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- Seen Jun 28, 2020
Hello everyone,
since I have recently rediscovered the joys of playing Pokemon I decided to take on a challenge I have started already, quite a while back but then lost track off. The mono-type challenge. For this I do not want to simply play a single mono-type for a specific game, but do them all. Which means 18 types in 8 different regions, 144 playthroughs in total before this challenge is finished. Since I thought it might be nice to share my progress with other interested Pokemon enthusiasts I decided to log everything in this forum. I have also signed up for the mono-type challenge thread that I found here, so you might find small updates on there as well. On here I will try to give updates in more detail when possible.
As I am working full-time these updates might sometimes take up until the weekend and they might not contain much progress sometimes. I hope that at least someone will be interested in my progress and since I am horrible with nicknames, maybe some of you will have ideas for my team choice. I also want to give my MVP Pokemon to someone who is interested. Please note that this are not specially trained as I only played through the main story lines with them. Without further hesitation, here is a small summary of my first adventure in Sinnoh, going for a mono-Poison run.
Starting my adventure in Platinum I chose Piplup as my starter for the first interactions of the game, as I knew he was going to be a great HM slave. After reaching Jubilife City and having access to Route 204 and the Ravaged Path I was quickly able to add the first two Poison Pokemon to my team: Budew and Zubat. After grinding for quite a while I was confident in their strengths to move on to face the first gym leader. As you could have guessed Budew was able to easily finish his Rock Pokemon off.
Moving towards the second badge I was faced with my first real challenge, Mars and her Purugly. Neither Budew nor Zubat were even close to evolving so it took me some grinding to get to the right level and some luck using Supersonic to finally beat her. Whilst traveling through Eterna Forest I was able to find the third addition to my team, a Gastly.
The second badge was quite easy to obtain, especially since Zubat evolved into Golbat and had access to super effective STAB Wing Attack.
The third badge was as easy, since Gastly evolved into Haunter and after a quick trade into his final form Gengar. After leaving for Veilstone City and meeting up with Barry, god I hate Barry. And beating him into the ground, Budew evolved into Roselia and Golbat evolved into Crobat. Shout out to Cheryl for giving me the Soothe Bell to make this a lot quicker.
Deciding on not facing off against the 4th gym leader but grabbing team addition no. 4 and 5 I went for the Great Marsh in Pastoria City. This saw me add Skorupi and Croagunk to the team. After having caught them, after quite a while of searching through the Marsh, I returned to finally grab my 4th badge. Crobat easily obliterated Maylene's Fighting type Pokemon.
Back to Pastoria City to face off against the Water typ Gym was as easy as Roselia had the type-advantage for this one. Shortly after meeting up with Cynthia for the first time both Croagunk and Skorupi evolved into Toxicroak and Drapion. Drapion will turn out to be one of the MVPs in this team, but more on this matter later.
Finally being able to grab HM Surf in Celestic Town means I was able to add the last member to my team, Tentacruel. I was able to easily find one, already evolved, on my way to face off against Byron. This time it was Tentacruel and Roserade, which evovled after finding a Shiny Stone on Iron Island.
Finishing the story line around the lakes had me move towards Snowpoint City to get my 7th badge as well. This was the first time Toxicroak was of some importance in my team. After grabbing the 7th badge it was time to finish the main story line before going to mess up Volkner's team. After making my way up Mt. Coronet, Barry helped me beat up the commanders before going into the Distortion World. I have to admit that Cyrus took me quite a few tries. Saving in front of him meant I didn't have to walk all the way up to him again. After some strategising I was finally able to beat him though. This was the second time, after arguably having two not to great Pokemon to face off against Mars, that the game really challenged me. And I have not experienced this in quite some time when playing a Pokemon game.
Finally after having caught Giratina I was able to claim my last badge. This was the last time Toxicroak was key to a Gym battle, as teaching it Earthquake really made a difference.
Now I could try to finish off this challenge by beating the Elite Four. Moving through Victory Road was fairly simple and it gave my Pokemon some well needed extra experience.
I knew facing off against the Elite Four was not going to be easy. Especially knowing about the fairly bad move pool I had with my Pokemon. So after purchasing some potions and revives I was ready to take on the challenge. Aaron was actually fairly easy to beat, especially since I taught my Drapion how to use Rock Slide. Being quad effective against most of his Pokemon and with the help of Crobat and Toxicroak I was able to move past him and on to Bertha.
