[Gen 2] The Solo Tier Project

Some people like to catch them all, others like to have one strong Pokémon and let it coast throughout the game. I find myself more on the latter camp, myself. Which eventually has led me to wonder, which Pokémon have the easiest time on soloing the game? Which Pokémon have the hardest?

This is an attempt to find it out!


Our goal here is to complete a total of 138 solo runs of Pokémon Crystal, give or take a few problem children. These 138 Pokémon are:

• The base form Pokémon (as considered in Generation II)
• The Pokémon who evolved from baby Pokémon (Pikachu, Clefairy, Jigglypuff, the Hitmons, Jynx, Magmar, Electabuzz and Togetic)

For now, I won't be doing the evolved forms since they'll dominate the tier list and with some notable exceptions, shouldn't be too different from their base forms. Maybe I'll do them when / if we get done with all of these base forms, I don't know.


There are the usual rules you'd expect

• Once the run starts, only one Pokémon may be used in battle.
• Pokémon may be hacked into the game, as long as their movepool and stats can be legally obtained by that species at that level.
• We may change the clock time anytime and however many times we want.
• The game ends after beating Champion Lance, and the 16 gym leaders

And also, as a guideline we'll try to avoid using healing items whenever possible and try to keep our levels at a reasonable place - that most likely means doing minimum amount of battles.


Although my subjective fuzzy feelings on the matter will have some weight, it's probably a good idea to try and put some hard data into the process. If anything, it'll make this feel a bit more scientific rather than haphazard spastic process this likely will be.

Some of the metrics I'll try to minimize during the run are:

• Pokémon Level
• Number of items used in-battle
• In-Game Time

In this order, that is, if using items or backtracking to get something will help keep the level down, I'll do it. That said, I'll, of course try my best to find a strategy without them.

I'll post updates of the run as we go along, and at the end of each run, I'll post a little analysis to link from the tier list below.


S Tier
Buttery smooth, can't get much better than this.

• None so far

A Tier
Had a few hiccups here and there but pretty nice overall.

• Delibird - [final stats and post-mortem]

B Tier
The problems were a bit noticeable but in the end it wasn't a complete slog.

• Geodude - [final stats and post-mortem]

C Tier
Well, at least it was possible without restarting forever / grinding to level 100 / using a small country's GDP worth of items.

• None so far

F Tier
Abandon all hope in those who end up here

• None so far

I'm not doing the runs in any particular order, so if you'd like to see a Pokémon that's not up there done, just drop a comment or message me and I can move it up the queue.

Janp: Thank you! I haven't played them yet but they can actually learn some pretty neat moves via TM. Which is more than I could say about certain nightmare inducing Pokémon coming up.


Geodude is actually pretty solid as far as the physical side of things goes. The real problem is when things get Special.

As it turns out, he has the special defense - and offense - of a wet tissue. Considering three of its six weaknesses are special, this might be a problem.

It can get some solid moves, but not much in terms of coverage, which makes things a bit ... tricky.

Fortunately, we only have to deal with teams full of its weaknesses after Morty, which means we have a lot more leeway to train and pick up different TMs.

Honestly, I think the biggest issues are going to be Lance, Blue, Bruno, Misty and Erika.


- I got Jawbreaker the male Geodude. I needed to reset a few times to get one with decent stats and a decent Hidden Power type / power (it will matter later), but after that we're doing business.

- The Rock type is great since it means we're pretty much immune to damage for this part of the game.

- I chose to give Silver a Totodile, since I believe having an advantage against you is part of the spirit of the game. Totodile will also be slightly trickier to handle than a Chikorita later on. It was very easy to deal right now, but things won't stay this way for ever.

- Just by beating the random wilds that came on our way and a few trainers, we get Rock Throw right before finding Falkner. This is good, as it makes the fight a lot easier - remember that this generation, his Pokémon use Mud-Slap which is super effective on us and lowers accuracy.

- We were stil outsped by Falkner, but managed to hit the Rock Throw before we got too haxxed. Pretty easy fight, all things considered.

- Bugsy was even easier, no accuracy hax meant that the battle went by pretty fast. But then we encounter the real gym leader of Azalea: the rival.

You see, I've been doing the least amount of battles as possible, so right now Geodude is at level 18.

