All the Pokemens

May 5, 2020

Mahogany Stadium

This gym's design appears to be a large refrigerated area encased in ice. It's very simple, but this is also one of the more iconic stadium designs to me. Its more mechanical design is different from the typical ice cavern design that first comes to my mind when I think of ice.

The gym actually proved to be a lot more of a challenge than it initially seemed. I lost multiple times to the gym leader and along the way also had some admittedly hilarious run-ins with RNG which I'll detail below. For the most part, the gym's two standard trainers are the calm before the storm as Pryce's team is actually pretty powerful.

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Round 1:

Snowboarder Alvin

This guy uses a team of standard base-stage pokemon as per usual. He has some water-types and a Flaafy for basic coverage, but my first battle against him, my challenge came from an unforseen threat.

This Smoochum must have just gotten back from worshipping RN-Jesus because no matter what I did, this thing assaulted Maria with lucky rolls constantly. First of all, I assumed it wouldn't be a threat, so I took it as an opportunity to set up Light Screen. Big mistake. This thing took advantage of its one free turn and, with a single lick, paralyzed Maria. This caused Maria to lose not one, two, three, or even four, but five turns in a row! All the while, it relentlessly pounded me with critical-hit pounds. By the time I was finally able to get an attack off, this thing had brought Maria's HP from full to 7 with nothing but pound! Honestly, at that point, I can't even be mad.

Aside from that massive failure, Alvin's team is pretty standard and I was able to clear up the rest with Quilliam no problem. I'm not entirely sure what his strategy is supposed to be. His pokemon like to use Endure a lot but don't really seem to have a strategy to go with that, so all Endure really does is waste time. I guess the idea is to use Endure to stall while Whirlpool whittles down your health but that's a total joke of a strategy considering we're coming right off of Rocket Takeover's toxic strats.

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Round 2:

Skier Carol

During one of my playthroughs, Carol also had a little Alvin moment. Her Dratini was able to nearly take out a fully-cursed-out Dairy thanks to critting and flinching with Headbutt several times in a row. I couldn't get a hit off for several turns and had to resort to Milk Drink twice to survive!

Carol's team seems all about slowing your team down with Icy Wind and.... nothing else. Again, these two trainers are the calm before the storm. The real nightmare is just ahead of us.

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Final Round:

Leader Pryce

This battle took me three attempts to clear. Why? It turns out, his Piloswine is shockingly fast. I had to adjust my strategy multiple times to deal with his team and ultimately decided that Maria just wasn't fast enough to be as helpful here as it looked like she would be. Pryce seemed to have a tendency to start with Donphan, which meant switching into Katana and taking it out with Toxic was a pretty surefire first round. His second pokemon seemed to alternate between Dewgong and Cloyster. Cloyster was the preferred choice because his Dewgong liked to set up Safegard which would render toxic useless. My initial strategy was to have Katana run itself into the ground, leading to a decent amount of damage on the second pokemon, then send out Maria to take it out and deal some damage to Piloswine with Fire Punch. What actually happened was I'd send Maria out, it would take out Cloyster or Dewgong, then Piloswine would just outspeed it and take it out with Earthquake. During that first battle, I stupidly went for Quilliam as my last pokemon instead of Axel. Quilliam wasn't able to deal enough damage and was taken out.

The second attempt, I went with Axel instead of Quilliam. But again was faced with the same issue. Maria wasn't fast enough to do anything to PIloswine and Axel was taking too much damage from Piloswine. I couldn't win.

So the last attempt, I had to get more strategic. Since Maria wasn't fast enough, I had to go with Quilliam. His Thunderpunch wouldn't do as much against Dewgong which was my main concern as I figured it would probably be able to take me out with a Surf. But, Quilliam did have a couple of advantages over Maria. For one, he was faster. And two, he resisted Ice, which made him a good switch-in for Katana. My plan this third battle was, instead of letting Katana run into the ground, I'd switch into Quilliam. That way, Katana would be able to get a hit in on Piloswine to soften it up for Axel! Things all went according to plan up until... Katana missed.

Thankfully, Axel was able to make up for the lost ground and made a sweet save with a critical Surf! With such a clutch victory and the necessity of it, I think it's pretty clear who the MVP this time around is and isn't.

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MVP: Axel

May 6, 2020

Blackthorn Stadium

I've noticed several mistakes on Serebii's page for Gym Leader Castle. Some pokemon have been listed incorrectly such as the Rocket Executive being listed as having a Houndour in round 1 when he actually has a Houndoom. Some trainers' names were listed wrong such as the Skier in Mahogany gym being named "Kathy," but I think the one that takes the cake is their mistake of reusing the screenshot for Olivine Gym as the screenshot for Blackthorn gym. As you can tell by the different aspect ratio, I got this screenshot from elsewhere.

This stadium is designed as though it's inside the jaw of a massive dragon. It's definitely an imposing design to match the difficulty of this gym.

Fuck. This gym.

While the gym only has two trainers and both of them are a total joke, between both Stadium 1 and 2, Clair is the first time I've ever been walled to the point where I'd have to change up my party. Because of the stat distribution between our pokemon, I genuinely don't think winning without relying too much on luck would be possible. Her pokemon were simply too fast, too powerful, and too bulky for my Gold team alone to get around. We'll detail my experiences when we get there.

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Round 1:

Cooltrainer F Gloria

I said the two trainers here were a joke and that's no joke. Gloria's team is all about putting your pokemon to sleep and damaging them while they can't attack. A very basic strategy I would expect to see as far back as Azalea. It comes with one major fundamental flaw, though... Sleep Clause makes it so that only one pokemon at a time can be put to sleep. So, if you let your lead pokemon get put to sleep and then switch out, her team is entirely defenseless against you. It's full of a bunch of delicate base-stage pokemon so they can all be picked off one after another with a single pokemon.

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Round 2:

Cooltrainer M Vince

It's almost like the game is making fun of you at this point, because Vince's team is among the most generic teams in the entire castle. He just uses the base stage forms of all the starters. There's nothing surprising in their movesets and all they seem to do is use STAB moves. The most unexpected thing I think he pulled on me is his Charmander used Dragon Rage to deal extra damage when Flamethrower wouldn't do enough. Riveting!

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Final Round:

Leader Clair

This is the team you're going to have burned into your memory as you battle your way through this gym time and time again, constantly trying out different strategies that might work but you don't know because last time she got a lucky crit here or a BS flinch there. Maybe her Lapras froze you or her Arcanine burned you. It seems that Clair is the queen of RNG because the dice always seem to roll in her favor! I'm going to give the crits a pass because looking at her team in hindsight, her Kingdra does have a Scope Lens which increases its crit chance, but even still that only buffs the crit chance of each individual hit to around 12-13% which, while much more significant, is still only a little more likely than freezing with Ice Beam. So when she gets two or three crits in one battle, I still have to call BS on that one. And it wasn't just her Kingdra getting lucky crits, too.

Side note, the fact that she even has a Scope Lens is completely asinine. The only way you can get your hands on a Scope Lens of your own is through Mystery Gift. At 0.2% rarity. Let me remind you that you can only do Mystery Gift once a day with each copy of the game you or any friends of yours own, so you can't just grind for it. And the odds of you getting one each time are only twice as likely as finding a Chansey in the Wild that happens to be holding a Lucky Egg. (Chansey has a 1% rarity and each Chansey has a 1% chance of being encountered while holding a Lucky Egg.)

Clair's team doesn't look too bad on the surface. Axel should be able to make quick work of her Arcanine, Rhydon, and Ampharos while Maria and Katana can take out the rest, right? Wrong. I'm pretty sure Clair's pokemon have maxed out stats because despite all of my pokemon obviously being the same level as hers, every single one of them consistently outsped mine! Granted, my Gold team doesn't exactly have a whole lot of fast pokemon, but neither does hers! I'm obviously willing to make an exception for Arcanine, but her Kingdra was even able to outspeed Katana!!