Bertha's Ground type Pokemon were sure to prove a challenge for my team. Thankfully I had two super effective Pokemon myself in Roserade and Tentacruel. Thanks to quad effective Grass and Water Type moves and a quad effective Ice Beam for Gliscor I was also able to beat her on my first try.
Now it was time to face off against Flint. Again, this seemed to be a favourable match-up for Tentacruel so he was the one to lead the charge. This battle actually took me a few more challenges as his Houndoom more than once started the fight with Sunny Day weakening my Tentacruels Water-type moves. Unfortunately Houndoom wasn't the biggest challenge. There was still his Infernape. Gladly I had Crobat. And Crobat knew Confuse Ray and Poison Fang as well as Fly. The obvious best strategy here was to hope for some luck. Using Confuse Ray and poisoning Infernape turned out to be a great plan. Seeing as Infernape knows how to use Earthquake this was the biggest hurdle and the rest of his team was quite easily beaten by Tentacruel.
Up next was the Elite four member I feared most, Lucian. This was all due to his Psychic-Type Pokemon being faster and super effective against all of my Pokemon except for one. Drapion. Drapion was not only faster than his Alakazam, but also bulky enough to eat most of the specially effective moves of most of his Pokemon. The only thing that proved to be difficult was his Mr. Mime setting up Reflect on it. I had an answer for this though. Gengar knew how to use Dark Pulse and it was able to cause flinching. This meant I was able to cause Mr. Mime to flinch first and then finish it off using STAB super effective Shadow Ball. Drapion's only other real issue was Bronzong. There was not a single Pokemon on my team, that was able to easily beat this Pokemon, so I went for the cheapest thing I could think of. Gengar was able to use Destiny Bond on it, thanks to being way faster and removed it from the battle. Drapion then took care of the rest of Lucian's team, for me to finally be able to move on to Cynthia.
Oh Cynthia. How overpowered you are in these games. I tried everything to beat her by usual means, but there was just no chance, with my Pokemon at the levels they were. At this point they were all at Lvl. 49 at best and didn't stand a chance. Especially not against her massively overpowered Garchomp. There was only way to beat her. And that was to level up my Pokemon. So after grinding some trainers with the Vs. Seeker I challenged the Elite Four again. The first four members sure were easier this time around. But then there was her again. My first attempt consisted of Drapion leading the charge against her Spiritomb as it knew Psychic and setting up on it, using some X-Attacks and X-Speed. But even with 6! X-Attacks it was not able to finish off Garchomp with a single hit. Something else had to be done. And then I noticed that Gengar was faster than all of her Pokemon. So I took the cheapest attempt ever to finally finish this challenge and just Destiny Bonded her whole team...
I know a very anti-climatic finish in the end. But I was able to do it and enter the Hall of Fame.
My team in the end looked like this:
Drapion: Lvl. 54
Toxicroak: Lvl. 50
Roserade: Lvl. 51
Gengar: Lvl. 53
Crobat: Lvl. 54
Tentacruel: Lvl. 53
You can tell by the level differences that when going for the grinding I ignored Toxicroak and Roserade as I noticed that they don't play a big role in beating the Elite Four at all. Especially Toxicroak was absolutely useless against the Elite Four. Looking at this challenge I would probably opt for Skuntank instead of it, if I were to do this again. His Dark typing gives you an alternative to Drapion should it faint and it also has access to Flamethrower which helps with Pokemon like Scizor as well as Bronzong.
Since I was not happy with the way I beat the Elite Four, even though I did manage to do it, I decided to go for the optional challenge end as well. Moving towards Stark Mountain I knew there was only three Pokemon that did great against the Elite Four so I focused on leveling them up. This meant Drapion, Tentacruel and Gengar were the ones that needed all the experience. Finishing the Stark Mountain storyline was actually not too hard. Thankyfully I was only missing the Lake trio, Manaphy and a Tentacool from my Pokedex before being able to face this challenge. I decided that this time, before facing the Elite Four I was going to teach my Pokemon the best moves for the types of Pokemon I was facing.
Again most of the heavy lifting was done by Drapion as well as Tentacruel. Gengar was able to help out here and there.
