Shadow Claw
-Close Combat
-Aerial Ace

Bugsy (Scyther) ♂ Lv 42
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Technician
Moves:
-X Scissor
-Wing Attack
-Pursuit
-Slash

Woodie (Forretress) ♂ Lv 35
Nature: Calm
Ability: Sturdy
Moves:
-Take Down
-Mirror Shot
-Selfdestruct
-Bug Bite

Shuckie (Shuckle) ♂ Lv 34
Nature: Relaxed
Ability: Gluttony
Moves:
-Wrap
-Bide
-Encore
-Safeguard


HeartGold Bug Monotype – Part 6 – Victory Road + Elite 4 (Final NECESSARY Part)

Spoiler:
Before setting off for Victory Road, I checked potential TMs I could pick up, and TMs I already had, which made me realise there was no point in wasting my time looking for them as my Pokemon’s TM compatibility for the most part was terrible, and the TMs I could learn were in Kanto.

I also soon realised my Krabby couldn’t learn Waterfall, so I caught a Tentacool and taught Strength to my Heracross.

I then realised that the game forces you to do Bell Tower. The Kimono girls weren’t a problem, but Ho-oh itself took a couple of attempts. It was mostly beaten using Shuckle’s Bide once again.

There was little to talk about in the journey up to Victory Road until fighting Silver again. First time, I forgot to save in front of him, died and had to trek all the way back. The second time, I decided to equip the Occa Berry to Heracross so I could use Earthquake against his Typhlosion. It was almost a one shot, so I sent in Ariados to finish it off with Shadow Sneak. The rest of his team was not especially noteworthy, however.

My DS battery grew low and it was time to charge, so it was now time to strategise what I was going to against Lance and take a break for a few hours.

So I went back to playing. I grinded all of my mons to at least level 40, and gave my two rare candies to Scizor making it 45. I bought a lot of X items and healing items before entering the Elite Four, and I definitely overdid the healing items and should’ve concentrated on more X items.

Will was very easy. I set up X Attack x3 and X Speed x2, and his team was swept with X Scissor on my Scizor.

Koga, I didn’t bother setting X items up with, except one X Attack I used on my Heracross to turn his Forretress into a 2 shot with Close Combat. I exploded on Crobat as I had no other way to deal with it. Other than that, his team wasn’t very tough.

Again, on Bruno I set up X Attack x3 and X Speed x2 on my Scizor, and he was a sweep using Wing Attack on his fighting types and X Scizor on his Onix.

Karen, I set up with Heracross instead. This time X Attack x3 and X Speed x3 so I’d outspeed the Houndoom. I used Close Combat on her Umbreon and Houndoom, Strength on her Murkrow and Vileplume and Shadow Claw on her Gengar.

https://i.imgur.com/Ojop0n0.jpg
Lance took a lot of thinking about. Eventually, I used 5x X Defend, 6x X Attacks and 3x X Speeds, praying for Gyarados to not crit me, healing in between every so often. This made his Gyarados, and my main concern, his Charizard, both one shots. His first Dragonite wouldn’t even go down in one shot with 6 X Attack boosts, though, and it had Fire Blast. I ended up sending out Forretress who it luckily missed Fire Blast on and I exploded in its face. I then set up 3 more X Attacks on Scizor before sweeping the rest of his team. Aerodactyl took a few hits, but following that, Lance was fairly easy to deal with. Much less of a problem than Rival in LeafGreen and Steven, either way.

https://i.imgur.com/Ov27Icy.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/b73G5bi.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/QprgW7k.jpg

Instead of writing a summary for my final team here, I’ll post the photographs I took. I plan to go back and do the second half of the game, but since the Win Condition for now is only to get past Lance, I will put this on hold until I’m done with the rest of the challenge and start Pokemon Black instead. HeartGold was the easiest so far due to access to good Pokemon throughout. It was a little grindy, but at the moment, as far as I'm concerned, the real game hasn't begun yet, and what's more important is how the Pokemon survive through Kanto. But to analyse what I did do, Scizor/Scyther was the best of the bunch, but Heracross was also undoubtedly very good, and they were definitely the two carries of this team. I personally felt Ledian to be a bit lacking after a while, and although it was fairly useful during the mid game, Ariados' movepool left much to be desired by the end game. Shuckle was super niche and Forretress was fairly middle of the road with some niche helpful uses like exploding too.