No matter what I did with my Gold team, when I tried switching out or staying in, who I tried to keep alive, who I used against what... nothing could take out two of her pokemon, let alone all three! And all the RNG shenanigans only made things that much worse. Even when RNG tipped a bit in my favor like a surprise crit with Thunderpunch, it was immediately reciprocated with a flinch from headbutt. It would take several attempts just to finally be able to come to the conclusion that a specific strategy wouldn't work.

I tried everything. I even started moving items around on my team. Nobody seemed bulky enough to be able to make use of Leftovers, and the Focus Band and Quick Claw were simply too inconsistent to be of any help. If anything they'd be detrimental because they would trick me into thinking my pokemon was faster or capable of surviving a hit on their own merit.

Ultimately, I had to regroup and rethink my team going forward. That's when I swapped Katana for Magnanimus. While Clair was no stranger to switching, so Parafusion wouldn't be consistent enough to rely on, it would be a nice way to potentially force a switch and get some free damage on an incoming pokemon. Not only that, but Thunder would add some much needed power to my attacks. If only Maria could have learned Thunderbolt...

Even with swapping Magnanimus in, it still took several tries to see if the idea would even work. I also had a few fallback plans, such as possibly taking advantage of Somnium's Mean Look, Confuse Ray and Destiny Bond to take out some of her bulkier pokemon like Lapras. But even then, there'd be two other pokemon I'd have to worry about and switching into Somnium probably wouldn't be able to take many hits or get a good switch-in either.

What's more, by making adjustments to my party, Clair started to change up her lead pokemon. While this caught me off guard at first, it actually proved more beneficial as I felt I had an easier out to the pokemon she was starting with this time. She was pretty consistently opening up with Arcanine and Rhydon now where she previously would open up with Kingdra and switch to Rhydon if she had it to counter Maria. Arcanine and Rhydon, however, were much easier to deal with. By starting with Axel, I was able to consistently pick off her first pokemon without any issues.

When it came to her Lapras, Magnanimus reminded me just how useful he could be by dealing massive damage with Thunder! All I needed was one more hit and then I could use the remainder of my HP to deal extra damage to Kingdra and open up the possibility for Maria to finish the job! And... Thunder missed. Magnanimus blew it. It was able to survive another hit from Lapras, but it wasn't going to be doing anything to Kingdra with its HP standing. Needless to say, I was distressed beyond belief. I'd been battling this gym over and over for about two hours straight and I'd have to redo the gym once again after coming so close!

...But I did still have one more pokemon. Against all odds, I sent out Maria and hoped for the best and, on the last turn just before Maria fainted, I was able to paralyze Kingdra with Thunderpunch! I previously hadn't been using Thunder Wave because I simply couldn't afford the extra turn. I needed to deal as much damage as possible in as little time as possible. My best bet was to just hope for a paralysis with Thunderpunch. While the paralysis didn't do anything magical like stop an attack, it was able to slow Kingdra down enough for Maria to finally be able to outspeed it and I was able to get the last hit in and was holding my breath as I watched the health deplete. I was just barely able to take out Kingdra! Had it gotten another attack off, my only hope was a miss or failed paralysis check. It was unlikely that I'd be able to rely on either of those, but thankfully I didn't have to! This gym took way too long, but I'm just happy to put it behind me.

As for the MVP, I really, really wanted to give it to Magnanimus here. Even with the miss, if it wasn't for Magnanimus, I never would have gotten past Lapras so smoothly. But I can't just ignore the amazing clutch move Maria pulled!

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MVP: Maria

May 8, 2020

Elite Four Challenge

After defeating Clair, you're challenged by none other than the Elite Four themselves! This works in just the same way that it did in Stadium 1 where you have to defeat the four members of the Elite Four in a row in order to earn a single chance at fighting the Champion. I don't know if it was the gen II movesets or the levels I was limiting myself to, or their teams just being much more powerful than the ones in Stadium 1, but I found this Elite Four challenge to be far more challenging than its predecessor!

The stadium itself is actually really cool. Each one seems to have its own map that gets progressively further from the entrance as the sky turns from day to sunset to dusk to twilight, culminating with the final showdown at night. As you advance through the stadiums, you climb a flight of stairs and as the camera pans around, you can see the entrance in the distance and the champion's stadium growing closer with a menacing Charizard statue looming over the entire time. But after your Nth attempt, the design of the stadiums stops being your focus and instead you're focused much more on how much Bullshit is happening in your face.

I actually got walled pretty bad here with my Gold team, so I ended up completely switching over to my team from Silver. I recalled being able to clear the Red battle surprisingly easily with that team, so I figured I'd have the same luck here! The problem I was consistently finding myself with was that Maria and Axel just couldn't take enough hits to warrant their lack of Speed. Maria had decent luck surviving special attacks and Axel could take physical blows fairly nicely, but even then they were typically only two-hit KO's; 3-hit at best. Maria typically had the time to set up Light Screen and then go down and hope Light Screen would be enough to allow the next pokemon to take a hit.

Even with my Silver team, though, I consistently found that any pokemon that wasn't incredibly slow by nature was outspeeding mine. I'm pretty convinced that these pokemon are fully drugged out with vitamins which is what made this challenge so difficult. I never did invest any money into vitamins for my pokemon and I suppose it shows.

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Elite Four 1:

Will

Will gave the the most trouble in Silver version, but here, he was by far the easiest of the four. Perhaps his most threatening pokemon was his Clefable because it knows a variety of coverage moves. Most relevant for me was Fire Blast since it was strong against most of my team. It also knows Thunder and Blizzard in case I try to approach it with Totalleon or Gunthur. His Girafarig also knows Earthquake, a move I genuinely had no idea Girafarig could even learn. But once I was armed with that knowledge, this battle became a joke to win every time. I'd just use Magnanimus from the start and whatever I couldn't kill easily with Thunder, I'd parafuse or in the case of Girafarig, switch to Katana to avoid an Earthquake. It is worth noting that Will's Clefable is holding a Bitter Berry which means I'd have to use Swagger on it twice. But that also means increasing its attack to four-times which it can't even use against me since it only knows special attacks! It seems he always uses Xatu which is nice because Magnanimus can take that one out with Thunder, no problem!

MVP: Magnanimus

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Elite Four 2:

Koga

This one is just plain dumb. All of his pokemon do nothing but spam Double Team. His team has no win condition, he's literally just here to annoy you to death, just like in Gold and Silver. The same strategy that worked there works here. Whatever Gunthur couldn't kill quickly with Earthquake, Katana could whittle away with Sandstorm. His Muk is his biggest threat because Gunthur can't get a One-hit kill on it and it has Fire Blast to use against Katana. My best bet is to just use Gunthur and hope he doesn't miss due to Double Team. Aside from Electrode and Muk, nothing on his team can so much as scratch Katana while she's holding Leftovers, so all this battle boils down to is using Toxic, Sandstorm, and Fly a lot. On its own, this wouldn't be so bad. It's the fact that you have to battle him over and over again every time you lose that really grates on you.

MVP: Katana

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Elite Four 3:

Bruno

I don't know what the hell was going on with Bruno, but this is the opponent that walled me for so damn long. None of his pokemon look very fast at all but almost all of them could consistently outspeed mine on top of being bulky as hell and dishing out loads of damage. His Onix and Golem look like nice, free KO's, but he NEVER USES THEM. More often than not this battle just comes down to comparing dick sizes with his Machamp or Blastoise. His Kangaskhan is also really annoying because it loves to use Dizzy Punch which has a pretty high chance of confusing you. It's also holding a PSNcureberry making working around her bulk is that much more difficult. In my winning battle, I really just got lucky that he chose Heracross instead of Kagaskahn. His Heracross has an odd moveset that includes both Counter and Reversal. Normally it seems like you'd want one or the other, but I suppose the idea is to have it take a strong hit and counter it, then use Reversal to deal massive damage to the rest of your team. But for such a slow pokemon, that's a bizarre strategy to go for. Anyway, Heracross is a very easy kill for Katana. Blastoise usually came down to Toxic while Machamp would often require me to anticipate a switch with Magnanimus to parafuse it. Otherwise, it would just use Earthquake to tear through my defenses before I even have a chance to so much as paralyze it.

