[Discussion] The Monotype Discussion Thread

[Explorer of Time]

As requested, if you want a place to discuss and chat about your monotype challenges without cluttering up the thread, this is the place to do so.

Please keep rule questions, challenge applications, hall of fame posts, and full updates on your runs to the main challenge thread, so that I can see them more easily.

There are no types of posts restricted only to this thread, however. If you'd rather post everything in the main challenge thread itself, feel free to do so, just so long as you don't spam it with tons of posts at a time.

Resources:

Unapologetic Nerd Monotype Articles: This is a great resource to quickly check available Pokemon for every type in mainline games. However, it does assume that Legendaries are available, which they usually aren't in my rules, doesn't list trade evolutions, and doesn't include postgame-only Pokemon like in Gen 2/4 Kanto. If you have access to trade evos, you should also check the trade evos of your type to make sure you don't forget them, either.

Bulbapedia: The main wiki for the Pokemon franchise, with lots of details about movesets, locations, and basically everything you need about in-game information.

Serebii.net: Like Bulbapedia, this site has lots of information about official Pokemon games that's useful for planning monotype runs, including movesets for non-boss trainers that aren't found on Bulbapedia.

Pokemon Database: Basically an online Pokedex with all the information on Pokemon stats and moves and stuff you could want, but not much information about other stuff like trainer movesets and where to find items.

Cave of Dragonflies Catch Rate Calculators: Having trouble catching a Pokemon for your team? This site has calculators to break down your catch rate probabilities for every generation's catching mechanics.

Marriland's Pokémon Team Builder: This calculator gives an easy way to visualize all your team's type resistances and weaknesses. Since this is a monotype challenge, there are always going to be types that none of your Pokemon can resist without abilities, but you can use dual types in most games to avoid your whole team being weak to certain types.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

The internet has a calculator for catch rate in Pokémon? [/Dumbfounded] [/Exaggerated for Comedy] That would be really helpful in the future.

Random side note for this thread: Even though catching ineligible Pokemon is allowed for the PokeDex fodder (eg, the HM for Flash in Gen 1 and Gen 3 Kanto), field moves, etc., I always feel kind of conflicted about the box legendary Pokemon in Ruby/Sapphire because they're a pain to catch, and I can't use them. It was also very frustrating (and hilarious in hindsight) that Kyogre used struggle and knocked itself out while I was chucking Ultra Balls at it. It's even funnier given the laws of probability that "Yes, you can get really lucky and catch it in only a few Ultra Balls, or even the first Ultra Ball, or (if you're really lucky) while the wild Pokemon has full health"

Random side note: I've been trying to do away with the roman numerals in references to generations (Gen 3 instead of Gen III) because we're getting close to Gen 10 now, and I think Gen X looks ridiculous (given generational politics of "Gen X vs Millennials," etc.) Plus, a friend of mine who plays Pokemon has dyslexia and complained to me like "Why are you using Roman numerals for that?" and I felt bad for him.

 

[StenirRPG]

I think last run in Sapphire I just knocked out the box legendary. As for games, I do refer to them via Roman numerals when I reference Gen number, but a lot of times I use that simple to make things easier to find. I'd much rather call it "Gen 01" so it sorts nicely (once we get Gen 10, many things will sort 1, 10, 2, 3 etc. if not carefully watched).

One of the reasons I was looking for something like this thread was to discuss times I feel like I'm backed into a corner (or to try and help those that might be if I can). Usually, this is either near the beginning when you have a small team and it's very unlikely you have many TMs available, but it could also be near end game when you have such and such a team and there's a number of TMs/HMs/TRs you might have available but aren't certain what to do about X trainer.

Heck, right now I'm stuck debating on whether, with four grass types currently at my disposal, to try to tackle Brawly or just move on and come back later. All of them are currently level 18 (Oddish, Grovyle, Lombre, and Shroomish). I always feel that I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something or if it's just gonna be a "grind until you can".