All these images are different sizes and I apologise for that

Scizor:
https://i.imgur.com/1kycUNH.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/2IRx203.jpg

Heracross:
https://i.imgur.com/YapCxim.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/pEZIvyy.jpg

Ariados:
https://i.imgur.com/9M2AbC6.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/OhWIiuF.jpg

Ledian:
https://i.imgur.com/C18pDEd.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/DM6oF73.jpg

Forretress:
https://i.imgur.com/5JlEfsu.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/UZbxM5d.jpg

Shuckle:
https://i.imgur.com/2KYkqh8.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/Rfxwh7Z.jpg


HeartGold Bug Monotype FIN....?
(Kanto to be done after I've finished the rest of the ultimate challenge)

adzpower February 24th, 2019 2:21 PM

Heart Gold Gyms 1, 2 & 3

Spoiler:


I apologize in advance for the dodgy photos, unlike Omega Ruby after beating trainers on Heart Gold you have literally seconds to take a decent pic before the battle ends by itself.

Trainer Blossom has reached Johto! Eager to continue her research and acquisition of as many grass types as possible, she reaches New Bark Town and picks Chikorita as her Johto starter, the naming theme for this region is famous forests, we call him Sequoia after the Sequoia national forest in California.

We head up to Violet City after beating our new rival, Tye, he’s not as nice as Brendan, it’ll take some getting used to.
We head to route 32 just below Violet to catch our new two team members, Amazon the Bellsprout and Monteverde the Hoppip, Amazon of course being names after the famous Amazon rainforest in South America, and Monteverde being named after the reserve in Costa Rica. After grinding for a while on Mareep’s and clearing the Sprout Tower, we head onto the Violet gym to take on Faulkner, luckily he was not as difficult as I thought he’d be, we spammed poison powder and then it went downhill for him from there.


We then headed down to the Union cave, full of ground types so perfect for training, we take on Team Rocket at the well and then we get to Bugsy, I have no shame at all in admitting that his stupid Scyther with U-turn creamed us…..18 times. 19 times the charm my friends! We then bump into Tye and beat him, I was worried about his Quilava but for some reason he kept spamming quick attack like a noob. So no fire attacks.


After that nightmare we head up to the Ilex Forest where we catch our next member, Daintree the Oddish, named after the Daintree rainforest in Australia, it was easy to get her some levels back at the Union cave, we then cleared the forest and headed to Goldenrod City, we took on all the surrounding trainers and then took on Whitney, shockingly she was much easier after Bugsy, I think this may be the only time I ever say that Whitney was an easy opponent!


And that’s where we called it a day, my team is as follows:

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/bayleef.pngSequoia the Bayleef, Male, Naughty, Lv 23

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/weepinbell.pngAmazon the Weepinbell, Female, Bashful, Lv 22

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/skiploom.pngMonteverde the Skiploom, Female, Quirky, Lv 21

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/oddish.pngDaintree the Oddish, Female, Hasty, Lv 17


Heart Gold Gym 4/Training

Spoiler:

So despite not earning many badges today we actually did a ton, after beating Whitney we battled the trainers up to Ecruteak, during this Daintree evolved into Gloom. We then went into Ecruteak proper and used headbutt on trees until we found our newest team member, Sherwood the Exeggcute!

We then headed to route 37, just below the city and trained our butts off on wild Stantler, who give a good amount of EXP at this point in the game, after everyone gaining 3-4 levels Daintree evolved into Gloom during this.
We head into the tower and beat Tye, he was a little tricky with his Zubat and Quilava but we got there in the end. We then freed the Legendary Cats (don’t you tell me they’re dogs, they are clearly based off of a lion, a cheetah and a tiger).
We battled out way to Olivine, grabbed the good rod and headed back to Ecruteak, we caught a Poliwag in the pond here to use as our water HM slave, surf etc. Which we then went and got from the Kimono dance studio.

I was concerned about Morty because all of his Pokemon are part poison, however I picked up the Light Screen TM from Goldenrod and taught it to Sequoia, we totally walled his Shadow Balls and we ended up beating him a lot more easily than we beat Bugsy, I guess even though he is effectively a poison trainer none of his Pokemon knew any poison moves, Johto has some very strange gym choices, I always wondered why a lot of the gym leaders don’t even use Johto Pokemon (Faulkner, Bugsy, Morty, Chuck). Anyways, after beating Morty Monteverde evolved into Jumpluff.


We then had a few options, but seeing that I could probably use more training before we faced Chuck and Jasmine, we went to Mahogany Town to clear the Lake of Rage and take out the rocket base, this was extremely tedious, as Sherwood still hadn’t learnt confusion, with all the Zubat’s and Grimer’s it was very slow going, but about half way through Sherwood finally learnt Confusion and my word what a difference, we started blasting through the grunts like no tomorrow. I also forgot that Sequoia would evolve so early, we just hit Lv 32 as I was about to turn off.

After that we headed back to Olivine to climb the lighthouse and retrieve our mission from Jasmine, and tomorrow we set sail for Cianwood!