It took me several, several tries to be able to finally get past him and even then I'm not certain I'd be able to do it consistently. The entire rest of the way my heart was racing because I did not want to have to do this again.

MVP: Katana

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Elite Four 4:

Karen

Compared to Bruno, Karen was a walk in the park. Her team was entirely built around immobilizing you with Attract and Confuse Ray. As long as you pay close attention to the genders of each pokemon, Attract will be useless for her most of the time and can even open up to a free switch. For the most part, her entire team could do little to nothing against Katana, so all I really had to do was use Sandstorm and an occasional Toxic while stalling her out. Magnanimus also proved very useful due to being genderless which makes it immune to Attract altogether. Even on the off chance I'd have to let a pokemon get infatuated, it would only be a matter of time before she'd be forced to switch because of toxic damage building up.

MVP: Katana

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Champion Showdown

At the end of the Elite Four's gauntlet, the only one standing in your way is the Dragon Champion Lance himself. This is a high-stakes battle at the peak of the castle. A loss here means it's right back to the start of the Elite Four.

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Grand Finale

Champion Lance

Lance's team doesn't actually differ much from his team in GS. The only difference is due to the Species Clause, he's forced to replace his other two Dragonite with a Steelix and Tyranitar. While these pokemon are incredibly intimidating on the surface level, it doesn't take long to realize that they don't actually cover each others' weaknesses at all. His entire team is pretty weak to Water and Electricity, so I think it's pretty clear which two pokemon were my best bet.

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I decided to open up with Magnanimus, but of course I was met with the one thing that I didn't have an easy switch for. I knew that switching into Totalleon would be a bad choice. It was obvious this thing was going for an Earthquake, so my best bet was to switch into Katana and try to work something out. My initial plan was to simply let it take out Katana so I could counter it later. Because, as previously mentioned, Steel is the perfect counter to Katana, being the only type immune to both Toxic and Sandstorm, all I can really do against a Steel-type is spam Steel Wing and reduce their health a few points at a time. Thankfully, it seems Lance had the same issue because he took the opportunity to switch out as well.

Lance's Dragonite siwtched into a surprisingly solid hit from Steel Wing. I switched into Magnanimus to resist its Thunder. (I should probably mention that by this point I was looking at Karen and Lance's teams ahead of time because, between Koga and Bruno, I wasn't taking any chances any longer). I of course went for a Swagger only for him to switch back to his Steelix. My first Swagger missed, leading to another cycle of switches and another free hit on his Dragonair. But when my next Swagger hit his Steelix, I figured he'd either take the turn to switch out have a 50% chance of hitting himself. This battle wasn't going to go anywhere if I wasn't ready to take a risk, so I switched into Totalleon, unsure of what his next switch woud be. I figured worst cases scenario he would switch into his Gyarados and go for Hyper Beam which I was pretty confident Totalleon would be able to take at least one of if his track record in Silver was anything to go off of.

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see that Lance's final choice pokemon was his Aerodactyl. While this thing could still prove to be a threat, it wasn't nearly as dangerous as the majority of the rest of his team. I could have gone for a Surf which would have done more damage, but I figured he might try to switch back to his Dragonite in anticipation of a water attack, then go for Thunder to deal heavy damage to Totalleon. Anticipating this, I went for Ice Punch instead and, sure enough, he switched back into Dragonite. Dragonite barely hung on, so I switched to Magnanimus and went for Swagger in anticipation of another switch. He went for Dragonbreath which convinced me that he was sticking it out now, so I started going for Sonicboom to finish this one off.

Naturally, out came Steelix. Once again, I anticipated an Earthquake and switched out to Katana. Instead, he surprised me by switching back to his Aerodactyl. I'm not really sure what he was going for here considering I hadn't even used Swagger yet, but perhaps he was expecting to bait me into swaggering his Aerodactyl?

Whatever the case, Aerodactyl was just going for Ancientpower in hopes of boosting its stats, so I was able to take care of it pretty easily with Steel Wing.

When Steelix came back out, the kiddie gloves were off and he started going all-out with Hyper Beam. I went a few rounds of dodging Hyper Beams with Fly, but unfortunately missing with Hyper Beam doesn't cause you to recharge, so he was still able to hit me on my off turns. For a moment, I considered taking advantage of this off-turn by switching into Totalleon, but then a more safe strategy hit me. Instead of switching, I decided to waste the free turn and hit him with a Steel Wing. Then, anticipating his next Hyper Beam, I switched into Magnanimus. That way, I'd be able to use Swagger on it and hopefully cause it to damage itself. Unfortunately, he critted Magnanimus! I'm pretty confident Magnanimus would have been able to survive the hit, but I still had hope!

My only choice at this point was to send out Totalleon and take advantage of the free turn. I used surf, but it didn't quite take Steelix out! One more surf though made me realize that, to my surprise, Totalleon was actually outspeeding! I was so used to my pokemon being slower that I thought I'd have to take another Hyper Beam here, but no! I forgot that Steelix is actually much slower than Onix! Thanks to that fact, I was finally able to take down the Champion and for the first time in my leaf, I'd cleared The Johto Gym Leader Castle!

As for my MVP, my initial thought was to give it to Totalleon, but that really doesn't seem right. Totalleon did much of the heavy hitting, but it was really thanks to Katana and Magnanimus for making that possible in the first place! Throughout this battle, I was constantly switching pokemon to get the upper hand on my opponent. At no point did I feel like I was relying heavily on the efforts of a single pokemon. So, as much of a cop out as it may seem, I can't think of anything more fitting than to say my MVP for this battle was the whole team!

MVP: Everyone!

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Of course, I'm not going to leave on such a cop-out. I think it's only fair to award a particular Team Member for not only being a significant help in the final battle, but also being a crutch that really held my team together throughout the entire Gym Leader Castle and the majority of the Elite Four as well. I'm of course talking about:

Grand MVP: Katana

I genuinely wasn't expecting to rely on Katana nearly as much as I did. But this Toxic, Sandstorm, Fly, and Leftovers combo proved to be way more reliable than I ever would have expected it to be. And to think I'd considered during my Gold playthrough to use a Crobat in its place! I think it's pretty clear now who's one of the pokemon that are going to be Level 52 going into the Poke Cup---ah, but it's a little too soon to determine that, don't you think? Because defeating Lance unlocks one more challenge for us to face: The Kanto Gym Leader Castle!

May 8, 2020

On 4/9/2020 at 1:34 PM, NyxAvatar69 said:

Let me rephrase what I said before. I only finished Stadium 2 last year using only rentals (because I don't have any of the stuff to use my own mons nor do I want to spend the money on all that junk). Gym Leader Castle is fairly easy because gym trainer amounts vary outside Jasmine (who you fight straight away with no extra trainers beforehand) but then the difficulty picks up hard after Jasmine with Clair being a massive wall. The Elite Four also has two members with really annoying strategies and Lance is still the same "spam Hyper Beam and hope he obliterates everything fast". Luckily, the Kanto Gym Leaders are just the gym leaders themselves.

As for the Stadiums, Little Cup only allows Level 5s, making it similar to Stadium 1's Petit Cup...except with lower levels, no chance of Level 30s blindsiding you, and items. The last battle sucks with rentals because you need to pray he doesn't bring Abra because you auto lose unless you crit if he brought Abra because Psychic and high Speed (or just use Houndour, but you need to consider the fact you're doing 8 battles so you need good mons that can handle a variety of situations). Poke and Prime are standard fare and Challenge Cup gives you random teams, but seeing as you played Stadium 1 and that game already makes you consider strategy on team preview, you should have no issues. Although...the bot does tend to get a bit bullshitty because during my Challenge Cup Master Ball run, my Tentacruel with +4 evasion got hit by all of my opponent's Snorlax's Hyper Beams and I lost a battle solely because of that.

Also have fun with the final battle.