For Aaron, Drapion was now able to use Fire Fang. Being almost Lvl. 70 when starting off it was fairly easy to beat him.
Bertha, she was not able to withstand Gengar's quad effective Energy Balls and when he ultimately fainted Tentacruel took care of the rest of her Pokemon.
Flint, his Houndoom just was not strong enough to finish off Tentacruel fast enough so after using two X-Special Attack and an X-Speed Tentacruel swept his whole team.
Lucian, Drapion was able to easily set up on his Mr. Mime. Again going for an X-Speed and some X-Attack he swept his whole team. Bronzong was not a challenge for him this time, since I taught it Firefang.
Cynthia, Finally, the rematch against Cynthia. The first time around this was giving me a real challenge. This time though, my Drapion had reached Lvl. 70 and had an amazing moveset for her team. I went for the save setup against her Spiritomb and used an X-Speed as well as 6 X-Attack. Drapion was also equipped with a Life-Orb, just to be sure.
With this his Crunch decimated her Spiritomb, Ice Fang finished off Garchomp, Crunch finished off Milotic, Ice Fang was great against Togekiss, Fire Fang worked wonders against Lucario and in the end it was only Roserade which fell to another Fire Fang. This time on my first try I steamrolled Cynthia and finished the challenge for good.
The team that beat her in the end was:
Drapion Lvl 70 - Ice Fang / Fire Fang / Crunch / Cross Poison
Tentacruel Lvl 65 - Hydro Pump / Surf / Waterfall / Ice Beam
Toxicroak - Who cares, he was useless for this part of the game
Roserade - Same as Toxicroak
Gengar - Lvl 58 - Thunderbolt / Energyball / Shadow Ball / Dark Pulse
Crobat - Lvl 54 - Fly / Bite / Poison Fang / Confuse Ray
I apologise for the pictures being in German, unfortunately you cannot choose the language in this generation.
This was a lot more than I wanted to write but I quite enjoyed it and I think I might open a thread for my journeys through these challenges to go into more detail.
So finally, Pokemon Platinum and therefore the Sinnoh region can be crossed off the list. Next up is the Poison mono run in the Galar region.
since I have recently rediscovered the joys of playing Pokemon I decided to take on a challenge I have started already, quite a while back but then lost track off. The mono-type challenge. For this I do not want to simply play a single mono-type for a specific game, but do them all. Which means 18 types in 8 different regions, 144 playthroughs in total before this challenge is finished. Since I thought it might be nice to share my progress with other interested Pokemon enthusiasts I decided to log everything in this forum. I have also signed up for the mono-type challenge thread that I found here, so you might find small updates on there as well. On here I will try to give updates in more detail when possible.
As I am working full-time these updates might sometimes take up until the weekend and they might not contain much progress sometimes. I hope that at least someone will be interested in my progress and since I am horrible with nicknames, maybe some of you will have ideas for my team choice. I also want to give my MVP Pokemon to someone who is interested. Please note that this are not specially trained as I only played through the main story lines with them. Without further hesitation, here is a small summary of my first adventure in Sinnoh, going for a mono-Poison run.
Starting my adventure in Platinum I chose Piplup as my starter for the first interactions of the game, as I knew he was going to be a great HM slave. After reaching Jubilife City and having access to Route 204 and the Ravaged Path I was quickly able to add the first two Poison Pokemon to my team: Budew and Zubat. After grinding for quite a while I was confident in their strengths to move on to face the first gym leader. As you could have guessed Budew was able to easily finish his Rock Pokemon off.
Moving towards the second badge I was faced with my first real challenge, Mars and her Purugly. Neither Budew nor Zubat were even close to evolving so it took me some grinding to get to the right level and some luck using Supersonic to finally beat her. Whilst traveling through Eterna Forest I was able to find the third addition to my team, a Gastly.
The second badge was quite easy to obtain, especially since Zubat evolved into Golbat and had access to super effective STAB Wing Attack.
The third badge was as easy, since Gastly evolved into Haunter and after a quick trade into his final form Gengar. After leaving for Veilstone City and meeting up with Barry, god I hate Barry. And beating him into the ground, Budew evolved into Roselia and Golbat evolved into Crobat. Shout out to Cheryl for giving me the Soothe Bell to make this a lot quicker.