While we can consistently beat Gastly with only 2 or less HP of damage, Croconaw outspeeds and will pretty much always go for Water Gun against Geodude, which OHKOs. Even if we somehow survived Water Gun, our strongest move - Magnitude 10 - could only OHKO Croconaw back if it critted.

X Special Defenses don't exist this generation and even if they did, we wouldn't be able to buy any. Which means, we grind.

While fortunately there are trainers we can battle, they only get us to level 22 when we need to get to around level 27 - so we grind on Slowpoke Well, the couple of Slowpokes will really help our special defense.

I should note that level 24 is enough to survive a Water Gun. Which means we could PP Stall Water Gun, and for that, we'd need to buy 24 Super Potions. But while I did say that I'd prioritize low level over items, PP Stalling is a bit of an exception. If we do allow that, then we can start doing it forever and ever, and that wouldn't be fun for anyone.

Back at level 27, we kill Croconaw, with only a little luck. The only thing to note in Zubat is that it likes using Supersonic, but give Geodude a Bitter Berry held and it shouldn't be an issue.

- After an uneventful stroll down Ilex Forest we reach Goldenrod and one of our best moves in the game: Rollout. While technically weaker than Rock Throw, it can scale, and, since we're doing a solo run it's not like the drawbacks are particularly bad for us. It's something that needs to be used with care, but might be very necessary later on.

- Being rock type means that the only way Whitney could possibly scare us was either rolling a special move via Metronome or getting a Rollout rampage going - which she didn't.

- At level 29 we're sufficiently far along the curve that we can start taking damage from stuff and counter killing them - that's the only way we managed to get going against the Vaporeon Kimono Girl. All the others were pretty easy to kill, though.

- The rival AI goofed and used Scratch instead of Water Gun on the Burnt Tower. This was the only reason I managed to get past Croconaw after being cursed. This is going to be very complicated to deal with the next time we meet.

- Morty was pretty easy to deal with, just spam Magnitude! His Gastly even helpfully got me paralyzed by Lick to make sure Gengar couldn't use sleep to screw me.

- Now we can go to Mahogany and face Pryce, go to Cianwood and face Chuck, or Olivine and face Jasmine. All three of those gym leaders are of types who are super effective against me. I'll need to figure out the proper routing but this seems like a natural break anyways.


Jawbreaker the Geodude
Level 33
- Tackle
- Defense Curl
- Rollout
- Magnitude

So far, he's actually been doing pretty well but the thing is, we're starting to get to the parts that are special heavy. I fear that we'll need to some grinding en masse pretty soon, but we'll get EQ pretty soon and there are some TMs within our grasp that could be enough. We'll have to see how it goes.

In Game Time: 6h 50 min
Items used in-battle: 0
Badges: 4/16

- So I decided to go to Mahogany and snatch ourselves a Hidden Power. Like I alluded to before, our Hidden Power is Flying which is physical this generation.

This should help us deal with Chuck, without many issues.

- Since I was here already, I did the Rocket Base subplot. Nothing of note happened there besides me getting Earthquake and having a small heart attack when I saw the rival show up when I hadn't saved in a while.

Thank God he doesn't battle us here.

- After that we make our trip to Olivine and drop by the tower. Nothing very interesting happens there, battle-wise. This is going to be a bit of a recurring theme with these runs - either a battle is almost impossible, or it's very easy.

- Getting to Chuck, we discover that EQ can one shot a lot of stuff, making the Hidden Power manipulation possibly unnecessary, which is actually great stuff. It means the solo is easier to repeat.

The real problem here is that Poliwrath can surf and OHKO us. Thankfully, we do have access to a solution right now! Or rather, in the time that takes us to get to Goldenrod and come back since we don't have Fly yet.

And in that round trip I managed to ping some five trainers I had avoided before. uggh.

Anyways, back to Chuck. We have two problems:
* Poliwrath outspeeds us
* Even if it didn't, we can't OHKO it.

The answer to that comes in two bottles. Use an X Speed and an X Attack in front of Primeape and this should be gone without a problem. We have a giant defense so we can tank even a crit Karate Chop from Primeape.

I tried to see if the Hidden Power would let us shave off that X Attack, but it won't.

Used items: 2

- Pryce let me get a Rollout streak going on. He really shouldn't have.