The rentals are honestly worse in Stadium 2 than they are in Stadium 1, though. Kadabra and Wobbuffet tend to be mains for most cups, but I'll stop there before I say anything else.

Re-reading this post now that I've finished Gym Leader Castle, I totally get what you're saying here and agree completely, though I imagine the two E4 members with annoying strategies include Koga and Karen. Maybe I just got lucky with RNG against Karen, I can see her getting really frustrating if you have bad luck with Confusion or aren't running moves like Sandstorm or Toxic, which if you're using Rentals I imagine is much harder to make happen. I have to say I totally commend you for being able to clear the Castle with only rentals. Even with a fully custom team, these battles were no joke! I have no clue how you would even begin to approach Bruno.

May 9, 2020

Kanto Gym Leader Castle

After completing the Johto Gym Leader Castle, your next challenge is the Kanto's Castle! Thematically, this castle is very similar to the Gym Leader Castle from the first game but viewed from a different perspective and with the towers slightly repositioned. You can actually do these battles in any order you like, just like in GS! Each gym also only has its Leader to worry about, so while the gym leaders here are a bit more difficult than the Johto leaders, each gym is easier to get through. You don't have to worry so much about being screwed by RNG because you can just try again immediately.

The individual stadiums themselves are actually really cool. They're identical to the ones from the previous game! While I still think the new stadium design is much more interesting, these are still very memorable to me and it's a really cool throwback!

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Pewter Stadium

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Leader Brock

Brock doesn't have much in terms of coverage on his team. His Pinsir and Forretress will wall you if you rely too much on grass attacks, but he doesn't have anything at all to stop Water-types. The best defense he has are is Omastar and Kabuto which are just not weak to it. Surprisingly, Kabutops doesn't even seem to know Giga Drain! I'm not sure if that's a move Kabutops can know, but I'm pretty sure it is. Forretress knows Giga Drain, but there's not much it can do with that. Ultimately, Brock is pretty straight-forward.

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Cerulean Stadium

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Leader Misty

Misty's team was bizarre. Obviously, the majority of her team is built around Rain Dance, but then she has this completely random Sunflora that contributes nothing to her team. I guess the intention is that it would wall your Electric- and Grass-types, but she has Quagsire and Togetic for that purpose and there are also so many better options for that role. Maybe it's a reference to an anime episode that I simply don't remember? Her Togetic also doesn't do much for her, but that one is obviously just an anime reference, so I totally understand that.

Another oddity about her team is that, while I was expecting her Starmie to be a problem with its speed, it turned out that Poliwhirl actually seems to be faster?

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Vermilion Stadium

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Leader Lt. Surge

Lt. Surge's team is a bit more balanced in terms of coverage. Just like Stadium 1, his Raichu knows Surf and he also has a Lanturn that uses it as well. His Porygon is a bit of an odd choice, but it can't be taken down as easily with Earthquake. The rest of his team, though, is incredibly vulnerable to Earthquake, so Gunthur had a field day here.

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Celadon Stadium

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Leader Erika

Erika's team is even more annoying than Koga's. Her team is entirely about stalling you out and doesn't seem to have any sort of win condition. All of her pokemon know some sort of Sleep move and a Healing move with the exception of her Vaporeon who knows Rest and Sleep Talk instead. Because of this annoying strat, the best you can really do is take advantage of Sleep Clause and then build up damage with Toxic. Mean Look may also help here but I was able to power through with the help of Toxic and Steel Wing to deal more rapid damage. The only reason I find her more bearable than Koga is that she's alone. You just have to beat her team once and never have to come back. But it still took me forever to get through here.

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Fuchsia Stadium

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Leader Janine

I really love Janine's art here but her team was probably the easiest out of the entire castle to clear. I suppose it's because her team is primarily designed around Toxic but due to the abundance of Steel-types on my Silver team, I was able to work around that strategy really easily. The worst thing she could do is cause Cross to hit herself with confusion. Other than that, it was just a matter of setting up a few Swords Dance and sweeping her entire team.

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Saffron Stadium

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Leader Sabrina

Sabrina was a bit more difficult to deal with than Janine. She's more about setting up Future Sight and barraging you with powerful attacks. Without Reflect and Light Screen, though, her team really isn't as scary as it normally is. I was easily able to parafuse her Alakazam, switch into Cross and get a few free Swords Dances up. Due to Alakazam's Future Sight, I wasn't quite able to take out her entire team with just Cross, but Cross was still able to deal some unrecoverable damage.

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Cinnabar Stadium

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Leader Blaine

Between Gunthur and Totalleon, Blaine's gym was a total joke. His team is all about Sunny Day, but he never so much as got the chance to get Sunny Day off before all of his pokemon went down to Earthquake and Surf.

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Viridian Stadium

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Leader Blue

Blue is inherently the most challenging of the Kanto gym leaders due to the variety of Pokemon on his team which I believe is identical to the one he used in GS. My first attempt against him, I was actually swept by the Alakazam he opened up with because its PRZcureberry stopped Magnanimus from paralyzing it. With no real consistent out to this Alakazam on my Silver team, I decided to splash in Dairy from Gold to hopefully take advantage of Shadow Ball. However, in changing my team, he decided this time to open up with Gyarados instead of Alakazam. I smartened up this time, though, and went for a Swagger instead of going for the quick kill, figuring that Gyarados would likely switch out for Rhydon or Exeggutor. Sure enough, he switched to Rhydon which gave me the upper hand I needed to switch into Totalleon. From there, the rest of his team was easy to deal with. Really, his Alakazam is the biggest threat on his team, but if you happen to have a Dark-type on your team, then it wouldn't be a problem at all. Since he didn't use Alakazam at all my second attempt, though, I was able to breeze through his team pretty easily as Totalleon is a good or decent matchup against the majority of his pokemon.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Aura

May 11, 2020

On 08/05/2020 at 10:17, Aura said:

though I imagine the two E4 members with annoying strategies include Koga and Karen.

100% yes. Both of them can go die in a fire, especially Karen.

On 08/05/2020 at 10:17, Aura said:

I have no clue how you would even begin to approach Bruno.

As my boy Fredrick would say, "Pick a god and pray." (and maybe hope your Kadabra doesn't get killed because he's a win condition because Machamp will always be brought by Bruno).

Edited May 11, 2020 by NyxAvatar69

May 11, 2020

I just realized that Pokémon was short for pocket monster. How did it take me over 20 years to get this?

May 12, 2020

After defeating all of the Kanto Gym Leaders, a mysterious cavern opens up beside the Kanto Castle. Entering here brings us to the true final battle of Pokemon Stadium 2's Gym Leader Castle. Who else could be more fitting than the one and only Red himself?

????

-------------

Trainer Red

Red's team is kind of bizarre. It doesn't at all represent his team from Gold and Silver other than the presence of three starter pokemon and an Eevolution, but it's the wrong set of starters and the wrong eevolution to boot. I'm not entirely sure what they were going for with this team as none of these pokemon are exceptionally powerful. I can't imagine, for example, why they would replace his Snorlax with a Tauros of all things. Regardless, I went into this battle expecting to deal with max stats and having my butt handed to me.

==========

I decided to go into this battle opening up with Cross because it would be a good matchup against the majority of his party. Meaning I had a pretty solid chance of being able to set up a Swords Dance. Worst case scenario, he'd start with or switch into Typhlosion, so I'd need a pokemon to counter that. I'd expect his Typhlosion would probably take the time to set up Sunny Day, so I decided Gunthur would be a good counter. Lastly, I went with Magnanimus because this guy has been useful in almost every battle up until now. If nothing else worked, I could always Parafuse something to death.

=========

Red opeend up with his Tauros, to which I responded by setting up a Swords Dance. He didn't switch out and instead went for Earthquake which told me he probably didn't have his Typhlosion on his chosen team. That was great for me because it would mean the rest of my team would be pretty safe. I went for another Swords Dance and then took out Tauros easily with a single Metal Claw.