Current team:

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/meganium-f.png Sequoia the Meganium, Male, Lv 32

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/jumpluff.png Monteverde the Jumpluff, Female, Lv 31

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/weepinbell.png Amazon the Weepinbell, Female, Lv 30

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/gloom-f.png Daintree the Gloom, Female, Lv 30

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/diamond-pearl/normal/exeggcute.png Sherwood the Exeggcute, Female, Lv 29


Heart Gold Gyms 5, 6, 7, 8

Spoiler:

So we’ve done a ton since last time, we sailed to Cianwood, and Chuck was actually extremely easy? I one shot his Primeape somehow and Poliwrath is water so that didn’t go too well for him.


We picked up the secret potion and went back to Olivine, we healed Amphy the lighthouse Pokemon up and challenged Jasmine, she wasn’t as tricky as I thought she’d be, once I Leech Seeded all her Pokemon it was just a case of whittling them down with my special attacks.


We then travelled back to Mahogony and took Pryce out, very easy, all his Pokemon were either part water or part ground, so they went down quickly.


I should mention that I’m always training between going to each area, I am very aware of Johto’s levelling issues, so I’m trying to keep them as high as I possibly can on levels.

We have to then do the most tedious part of the game imo which is the Goldenrod Team Rocket episode, all they use is poison types, so as a grass trainer, this was kind of a nightmare, it felt like it went on forever, but we got there in the end, no-one was particularly challenging, it went well.

We then get to route 44 and get hunting for our next team member! We found him after a few tries, Paradiso the Tangela! His Ancient Power is going to be essential in battling Lance later on, hoping it pays off, but he’s quite a lot lower levelled, so I’m planning on giving him a classic 80’s training montage after beating Clair, we call him Paradiso after the Gran Paradiso reserve in Italy.

We get through Ice Path easily enough, its pretty good training actually with all the wild Golbat, we then make it out and immediately train on the trainers down below on route 45, every little helps at this point, we then get into the gym and face Clair, it took some time to whittle her down because of her annoying Dragonair’s, lots of seeding and healing and we eventually win, she then runs off after having her temper tantrum and we go after her to get our badge, and that’s where we stopped for now.


I'll do a proper team update once everyone is trained up and ready for the League.



Heart Gold Training & Pokemon League

Spoiler:

So after earning my final badge we had to go and do that pointless, tedious portion of the game where you have to climb the tower and face Ho-oh, this feels really shoe-horned in and I wish it was post-game, really breaks the flow of the game up.

Then we go east of New Bark Town and fight the trainers leading up to Victory Road before coming to a stop, my Pokemon needed training a lot, especially Paradiso who was still new to the team. Insert 80’s training montage here please.

We did a lot of grinding, A LOT of grinding, to the point where my team now looked like this before going into the League.


Before that we had to face Tye one last time, his Typhlosion was tough, but I had taught Sequoia Earthquake so we took him out eventually.

Now for the elite four! Will was pretty easy, I don’t need to say much about him really. Koga was someone I was afraid of because poison, but aside from Forretress I one-shot everything with Sherwood’s Psychic attack, it destroyed him.



Bruno was also very easy, I had a psychic and a flying type, not much else I need to say where that’s concerned.


Now onto Karen, who like Koga, I was scared of, but she was actually very easy.


Now to the battle I had been dreading the entire game, Lance, who is essentially a flying type trainer disguised as a dragon tamer, is my worst nightmare with a team full of grass types. I have never stalled and healed so much in a battle! Not so surprisingly his Charizard was the hardest to knock out, his Air Slash was lethal. But eventually we beat it thanks to my MVP, Monteverde the Jumpluff came through all battle! If it wasn’t for her speed at using Leech Seed I wouldn’t have won, pure and simple, I knew the Dragonite’s could heal status with their ability, I needed to get in quick with a seeding to make things easier, and it worked, thank you Monteverde! I will never underestimate Jumpluff again.


Champion pose!


Next up Blossom will be heading for Kalos in search of more grass types!