- The rival in Goldenrod is ... tough. Basically, I need to have a Bitter Berry as my held item or Golbat will likely confuse me and my plans will be all gummed up. Now, I'm a few attack points away from being strong enough to OHKO either Golbat or Feraligatr, and since I'm outsped, Feraligatr will 2HKO me before I kill it.

I tried using a few vitamins and the box trick, but that wasn't quite enough. So I was forced to use an X Speed and switch Tackle for Return. With this, I was able to OHKO Golbat, tank the Water Gun and then OHKO everything else.

I tested it multiple times and it seems to be a consistent victory, so I guess I'm happy enough with that. I really wish I could have done this without items but only one item is pretty good.

Used items: 3

- After that we have Clair ...

So, we're outsped by her Pokemon. Geodude can tank a Surf - if she doesn't roll high - but that's not enough. So, you might think "Hey, just use an X Speed" and that is enough to get rid of two of her Dragonairs - and presumably the third - but we can't OHKO Kingdra.

So, this battle is possible if we use an X Speed against Dragonair - and again, if it wasn't a high damage roll - and then kill it. Now we use 10 Hyper Potions to stall Ice Beam. Then, you use an X Attack, and kill both Dragonairs and Kingdra with Earthquake.

That would, however, increase our item usage by 12 and be PP stalling which is just ... uggh.

Thing is, we are at a very bad situation here. Right now, we're at level 50, which is actually kinda low for a solo run.

Ideally, we'd like to be able to tank the Surf - but a Geodude with perfect DVs and max stat exp can only tank a Surf at level 80. We have neither of those, so our projected level would be around the 90s.

But wait, if we're leveling up that much, then surely we'd outspeed the Kingdra - and given our massive attack, by that point we'd likely be able to just OHKO it, right? Well, we'd need to get to around level 70 (with about 12000 speed stat experience or 105 Sneasels) to be able to outspeed.

So, we might be able to stomach the extra X Speed, but is it possible to gain enough attack without using the X Attack? Since that X Attack is the only reason we need to PP Stall. As it turns out, the magic number here is 148, while we have 119. To get to that number with our DVs we'd need to max our attack stat exp. (about 34,554 points or 276 Heracrosses) and get to level 58.

So in the end, it seems that the PP Stalling strategy is the lesser evil here. But since we need to level up some to make the strategy a bit more consistent anyways, I decided to go from level 50 to level 55.

And then, it turns out that I am a dumb-dumb, because I forgot to consider that when I leveled up not only would I consistently tank the Surf, but the Ice Beam would also do less damage. At level 55, Ice Beam is a 3HKO which means we only need to heal once before using the X Attack. So in total we only use 3 items this battle.

Used items: 6

- We managed to get to level 60 by the last rival fight which was enough to OHKO Feraligatr, tank Surf and survive the chip damage dealt by his Pokémon.

- And now, the Elite Four:

vs. Will

We need to use an X Speed because when Jynx comes in, she will OHKO us with Ice Punch. Giving Geodude a Bitter Berry will shut down any Confuse Ray business the Xatu lead will do, but we can't OHKO Slowbrow or Exeggutor. While they're not exactly threats to us, it's important that we only take, at most, two Psychics between Xatu, Exeggutor and Slowbro.

It's technically a luck based strategy, but it's easy enough to try for that, and I'm okay with it.

Used items: 7

vs. Koga

A fairly straightforward battle as far as things goes. The only thing to pay attention to is that Crobat will spam Double Team, so, it might be annoying to KO it, but even with Toxic I managed to consistently do it.

vs. Bruno

This is a tough cookie and needed a bit of testing to finalize but as it turns out we can do it without an item in a consistent fashion: just use Defense Curl twice at the beginning of the battle.

As long as nobody crits, this should be enough. Since Machamp uses Cross Chop, this is still luck based to a certain extent but there's an 80% chance it will miss or not crit, and those are odds I can live with.

vs. Karen

She's a bit annoying since we're speed tying with the Umbreon, can't OHKO it, and sometimes it will use Sand Attack. But really, the only point of failure here is missing against Vileplume. Outside of that, as long as you don't have horrendous luck you should win.