--------------

Red then sent out his own Scizor, but with mine having boosted attack, I would be able to get some decent damage on this thing. I kind of figured he would outspeed me and be able to take me out due to the three Earthquakes I'd been hit by prior, but his Slash ended up leaving me with a sliver of health, so I was able to get off a Metal Claw in addition to a Quick Attack the following turn. This didn't quite finish him off, but it brought his health dangerously low, so I didn't have any problems sending out Gunthur. Best case scenario, Gunthur would be able to take out Scizor with an Earthquake and then Explode on Red's final pokemon.

His Scyther's super-effective Metal Claw wasn't enough to take out Gunthur in one shot as expected, so I was able to Earthquake it and finish it off.

---------------

His final pokemon was his Feraligatr. This pretty much semented my victory. The only thing I'd have to worry about was missing with Thunder or Thunder not one-shotting. If that were the case, there was a pretty high chance this thing knew Earthquake and would be able to one-shot Magnanimus. (turns out, it doesn't know Earthquake at all, but in the moment, I had no idea)

I went for Explosion without much hope. The only way I was going to get Explosion off was if Gunthur's Focus Band activated, but it didn't and there was no way Gunthur would be outspeeding a Feraligatr, so it all came down to Magnanimus. But that was totally fine because a single Thunder was all it took to take this guy down.

==============

This was... an extremely anticlimactic battle. I went in expecting this to be the most difficult battle so far. I was expecting some really nasty pokemon with high speed that would just destroy my pokemon. Instead, I was met with a team that, yeah, had maxed stats, but none of these pokemon were too terribly impressive. Even looking at his entire team's moveset now it's all terribly generic and underwhelming. There is absolutely no strategy to his team whatsoever, it's just hit with moderately strong attacks. The pokemon choices felt completely arbitrary and even the music, while nice, wasn't nearly as hype-worthy as the music against Lance or the Kanto Gym Leaders.

I'm sure this battle is much better in Round 2, but at least in Round 1, I was honestly left disappointed here. Nonetheless, it was still really cool to experience this battle at all because, just like in Stadium 1, I've never seen anything in this game past the 8th Gym with my own eyes.

Upon defeating Red, instead of getting a prize pokemon to send to our game, we actually unlock the Doduo gameboy!

.....for gen 1.

Yeah, this was something I realized while looking up information for this game going in and it's kind of soured my mood toward this playthrough ever since. My initial plan was to use the Doduo gameboy to catch the remaining pokemon necessary to get 150 so I can transfer pokemon, then transfer forward all my Kanto pokemon hastle-free. From there, I'd do round 1's Prime Cup with my Kanto team and then use the Dodrio gameboy to complete the pokedex in Gold.

Nope.

The Doduo and Dodrio gameboy towers you unlock only work for the Gen 1 games. In order to unlock accessibility to this feature for Gold and Silver, you have to repeat the unlock requirements in round 2. I'm on the fence as to whether or not I'm willing to actually play through Round 2 to unlock this. I probably won't because that will take a lot of time for something that, at that point, I won't have any real need for. If there was an easy way to train up pokemon like in Gen 1, then I'd probably be more enthusiastic. But the way it's looking, I'll have to limit myself to going through Gym Leader Castle again with the exact same pokemon against an even harder challenge that I'm most certainly not prepared for. I think part of why I felt like I haven't enjoyed this game as much as Stadium 1 was just because of how... incomplete my team felt. Yeah, I had all the pokemon I wanted for the most part, but having to keep them below 52 meant many of them lacked the final moves they would have by level 100. Typhlosion didn't have Flamethrower, Ampharos didn't have Thunder... and looking at the way Grinding was going to go, I just don't think I'm going to be putting in the effort to raise any of these pokemon to level 100, especially considering I won't be able to transfer them forward past GSC and eventually the batteries for these games are probably going to die again, causing me to lose everything anyway. In a way, maybe that should encourage me to keep going, but I kind of just find it discouraging.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still certainly enjoying this game just as much as Stadium 1! It's really cool seeing all these new modes and stadiums I've never had unlocked before. This is something I've only dreamed of doing once upon a time. I can't tell you how many times as a kid I'd go into the Mystery Gift or My Room screens only to ponder just what was lying behind these screens. Passing Blackthron gym seemed like a fantasy and I could only imagine what the Elite Four and Kanto Gym Leaders would be like! So yeah, there's definitely lots of really fun discoveries to be had here and some more that I'm really excited to get into!

Anyway, I think I'll have my thoughts on this pieced together more by the time I get to the point I have to make that decision. I'd love to have all the content unlocked in this game, but I also don't want to burn myself out on it anymore than I'm already starting to feel. For now, there's still more to be found and I think changing modes is definitely going to be a nice change of pace.

May 13, 2020

Earl's Pokemon Academy

This mode on the surface seems like it wouldn't be much to write home about. One would rightfully assume this was just some simple tutorial mode for anyone who didn't have the main games to learn the basics of Pokemon. I imagine even many fans of this game may have never done more than take a quick peek in this mode. It's not necessary to unlock anything in the game and if you already know the basics, you might assume you have nothing to gain from investing your valuable time here.

However, I still recommend giving this mode a quick playthrough even if you think you know all there is to know. You just might be surprised at just how thorough Earl's lessons can get. Many of the more technical aspects and strategies I've discussed from the start of this series are actually derived from information I first learned here as a child. Where I expected this mode to tell me things like "paralysis has a chance of stoping your pokemon from attacking" or "fire-type attacks are strong against grass-type pokemon," these lessons will tell you things you may not actually know, like "paralysis will reduce the pokemon's speed" or "a fire-type attack used by a fire-type pokemon will be stronger than if used by a pokemon of any other type!"

While I consider myself pretty well-informed in Pokemon having grown up with it and never really grown out of it, this mode addresses some things that even I never knew or at least didn't expect for it to touch on. For example, I had no idea Blizzard's accuracy was decreased between Gen 1 and 2. I also didn't expect this game to address the fact that Psychic-type pokemon in gen 1 were immune to Ghost-type attacks. This was due to a programming error as it was clearly intended for Psychic types to be weak to Ghost, but due to compatibility issues, this error could never be fixed with any subsequent releases of gen 1 games so it kind of just proved to be a stain of embarrassment on the programmer's part.

Earl's Pokemon Academy is split between three different classes: Trainer, Gym Leader, and Elite Four, covering varying levels of technicality. Each class has member of the Pikachu line as its mascot. In order to pass a class and receive a medal, you'll have to attend each of Earl's lectures and pass the written and practical exams.

The lectures will cover all sorts of new information. You'll select a topic from a list and have to read through a brief lecture from Earl. This sounds boring but it really doesn't take much time at all and you'll be acompanied by some surprisingly memorable and quotable lines from Earl himself. There's actually a lot more personality here than you would expect. At the end of each lecture, Earl will ask you a question about what you just learned, so make sure to pay attention as sometimes he'll ask you something about the information he specifically mentioned in the lecture!

The written exam will require the player to answer a series of 10 questions on the various topics discussed in the lectures. You must score at least 80% in order to pass!

The practical exam is perhaps the most interesting. You're presented a series of battle puzzles effectively. You're given a collection of 6 rental pokemon and have to look through them and decide which three are best to approach the opponent, keeping in mind information you've learned from the class. In order to pass these exams, you'll not only have to win the battles, but you'll have to do so using the correct three pokemon choices. If you're at a loss for which pokemon to choose, you can also get a hint from Earl.

====================

Trainer Class

-------------------------

Lectures

Where I expected the lectures to be pretty standard and boring here, covering simple things like type match-ups, status conditions, the typical stuff you'd see in a regular in-game trainer school from the main series, I instead found some surprisingly technical information covered here. the lectures were divided into several sections: Rules, Type match-ups, Status Problems, Moves, Trainer Battles, and New Features. Each naturally focused on a different aspect of the game and each lecture encourages you to check out the Library for more specific information. We'll take a peek there once we're done with this mode since that's more in line with the fundamentals that you're kind of just expected to know such as basic type match-ups etc.