 

[Explorer of Time]

Heck, right now I'm stuck debating on whether, with four grass types currently at my disposal, to try to tackle Brawly or just move on and come back later. All of them are currently level 18 (Oddish, Grovyle, Lombre, and Shroomish). I always feel that I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing something or if it's just gonna be a "grind until you can".

Honestly, if you've already gotten through Granite Cave to catch Oddish, you don't really need to fight Brawly at all until later. His fight is certainly doable at your level, and I've beaten his stronger Emerald team with weaker Pokemon, but he's still very RNG dependent because both his Pokemon know Bulk Up and it's unlikely that you have good special moves yet. You may lose a few times if the RNG doesn't turn out in your favor.

On the other hand, you can go quite a while without fighting him if you've already gone through Granite Cave, and the only other caves that Flash is useful for are after the Mossdeep Gym. Brawly's TM is also Bulk Up, which is useless to you until you have a Breloom. I'd wait a few levels and spend time exploring the routes around Slateport and Mauville, then go back and fight once you evolve your Shroomish (and Oddish) since they're only a few levels off from evolving anyway.

 

[StenirRPG]

That was going to be my backup plan after giving myself a "three attempt" rule after I went and caught Oddish. Either I win in three attempts or I try something different.

I got Oddish up to level 18 to match the others, and tried again. This time, I used Oddish for Poison Powder and Shroomish for Leech Seed. I'd have to look more into it, but I feel like the success rates on those are just awful compared to Gen 2. Maybe GameFreak realized how silly the combo was? Anywho, that got me through it this time, although I only had one left when it was over. You are definitely right, though - Shroomish has the best move out of all of them, and it's Mega Drain. Better than Absorb, at least.

If I didn't make it through, I would definitely probably have just waited for evos. I ended up having to wait for Oddish->Gloom for Combusken to have more survivability in the battle with May, so that's something.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

How do you guys normally spend your Rare Candies? I used to use them for difficult gym leaders (like Gen 01 Misty years ago), but now I feel like I gotta save them for the end of the Gen 3 games to avoid burning out on grinding. In other words, I hoard my rare candies for the Elite Four. Today though, I realized I had the problem for Victory Road in the Fighting monotype Sapphire (GBA) run: not one, not three, but two underleveled Pokemon in my party. So I brought them up to from Level 37 to Level 40. (I had 14 Rare candies from the Zigzagoon trick early in the playthrough.)

I'm posting this in the secondary montoype thread to test the waters of what should and should not go there. I welcome Explorer of Time to move it to the main Monotype Challenge thread if she so desires.

 

[Sakura_H]

How do you guys normally spend your Rare Candies? I used to use them for difficult gym leaders (like Gen 01 Misty years ago), but now I feel like I gotta save them for the end of the Gen 3 games to avoid burning out on grinding. In other words, I hoard my rare candies for the Elite Four. Today though, I realized I had the problem for Victory Road in the Fighting monotype Sapphire (GBA) run: not one, not three, but two underleveled Pokemon in my party. So I brought them up to from Level 37 to Level 40. (I had 14 Rare candies from the Zigzagoon trick early in the playthrough.)

It depends on which games I play, but, to be honest, in most cases I avoid using Rare Candies. I often had the feeling of 'wasting Rare Candies' for using it at low level, so I just keep them at bags. Exp candies were fine to me as it can be easily farmed in raid battle for Gen 8 and 9. Grinding exp was fine to me and in most games I would set some level caps to myself, so exp was not a main problem.

 

[Explorer of Time]

How do you guys normally spend your Rare Candies? I used to use them for difficult gym leaders (like Gen 01 Misty years ago), but now I feel like I gotta save them for the end of the Gen 3 games to avoid burning out on grinding. In other words, I hoard my rare candies for the Elite Four. Today though, I realized I had the problem for Victory Road in the Fighting monotype Sapphire (GBA) run: not one, not three, but two underleveled Pokemon in my party. So I brought them up to from Level 37 to Level 40. (I had 14 Rare candies from the Zigzagoon trick early in the playthrough.)

