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Toughest Captures

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    • 5,288
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    • Seen Mar 3, 2025
    Pretty self explanatory title but yeah, what are some of the Pokémon you find toughest to capture? Don't feel bad about listing legendaries, they are tough after all.

    For me personally I felt like I had a baptism of fire starting out in Pokémon with Emerald:
    • Regirock, Regice and Registeel have an convoluted method of unlocking the right to even battle them
    • Lati@s roam, with one of the lesser ways of tracking them
    • Kyogre, Groudon and Rayquaza all have Rest

    But now in my current mode of compulsively capturing every possible Pokémon in a game (cheated slightly with trading for HeartGold as I wasn't going to wait months for Safari Zone blocks), Pokémon Black has thrown me two curveballs: Poliwrath and Politoed. Right away there are some limitations:
    • Both are only available in limited locations (caves, and Route 6 respectively)
    • Both are only available through the unreliable "phenomenon" method, in this case Fishing in Rippling Water
    • Within that, both have only a 5% chance of appearing
    On top of all that however, should you encounter a Poliwrath at a high enough level, which is quite likely, it will possess the ability to end the battle instantly with Circle Throw. It took me three Poliwrath encounters (we're talking at least an hour of sprinting in a cave to generate the phenomenon) to find one weak enough to not have learned the move.

    Politoed however, is even worse.
    It only has 3 level-up moves, and the first of those? Perish Song. So for every turn it is awake there is a 1/4 chance it'll put a clock on the battle. I've encountered 3 so far, and every. single. one. has woken up on the first turn of sleep, two using PS instantly and the third evading two Sleep Powder attacks in a row before using it. Needless to say I haven't caught it yet.
    Oh, and my sleep inducer, Lilligant, can either barely shave any health off with a 40BP neutral Hidden Power, or demolish it with STAB Petal Dance, so I either have to switch to another attacker, or throw balls at 100% health.

    One self-imposed weakness is that I only use either ordinary Poké Balls or balls introduced in the region I'm playing, due to aesthetics (I really don't like Ultra Balls, although a Great Ball can look ok in some sprites). But still, an odyssey for a rare green frog I don't even intend to use!
     
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    Cresselia. It's a roaming legendary with a low catch rate, and I remember it taking a very long time to get it in even an Ultra Ball. That kinda fed me up over the years, so if I were to ever replay D/P/PT, I'm going to just throw a Master Ball at Cresselia. I also had a super hard time with the Lake Trio as a kid.

    Also, Beldum gets an honorable mention of being annoying. It's also got a catch rate of 3.
     
    Palamon said:
    Cresselia. It's a roaming legendary with a low catch rate, and I remember it taking a very long time to get it in even an Ultra Ball. That kinda fed me up over the years, so if I were to ever replay D/P/PT, I'm going to just throw a Master Ball at Cresselia. I also had a super hard time with the Lake Trio as a kid.
    Click to expand...

    Oh yeah, I wasn't aware of the mechanics of roaming Pokémon when I played Diamond, so I would always try to Fly to where they were, only to find they got away. I think it took until 2013 to finally catch Cresselia or Mesprit, and I only managed it because I'd traded over a Master Ball from an abandoned save.
    Now though I've assembled a brilliant team over two HeartGold saves and one in LeafGreen - a Mean Look + Baton Pass Umbreon, Thunder Wave + Baton Pass Jolteon and a Scizor with Technician and False Swipe, all at a high level. Even with the tendency of Raikou and Entei to Roar me away, I found it so much easier to capture them.
    Still just used a Master Ball on Tornadus though.
     
    Just a little update, I captured the next Politoed that appeared, on the last turn before Perish Song would have KO'd it! Still using a regular Poké Ball. Managed to get a lv. 65 Dragonite into one of those, at 25% health with no status, first ball thrown too!
    I would definitely not play the way I am ever again once I go back to work, its incredibly time-consuming (I've probably used up 70 repels in DragonSpiral Tower's water to get all 3 stages of the Gen I dragon). But its quite satisfying at the moment.
     
    I don't know if it was just me, but I always remember Moltres in FRLG being super tough to catch, I'm not sure if it has the same catch rate as the other birds, but it always seemed like a real pain to me, maybe I was just unlucky with it! Apart from that, the regis and legendary dogs in Johto stand out to me!
     
    zapdos in leafgreen and rayquaza in emerald are both that come to mind. gotta love chucking like 30-40 poke/ultra balls before one of them sticks.
     
    The only one that comes to mind, is the first legendary I actually failed to capture after tossing a good 10-20 Ultra Balls and I believe several Dusk Balls at it; Tapu-effing-Koko in Moon.

    I was down to my last Pokemon and had it down to 1 or 2 HP and ended up having the faint it when I ran out of balls because the encounter took me off guard so I hadn't saved beforehand.

    (I habitually use the Master Balls on the cover legendaries).
     
    Azelf! He was my sister's favourite, but so annoying, battle after battle he refused to be caught, after both Uxie (Timer Ball) and roaming Mesprit were already caught. At about that time my friends asked if I could try catching their as the last thing to fill the Pokédex, and that one was caught in the first ball...
     
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