If she really gives you grief, start with a Guard Spec, but personally I don't think it's necessary. Also, give Geodude a Bitter Berry to hold to get rid of Confuse Ray shenanigans.

vs. Champion Lance

Lance's impossible. Right now, at least. Lance leads with Gyarados, outspeeds, OHKOs us with Surf - and it will always go with Surf - and in this generation there's no Focus Sash or X Sp. Def. While we can prevent a 2HKO from becoming a defeat by PP stalling or counter-sweeping, we can't stop an OHKO.

We need to grind. After some calcing and testing, it turns out that we need to have at least 88 Sp Def to tank a Surf and at least 178 Attack to counter KO Gyarados with Return.

So we grind to level 71 - and gain one level battling our way to Lance. The elites were even easier than they were before.

As a sidenote, by the time we get to that level, we could have done Clair without any items. I'll still consider them, but if you do this solo, keep in mind that battling more trainers until that point and/or preparing your grinding might save you a few items.

I didn't even bother calcing the speed to outspeed Gyarados since I didn't think it was actually possible, but hey we're level 72 against a level 44 Pokémon. Which means, to my surprise, we outspeed Gyarados and OHKO. We don't OHKO the Dragonites though, and they're immune to our strongest move. But as long as the first Dragonite misses with Blizzard twice, which is frequent enough, we're practically home free.

Just spam Return, and heal if your health gets too low. I needed to use two Full Restores but that was it. We're officially the champions of Johto.

Used items: 9


Jawbreaker the Geodude
Level 73
- Return
- Defense Curl
- Rollout
- Earthquake

I'm actually pleasantly surprised - I don't think we'll have any more almost impossible battles in the future and considering the only reason we're even at our 60s right now is that Lance decided to lead with Gyarados is probably a good sign.

That said, we'd probably need to get to that level to deal with Misty and/or Erika anyways so it's not like it's a huge loss, I suppose.

In Game Time: 20h 46 min
Items used in-battle: 9
Badges: 8/16

- Surge, Sabrina, Janine, Brock and Blaine. The biggest issue here was that I'd forgotten to get the radio card back in Johto, so I needed to get the Magnet Train up and running again.

- For Erika, replace Return with Fire Punch. This should be enough to OHKO Tangela. It wasn't enough to deal with Jumpluff, but we could comfortably tank that Giga Drain, so we just 2HKOd it. After the battle feel free to swap Fire Punch back for Return.

- As for Misty, we need an X Speed to outspeed Starmie - who'll otherwise KO us. We can safely set-up in front of Golduck.

Used items: 10

- As predicted, Blue was complicated, but far less so than Lance or the rival: We needed an X Speed and an X Attack to deal with Gyarados.

Used items: 12


Jawbreaker the Geodude
Level 79
- Return
- Defense Curl
- Rollout
- Earthquake

In Game Time: 23h 39 min
Items used in-battle: 12
Badges: DONE


Geodude was probably a good example of how this will be for most Pokémon - a string of easy battles until there's one impossible battle or two. But I will mention that I was pleasantly surprised at how the game went - yes, we needed to grind but considering Geodude's terrible special bulk and quad weaknesses the fact we only needed to do it twice is actually pretty good.

Gyarados is Geodude's worst enemy, so instead of trying for Hidden Power Flying early on I really should have gone for Hidden Power Electric. Something to keep in mind for other Rock/Grounds at least, since we usually outspeed Gyarados a few levels before we can manage to OHKO it.

I tested later out of curiosity and it turns out that Lance can indeed be beaten without items - at like, level 95 - so, there's that if you're into no items, grindy, runs. I mean, Geodude can learn Protect, Swagger and Double Team so you could just hope for hax - enough to stall out the water move at least - but I really don't like those type of strategies.

I think Geodude is a solid B-tier, like it's surprisingly good at dealing with grass types since they're usually pretty slow and also Poison, but it really can't deal with things like Starmie or Gyarados without being very overleveled. Since Graveler and Golem don't have any big differences between movepools, I'm confident in saying that they'll play more or less the same - maybe Golem can take a hit better and could be moved up to A-tier but that's a big if.


As for the next run, Delibird ought to be interesting enough, as recommended by Janp.

While Delibird is a bit of a meme, I'm genuinely not that concerned here.

Delibird actually has a pretty OK - by Gen II standards at least - TM movepool, so we can keep Present shenanigans to a minimum.