Deciding on not facing off against the 4th gym leader but grabbing team addition no. 4 and 5 I went for the Great Marsh in Pastoria City. This saw me add Skorupi and Croagunk to the team. After having caught them, after quite a while of searching through the Marsh, I returned to finally grab my 4th badge. Crobat easily obliterated Maylene's Fighting type Pokemon.
Back to Pastoria City to face off against the Water typ Gym was as easy as Roselia had the type-advantage for this one. Shortly after meeting up with Cynthia for the first time both Croagunk and Skorupi evolved into Toxicroak and Drapion. Drapion will turn out to be one of the MVPs in this team, but more on this matter later.
Finally being able to grab HM Surf in Celestic Town means I was able to add the last member to my team, Tentacruel. I was able to easily find one, already evolved, on my way to face off against Byron. This time it was Tentacruel and Roserade, which evovled after finding a Shiny Stone on Iron Island.
Finishing the story line around the lakes had me move towards Snowpoint City to get my 7th badge as well. This was the first time Toxicroak was of some importance in my team. After grabbing the 7th badge it was time to finish the main story line before going to mess up Volkner's team. After making my way up Mt. Coronet, Barry helped me beat up the commanders before going into the Distortion World. I have to admit that Cyrus took me quite a few tries. Saving in front of him meant I didn't have to walk all the way up to him again. After some strategising I was finally able to beat him though. This was the second time, after arguably having two not to great Pokemon to face off against Mars, that the game really challenged me. And I have not experienced this in quite some time when playing a Pokemon game.
Finally after having caught Giratina I was able to claim my last badge. This was the last time Toxicroak was key to a Gym battle, as teaching it Earthquake really made a difference.
Now I could try to finish off this challenge by beating the Elite Four. Moving through Victory Road was fairly simple and it gave my Pokemon some well needed extra experience.
I knew facing off against the Elite Four was not going to be easy. Especially knowing about the fairly bad move pool I had with my Pokemon. So after purchasing some potions and revives I was ready to take on the challenge. Aaron was actually fairly easy to beat, especially since I taught my Drapion how to use Rock Slide. Being quad effective against most of his Pokemon and with the help of Crobat and Toxicroak I was able to move past him and on to Bertha.
Bertha's Ground type Pokemon were sure to prove a challenge for my team. Thankfully I had two super effective Pokemon myself in Roserade and Tentacruel. Thanks to quad effective Grass and Water Type moves and a quad effective Ice Beam for Gliscor I was also able to beat her on my first try.
Now it was time to face off against Flint. Again, this seemed to be a favourable match-up for Tentacruel so he was the one to lead the charge. This battle actually took me a few more challenges as his Houndoom more than once started the fight with Sunny Day weakening my Tentacruels Water-type moves. Unfortunately Houndoom wasn't the biggest challenge. There was still his Infernape. Gladly I had Crobat. And Crobat knew Confuse Ray and Poison Fang as well as Fly. The obvious best strategy here was to hope for some luck. Using Confuse Ray and poisoning Infernape turned out to be a great plan. Seeing as Infernape knows how to use Earthquake this was the biggest hurdle and the rest of his team was quite easily beaten by Tentacruel.
Up next was the Elite four member I feared most, Lucian. This was all due to his Psychic-Type Pokemon being faster and super effective against all of my Pokemon except for one. Drapion. Drapion was not only faster than his Alakazam, but also bulky enough to eat most of the specially effective moves of most of his Pokemon. The only thing that proved to be difficult was his Mr. Mime setting up Reflect on it. I had an answer for this though. Gengar knew how to use Dark Pulse and it was able to cause flinching. This meant I was able to cause Mr. Mime to flinch first and then finish it off using STAB super effective Shadow Ball. Drapion's only other real issue was Bronzong. There was not a single Pokemon on my team, that was able to easily beat this Pokemon, so I went for the cheapest thing I could think of. Gengar was able to use Destiny Bond on it, thanks to being way faster and removed it from the battle. Drapion then took care of the rest of Lucian's team, for me to finally be able to move on to Cynthia.
