3rd Gen The Feebas Factor

The last one has disappeared into the archives already, so let's start yet another Feebas thread.

So this little fishie is called Feebas, and is probably one of the rarest Pokemon back when RSE was still new. Locating only in 6 unique tiles across the whole Route 119, which changes along with Dewford Town's trendy phrase, many gamers rage to find this one Pokemon. Hours were spent on finding this Pokemon, and we're not done yet 'cause there is still one more thing to do: evolve it.

Milotic was an even harder Pokemon to get, as you'll need a Feebas that loves Dry Pokeblocks. Of course, if you remember the location of your Feebas tile, then it won't be as hard to find them again. Still, evolving it requires a lot of patience to make Pokeblocks good enough for your Feebas to eat, before you could evolve it.

ORAS has made Feebas much easier to acquire, but many won't forget the challenge to find one in the originals.

So, what do you think about the mechanic, whether it's the method to find Feebas or how to evolve it? Did it throw you off when you first learnt about it? Have you managed to catch one of these for yourself at RSE? Discuss!

Ugh... even after Ruby & Sapphire, I can't believe that they kept up the same darn tradition on trying to even find a Feebas for eight years, ugh. I didn't even find one myself when I was trying to find one in the games, but I was lucky enough that my friend managed to capture one and trade one to me!

Even trying to evolve it was a pain since I've had little berries and it took so much berries for it to maximize it's beauty. Which is a real bummer too because Milotic is of course my favourite pokemon of all time, ugh. Still though, I give them props for making up such a complex way to even find one and a weirder way to evolve one... I guess it sorta fit a niche!

I caught so many of these things in Sapphire like you have no idea. Fished up around three boxes and ended up giving some to a friend.. but evolving it was very difficult for me. :< I couldn't do it no matter how hard I tried while that same friend I gave a few Feebas to could evolve them with such ease, lol. Remember being a little envious of that.

Since it was so difficult for me to evolve Feebas Milotic ended up being a very elusive Pokemon to me. But that difficulty really does pay off when you're finally able to nab that darn thing!

I remember when I first found out in my (terribly beat up) RS Prima guide that Feebas was the hardest Pokémon to catch. And I did catch it in I think Ruby, it wasn't a task that came to me right away. And in Emerald, I caught it in 2009, on one of the tiles lower from the entrance to that long rapids area.

But as for evolving Feebas I think that mechanic is kinda cool, trying to "de-ugly" a Pokémon to make it more gorgeous and evolve it. Some people weren't fond of it, and although it wasn't conventional it does make you use the Pokéblock mechanic. I remember Wallace's in Emerald being brutal to take... And Cynthia's in Platinum for that matter.

As for me... Can I be one those that got lucky enough to find one without a guide? I was kinda late to the Pokemon games (only playing RSE when DP was just out), and I've only learned about the Feebas mechanic back at 2007, roughly 1 year after I started playing.

However, I encountered a fisherman with a Feebas, and because of that I knew it was at Route 119. Miraculously, I managed to find a Feebas tile just by randomly fishing, and proceed to try and evolve it. Unfortunately, as I don't have a guide with me, I had no idea on how to evolve it, and thought it evolves through the conventional way of leveling up. The poor Feebas reached Lv 100 without evolving and it... makes me laugh thinking about it lol.

I've just learnt on how to evolve it at 2007, but it was kinda too late as I've already gotten a DSL and DP along with it. But because of that silly Lv 100 incident, Feebas now holds a special place in my heart.

Is it weird if I think Feebas is cute?

Well, I had started Pokemon around the same time as Illusione-Tempus, with a Sapphire version, so I hadn't known even what a Feebas was until about maybe half a year later? Then I decided to try to fill the Dex up, but the walkthrough about Feebas confused me so I thought 'Hey, I'll just come back later'.
A few years ago for some reason I suddenly started searching for how to get a Milotic in Sapphire, and finally understood what they said about Feebas' tiles. Of course it didn't occur to me that even after I caught 2 Feebas(my sister has one now) I wouldn't have enough berries to make Pokeblocks to evolve the poor thing.
I only heard sometime last year about Feebas needing to like Dry Pokeblocks to evolve, though.


"STOP THAT YOU SILLY FISH"

Feebas and Milotic are great Pokémon designwise. I really like how an ugly fish evolves into the gorgeous Milotic. Milotic is an awesome Pokémon, but sadly I've never owned one, not even a Feebas. When I'm on that route, I often fish on a few tiles, just to see if I'm extremely lucky.
I think it isn't that bad to have an ultra rare Pokémon implemented in a game. There is nothing wrong with a weird evolution method as Feebas's either. But to put those two things on the same Pokémon... They could have better spread them over two different evolutionary families in my opinion.

In my first play-through of Emerald, unfortunately, I never was able to encounter Feebas. In one of my runs, my goal was to complete my regional PokéDex, and after putting some decent amount of time and effort, I was rather close to finishing. Sadly, however, due to not capturing Feebas (my friend had a couple, but couldn't give any to me as neither of us had any link cable back then), I didn't have much chance of successfully getting around to it.