I'm posting this in the secondary montoype thread to test the waters of what should and should not go there. I welcome Explorer of Time to move it to the main Monotype Challenge thread if she so desires.

Usually, I save up enough to evolve a Pokemon earlier than I otherwise would, or get key level-up moves quicker. For the Rare Candies I find after that, I save them for after Victory Road, and try to equalize my team's levels if possible.

A couple exceptions: If I'm using a very defensive Pokemon that's slow to grind, I'll feed it all of my Rare Candies, and I'll also feed Rare Candies to caught lategame Pokemon that are too underleveled for lategame trainers.

 

[StenirRPG]

For me, Rare Candies are usually only used right before Elite Four, and for me, it's more of a balance of stats than level. If a Pokemon is one I know I'll need offensively, like say my Cradily coming up in Gen 3 Grass to help counter Glacia, I might pump it up a little more, even if it unbalances levels. While I do subscribe to the whole damage rounding threshold math when I grind, endgame is less about levels and more about specific stats in my opinion. Being at the same level is all and well, but if you can get through the E4 with two levels less because you can outspeed a Crobat that's been giving you trouble, that's what might be best to aim for.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

I gotta vent a bit because my English pen pal made a big deal about how I didn't have Heracross on my Fighting monotype team. Heracross has been dead weight because even when I ran into Psychic-type Pokemon like Alakazam (weak to bug-type attacks), not only do I not have a bug-type attack, Heracross is still weak to Psychic-type attacks because bug- doesn't resist psychic-. I was starting to grow closer to Heracross (as opposed to stay 40 meters away from it at all times), but now my whole team is under-leveled for the Elite Four. Blaziken is level 48, but the 2nd highest is Breloom at level 43, and the other four are level 41 EXCEPT Heracross which is level 40. To add insult to injury, OBS crashed twice today, so I gotta redo everything I did today (from a previous save) just so I have have footage of the final Wally battle. (It's worse when I realized I saved right immediately after the crash and immediately before Wally, so I could've just reset the game normally if I hadn't stupidly pressed the save button in the League Pokemon Center.) Not only was the 45 minute session a complete waste, I gotta do "Day Care" grinding because of wild Hariyama's "Whirlwind" telling me "No, this battle didn't count" and Golbat's "Air Cutter/Wing Attack." What a pain!

 

[StenirRPG]

I had to go look up Gen 3 Heracross to see what actually was available in the learnset. You get Brick Break, which is a nice STAB move, but yeah, you don't get a Bug move until 53...If you were desperate for something with Heracross to deal with Psychic types, you could give it Thief, but that's special so might not be the best option. Do you know your Hidden Power type? That might be an option. Strength could be an option, too, with 80 power. Hopefully it has Guts?

 

[GhostMadison7]

Cave of Dragonflies Catch Rate Calculators: Having trouble catching a Pokemon for your team? This site has calculators to break down your catch rate probabilities for every generation's catching mechanics.

Oh wow this is so nice! Thanks!

 

[Sakura_H]

May I start a new discussion here? Which game(s) are the 'best' for achieving monotype challenge Game Mastery? 'Best' can mean 'the most difficult', 'the easiest', 'the most enjoyable' or even all other meanings which you think it's the best.

I'm thinking to do a Game Mastery after my RR mono-grass run, but I haven't decided which game to go through yet. For mainline games, I may choose pokemon Sword/Shield with sufficient numbers of pokemon to catch and suitable difficulty. I prefer a game with more pokemon catchable than less pokemon as some types may be 'too difficult' with only 2 or 3 pokemon. At this case, GEN 8 and 9 would be perfect for me (and maybe also GEN 7 USUM?) I prefer GEN 8 to GEN 9 as Scarlet/Violet story is a little bit 'too long' for a run. But I found a technical issue with NS as it can at most save 8 accounts with 8 different save files for each console. If I don't delete the save data, that means I need at least 3 separate consoles for the Game Mastery run. Well, I don't like delete the save data.