FactoriesFarAway February 25th, 2019 11:08 AM

Pokemon Black Bug Monotype - Introduction/Analysis

Spoiler:
Again, as Black has a lot of options for Pokemon to use, I’m going to analyse these. Unlike Ruby, it’s also worth considering at what point in the game they come at and at what level they evolve, because for several of these you get them fairly late or they evolve very late.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/4/48/Spr_5b_542.png
Leavanny has decent all around stats with a pretty sizeable attack and speed stat. Whilst its type combination leaves it with a lot of weaknesses, Grass is a pretty good STAB to have, especially with a Pokemon like Seismitoad being in this game. It has access to Razor Leaf and Bug Bite as soon as you get it, and learns some pretty strong moves by levelling up such as X Scissor and Leaf Blade. It gets access to some pretty good moves through TM too, such as Poison Jab, Aerial Ace and Shadow Claw. You get it early on and Sewaddle evolves to Swadloon pretty early too, at level 20. Its biggest downfalls are that neither of its abilities are particularly good, with Swarm being the better of the two for what we’re doing, and it evolves through Friendship for its final evolution.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/9/9b/Spr_5b_545.png
Scolipede is very fast and has decent attack and defense. It can learn Earthquake, X Scissor, Poison Jab and Rock Slide via TM. Rock Slide in particular will be very useful given its Speed, giving the upper hand over Flying types which have tended to wall me in these bug monotype playthroughs. Its level up movepool is pretty lackluster however, especially early on. Having Poison Point makes it a decent user of Venoshock despite it not really being special oriented, so there’s rarely a reason to take Swarm on it. You get it early on and it evolves early, reaching its final form at level 30. There’s no real downsides to using it, except for its poor early game movepool.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/0/02/Spr_5b_558.png
Crustle is slow but bulky and has a fairly strong attack stat. It has a fairly good type with few weaknesses, which, much like Armaldo in Ruby, covers a lot of ground for other Pokemon on the team. Both of its abilities are pretty good, albeit I think Shell Armor is the better of the two. It evolves at a fairly standard level, and its level up movepool varies from decent to very good, although it does take quite a number of levels to get going on that front. It doesn’t have much TM capacity beyond what Scolipede and Leavanny have, except for its access to STAB Stone Edge and Rock Slide.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/0/08/Spr_5b_589.png
Escavalier has insane attack and defenses, but is one of the slowest Pokemon in the game. Its typing of Bug/Steel is really strong albeit fairly common at this point. I personally won’t be able to evolve this until I pick up Shelmet as well, so it does evolve after the mid-point of the game. It has a very poor level up movepool until it gets into the 30s, and it doesn’t have a particularly great movepool via TM either, learning very few helpful moves. As I said with Crustle, I personally think Shell Armor is the better of its two abilities.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/2/20/Spr_5b_617.png
Accelgor is one of the fastest Pokemon in the game with a strong special attack stat. Its defenses are awful, so it’s the epitome of a glass cannon. I don’t think either of its abilities are particularly useful for single-player, so it doesn’t really matter which one you pick up. You can evolve it as soon as you get it, albeit you get it fairly late in the game. It doesn’t learn much through level up, but what it does is fairly strong, gaining Giga Drain at 37 and Bug Buzz pretty late at 44. Through TM it learns Sludge Bomb and Energy Ball, but not much else worthy of note. Its lack of a dual typing makes it generally not as interesting as a lot of the other Pokemon you can run into, however.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/0/00/Spr_5b_596.png
Galvantula is fast with a strong Special Attack stat. It has a unique typing and evolves at the fairly average level of 36. It learns Signal Beam through level up, but nothing else particularly noteworthy, and STAB Thunderbolt and Energy Ball through TM, as well as having CompoundEyes meaning it can hit Thunder with 91% accuracy. Its other ability Unnerve is never worth taking over it, in my opinion.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/5/54/Spr_5b_632.png
Durant is fast with strong attack and defense. Unfortunately, whilst Hustle is a much better ability than Shell Armor, it has little to offer in terms of moves that Escavalier doesn’t, or that other Pokemon couldn’t do better whom are available earlier on, since you get Durant way too late and at way too low of a level for it to be useful, in my opinion. That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad Pokemon by any means, and I’d have definitely put more consideration into taking it if you got it earlier.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/1/18/Spr_5b_637.png
You can’t really talk about Volcarona without talking about Larvesta. The reason I say that, is it’s going to be Larvesta for the vast majority, if not the entire, game. Larvesta has nothing of note except for its attack and fire typing. It only learns moves every 10 levels and there’s barely any fire type moves that make use of its good attack. Once it evolves, it’s an entirely different story, as it becomes a powerful special sweeper with sizeable special defense, but you’re not going to see that side of it until the end of the game, if at all, and Larvesta is absolutely pitiful to carry around until that point, especially for something you’d be raising from level 1 as you find it in an egg. I really wanted to use this mon, but I cannot justify it.

Now that that’s out of the way, before continuing, I’d like to point out that you can’t actually get a bug type Pokemon until after the second gym in this game, oddly enough, so I needed to trade one in early. I decided it would make more sense to go with the one most like a starter, as trading in a low level Durant just seemed unfair. So I decided to go with Venipede, in that it’s a 3 stage evolution Pokemon that evolves fairly early through level-up.

I’m also going to choose the Water type starter in this game instead of the Grass type, and my reasoning is that Bianca will get the fire starter anyway, and it makes the early game more tolerable. Given I have to trade my first bug type, a bug over the level of 10 isn’t going to obey me until I beat the first gym, so I’d rather make the first gym as easy to get through as possible because of that. If I didn’t have to trade a bug to progress, I would’ve just chosen the fire type starter.