While Delibird's stats aren't stellar, they also aren't the worst. I don't think we'll be OHKOing a lot of stuff this run but I also don't think we'll just keel over and die.

And, in this game at least, Rock is pretty much non-existent as an offensive entity, and the few rock types we do encounter are almost always part Ground so we can just Ice them to death.

The only battles I think are going to be ridiculously complicated is Whitney and Brock.


- I started the game with Santa, the male Delibird. I did some resetting to get decent stats across the boards - and considering we needed to get to level 80 last time, I'm considering that to be a bit of a necessity - but not like perfect DVs or anything.

I also aimed for Hidden Power Ground since it neatly deals with all of our weaknesses, but I'm not sure if it'll be necessary.

- I let the rival have Cyndaquil, but right now the only thing we could do is spam Present. Which thankfully killed him pretty quickly.

- Strictly speaking we only have to do 5 battles with Present (counting the rival) before facing Falkner, but as with every other luck based strategy, they're annoying.

Falkner itself will be hard too since his underleveled Pidgeotto hits quite hard with Gust.

So, if you want to grind at a safe-ish place, there's the Bellsprout Tower where you'll resist most attacks. I beat two trainers there to get Delibird to level 10 before coming back to face Falkner.

It took about 5 tries before I remembered that hey, I can give Delibird a berry to make it last longer. After that it took two or so tries before I managed to beat Falkner.

With that, we gain TM Mud-Slap, which is the first TM we can learn and an absolutely necessary TM to have.

- Theoretically, you don't have to beat any trainers from Violet to Azalea, but there's one Hiker in the cave that's ridiculously annoying to avoid.

Mud-Slap will make your life a lot easier with this guy.

Now, we also want Swift since bugs resist Mud-Slap, Scyther will be outright immune to it, and we want to avoid Present as much as possible. You can skip the PokéManiac but it can be kinda hard, since he's a spinner.

- After completing the Slowpoke Well, we'll need to battle at least two Gym Trainers before facing Bugsy, although we might end up battling a third since he's a spinner.

I kinda hate those.

- Bugsy itself is a bit of a challenge but not an impossible hurdle.

I ended up Mud-Slapping the coccoons to try and mitigate the damage they deal and lower the chance we get poisoned by a Poison Sting and then just spam Swift.

- The rival is another trainer that's a bit annoying to deal with. You need Mud-Slap to deal with Gastly, but fortunately it has terrible defenses so Mud-Slap is enough to 2HKO it.

The problem comes with Quilava - now, I just gave Delibird a berry to hold, and kept spamming Mud-Slap, but I can see why some people would find this strategy unsavory.

I personally have no sympathy for him since he uses Smokescreen a lot, but if that's the case for you, back-tracking and beating a couple of trainers should do the trick.

- And then, we have Whitney. Miltank's Rollout deals a lot of damage, like almost OHKOs us. And all of our attacks are physical so they deal next to nothing to it.

To make things worse, Clefairy's Metronome makes actually surviving that first Rollout a lot less consistent than it needs to be.

So, we'll need to get tricky. As it turns, if we get to level 25 we'll manage to outspeed Miltank and reliably live a Rollout.

Now, we could spam Mud-Slap and hope the accuracy hax is enough to stop the murdercow - but that's a very luck based strategy, which we don't really like.

So here's where things get a bit iffy depending on your point of view. As it turns out Blizzard - which we can get from the Game Corner - can 2HKO Miltank, the problem is that getting the 5500 coins will take a lot of time, right?

Well, nope. So, the second slot from the top in the second row from the left has ridiculously better odds. As in, make 50 coins become 5500 in 10 real life minutes (with turbo and autofire).

I literally left it rolling, went to get a snack and when I came back it was done.

It's hogged by a gambler that will only go away in the mornings though, so either change your clock or wait until you get that to time.

- Back to Whitney, or rather, Miltank. You could just Blizzard twice, but I prefer to use one or two Mud-Slaps before using the Blizzard. This gives me more leeway in case Blizzard misses.

- The kimono girls were fairly straightforward - Flareon and Jolteon were scary but we managed to beat them with the power of Mud-Slap.

