[Challenge] The Solo Challenge

Dragonair Lv.53
164 HP / 129 Attack / 105 Defense / 111 Speed / 114 Special
- Body Slam
- BubbleBeam
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam

- Started the game with Virus the Porygon.

- Beating Brock was a bit annoying since I only have normal moves, but Conversion made Porygon become Rock type so it couldn't really do a lot back either. After a long war of attrition, I won.
Badges: 1/8

- At level 23 - just as soon as we reach Cerulean - we get our first special move, Psybeam. It's far from ideal but it means we can start using our humoungus Special stat. Misty's Starmie was tricky but nothing Virus couldn't handle.
Badges: 2/8

- Blue on the other hand, was trivial. Both times. So was Lt. Surge. And to make things even better, Surge gives us Thunderbolt, which will be very useful.
Badges: 3/8

- Gen I's policy of making almost every grass type Grass / Poison made Erika fall down rather easily. And with Celadon we basically won the game since we get Psychic and Ice Beam. We've also reached our low 40s so we learned Tri-Attack which finalizes our moveset.
Badges: 4/8

- Both Giovanni and Lavender Tower Rival were pretty easy to deal with.

- Koga's trainers were harder to deal with than Koga itself - they had Psychic Pokémon with high special.
Badges: 5/8

- Sabrina went down to a string of tri-attacks, although Alakazam does outspeed which might be problematic for the E4 later on.
Badges: 6/8

- Blaine and Giovanni were very easy. I didn't even heal or use a potion between them.
Badges: 8/8

- Lorelei and Bruno were trivial, but Agatha was troublesome since Gengar outsped and did some damage. Almost killed me. Lance was pretty easy.

As for Champion Blue, it was a bit more complicated than I expected - Alakazam and Arcanine outsped me and Venusaur could tank an Ice Beam. I managed to kill everybody without using an item but it could have gone south if the AI was a bit better.



And this shows the power of turbo, about 2 real-life hours became 13 in-game hours.
Either way, this was peak Porygon - offense and defense were the same thing, the TMs were very easy to get, and so on. Let's see how things go in the next generations.

- Started the game with Malware the Porygon.

- Silver was pretty easy.

- Since we get Psybeam a lot earlier this time around, Falkner, Bugsy, Whitney and Morty went down pretty quick.
Badges: 4/16

- The only reason Chuck wasn't a breeze was because of Hypnosis and Conhax :c
Badges: 5/16

- Instead of going straight to Jasmine, we go to Pryce because in this gen Steel resists Psychic moves. After the whole Rocket base thingy, Pryce died relatively quickly. Piloswine survived but a lucky Tri-Attack burn handled that.
Badges: 6/16

- I only won Jasmine because Iron Tail missed a lot, lol. In hindsight, I should have given Porygon a paralyze cure Berry - or just caved in and healed the paralysis - but it all worked out in the end. Thank Pryce for his TM.
Badges: 7/16

- Funnily enough, two five years old in the Dragon Den were more annoying to deal with than Claire - they managed to freeze me and almost killed me.
Badges: 8/16

- Rival the last but was pretty easy but like always, Magnetons give me problems.

- For the first time in quite a while the Elite Four actually was difficult.

Will was pretty easy, but Koga could sometimes poison and just stall until I died. If Bruno survived a Psybeam, he'd just destroy me and Karen did cheap tricks like Sand Attack and Curse. Still, losing again and again got me enough levels to push through.

Lance was as easy as always though. Icy Wind (with NeverMeltIce) was enough to kill 2/3 of his team and Tri Attack killed the other 1/3

- A small sidequest later, I get to Vermillion and just Psybeam Surge to death.
Badges: 9/16

- After that we hop over to Saffron, get Psychic and beat Sabrina.
Badges: 10/16

- And to wrap up this session, we just Icy Wind Erika to death.
Badges: 11/16

- One jaunt down the Rock Tunnel later, we get to Cerulean and Misty is relatively easy.
Badges: 12/16

- While Koga was a bit troublesome, Janine went down easy. A lot of levels and Psychic made sure of that.
Badges: 13/16

- Brock went down to an Icy Wind barrage.
Badges: 14/16

- Some lesser souls might have qualms about beating a homeless' old man last Pokémon. Not I. Blaine was destroyed.
Badges: 15/16


- And it was on the last battle of the run that my lack of Thunderbolt actually bit me in the ass. Without Thunderbolt, Gyarados survives and Pidgeot is a range. And since a lot of Blue's Pokémon actually can outspeed me, things can get complicated.
Luckily the AI goofed on my second attempt and I won.
Badges: 16/16 - Game end.