In the end, I decided to take:

-Scolipede (Trade)
-Levanny (Pinwheel Forest)
-Crustle (Desert Resort)
-Escavalier (Route 6)
-Accelgor (Icirrus City)
-Galvantula (Chargestone Cave)

To get Shelmet, I need to make sure I start in a season that is not winter. This is because Shelmet is NOT available in winter. Luckily, my DS time is set to 3rd of February, and February is considered a summer month, so this is no problem. I want to make sure my DS is at a stable date where I don’t have to change the time, as I will be playing Platinum at the same time, and if I mess with my system clock, it’ll mess with my honey trees. I’ll talk more about my plans for Platinum in my post about Platinum however, which should be coming fairly soon.


Pokemon Black Bug Monotype – Part 1 – Badges 1 & 2

Spoiler:
I’m going to flat out say it now – this game had the most difficult early game so far. Yes, harder than Roxanne, and yes, harder than Brock.

Early game went how you expected. I chose Oshawott as my starter and only raised it up until Level 15 where I tackled the first gym. Before fighting the gym, I picked up both a Lillipup and a Patrat, as well as the elemental monkey. I wasn’t aware that I wouldn’t be able to trade until after I’d beaten Cilan, which made fighting him with Oshawott one of the hardest things ever, and it was only by a sheer lucky crit and equipping a berry that I beat him, after many many resets. If I ever decide to do a Water/Grass/Fire monotype, or a monotype for a type not available before the first gym again, I’ll be doing Black/White 2 and not the first game, case in point.

After I was done with the first gym, and had done Fennel’s little quest, I traded the Lillipup I caught for a Venipede from my Black 2 game. I boxed everything else but Patrat as it was my cut user.

I levelled up Venipede on the surrounding trainers, and it was fairly capable despite only being level 10 upon trade. Its level quickly got in line with how Oshawott’s was. Upon fighting Lenora’s gym trainers, I noticed an issue, however… Venipede was going to get beyond level 20 before I fought Lenora, meaning it wouldn’t obey me. I figured out a rather awkward solution to this. I grinded on all the trainers in the surrounding area until I not only evolved to Whirlipede, but was level 24, and then bought a lot of Super Potions.

https://i.imgur.com/KduCAD7.png
My solution was to wait for Lenora to poison herself on my Poison Point, slowly killing herself with that and Take Down, healing myself and praying to hit Poison Tail all the while. And after probably around 10 attempts, I finally had the successful fight. By the way, Whirlipede is called Pls because he legitimately took nearly 20 Ultra Balls to catch from full health in Black 2.

Now that I’ve stuck out the initial road block, the rest of the playthrough should theoretically be much easier.

TEAM SO FAR

Pls (Whirlipede) ♀ Lv 25
Nature: Sassy
Ability: Poison Point
Moves:
-Bug Bite
-Rollout
-Poison Tail
-Screech

Patrat (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 2
Nature: Serious
Ability: Keen Eye
Moves:
-Tackle
-Cut


Pokemon Black Bug Monotype – Part 2 – Badge 3/8

Spoiler:
After beating Lenora, I headed to Pinwheel forest to catch a Sewaddle. I preferably wanted one with Swarm over Chlorophyll, but I caught 4 and they all had Chlorophyll, and wasn’t bothered enough to keep searching, so I kept the one with the highest attack stat. I put that Sewaddle out front and boxed the others. I fought all the trainers in Pinwheel Forest which wasn’t particularly challenging, and Sewaddle evolved to Swadloon.

I made my way to Castelia and tried to fight all the trainers and pick up all the items I could before entering the gym. I gained a few levels, as well as a few useful items such as the Eviolite, Exp Share and Amulet Coin during this part. I also gave a massage to my Swadloon. I saved and quit for the night following this as it was getting late.

The next day, I loaded up the game and gave Swadloon another massage, and then went through the rather unremarkable Team Plasma encounter before fighting Burgh. Burgh was a total pushover, with all of his Pokemon being one shot by Rollout on my Whirlipede.

TEAM SO FAR

Pls (Whirlipede) ♀ Lv 28
Item: Eviolite
Nature: Sassy
Ability: Poison Point
Moves:
-Bug Bite
-Rollout
-Poison Tail
-Screech

Buggyboi (Swadloon) ♂ Lv 26
Item: Amulet Coin
Nature: Serious
Ability: Chlorophyll
Moves:
-Tackle
-String Shot
-Bug Bite
-Razor Leaf

Patrat (HM Slave) ♂ Lv 2
Nature: Serious
Ability: Keen Eye
Moves:
-Tackle
-Cut


Pokemon Black Bug Monotype – Part 3 – Badge 4/8

Spoiler:
Next it was time to go to Desert Resort to pick up Dwebble. I avoided as many trainers as possible on the way there, except for of course having to fight Bianca and Cheren, neither of whom were an issue at all. Due to carrying around only two Pokemon, I’ve had the opposite issue (not that it really is an issue) to what I’ve had in the previous games so far in that I’m fairly overleveled by comparison to the trainers around me.