PS. Well, I must say another issue was GEN 9 performance was not good enough for me to take it again and again. The game story was perfect to me, but not the performance. I hope this won't hurt any person who love GEN 9 a lot.


For romhacks, there are many game with different difficulty. Finishing Radical Red Game Mastery must be a great achievement considering its difficulty, but, um, it seems to be extremely painful. Some causal games such as Mega Moe FireRed may be good enough for me with a little bit increasing in difficulty. (Well, I enjoy using Moemon sprites so it's completely fine for me. HAHA) As I prefer games with more different pokemon, Unbound, Increment Emerald, Inflamed Red or something similar should be fine too.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Gen 8 seems like the easiest, to me, since every type has at least one Pokemon catchable before the first gym, and every type can get a full unique team of six Pokemon. The Paldea, Galar, and Kalos games look good too, but a couple types in the latter two will need to rely on a traded/hacked starter for a little bit, or start their challenges late.

ORAS is mostly good too, but held back by a few types. Electric, Fire, and Steel will have difficult early games and even out later on, but the real difficult one is Ice, which is stuck with a single Pokemon (plus descendants of the same species via breeding) up until Shoal Cave after the 6th gym.

In general, the games that are best for Game Mastery Challenges tend to be the ones with the largest regional dexes, and the worst ones tend to have the smallest regional dexes, like BW1, Diamond and Pearl, and all the Kanto games.

Speaking of Kanto, FRLG and the Gen 1 games are also technically the fastest if you're trying to do a Game Mastery challenge quickly, since they have less types to do. Dark, Steel, and Fairy didn't exist back in Gen 1, and Ghost and Dragon are optional there since they only have one evolutionary line. (Steel joins the optional types in FRLG because of Magneton.) That being said, only Normal, Poison, Flying, and Water have many Pokemon you can choose from in Kanto, so it's probably one of the less fun Game Masteries to do.

 

[Smotemotem]

So I'm about to challenge PLA and I have a few questions. Are grit items allowed? Is the challenge complete when the postgame is beaten? Or regular credit roll? Is there anything I need to be extra careful about, so as to not slip into Free mode on accident?

PLA seems like a very unconventional style of game, but pretty straightforward rules-wise. Just trying to do it by-the-book. Thank you!

 

[Explorer of Time]

Are grit items allowed? Is the challenge complete when the postgame is beaten? Or regular credit roll? Is there anything I need to be extra careful about, so as to not slip into Free mode on accident?

Grit items are allowed, the challenge is completed when the credits roll, and I don't think so but I'm not 100% sure since I haven't played the game yet.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Can someone give me advice for a Gen 3 Kanto "Flying Monotype" challenge? I got Charizard, Pidgeot, Gyarados, and Dodrio, but what about Dragonite? What about Butterfree? I'd add Golbat, but the game would consistently yell in my ear, "Boy, I bet you wish you were playing Hoenn right now!" every time it levels up with high friendship.

Also, to whoever decided Aerodactyl should be revived at Level 5 in Gen 3 Kanto, who hurt you?

 

[Explorer of Time]

I might not have played a Flying monotype in Gen 3 Kanto, but I've played one in Gen 1. I've used Dragonite and it's quite good, and it gets even better in Gen 3 from the expanded movepool, but you realistically won't have it evolved until around Victory Road.

Charizard and Gyarados are both great, keep them. Dodrio is good too, but if you want Fearow it may not be ideal to have them both on the team at once. Dodrio has a minor late-game edge, but Fearow evolves faster and learns its important moves at lower levels.

Butterfree is also great early on, with lots of status moves you'll have difficulty getting on your other team members, but it's fragile and tapers off in the late game. Still, it's worth using since Kanto doesn't have a lot of options.

I didn't enjoy using Aerodactyl in Gen 1, but it's much improved in Gen 3 with the addition of Rock Slide from the move tutor as a great STAB Rock move.