- The rival was less so ... Haunter could be taken out with Mud-Slap and/or Blizzard and Magnemite almost dropped dead at the face of Mud-Slap but Quilava was annoying. At the end, I needed to wait for accuracy spam with Mud-Slap. Once again, turnabout is fair play. Besides, we'll get Hidden Power real quick and just get rid of the accuracy hax anyways. Better get our mileage on this baby while we still can.

- As for Morty, give Delibird a Mint Berry to shut down Hypnosis and then Blizzard the Gastly and the first Haunter to not give them the chance to set up a Curse. Gengar will survive the Blizzard but with the Mint Berry he's mostly harmless. The last Haunter is pretty straightforward to handle.


Santa the Delibird
Level 33
- Swift
- Mud-Slap
- Present
- Blizzard

Delibird is doing very well - we needed to level up a bit to deal with some trainers, but nothing that couldn't be done by just battling the trainers we were avoid. Next time we'll get rid of the accuracy hax, so that's great and knowing that the casino can be done in about what, 1h 30 min in-game time is pretty nice to know. I actually think we might be able to avoid any grinding sprees until Brock.

In Game Time: 5h 53 min
Items used in-battle: 0
Badges: 4/16

- We drop by Mahogany to get Hidden Power and since we're already there, we take care of the plot. We also switch Swift for Headbutt since Swift is starting to lag a little.

- Pryce was pretty easy to beat - just spam whatever attack seems appropriate.

- Chuck went down to a combination of Blizzards and Headbutts. And with that we get Fly, the only Flying move Delibird can learn (besides Hidden Power).

- The Magnemites went down to repeated Hidden Powers and Steelix went down to a single Blizzard - fortunately we can tank an Iron Tail from full health if we miss.

Out of morbid curiosity, I did the battle with Mud-Slap in another save. Since Magnemite are quad-weak to ground, Mud-Slap actually is a 2HKO. If we have Delibird have a PrzCureBerry, we should be able to consistently beat Jasmine.

I still strongly recommend getting Hidden Power Ground, but it might be feasible to do without it. Not to mention that with Mud-Slap there's a world of trolly strategies to use if you feel so inclined.

Also, Icy Wind is a 2HKO on Steelix, so it might be risky to slap it on Delibird, but possible if you really want the higher accuracy and PP. I haven't done it myself because while I can always get another Blizzard, I can't re-get Icy Wind and it's side-effect might come in handy later.

- The Rival went down quickly with HP Ground. God bless the Hidden Power.

- Clair's Dragonair will keep spamming Thunder Wave - maybe because of "good" AI, I don't know - which means a PrzCureBerry as a held is a good choice here.

They should be going down on two or so hits of Headbutt / Fly. The deal with Kingdra is hitting a Headbutt / Fly and then a Blizzard. The main trouble of the fight is whether you can pull that Blizzard off.

It might take you a few tries to get that Blizzard landing, but it should do the trick. If it's a bit too unaccurate, you might want to use an X Accuracy.

- Rival went down in Victory Road just as quickly as he did in Goldenrod.

- We drop by Goldenrod to get a couple of Returns - just in case we need to do some movepool rearraging during the Elite 4 - as well as a Soft Sand, since we hadn't grabbed one before. And as long as we're in Johto, we grab a few extra Rare Candies, Sharp Beak and PP Ups we hadn't grabbed before.

- Will was nothing special, the only adjustment needed was a Bitter Berry in case I missed a Blizzard against a Xatu.

- Koga on the other hand, was annoying. While Ariados died to a Fly, Forretress resisted pretty much everything I had, and it has the terrible habit of Exploding when the going gets tough.

Eventually, I learned that a Blizzard left it just in the right range, so I could just Fly the next turn and miss the Explosion coming.

Muk went down to Hidden Power and Crobat to Blizzard.

- Bruno is straightforward ... for the most part. Hitmontop can't be flied because it has protect, but Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee can.

Onix is a Blizzard away from dying, but Machamp can survive a Fly. Or a Blizzard. And it knows Rock Slide.

It takes two rare candies and a Sharp Beak to OHKO Machamp.

- Karen was a bit annoying but with a Soft Sand and a little bit of luck I managed to OHKO Houndoom, which means everything else was straightforward enough.