The Dwebble I picked up had Sturdy, and it seemed to take ages to find another, so I stuck with it, and then fought all of the trainers in the surrounding area to raise it up. Upon entering Nimbasa City, I picked up the Soothe Bell one of the women in the town gives you and equipped it to Swadloon. I then fought all the trainers available to me in Nimbasa City, including N and the gym trainers, and the routes to the east and west. During this, Swadloon evolved into Leavanny, one of my favourite bug types, and Whirlipede evolved into Scolipede.

I’d like to add that I’m really glad Vending Machines are literally everywhere in this generation because it saves me a lot on healing items. That teamed up with Amulet Coin means I’m pretty stinking rich already.

Anyway, it was time to face Elesa. I basically swept her team with Dwebble’s Rock Slide and there’s little more to add. I’m not expecting many of the gym battles to be difficult in this game following the first two because the bugs in this game are actually good and diverse.

Oh, I also boxed Patrat, since I don’t really need it anymore.

TEAM SO FAR

Pls (Whirlipede) ♀ Lv 31
Item: Amulet Coin
Nature: Sassy
Ability: Poison Point
Moves:
-Bug Bite
-Rollout
-Poison Tail
-Screech

Buggyboi (Leavanny) ♂ Lv 31
Item: Miracle Seed
Nature: Serious
Ability: Chlorophyll
Moves:
-Tackle
-String Shot
-Bug Bite
-Razor Leaf

BabbyCrab (Dwebble) ♀ Lv32
Item: Eviolite
Nature: Timid
Ability: Study
Moves:
-Stealth Rock
-Slash
-Rock Slide
-Bug Bite


Pokemon Black Bug Monotype – Part 4 – Badge 5/8

Spoiler:
Now that Elesa was beaten and the drawbridge was lowered, it was time to move on to Driftveil City. The first thing I did was catch Karrablast. I caught two in total, and both had Swarm but again, I wasn’t too bothered about the ability (the only mon I do really want the preferred ability on is Galvantula) and I took the one with the neutral nature.

I equipped it with the Exp. Share and fought all the trainers in the surrounding area to level it up, including Cold Storage. Nothing was particularly difficult. Before facing Clay I picked up a dozen MooMoo Milk from the market and 10 revives.

Clay himself was tougher than I expected. His Krokorok and Palpitoad were no match at all for my Leavanny, but I had nothing particularly useful against his Excadrill I used a mixture of Dwebble and Leavanny and had to whittle him down fairly slowly, which sucked given he does a lot of damage. He wasn’t as awful as some of the leaders in other games, but wasn’t super easy either.

TEAM SO FAR

Pls (Whirlipede) ♀ Lv 32
Item: Amulet Coin
Nature: Sassy
Ability: Poison Point
Moves:
-Bug Bite
-Rollout
-Poison Tail
-Screech

Buggyboi (Leavanny) ♂ Lv 33
Item: Miracle Seed
Nature: Serious
Ability: Chlorophyll
Moves:
-Tackle
-String Shot
-Bug Bite
-Razor Leaf

BabbyCrab (Dwebble) ♀ Lv33
Item: Eviolite
Nature: Timid
Ability: Study
Moves:
-Stealth Rock
-Slash
-Rock Slide
-Bug Bite

MetaKnight (Karrablast) ♂ Lv 32
Item: None
Nature: Serious
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Endure
-Fury Cutter
-Slash
-Headbutt


alisaie February 25th, 2019 2:34 PM

Water Monotype Challenge - Second Update
Heart Gold | Marko

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/4/4a/Zephyr_Badge.png/40px-Zephyr_Badge.png https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/0/08/Hive_Badge.png/40px-Hive_Badge.png https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/a/a7/Plain_Badge.png/40px-Plain_Badge.png https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/4/48/Fog_Badge.png/40px-Fog_Badge.png https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/b/b9/Storm_Badge.png/40px-Storm_Badge.png https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/7/7b/Mineral_Badge.png/40px-Mineral_Badge.png

Whoo, a lot has happened since the last time we updated! First off the battle against Whitney that went .... well she was a pain. We managed to defeat her with a mix of all three Pokemon but christ her Stomp attack and the fact that she always seems to get off a flinch is downright dirty tbh. After the defeat of Whitney the game went a lot more smoothly.

