3rd Gen Pickup

[vaporeon7]

The ability Pickup was introduced in generation III. It gave the Pokémon with it a 10% chance of picking up an item after battle. Items ranged from Super Potions to Rare Candies. A couple of Pokémon that could have this ability included Linoone, Phanpy and Meowth. In Emerald, it changed so that the items you could get was determined by the Pokémon's level. So did you ever use the ability Pickup to get new items? If so, which Pokémon did you use? Which games had the better available items? What other items should you have been able to pickup?

Discuss

So frosty~

 

[Sydian]

In RS, I always have an army of Zigzagoon to pile up on Rare Candy and I use them as last minute level ups before the E4. n____n IT'S FUN OKAY. I don't do it in Emerald or FRLG though.

 

[vaporeon7]

I always had my army of Zigzagoon and go Rare Candy farming. I also used it to get HP UPs and Nuggets to sell early so I could buy coins to get TM13, TM24 and TM35 from the Game Corner.

 

[Brendino]

I know in FireRed at least, I had a Meowth in my party for the longest time, specifically because of Pickup. I'd always forget to take the items off of it though, and most of the time it would only be some sort of berry, so I wasn't too excited about it. Playing Emerald with a Linoone in my party was a different story, though. Even by the time it was around level 50, I'd find a Rare Candy, HP Up or a Revive every 10 minutes or so.

 

[Kikaito plush]

I had a Moewth just to get more Rare candies in FR playthrough, most of the time it was a potion or a berry but as soon as it hit lv.100 the rare candies came rolling in. I have never tried it in emerald though because I had over powered my party by gym no.4.

 

[Golden Warrior]

Pickup never gave much to me. Minus the nice revive ever so often. I did go with a party of six one time and that actually ended quite well as far as I remember. I like the ability, but I never really use it. Ah, well.

 

[Aquacorde]

My brother use the army of Linoone for... idk what he wanted actually but he got it I suppose haha. I usually end up with one Linoone in my party because a) I liked them b) they were pretty good and c) pickup was actually kind of awesome. Free stuff yo.

 

[Hikamaru]

I loved how useful this ability was for getting yourself some free items, like Revives and Rare Candies. It did net slightly better items in R/S/E than FR/LG though, but since I only played the former I got to make use of this ability well. In fact one of my initial Ruby team members was a Linoone. She netted me some pretty good items and was a handy member of my team.

Ruby & Sapphire was still kinda boss with Pickup given it could give you Rare Candies early on, before the level curve introduced in Emerald.

 

[Elaitenstile]

Pickup was one of my (many) special memoirs while playing Ruby and Sapphire, so that's why I simply couldn't play a game without adding in Linoone for my team members, and that's how I and Linoone grew so close.

I thought that Pickup was extremely cool, and I never abandoned it in the hope that Linoone/Zigzagoon might pick up a Master Ball. It really gave me lots of cool things (3x Ultra Balls before first gym, for instance) and I had a lot of fun.

I also had a theory that Zigzagoon, once evolved, reduces the chance of picking up an item, since for some reason Zigzagoon always picked more than Linoone.