The rules section contained lectures on the rules from the perspective of Pokemon Stadium. It explains things such as choosing three pokemon of your six, the various clauses that apply to the many modes, as well as notes on legal and illegal move combinations, providing advice on deciding when to evolve a pokemon and when it may be useful to keep a pokemon from evolving.

Type match-ups is pretty much what you would expect, although this section focuses more on changes between gens 1 and 2 as mentioned at the start of this post.

Status problems doesn't actually cover the basic effects of each status condition but rather zeroes in on the more technical aspects. It brushes up on how Paralysis and Burn reduce Speed and Attack respectively, but also some of the newer status conditions introduced in Gold and Silver like Infatuation, Nightmare and Curse and the restrictions that apply to these conditions.

Moves is perhaps the most interesting section as there are many lectures here covering a variety of basic strategies. This is where I actually learned about STAB damage when I was a kid (that's where a pokemon using an attack that's the same type as itself will deal 1.5x the damage it normally would). This section also covers the importance of status-changing moves and moves like Haze, Light Screen, etc. It provides basic strategies for how to effectively use these moves as well as how to counter them. For example, it suggests using moves like Fly or Dig to waste time on Light Screen/Reflect or inflicting Poison damage (a strategy I've actually been using a lot with Katana this entire time) as well as to avoid moves like Skull Bash and SolarBeam. This section also covers changes to moves and move effects between Gens 1 and 2! Another interesting tidbit that this section actually taught me just now is that, in gen 1, moves with secondary effects would never trigger their second effects if used against a pokemon of the same type. In other words, thundershock would never paralyze an Electric Type and Bite would never make a Normal Type flinch. Not only did I not know this was the case, but apparently even after it was changed in gen 2, using a move of the same stat still causes a reduced chance of secondary effects happening.

The Trainer Battle section mostly focuses on strategies surrounding Switching pokemon (it actually surprised me by suggesting that you may want to leave a pokemon in to be knocked out rather than switch into a new pokemon to avoid the new pokemon taking damage! I would have figured a mode like this would have encouraged you to try and keep all of your pokemon around and aim for continues!) There are also lectures about the Special stat split in Gen 2 as well as differentiation between Physical and Special attacks.

The New Features section features a brief lecture on Held Items.

------------------------

Practical Exams

Camper Cole

Cole's battle is all about understanding the weaknesses of grass-type pokemon. Just choose the pokemon that are strong against Grass-types and you're good to go.

Super Nerd Melvin

Melvin's battle, like Cole, is about type match-ups. This time, it's the Fire Type, but it's a little bit more complicated this time. Instead of simply selecting pokemon that are of types strong against his, all of your pokemon are Normal Types! In order to see the right ones, you'll have to check each of their moves as each of them know an elemental attack. Make sure you chose the ones with moves strong against Fire-types!

Schoolboy Carson

Carson's team is a bit more technical than the previous two. This time you have to deal with a variety of types rather than just one specialty. The correct choices are pretty easy to figure out though because the wrong pokemon all have terrible moves for the battle. A bit more strategy goes into the actual battle, but just make sure you always have the type advantage and you're good to go.

SwimmerM Clayton

Clayton's team is all about using defensive moves like Barrier and Acid Armor to minimize damage. Thankfully, among your selection of pokemon you have three pokemon that use fixed-damage moves. Just keep using those and his defenses are useless.

Youngster Jonathan

The puzzle with Jonathan's battle is pretty clear from the dialogue, he'll be using moves like Solar Beam and Skull Bash and you'll need to strategically use Fly and Dig to avoid damage. Don't just assume you know which pokemon to select, though! You may assume Dugtrio will know Dig, for example, but it actually doesn't! Check your moves before selecting the pokemon!

Picknicker Cyndy

Cyndy is all about using the move Amnesia to power up her pokemon's Special Defense. Once again, the strategy here is pretty clear. Just look for the pokemon with physical attacks and her special defense won't mean a thing.

Lass Nancy

Nancy can be a bit annoying. Her strategy is all about evasion. She'll build up her evasion with Double Team while reducing your accuracy with moves like Sand Attack and Smokescreen. The solution to this is obvious, just use the pokemon with moves that either can't miss or moves like Haze and Foresight to remove stat changes. What makes this annoying is that, no matter what, even if you use Haze or Foresight every other turn, you're pretty much always going to have to deal with reduced accuracy so if you're unlucky, this battle can go on for a long time. To help save some time, keep in mind that Foresight can still miss. Noctowl's Return may deal more damage, but Golbat's Haze will always neutralize stat changes.

===========

Once you've cleared the Trainer Class exams, you'll earn the Pichu Medal and move on to the Gym Leader Class!

May 14, 2020

On 12/05/2020 at 14:48, Aura said:

Passing Blackthron gym seemed like a fantasy

Considering how much of a wall Team Rocket and especially Clair is in Stadium 2, this line honestly doesn't surprise me.

May 14, 2020

Gym Leader Class

============

Lectures

The lectures in the gym leader class come in fewer number, so you don't end up spending too much time in this one.

The Type match-ups section covers the ins and outs of dual-typed pokemon and the effects their typing has on damage multipliers. It also demonstrates just how much damage you can deal in a theoretical example of an Ampharos using Thunder on a Gyarados and getting a critical hit, leading to Thunder getting a 12x multiplier. But this can actually technically be improved further if Ampharos was holding a Magnet, adding an extra 1.1x multiplier!

The Status Problems section covers the difference between indicated status conditions such as burn, sleep, and paralysis and non-indicated status conditions, such as confusion, infatuation, and curse.

The Moves section covers some more strategies in deciding which moves to teach your pokemon. In the Trainer Class, set damage moves were discussed more as a way to get around the opponent's high defense. Here, it's suggested as a way to work around a pokemon's own low stats. The section suggests teaching Gengar Night Shade because its low physical attack makes it difficult to effectively use standard Ghost attacks like Shadow Ball. This section also expands on the Fly and Dig strategies by covering ways to counter these moves with the select few moves that still hit the opponent even if they're in the air or underground. Lastly, this section also covers the importance of teaching one pokemon a variety of attack types to deal with a variety of opponents rather than just pokemon it's normally strong against, such as teaching Typhlosion Thunderpunch to deal with Water types.

The Trainer Battles section covers more strats to use in decision making when going into a battle. This section covers advice on what type of pokemon to choose first, suggesting starting with a pokemon with few weaknesses like a Normal- or Electric-type. I, personally, like to choose a pokemon with many resistances like Magneton. Just make sure you have other pokemon that resist its weaknesses so you can switch out if necessary. Earl also suggests to include a pokemon with an immunity such as a Ground- or Flying-type pokemon. It's always a good choice to have at least one of these so that you can get some free switches! And this is exactly what's covered in the next lecture--switching! The final lecture--Reading the Situation--covers the importance of paying attention to your opponent's stats and not just their type. It suggests an oddly specific example of an Alakazam against a Blissey. Earl suggests using Headbutt instead of Psychic because of Blissey's immense special defense but low physical defense. But I can't imagine any reason you would teach your Alakazam Headbutt in the first place. In most cases, I think you'd be better off taking the chance to set up some sort of status move before switching into a pokemon better equipped to battle Blissey.

The New Features section once again touches on Held Items, this time it goes a bit more in-depth about more specific strategies involving these items and certain moves such as using a Bitter Berry in combination with the move Outrage, or a Mint Berry with Rest. These are pretty basic strategies, but they can prove to be really effective! I'd personally also suggest giving a PRZCureBerry to a pokemon that relies a lot on outspeeding its opponent. There's also a lecture detailing basic breeding mechanics and move inheritance. Again, in a time where there was no Bulbapedia to look this stuff up, this was actually a really useful tool in figuring this stuff out!

===========

Practical Exams

----------------------

Pokemaniac Joseph

Joseph's team is mostly irrelevant. The goal of this battle is to pile on a bunch of status conditions onto the opponent so that they can't get their attacks off. The wrong pokemon choices all have several status moves that can't stack together such as Stun Spore and Sleep Powder. Thankfully, Joseph isn't smart enough to try to switch out of Infatuation or Confusion, so it's just a matter of persistence.