If Houndoom isn't an OHKO, you'll likely be left with only a small amount of health and be mopped up by her other Pokémon. You could use an item after dealing with Houndoom if you're sick of doing her again and again.

- For Lance, I switched Return for Icy Wind, since I didn't want to leave the game up to the chance I'd miss a Blizzard on the Dragonites.

As it turns out though, it should have been safe to switch Blizzard to Icy Wind, since as long as you face Charizard in the rain - i.e.: let Gyarados set the rain up for you - and you hold a Nevermelt Ice you can kill everyone of his Pokémon without Blizzard.

With that, we're officially the Johto champs.

- Surge, Sabrina, Erika, Misty and Janine were trivial. On the way to Pewter, do teach Delibird Thief so you can nab yourself a Leftovers from the Snorlax.

Blaine was also surprisingly trivial - Hidden Power is paying massive dividends still.

As it turns out, I massively overestimated Rock. While I was worried about Kabutops and Omastar who weren't weak to Ice and so might not die to a single Hidden Power (which is physical this generation) they don't have any rock moves. Oops. Oh well, better to have it be easy - and nice to know that when I do Articuno, Brock will be even less of an issue.

Blue is ... complicated. Or rather, Arcanine is. As it turns out we can't OHKO it with Hidden Power while his Flamethrower + Extremespeed certainly can kill us.

But wait! While Delibird can't make it hail, he can make it rain. And on rain, Arcanine deals a lot less damage to us. After a quick trip to Blackthorn to get rid of Fly and a trip to Celadon to get Rain Dance we face Blue again.

Still, beating Pidgeot on Icy Wind isn't happening quick enough which makes other Pokémon a bit troublesome. So we drop back to Goldenrod, get 4000 coins and Ice Beam (available after the Elite Four every Wednesday and Sunday). Also let's give Delibird our last Rare Candies for good measure.

After that, it was still a tense battle, but it was certainly possible. Just keep in mind that you really don't want to have Gyarados face you in the rain, stall that out if you need to.

And with that, we've beat Blue and beat the game.


Santa the Delibird @ Leftovers
Level 72
- Return
- Hidden Power Ground
- Ice Beam
- Rain Dance

In Game Time: 13h 37 min
Items used in-battle: 0
Badges: DONE


Delibird was actually a lot better than I thought it would. We were straddling the level curve for the most part, we didn't need to use any items which was a bit of surprise and there was a need for actual strategy this time around. No joke, this was the first time I've ever used weather moves in a main campaign.

Hidden Power manipulation was necessary for things to go this smoothly, which would be annoying in a cartridge and so would the need for gambling but in a turbo environment, that's just a very small price for the run's quality. The run was a bit luck based in the beginning, but that's the nature of things when you're forced to use moves like Mud-Slap and Present.

Surprising as it might be, Delibird managed to scrape by the A tier in my opinion. Grinding time was minimized, the run was strategical and fun in a lot of parts, I felt compelled to look for held items and never needed to use healing or X items. That's the peak Pokémon experience, in my opinion.


Since Delibird was actually a solid bro - I think I can spare the energy for Sunkern next. I know it can be done - I've seen it done - I just don't think it will be anywhere as smooth.

Sunkern is the worst Pokémon in the game by BST. Now, he's not the actual worst Pokémon in the game by usage - of the top of my head I can think of 6 worse candidates for that - but he's not exactly high up the list.

The main problem is that it has a very shallow movepool, its weaknesses are exceedingly common, so are its STAB resistances and the first two gym leaders will wall it pretty hard.

I genuinely don't think Blue will be able to be done itemless, maybe not Blaine either. Like, I'd like to proved wrong, but I have a feeling Sunkern will be delegated to either F tier or low C tier.


- Started the game with Sunkern. This time, I actively grinded since our only attacking move was resisted by Falkner. We got there at level 12 and still wasn't enough to get past the first Bird Trainer.

After doing the Bellsprout Tower we got to level 15, still not enough. So, we went to the Ruin of Alphs - no pesky flying types to make things annoying there.

It was at Level 21 that we managed to beat Falkner. Since there's Scyther (quad resist to grass) and Quilava coming up, and we're having trouble beating Level 8 Zubats, there's still more grinding to be done.

