Pokemon Sun: Mono Dragon Challenge
Overview
You know the drill. Only Dragon-type Pokemon. I chose Gen 7 for this challenge because you can actually get a full team of 6 different fully evolved Pokemon here. In fact, there are eight options on Pokemon Sun (Drampa is Moon exclusive): Salamence, Goodra, Turtonator, Flygon, Garchomp, Alolan Exeggutor, Kommo-o, and Dragonite. The first Pokemon I can obtain is Bagon on Route 3, which is after the first Trial but before the first Grand Trial – so speaking in normal Pokemon game terms, just after the first badge. Until then, I am allowed to use my starter. I chose Litten because it's a Fire type and it's slightly more Dragon-ish than Rowlet or Popplio.
Anyway, this challenge was a LOT harder than I anticipated. Well, the first half of the game anyway. There was a single Pokemon that cut the game in half, challenge-wise. But I'm not going to spoil anything yet.
I had underestimated how hard everything hits from the get-go in Gen 7, being used to a bunch of Tackles and Scratches in Gen 3 and 4, and to a lesser extent Gen 5, the games I usually run. I also had in mind that Gen 7 was super easy, which it really isn't – only Gen 6 is so obscenely easy, they did a lot to balance things out in Gen 7, even with the Exp Share. I guess I hadn't remembered that – this is only my second playthrough of the game ever.
Of course, Gen 7 does have other problems. I've seen the phrase 'hand-holding' on this forum at least a dozen times, but I wouldn't even classify the ridiculousness in this game as 'hand-holding', it's more like handcuffing. You can't EVER explore the game on your own, and it's infuriating to play a game that just feels like one big tutorial at times. Interestingly, this actually makes Monotype challenges harder. Normally, you would go out of your way to obtain the Pokemon you need as early as possible. In Alola, that's impossible, because the game forces you to beat trial after trial before you can even explore the entire island, or catch Pokemon in certain areas.
Despite this one huge flaw in these games, I still had a ton of fun in this playthrough, both with the very tough early game and the pretty easy end game where I had an awesome team to work with.
Gameplay
After choosing Litten, I went through the early game tutorial battles. I soon learned that Sun and Moon really punish you for having only one Pokemon in your team, especially if you play with Exp Share on. Your opponents get pretty strong quickly, and I started losing battles as early as the Trainer School, before I even started the real challenge. The Smeargle guy also took me a couple of tries. The first Trial, however, went in my favor quickly as Litten had just evolved and learned Fire Fang, which made a lot of difference.
I progressed through Route 2 and moved on to Route 3, avoiding as many trainers as possible since I had to box Litten soon. Then the first big grind of the game started as I looked for Bagon. 1% encounter rate, that's 100 encounters on average – but if you're unlucky, it can take several hundreds. Thankfully, I found one after 106 encounters, which still took forever but is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
What is pretty bad is how weak Bagon is. It has a solid level-up movepool, but its stats are mediocre at best, and it doesn't evolve until level 30. That means I had to clear the Water, Fire and Grass trials all with a single underevolved Pokemon. Or at least I thought that would be the case. One thing that really helped me is the fact that I somehow managed to find a second Bagon when I wasn't even looking for one. Apparently, it can also be found near the waterside on the first island. I didn't check if it's also a 1% encounter rate there, but I'd think that it is, in which case I got pretty lucky. Since I had already discovered that this game is no joke challenge-wise, I decided to leave the Exp Share turned on, which helped the weaker of the two Bagon to keep up.
With my team of two Bagon, I still got destroyed whenever I tried a Trial without a ton of Potions and X items. In fact, I didn't beat even one Trial first try on the second island. I can't remember blacking out this often in a Pokemon game, like, ever. The hardest part wasn't any Trial, though – it came right after finally beating Totem Lurantis.
I was stoked to finally add something to my team that wasn't Bagon, since I knew Goomy could be found in Lush Jungle. It could only be found when called in a SOS battle, with a 10% spawn chance, but only if it's raining. I figured that would still be better than a flat 1% rate, but I was mistaken. The first thing I had to do was sell a lot of good items so I could buy a TM for Rain Dance, which (thank God) Bagon can learn. Then I had to enter a battle in Lush Jungle, use Rain Dance, wait for the wild Pokemon (anything works) to call a Goomy, and capture it. Easy enough in theory, pretty terrible in practice. Most Pokemon refuse to call for any help, and if they do, half of the time nothing even appears. What's worse, most Pokemon have the infuriating tendency to call for help right after the Rain stops falling. I found that Metapod (10% encounter rate) is the best Pokemon to try this against, since it can't kill Bagon at least. However, I witnessed not one, not two, but three Metapod Struggle themselves to death before I ever managed to capture a Goomy.
It took me at least four hours to obtain a Goomy. Then I found out the next problem – Goomy has worse stats AND a worse movepool than Bagon, AND it doesn't evolve for the first time until level 40. Yeah, I spent four hours hunting for a Pokemon that's almost dead weight for about two-thirds of the game. I have never been this happy with the new Exp Share.
When I reached the third island, my stronger Bagon had evolved into Shelgon, which made things slightly better but still pretty difficult. I went to the observatory, actually beat the Steelium Z guy first try somehow, but then sadly got destroyed again versus Totem Vikavolt. After some more careful X Item calibration, I managed to beat it. Something similar happened with Guzma. After beating him, I finally gained access to Blush Mountain.