I'd recommend against Pidgeot, since Fearow and Dodrio both have better offensive stats and access to Drill Peck for Flying-type STAB.

If you want to use a Legendary Bird, I recommend Zapdos because it'll help cover your Electric weakness. Articuno is decent too but Moltres is redundant since you have Charizard and will also take your Legendary slot.

One more Pokemon I'd consider would be Scyther. True, its evolution isn't a flying type, but you can easily avoid evolving it and it's still pretty good unevolved. It is pretty fragile though, with five weaknesses and a 4x weakness to Rock, so I wouldn't use it on the same team as Butterfree or Articuno.

Finally, Farfetch'd is technically an option, but it's outclassed in every way by Kanto's other Normal/Flying types, so don't pick it.

For the postgame, it's probably not worth grinding any new team members since you get new Pokemon at such low levels, but you can get a level 62 Golbat in the bottom floor of Cerulean Cave and friendship evolve it, and Skarmory is also both good and catchable at Level 30. Xatu is also an option if you have the patience to train it up, but none of the other Johto Pokemon are worth it even if you do have lots of time to waste.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

My dumb --- forgot to follow this thread, so I didn't reply at all to the discussion I started about Heracross. Is it too late to necrobump that?



I've used Spearow/Fearow a bunch in few nuzlockes (one of which I really should finish sometime). I actually didn't remember what Pidgeot had over Fearow for fans (and Oak's stupid grandson) to consistently use Pidgeot over Fearow, but now that I'm looking at the movesets on Bulbapedia... No, I still don't know. (Anime nostalgia maybe?) I'll use Spearow over Pidgey, but Dodrio is king of the Kantonian birds! Dat STAB Tri Attack!

Gyarados was gonna be used no matter what (same with Charizard). Even though most people prefer it after the physical-special split, I've learned to appreciate it as a special attacker with the Kaiju moveset of Surf/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam/Flamethrower, though for this playthrough I will be teaching it Earthquake instead of Flamethrower (because PSA 10 Charizard on my team). I'm not sure I should run Thunderbolt and Ice Beam though. I need Thunderbolt for other water-types (and there's no grass/flying-type in pre-E4 Kanto), but Ice Beam would be nice to kick the sh** out of Lance's dragon-types. (I forgot for a minute that the rival won't have a Gyarados cuz of his Blastoise. I want to make his Gyarados eat my Gyarados's Thunderbolts!)

I ain't picking Farfetch'd unless it's from Galar! That's why I didn't bother mentioning it. People trade for a Farfetch'd from an NPC in Vermillion, and they're like "Look! I got a rare Pokemon!" and I say, "You discarded a perfectly good Farfetch'd is what you did!"

I didn't know Zapdos was allowed in Standard Mode. Tempting, but I'll probably stick to "no legendaries" unless the game starts kicking my ---. We'll see.

Speaking of rules, do I have to have Dragonite evolved at a certain point as long as it evolves at Level 55 (and not a level later)? I think it's kind of a weird potential gray area, but I'd love to take a Dragonite into the Elite Four and make the rival deal with it!

How do I get the Aerodactyl caught up anyway? The day care? Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Speaking of rules, do I have to have Dragonite evolved at a certain point as long as it evolves at Level 55 (and not a level later)? I think it's kind of a weird potential gray area, but I'd love to take a Dragonite into the Elite Four and make the rival deal with it!

How do I get the Aerodactyl caught up anyway? The day care? Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Just make sure your Dragonite evolves before you fight the League, and you'll be fine. My own Dragonite in Red evolved just before Victory Road.

As for Aerodactyl, I'd get the EXP share from Route 15 if reasonably possible, or just grind via switch-outs if not, but either way it'd be best to get it as soon as you beat Koga. Leave Saffron, the water routes, and one of the two paths to Fuchsia City until after getting Aerodactyl to save some experience for later. You can actually make it to Cinnabar without fighting a single trainer by surfing south from Pallet Town, IIRC.