We made our way up to Ecruteak City where we easily took down our rival Polo (Chimi took care of his Gastly and Zubat, Burrito his Magnemite, and a swift Ice Fang from Tortilla took down his Bayleef). Then we went to Olivine City to ... try to get one of our members but was stopped by some dude. Anyways we at least picked up the Good Rod we'll be needing for two of our members. I wouldn't grabbed one of the other ones except I didn't realize they were on a route that I already had access to until after I defeated Morty. Which by the way was incredibly easy between Chimi's Confusion and Tortilla's Bite.

Before I continue let me just warn you that I went all over the place for no particular reason other than being disorganized. Oops. Anyways. Our first new member of our team after we defeated Morty was Chalupa the Chinchou! Once she was acquired we backtracked to Route 32 to fish up our next member! Eventually entered Enchilada the Qwilfish! Once we obtained Enchilada we only had one more Team member to acquire then we had our full team.

That way, we made our back to Olivine City and onto Route 41 where we surfed for a bit. The Tentacool, Tentacruels, and trainers made for some nice experience and eventually Tortilla evolved into a Feraligatr! Soon after we encountered and caught our last team member Taco the Mantine. After we got everyone we made our way back to Olivine City to go up the lighthouse, get our mission, and then set sail, one more, for Cianwood. During our trek there Chalupa evolved into a Lanturn!

Chuck was honestly a little harder than I expected. I should have grinded a bit more before taking him on. Used Toxic Spikes during Primeape with Enchilada so the fight against Poliwrath was a mix of stalling and then finishing it off with a Spark from Chalupa. Then we trekked back to Olivine with a quick surf (it's honestly not a far surf and experience was always needed. That and I didn't pick up a Bird slave for Fly) so we can deliver the medicine to Jasmine. Except I forgot the medicine so then I had to make another round trip. Oops. But mission was (eventually) completed and off we went to fight Jasmine! She was honestly a lot easier than Chuck between Chalupa's Volt Absorb and Surf and Taco's Surf for Steelix.

With that all said and done we backtracked to Ecruteak and now we're standing in front of Mt. Mortar ready to continue! Already I can tell I'm slowly getting "underleveled" just like in every playthrough of mine in Johto, but I don't believe it should be an issue. If anything I'll just grind until I'm tired like always and then just slam my way through everything after. Guess we'll find out!

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/feraligatr.png
Tortilla (Feraligatr) ♂
Naughty | Torrent | Level 31
Ice Fang, Crunch, Water Gun, Rage

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/quagsire-f.png
Burrito (Quagsire) ♀
Hardy | Water Absorb | Level 28 @ Quick Claw
Water Gun, Headbutt, Slam, Mud Bomb

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/slowpoke.png
Chimi (Slowpoke) ♂
Bashful | Own Tempo | Level 30
Curse, Headbutt, Confusion, Water Pulse

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/lanturn.png
Chalupa (Lanturn) ♀
Bashful | Volt Absorb | Level 29
Stockpile, Surf, Confuse Ray, Spark

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/qwilfish.png
Enchilada (Qwilfish) ♂
Quirky | Poison Point | Level 24
Harden, Toxic Spikes, Water Gun, Rollout

https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/heartgold-soulsilver/normal/mantine.png
Taco (Mantine) ♀
Docile | Water Absorb | Level 24 @ Sharp Beak
Surf, BubbleBeam, Headbutt, Wing Attack

HM Slaves
https://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/sun-moon/icon/oddish.pnghttps://img.pokemondb.net/sprites/sun-moon/icon/wooper.png

FactoriesFarAway February 26th, 2019 5:02 AM

Platinum Bug Monotype – Introduction

Spoiler:
Platinum is going to be a… weird one to say the least, and will likely stretch on from now until the end of the monotype challenge, purely because of how it works.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/6/63/Spr_4p_401_m.png
I’m forced to start with Kricketot regardless as it’s the first Bug you encounter and the only one you find for quite a while.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/d/d2/Spr_4p_413.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/8/8c/Spr_4p_414.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/3/39/Spr_4p_416.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/0/06/Spr_4p_469.png
Beyond that, I’m going to once again try to stick to Pokemon that were introduced in the region I’m playing. These Pokemon are Wormadam, Mothim, Vespiquen and Yanmega.