---------------------

Kimono Girl Naomi

Naomi's puzzle requires you to pay attention to the held items of your pokemon. She'll warn you ahead of time that her starting pokemon will be Murkrow. That's very nice to know because two of the three correct choice pokemon only know Mud Slap as a harming move. All of the wrong choice pokemon have held items that don't work well with their movesets. Once you've put two and two together between the held items and movesets, your strategy will be pretty clear.

---------------------

Lass Tammy

Tammy is a bit trickier than the others so far. She'll telegraph two of her chosen pokemon--Gyarados and Magcargo--ahead of time. Obviously, you'll want to chose the pokemon with moves with 4x strength against those two. For her third pokemon, you'll have to take note of the fact that she only has pure Grass types. Just going for something that's strong against these isn't going to cut it. You'll need to make sure your pokemon can take Grass-type attacks as well! Since the order of her pokemon choices isn't made clear, you're also likely to have to switch around a bit in order to actually win.

---------------------

Youngster Dustin

Dustin's strategy is telegraphed from the start once again, he's gonna use Fly! But again, you'll have to pay attention to his team in order to avoid being caught by surprise as he also has some pokemon that will use Dig as well. You're gonna need to choose the pokemon that will be able to hit the opponent while they're flying or digging as well as pokemon that will be capable of taking these hits!

--------------------

Schoolboy Nolan

Nolan thinks he's got you all figured out. He'll be using a selection of pokemon with high special defence to protect against your team of Psychic types, but among your Psychic-Type pokemon are ones that know physical attacks! Choose those and his special defense will be useless.

===========

Upon clearing the exams for the Gym Leader Class, you're awarded the PIkachu Medal! All that's left here is the Elite Four Class!

May 15, 2020

Elite Four Class

=============

Lectures

The Type match-ups section here really just covers a single topic expanding upon just how high damage multipliers can get. This time it adds in the effects of Held Items I suggest before along with the effects of weather. It also adds in examples of the Light Ball for PIkachu and the Thick Club for Marrowak and Cubone which doubles the damage of their special and physical attacks respectively. Altogether, this can add up to a multiplier as high as 24x the normal damage meaning even a move with power as low as 10 would effectively have 240 power. With the move Thunder which has the base power of 120? That's 2,880 power. Obviously, this is a very extreme example but imagining the extent of something like this is kind of hilarious.

The Moves section features some even more technical advice on deciding which moves to use and when. There's a lecture on support moves explaining that some, like Confuse Ray and Hypnosis, work regardless of the opponent's type while others like Thunder Wave or Toxic don't work on certain pokemon that would normally be immune to their types or status ailments. This lecture brings up the interesting point that the message printed to the screen when a move fails to work varies subtly depending on whether or not there was a chance the move could have succeeded. "It didn't affect" implies that the move can affect the target pokemon but simply failed to, while "it doesn't affect" implies that it will never work. This is honestly a pretty silly distinction and I've never been fond of this concept, but I suppose it's there for balancing purposes. Even I've been tripped up here and there thinking certain status moves wouldn't work because of typing (like assuming Sand Attack wouldn't work against Flying pokemon). Another lecture covers how to work around an opponent that outspeeds you. It suggests the use of priority moves, the use of status moves to increase your speed or reduce your opponent's, and, my personal favorite, paralyzing the opponent to severely cripple its speed. This lecture also describes the advantages to outspeeding your opponent. Another lecture covers further advice on giving a pokemon a well-rounded moveset in order to help a pokemon deal with a variety of types. I'm not a super big fan of some of the advice given here, as it suggest things like teaching Blizzard to a Cubone to help it deal with other Ground-types, but this seems like a wasted move slot given Cubone's lack of special attack. Still, the advice of covering for your pokemon's weaknesses is certainly valid advice that is always a staple in team building. The next lesson covers combos, moves that work well together like Defense Curl and Rollout or Lock-On and Zap Cannon. There are several other combos listed here, but more or less the general consensus is to use status moves in conjunction with attacking moves that work well with the advantages those moves provide. The final lecture expands a bit on the previous one and discusses combos that depend on more situational circumstances. For example, Stom deals double damage against a pokemon that's used Minimize or how SolarBeam can be used on turn 1 during sunlight. Again, if you don't know a lot of the technical aspects of pokemon, you may be surprised by some of the combos listed here.

The Trainer Battles section opens up with a lecture on Offense-minded switching. I'm not too fond of the way this information is presented, especially the example given as it shows a switch from Pikachu to Sunflora to deal with a Cubone's impending Ground-type attack. This is a terrible idea because Sunflora would likely go down before it can even get a hit up, especially considering the example in one of the previous lessons that suggested teaching Cubone Blizzard! Switching into a pokemon that doesn't resist the attack it's getting hit by is a terrible idea unless you're confident the pokemon's stats will allow it to either take two hits from whatever the opponent is capable of dishing out, or you'll be able to outspeed. I can only really recommend switching into a pokemon that has a type advantage if you're confident the opponent is going to use a status move and this switch is going to disrupt their strategy, or can take the damage from the incoming attack anyway. This honestly seems like a lesson that should have been swapped with the lesson on Defensive Switching because switching offensively seems like such a basic and relatively bad strategy to begin with. Then again, it does take a bit more of technical know-how to pull off effectively, so maybe that's why it's placed here. The next lesson finally covers the point that had been bothering me this whole time. The fact that a super-effective attack isn't necessarily going to provide the best result. The example given is a Tauros using Thunder against Mantine. Even though it's 4x effective, Mantine has really high Special Defense while Tauros has really low Special Attack, so the attack wouldn't actually do as much as a move like Body Slam. Reading the situation like this certainly does take a lot of attention to detail, though, and I can't imagine a lot of players would think this far ahead. But in order to clear games like Stadium, this is the type of thinking you're really going to have to apply! The final section is perhaps the most complicated one. It gives advice on predicting what moves your opponent will use and suggests you take into account all the knowledge you have on building your own movesets in conjuction with your knowledge of your opponent's pokemon and team. Basically, put yourself in your opponent's shoes and try to think of what moves you would consider teaching their pokemon and pay attention to when they're switching what pokemon in. If they switch their Starmie in against your Water-type, chances are it'll probably know Thunder, so you may want to counter by switching into a Ground-type then anticipating the inevitable water or ice attack and switching into a pokemon that can resist that. It's a complicated mess of thinking several steps ahead but it's something you get used to as you do these battles.

The New Features section discusses held items once again. This time, it provides advice on how to get held items from the core games. This lecture focuses on items held by wild pokemon or pokemon traded over from Red Blue and Yellow. It suggests the use of Thief to steal held items from wild pokemon that might be holding a rare item! There is also another lecture on breeding, this time covering Egg moves and how to check the compatibility of two pokemon.

============

Practical Exams

-------------------

Cooltrainer M Conner

Conner's strategy is telegraphed from the start of the battle. He's going to use nothing but Hyper Beam throughout the battle. His pokemon are also all really high-level, meaning if Hyper Beam hits the wrong pokemon, it's going down. This one is actually pretty fun. Two of your pokemon have moves that will power up their attacks further beyond just being super-effective but you'll also need something that can take some powerful hits. Good thing you also have a Shuckle which is known pretty much exclusively for its impossibly high defences! Throughout the battle, you'll need to use a pokemon that's strong against the opponent and can take them out in one shot, usually by exploiting a 4x weakness along with your own held item. If you can't one-shot the opponent, you'll need to switch into Shuckle to take the hit and then switch into another pokemon during Hyper Beam's cooldown.

------------------

Cooltrainer F Becky

Becky has a similar strategy to Conner, but she has the added caveat that she likes to boost her pokemon's stats first. This is good for you because you're going to need that extra turn to build up your speed or reduce hers! All of her pokemon will outspeed yours, but a single Agility or Icy Wind is all you need to fix that. From there, you'll need to use Endure to survive the Hyper Beam, then hound on her with Reversal! As long as you're careful and use Endure every other turn to keep withstanding Hyper Beam, you'll never go down even when you can't take them down in two hits.