- I tried to just brute force past Scyther with SpA+6 but it still wasn't enough lol. It was enough to deal with the Rival though - Zubat's lower level and Quilava's single resist were manageable.

After getting to level 27 and a lucky crit we managed to take out Bugsy.

- Since Whitney didn't actually resist grass, she was easy enough to beat after a few Growths. We also picked up a Return, which will be important for dealing with things that resist Grass.

Unfortunately, it isn't the Panacea we want given we now have to deal with at least two Cursing Ghosts, kinda shutting down or attempts at setting up. Which means more grinding, lovely.


Sprout the Sunkern
Level 33
- Return
- Growth
- Mega Drain
- Synthesis

We're overleveled and finally got our first non-grass move but there's still Morty and the rival as barriers before we can get Sludge Bomb and Hidden Power. Although to be honest, I'm not completely sure what to get rid of to make room for both either way so, I can sleep on it a bit.

Still, between Jasmine and Pryce - and to a certain extent, Clair - it's not like we'll be out of the woods after we're done with Ecruteak.

In Game Time: 14h 41 min
Items used in-battle: 0
Badges: 3/16

(Also, I got access to my gaming PC so, the turbo is extra fast and the in game time is not perfectly comparable, but it definitely felt like 15 hours, so you know, the spirit of the thing isn't that wrong.)

@Figure: It's Crystal and a lot less than 24 h actually since turbo did some heavy lifting, but it's not really that impressive. The first generation games can be done pretty quickly and the usual timesink is grinding which is usually not really necessary if you're doing a solo run (with the few exceptions we've been dealing here, of course).


So, first of all, I didn't forget about this. So, I had a computer issue that made me lose my save file and I'll admit that the grinding sessions were putting me off of the game for a while, so I did some other things and put this on the backburner.

Yesterday I replayed up to where I was, did the Rocket stuff in Mahogany, beat Pryce and called it quits for that session. I was going to do Chuck and Jasmine today and write up an update but as it turns out I lost my file again - I think this time the issue was the VBA version I was using, I'm not sure.

And this is pretty disheartening. I'll try to figure out this stuff, start getting backups before the important battles (which is a good idea in general since this is good for scouting) and so on but yeah, finishing Sunkern will probably take a while longer.

And I am most certainly doing something OP and quick after this, because I don't think my frail heart can handle early game grinding again.


And as long as we're here, I may as well clear out some things I've alluded before or just had in mind but never put down to paper.

For the Pokémon which are technically evolved (their base form is a baby), we'll be running with them from Level 5, so for example, instead of starting with Pichu and evolving naturally to Pikachu, we'll just start with a Level 5 Pikachu.

This is because we want the runs to be different from each other - and having to do like the first four badges as a baby won't make for a fun run to read about or play -, half of them can be legally obtained at Level 5 anyways, and the other half can be legally obtained under leveled in the games anyways so it's not like it's a great loss and that's how the main inspiration for this - Jrose11's RBY solo runs, available on YouTube - is being done.

If I do end up doing these runs for other evolved Pokémon I will do this scheme for them too, although I don't think I will.

I mentioned before I likely wouldn't some problem children, they are Caterpie, Weedle, Magikarp and Wobbuffet.

The first two can't learn any TMs, MTs, BMs or even Event Moves, there are Pokémon that are immune to their only attacking moves, and even at Level 100 Att +6 they can't OHKO things like Brock's rock types or Blue's Pidgeot / Arcanine (iirc, could have calced wrong or misremembered), making this just a boring grindfest with just using X-Attacks and healing items until we can power through the later enemies.

Wobbuffet is just luck based for the most part, except it can't even hurt Ghost or Dark types using STAB moves so that's bad. There might be some AI cheesing to exploit here, but it also seems like just restart until you get lucky. Maybe I'll do it, since it has some kernel of potential, but I don't know.

Magikarp has more or less that same issues as Caterpie and Weedle, although it starts without an attacking move, and relies on Flail for heavy hitting, which isn't great. In theory we could get the Bubble Event Move Magikarp, which might make it more feasible, but it'll also mostly just end up doing the same set up and heal strategy for most of the later enemies.

I can't really see any of these four Pokémon ending up outside of the F tier - truthfully, I don't see Sunkern really getting out of that either, but there's still hope for that, in theory - and playing them would just be time wasting that isn't even fun.