I've always really liked the idea of Feebas and Milotic, and found the concept pretty creative. It gave the contest stats some use outside of contests, even if it was only beauty that saw some love there, and I'm not certain if any of the others have been used for anything in future generations. But still, I found it to be a really neat concept. At first I felt like it was just a Magikarp copy, of a weak fish Pokemon turning into a much stronger one, but once I learned the entire mechanic behind it, I liked it a bit better. When it comes to the designs, I feel like they did a really good job contrasting between the ugliness of Feebas, and the beauty of Milotic, since I feel like they both sit pretty close to first place of their category in that respect. I can name a few Pokemon I think are uglier than Feebas though, but that isn't really the point. In general I just really like the concept, and wish they'd do more of that, rather than all the gimmick Pokemon we see so often.

As for the mechanic behind catching Feebas and evolving it, I'm kinda split. On one point, I think it's a really interesting way of doing it, and does a good job of making Milotic hard to acquire, but on the other hand, going through the area for hours on end trying to find Feebas could certainly get really tedious. So it's a good thing they make the tiles randomized from game to game, rather than anytime you go to the area. I feel like the evolution method is fair though, since we've seen similar things when it comes to evolution. I definitely like it way more than evolution by trading, but I think that's more in the spirit of the Pokemon games, so that's just a personal preference haha. Personally, I never did take the time to catch a Feebas and evolve it, so I've never had a Milotic myself. I've just never had the patience for it, and given up rather quickly after no results, so yeah :D

I always liked the design of Feebas and Milotic! It's like an ugly fish who's despised by everyone eventually grows into a beautiful fish who everyone wants. It's also got the most original way of evolving; using PokéBlocks! I've never really been bothered to use one in my playthroughs, though. It's just really hard to go and catch one in the first place, then make Beauty PokéBlocks until you max it up on Beauty then level it up. Cool idea but to be real it's a hard job.

I didn't even catch one originally. I only found out that it existed when there was one slot missing before Milotic. I had no idea what it was, so I searched online and found Feebas. After some more searching, I found out how tedious it was to capture but I set on the quest! And I actually did eventually find it but the save file got reset. I don't want to go through the pain of finding Feebas again ;-;

I kinda do like Milotic's majestic looks but the main issue I usually faced was always struggling to even end up being able to use one and that's because I could never even get a Feebas in the first place, especially after hearing that tricky process where they are found in specific tiles of water that require lots of trial-and-error to be able to find it. Also, you need really good dry Pokeblocks to have even been able to get the required beauty levels for Milotic.

OR/AS may have simplified the process, such as being found on any water tile and able to be fished by any of the rods, it does have a lower encounter rate than it did in the original games. I was pretty much someone who gave up on looking for a Feebas when 3rd Gen ended because the method was so weird and rage-inducing.

As much as Milotic is a great Pokemon, the way you have to catch Feebas is major turn off for me. I've tried plenty of times and I've only successfully gotten it 2-3 times. I just have the worst of luck in catching it. But ahh, those times that I did successfully capture it was worth it because Milotic is great.

In my recent Emerald playthroughs, I haven't bothered with Feebas at all. Often I'd already have a decent water-type, such as Ludicolo or Azumarill, anyway.

Way back in RSE, I didn't know that Feebas evolves into Milotic...I was searching for a Carvanha and mysteriously nothing hooked my rod and after 5'th try a Feebas got hooked I was too determined to capture a Carvanha and defeated it with my Tropius and Soon I caught a Carvanha...After some time I came to know about Feebas factor and Milotic....And then I Spent Hours and Hours to find one but no feebas..,It was quite disappointing...:(

I liked it. It was different. Although, I was lucky with it so that why I like it probably lol. I once finally found one. I caught that one. Then I caught a full box of Feebas lol!
I never evolved one though if I recall correctly.

Feebas was a pain to hunt. But an old friend has the right phrase for catching Feebas, after mixing records with him and capturing, I have a Feebas in my Pokémon Box

Honestly, I never understood the whole "trendy phrase" thing, the first (and only) time I succeeded in finding a Feebas was because I'd fished every tile until I got lucky which ended up NOT taking very long. My best friend didn't understand the method either and we were filling our pokedexs so I'd offered to catch her one as well since I knew that once I found the tile the Feebas would be unlimited.

It took me a second one which I bred using a magikarp to successfully evolve it. The first one something along the lines of reached its pokeblock limit without having maximized in beauty. After all that I'd felt pretty let down when my best friend pointed out to me that it was exclusively water after I'd assumed it part dragon.
When I said this was the ONLY time I'd succeeded in catching a Feebas, I was referring to the fact that I've never tried it again and finding out Milotic was exclusively water is one reason why, you can get a good water type without all that fuss.

You do have to admit that when I first heard of the method to obtain Feebas I had literally no idea that Dewford's Trendy Phase affected where it could be encountered. Another huge gripe is that Dewford is so far away from where you can even catch Feebas, making it a tedious journey.

Despite the fact that the challenge of even finding a Feebas, let alone evolving it in the original RSE games made people want to throw their GBAs against the wall, I honestly think that it made for a more rewarding feel when you finally manage to catch the little fish, get the right nature for dry Pokeblocks and obtain your Milotic.

When I changed the trendy phrase in Dewford, I was lucky enough with the mechanics to have one of the tiles end up being above the waterfall, making it much easier to remember. Evolving it wasn't too difficult, as you just had to get the right nature to get the optimal boost to the Beauty stat (having Feebas hold a Blue Scarf helped as well). I used to play on a bootleg cartridge that had a broken clock function, so I was stuck making Pokeblocks from Kelpsy berries instead of the top-notch Pamtre. It took an average of about an hour and a half per playthrough to find a tile.