Oh Cynthia. How overpowered you are in these games. I tried everything to beat her by usual means, but there was just no chance, with my Pokemon at the levels they were. At this point they were all at Lvl. 49 at best and didn't stand a chance. Especially not against her massively overpowered Garchomp. There was only way to beat her. And that was to level up my Pokemon. So after grinding some trainers with the Vs. Seeker I challenged the Elite Four again. The first four members sure were easier this time around. But then there was her again. My first attempt consisted of Drapion leading the charge against her Spiritomb as it knew Psychic and setting up on it, using some X-Attacks and X-Speed. But even with 6! X-Attacks it was not able to finish off Garchomp with a single hit. Something else had to be done. And then I noticed that Gengar was faster than all of her Pokemon. So I took the cheapest attempt ever to finally finish this challenge and just Destiny Bonded her whole team...
I know a very anti-climatic finish in the end. But I was able to do it and enter the Hall of Fame.
My team in the end looked like this:
Drapion: Lvl. 54
Toxicroak: Lvl. 50
Roserade: Lvl. 51
Gengar: Lvl. 53
Crobat: Lvl. 54
Tentacruel: Lvl. 53
You can tell by the level differences that when going for the grinding I ignored Toxicroak and Roserade as I noticed that they don't play a big role in beating the Elite Four at all. Especially Toxicroak was absolutely useless against the Elite Four. Looking at this challenge I would probably opt for Skuntank instead of it, if I were to do this again. His Dark typing gives you an alternative to Drapion should it faint and it also has access to Flamethrower which helps with Pokemon like Scizor as well as Bronzong.
Since I was not happy with the way I beat the Elite Four, even though I did manage to do it, I decided to go for the optional challenge end as well. Moving towards Stark Mountain I knew there was only three Pokemon that did great against the Elite Four so I focused on leveling them up. This meant Drapion, Tentacruel and Gengar were the ones that needed all the experience. Finishing the Stark Mountain storyline was actually not too hard. Thankyfully I was only missing the Lake trio, Manaphy and a Tentacool from my Pokedex before being able to face this challenge. I decided that this time, before facing the Elite Four I was going to teach my Pokemon the best moves for the types of Pokemon I was facing.
Again most of the heavy lifting was done by Drapion as well as Tentacruel. Gengar was able to help out here and there.
For Aaron, Drapion was now able to use Fire Fang. Being almost Lvl. 70 when starting off it was fairly easy to beat him.
Bertha, she was not able to withstand Gengar's quad effective Energy Balls and when he ultimately fainted Tentacruel took care of the rest of her Pokemon.
Flint, his Houndoom just was not strong enough to finish off Tentacruel fast enough so after using two X-Special Attack and an X-Speed Tentacruel swept his whole team.
Lucian, Drapion was able to easily set up on his Mr. Mime. Again going for an X-Speed and some X-Attack he swept his whole team. Bronzong was not a challenge for him this time, since I taught it Firefang.
Cynthia, Finally, the rematch against Cynthia. The first time around this was giving me a real challenge. This time though, my Drapion had reached Lvl. 70 and had an amazing moveset for her team. I went for the save setup against her Spiritomb and used an X-Speed as well as 6 X-Attack. Drapion was also equipped with a Life-Orb, just to be sure.
With this his Crunch decimated her Spiritomb, Ice Fang finished off Garchomp, Crunch finished off Milotic, Ice Fang was great against Togekiss, Fire Fang worked wonders against Lucario and in the end it was only Roserade which fell to another Fire Fang. This time on my first try I steamrolled Cynthia and finished the challenge for good.
The team that beat her in the end was:
Drapion Lvl 70 - Ice Fang / Fire Fang / Crunch / Cross Poison
Tentacruel Lvl 65 - Hydro Pump / Surf / Waterfall / Ice Beam
Toxicroak - Who cares, he was useless for this part of the game
Roserade - Same as Toxicroak
Gengar - Lvl 58 - Thunderbolt / Energyball / Shadow Ball / Dark Pulse
Crobat - Lvl 54 - Fly / Bite / Poison Fang / Confuse Ray
I apologise for the pictures being in German, unfortunately you cannot choose the language in this generation.
This was a lot more than I wanted to write but I quite enjoyed it and I think I might open a thread for my journeys through these challenges to go into more detail.
So finally, Pokemon Platinum and therefore the Sinnoh region can be crossed off the list. Next up is the Poison mono run in the Galar region.