That's where the game changed radically. Blush Mountain has Turtonator. I cannot stress how ridiculously awesome Turtonator is. It provided me with a solid, fully evolved Pokemon at a time where I was struggling in every battle with my underevolved stuff. Furthermore, it even helped me as the middle game slowly turned into the end game, as it learns the amazing Shell Smash at level 37. Shell Smash swept so many opponents that are difficult on paper that it's almost not funny anymore. After losing about 20 battles until I found Turtonator, I did not lose even a single battle afterwards.
Pretty soon after finding Turtonator, I also had access to the desert, where I could find both Gabite and Trapinch. Gabite, however, had the same method of encountering as Goomy. The only difference is that I didn't need to set Sandstorm manually, since it's always sandy at night in the desert. All in all, though, it only took me about 20 minutes to… get sufficiently pissed off to settle for Trapinch (10% in the dark sand). Yeah, Goomy gave me nightmares.
Trapinch evolved quickly enough, before I even reached Po Town. I got Goomy to evolve into Sliggoo just after the battles in Po Town, which was right in time for the Aether Foundation (Eviolite helped it survive some attacks here and there). Whenever battles got too rough, I could always count on my MVP, sweet sweet Turtonator. Man that thing is a beast.
After clearing the Aether Foundation, which was pretty doable with my half-decent squad of Shelgon (x2), Sliggoo, Vibrava and Turtonator, I could finally go to Poni Island to complete my team. I captured the level 40 Exeggutor that harasses Lillie, but I found a level 43 Exeggcute soon after, so I replaced it and evolved it with a Leaf Stone. Exeggutor was sadly rather underwhelming – it's defenses weren't that great and its Speed was pretty terrible. The final team member would be Jangmo-o. I found one at level 44 pretty soon, which was rather lucky – its 5% encounter rate was better than Bagon, but worse than Turtonator. It put in some work even while underevolved, so much so that I decided to postpone evolution to milk the boosted Experience for a bit longer. I evolved it into Kommo-o just before the final Trial – Kommo-o versus Kommo-o!
It was on Poni Island that my team quickly transformed from pretty decent into absolutely bonkers. In a timeframe of less than two hours, Vibrava, Jangmo-o and finally Shelgon evolved into their final forms, and I was suddenly the captain of an amazing squad of blood-thirsty Dragons. Only Sliggoo didn't evolve – apparently, Rain Dance doesn't work if you want to evolve it, it needs actual natural Rain to evolve. Yeah, the bastard really made this run so much harder at every turn.
After DESTROYING Lusamine with my Dragons (man that felt so good) and capturing Solgaleo (I felt bad sending it to the Box after Lillie's speech, but rules are rules), I made a quick detour to the rainy Exeggutor Island. In the pouring rain, Sliggoo finally decided it was time to stop bugging me and evolved into Goodra.
I didn't even bother looking up where to find Dratini. My team was awesome and finally complete. Nobody could stop me.
The League was pretty anticlimactic. My team was strong enough that I won every battle without even needing to heal during battles. The only Pokemon I struggled with were Kukui's Primarina and, weirdly, the Fighting guy's Primeape, who was surprisingly quick and killed half of my team with Outrage. Otherwise it was smooth sailing. Normally I would have found an easy end game boring, but there was something deeply satisfying about it this time around. I struggled with the early game so much, with the weak Bagon and Goomy, and now they were part of this amazing unstoppable Dragon squad. I'm Draco, and I'm the Champion of Alola!
Final team
Turtonator lv 57 (Shell Smash, Flamethrower, Dragon Pulse, Flash Cannon)
Flygon lv 56 (Earthquake, Stone Edge, Dragon Claw, Feint)
Goodra lv 55 (Rain Dance, Aqua Tail, Ice Beam, Sludge Bomb)
Salamence lv 55 (Fly, Dragon Claw, Flamethrower, Crunch)
Kommo-o lv 54 (Poison Jab, Sky Uppercut, Clanging Scales, X-Scissor)
(Alolan) Exeggutor lv 54 (Grass Knot, Dragon Hammer, Psychic, Leaf Storm)
Order of usefulness:
1. Turtonator. By a landslide. It's the earliest fully evolved Pokemon you can get, it provides amazing coverage on the defensive side, it has good Defense, and it learns Shell Smash. Very impressive.
2. Salamence. Yeah, despite the awful early game. Bagon was there from the start, and once it evolved into Shelgon it was a decent Pokemon to fall back on. It took a while to fully evolve, but once it did, it had the highest Attack stat in my team, which is pretty awesome.
3. Kommo-o. It was surprisingly decent from the get-go, and its only real downside is how late in the game you can get it.
4. Flygon. Its main selling point is Earthquake, but Vibrava really is a lot weaker than Hakamo-o and Shelgon, so it needs to be fully evolved in order to fully function.
5. Goodra. It was a nightmare to catch and a pain in the butt to evolve, but it has amazing stats, especially Special Defense. In the League it was a pretty awesome tank, somewhat redeeming its awful middle game.
6. Exeggutor. It was always mediocre. Its comes late enough that its Defenses don't cut it, and its Speed is abysmal. It provides some useful type coverage in theory, but more often than not it doesn't get to actually use its moves.