I thought the lack of the BoltBeam core was going to hurt but it was actually pretty OK? Apparently the 35 extra BP on Ice Beam were just overkill. To be fair, if I ever got truly desperate I could get Thunder pretty easily, if slowly. It just felt like such a waste of time.

So here we go, onwards to Hoenn.

- Started the game with Trojan, the Porygon.

- Like always, Psybeam came in clutch for Gyms 1 and 2.
Badges: 2/8

- I was a bit worried about May, since I gave her Torchic. But it turns out I just speed and OHKO Combusken, so there's that. Let's see if this will happen again with Blaziken.

- When we reach Mauville, we could just say gg. If I'm willing to spend a lot of time playing the roulette, which has almost guaranteed payout in the long run, I could get Thunderbolt, Psychic and Ice Beam. But given Malware's performance back in Johto and the fact we can get pretty much all of these TMs later on, let's see how things go.

- Wattson's Magnemite and Magneton actually needed a little bit of strategy! Having Trojan hold a Cherri berry we can get rid of the first Thunder Wave, and after that we need to use Recover to last in battle.

It still wasn't working - I was resetting so I didn't just keep getting free experience. In the end, it was for naught, I needed to leave and battle the trainers in the cicling road before coming back and having a chance.

It's still not enough. Which means we have to grind it out, and cave in and use items.
This will be the hardest gym in the game, possibly the hardest trainer. While Steel types are a pain, Magnemite and Magneton in particular are even more so and Steven doesn't use them.

Badges: 3/8

- Flannery took two tries but wasn't anything particularly special.
Badges: 4/8

- Remember when I said Wattson was going to be the hardest enemy? I was wrong. You see, the only ability Porygon has in Gen III is Trace. Norman leads with Slaking.

But wait, it gets worse. After Porygon kills the first Slaking, Norman sends the second. Thing is, Porygon is loafing around that turn since it just attacked. His Slaking, is not.

Which means Porygon needs to take an uncontested Focus Punch to the face.

After some calcing it turns out I need to use Sharpen to get Porygon to Att+6, while wearing the Silk Scarf to both survive a Focus Punch from full and be able to OHKO Slaking, since we can't PP Stall for 20 turns. All of that using items.

And as it turns out, Vigoroth was speed tied to my Porygon so an extra item was needed.

Conclusion: Slaking without Truant is already bad, Slaking with Truant on your Truant turn is even worse.

I sincerely doubt Steven will be worse than this. On the good side, we get Surf, which means Ice Beam!
Badges: 5/8

Trojan the naive Porygon, Lvl. 46
- Tri-Attack
- Sharpen
- Recover
- Psybeam

- After collecting Ice Beam and Thunderbolt things proceed at a very fast pace. I did forget Psybeam so I was slightly afraid of May but it turns out Ice Beam could OHKO Combusken so, welp. Winona was destroyed.
Badges: 6/8

- I used a Magikarp to battle Tate and Liza, it was pretty easy. The Pokemon were 2HKO each.
Badges: 7/8

- Kyogre was a 2HKO, lol. Wasted his one turn using Calm Mind.

- Wallace wasn't very problematic given Thunderbolt. Now to the Victory Road and getting our hands on Psychic.
Badges: 8/8

- Victory Road was only notable in that I ran out of PP, and needed to use an Elixer :c

- Sidney was pretty easy to get past. Phoebe was a bit annoying because of Pressure, but thankfully I had a handful of Leppa berries. Glacia's only issue was that I needed to stall things so she didn't send Walrein when Hail was out. Drake was pretty straightforward, lots of Ice quadweaknesses there.

- Steven was complicated. I was forced to use items, I also made a couple of misplays but in the end, I had a bit of luck by my side and managed to win by the skin of my teeth.

Trojan the naive Porygon, Lvl. 66
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Recover