But here’s the problem we face: 3 of those 4 Pokemon are available only in honey trees, a mechanic exclusive to then gen 4 games, and I have to wait at the very least 6 hours between slathering honey and encountering the Pokemon. I can’t mess with my system clock to speed this process up, so it will be a slow one at first, given you only have access to two honey trees early on. Once I have access to more honey trees and fly, the process should speed up though.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/2/23/Spr_4p_412.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/c/cc/Spr_4p_415_f.png
I want to specifically talk about Burmy and Combee, however.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/d/d2/Spr_4p_413.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/e/e0/Spr_4p_413G.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/b/b4/Spr_4p_413S.png
For this playthrough, I ideally want 4 Burmy. Which will take a long time to obtain. I may come back and get them throughout the playthrough as I likely won’t even have enough money as soon as I have access to honey to do this, but the reason I want 4 is because I obviously need a male one to get Mothim, but I would like to try using the 3 different types of Wormadam. I have no idea how difficult obtaining all 3 will be, but I’d like to try using them as honestly, I don’t think I will get another opportunity to try all of Wormadams forms. They all have different stat distributions, different types and learn different moves through level up after evolution, so I’m treating them as if they are 3 different Pokemon.

I’d also like a Combee to evolve into Vespiquen, but it has to be female. This will take a lot of resetting and will be very time consuming. Luckily, gender isn’t locked upon honey encounter, only species, which makes resetting for a female Combee not as bad as it could potentially be.

Now you might be thinking, “hey, but Kricketune, Mothim, Vespiquen, Wormadam x3 and Yanmega makes 7 Pokemon. Aren’t you supposed to be running 6?” to which I say, yes, because I’m going to be dumping Kricketune as early as possible because it’s terrible in the long run. Mothim isn’t much better, with that said, and I may decide to run Kricketune over it in the end as at least Kricketune will have experience and some EVs by the time I get access to Mothim.

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/9/99/Spr_4p_123_m.pnghttps://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/6/6b/Spr_4p_214_m.png
If you notice, most of these Pokemon aren’t particularly good. If I do find myself genuinely struggling, I will switch to Scyther or Heracross, but I’d like to avoid this as I used them in HeartGold.


Platinum Bug Monotype – Part 1 – Badge 1/8

Spoiler:
I’m going to say this right now. I severely underestimated Kricketune’s potential.

I played the beginning of the game as normal, once again naming myself Beetlia and my rival Buggly. I however chose Piplup as I was expecting the rival to be really difficult if I was to choose Turtwig, given the only Pokemon I was to have access to for quite a while would be Kricketot. I actually intended to pick Chimchar to give him the neutral type against me, but I clicked the wrong starter and it wasn’t important enough for a reset in my opinion, as he will be picking up other Pokemon I’m weak against.

As soon as I had access to catching Pokemon, I caught a Bidoof, and of course, Kricketot, which with the help of a few Potions, I grinded to level 7 on wild Pokemon before I felt comfortable fighting the trainers. I temporarily boxed Bidoof, and permanently boxed Piplup (unless I decide to use it for Surf later, that is, but I'll likely catch Bibarel). Bide actually wasn’t as terrible as I was expecting it to be, and I genuinely didn’t have much trouble fighting all of the trainers accessible to me at that time. I made sure to be at least level 10 and evolved before fighting Buggly, however.

I actually ended up being level 12 for Buggly. I didn’t keep it as Kricketot for access to Bug Bite, as I felt the increase in power was more important than that move. If Kricketune wasn’t my only Pokemon, I’d have considered it, though. I dealt with his Starly using Bide, and his Turtwig using Fury Cutter. I fought all the trainers leading up to Roark, again, with surprisingly little issue, mostly using Fury Cutter, or Bide where I felt it was more applicable.

I’d picked up an X Attack somewhere (I don’t remember where, honestly) and decided to use that in my fight against Roark.

Roark, I expected to be an incredibly difficult fight and it was… really easy. Once I had used the X Attack and had Fury Cutter stacked from his first Geodude, his second Geodude and Cranidos went down in one hit, even with my minus Attack nature. I’m not going to lie, it absolutely blew my mind. It had been the easiest of the first gyms so far, by a total landslide, when I was expecting it to be one of the hardest. I’m never underestimating Kricketune again, I’ll say that much. I named him Territot, because I expected him to be terrible, but when I get the opportunity, I’ll be renaming him Amazitune. Or maybe Terrortot. He definitely deserves a better name, nonetheless.

TEAM SO FAR

Territot (Kricketune) ♂ Level 17
Nature: Careful
Ability: Swarm
Moves:
-Growl
-Bide
-Fury Cutter
-Leech Life


Aleimon Thimble February 27th, 2019 12:15 AM

Oh yeah, you wouldn't normally use Scyther here, of course. Only using Gen 4 Pokémon is tricky, but should still be a LOT easier than Emerald. Yanmega and Vespiquen are both pretty usable, although they do give you a ton of weaknesses, but Wormadam helps with that.

I knew that Kricketune is not that awful early game, but I didn't expect it to be that good either. By all means keep using it over Mothim ;)

adzpower February 27th, 2019 1:31 AM

Kricketune is pretty good actually, decent attack stat and it gets X-scissor and Night Slash by level up.


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