------------------

Juggler Ferris

Ferris telegraphs two of his chosen pokemon. You'll have to choose the appropriate pokemon to counter them while utilizing certain move combos in order to ensure you'll be able to actually deal enough damage. But you don't know what his last pokemon will be! But, if you pay close attention to which pokemon have effective combos, you should have no problems figuring out which ones to use. I actually failed this one a couple of times because it's not really clear which pokemon to use where. Perhaps I was simply overthinking, but I would have assumed Dragonite would have something to take out Steelix relatively easily. Since Golem was strong against Dragonite, I figured that would have been the correct choice. Clearly that wasn't the logic they used with this battle. Plus, even if you have the correct strategy going in, it's still possible you'll fail due to RNG with crits and misses because the battle isn't so stacked in your favor like usual.

-------------------

Swimmer F Julian

Again, this battle is pretty RNG-heavy. Julian's strategy is telegraphed from the start. She'll use Rain Dance to boost the accuracy of Thunder to 100%. Just like the other battles though, there's just too much that's not conveyed from the start. Her Starmie and Staryu both use Minimize to increase their evasion. I suppose the idea is to use Stomp which will deal double damage, but after several misses and two crits from Thunder... Yeah, I'm not really sure at all what you're expected to do about this other than get lucky. In hindsight, I suppose I could have just continued to go for the Sunny Day Solar Beam combo in spite of Minimize, but that just felt like something I wasn't intended to do? I dunno, but I didn't really like this one too much. Thankfully, I was still able to win but if too many attacks miss, it's just over.

=============

For clearing the exams in the Elite Four class, we've now earned the Raichu medal and unlocked new content in the Library!

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Library

While not anything super useful by today's standards, the Library was a godsend in the days before Bulbapedia and Serebii were so readily available. This area catalogues detailed information about all sorts of areas from the game. All content from Gold and Silver is locked out until you obtain all the stars in the Classroom, and to unlock information on Crystal you have to play the game with a copy of Crystal plugged in already, but there's lots of useful information here! Studying the information here can really help prepare anyone for what they can expect going into the other modes. If you're intimidated by the difficulty of the Stadium Games, I strongly recommend going through Earl's lectures and then poking around here in the library for information that can help you!

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Items is a catalogue of every possible item and their effects from both gens 1 and 2.

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Pokemon lists every obtainable Pokemon from both gens. Selecting a pokemon brings up a list of every possible move it can learn and how it can be learned! Hovering over a specific move will show in the top right of the screen what level the move is learned at and/or what TM can be used to teach it.

You can also check each pokemon's evolution trees to learn how to evolve it! Where nothing in the core games give you explicit information about this, here it's spelled out plain as day! I can't find any screenshots of this, but evolving pokemon is something that's always given me a bit of anxiety when playing a new pokemon game. So having a reliable source of information for how to evolve a pokemon is really nice!

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If you're interested in seeking out a specific move and who can use it, you can instead go to the Move list. This section will detail all sorts of information about each move and you may be surprised what you'll find about certain moves.

You can also click on an individual move to see a list of every pokemon that can learn it and, again, at what level or with what TM they can learn it in each game.

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Type match-ups lets you see a pretty standard Type match-up chart. You can even view matchups against double-typing by pressing A under a specific pokemon's type. By pressing C-up, you can list all the pokemon of that type and by pressing C-left you can list all the moves. If you don't know your Type match-ups very well, you can use this tool to help you plan what moves to teach your pokemon to cover for types it struggles against!

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Controls just explains the basic controls of Stadium 2. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to put this section in the game, but if you're really confused by the GUI and don't have the Instruction Booklet, I suppose this could be of use to you.

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Lastly, the Egg Groups section is a Breeder's best friend. This lets you search by the pokemon you want to breed, the pokemon you want to breed for, or simply check which pokemon are compatible to breed with each other. Unfortunately, there's no way to check for Egg Moves here, so you'll have to manually navigate to the Moves list to figure out which parents can pass on what Egg Moves to their offspring.

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While nothing in the Library is too terribly impressive by today's standards, I wanted to take special note of it because I find it really interesting that this game from 2000 has so much information readily available to the player that these days the main series games hardly seem to address at all! It's always been bizarre to me just how much information is hidden away from the players despite the prevalence of things such as the World Championship these days. I think the closest to this Library Game Freak has ever put out since was Pokedex 3D Pro back in Gen 5 and even that doesn't contribute nearly as much information as this mode! It would be nice for there to be an official source of information like this today, but I suppose it's a good thing that Game Freak seems content with allowing sites like Serebii and Bulbapedia to provide as detailed information as they possibly can. I shudder to think of a world where GameFreak is so uptight about their copyright that they decide to take action against these sites and provide their own sub-par sources of information...

Anyway, long story short, I am very happy Earl's Pokemon Academy was included. I imagine this single mode inspired many players to get into competitive battling back in the day! It really is a shame we've never seen anything quite like it since, especially given how many obscure facts there are about the mechanics even in the modern game that many people do not know.

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Well, with Pokemon Academy behind us, I suppose the next step is to move on in Stadium Mode!

May 16, 2020

Stadium

And now it's time for Stadium mode! I think the Pokemon Academy was a much-needed change of pace because now that I've taken that brief break from the action, I'm feeling much more excited to get into some genuine pokemon battles! I think the best place to start here would have to be the Poke Cup where I can use the same team from Gym Leader Castle with the minor exception that I won't be able to use Ho-oh since it's banned here.

Before progressing any further, I hopped back into GB Tower to level up two of my pokemon so that I'd have a nicely-rounded team for Poke Cup. As explained previously, you're allowed any combination of three pokemon whose combined levels don't exceed 155. For maximum flexibility, you'll want to have two pokemon at level 52 and spread your team evenly across the rest at 51. This way, no matter what your pokemon are all at the highest possible level and you'll always be able to select any three pokemon from your team. There are some other strategies you can use, such as having a single level 55 pokemon surrounded by level 50's. In my case, it may have actually been better to have Magnanimus at level 53 and Katana at 52 with the rest being level 50 since I pretty consistently used both of these pokemon throughout Gym Leader Castle, but since the majority of my pokemon were already level 51, this strategy would be an impossibility. Having two pokemon at level 52 was simply my best choice.

Magnanimus and Katana were consistently MVP the most throughout my Gym Leader Castle playthrough, so I decided these two would be the best fit for these spots. I was originally planning on going into the Poke Cup with the same team I'd used throughout Gym Leader Castle, but I've made some observations based on my experiences in Gym Leader Castle, namely that Somnium really didn't see much play at all. And in a mode that encourages me to keep all of my pokemon alive, relying on a move like Destiny Bond to keep a pokemon relevant probably wasn't the best choice. Don't worry, Somnium has plenty of use in catching certain specific legendary pokemon which we'll definitely do going forward. I decided to bench him in favor of one of my pokemon from Gold.

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Poke Cup Team

Gold

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Quilliam -- Typhlosion M

Level 51

Moves: Fire Punch, ThunderPunch, Sunny Day, Iron Tail

Item: Charcoal

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Totalleon -- Feraligatr M

Level 51

Moves: Surf, Earthquake, Ice Punch, Screech

Item: NeverMeltIce

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Gunthur -- Golem M

Level 51

Moves: Earthquake, Explosion, Defense Curl, Rollout

Item: Focus Band

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Cross -- Scizor F

Level 51

Moves: Steel Wing, Quick Attack, Slash, Swords Dance

Item: Bitter Berry

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Magnanimus -- Magneton

Level 52

Moves: SonicBoom, Thunder Wave, Thunder, Swagger

Item: Quick Claw

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Katana -- Skarmory F

Level 52

Moves: Toxic, Fly, Sandstorm, Steel Wing

Item: Leftovers

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Poke Cup

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Poke Cup -- PokeBall Division

As always, the PokeBall Division is a walk in the park. Not really much to say here.

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Round 1

Bug Catcher Nelson

Nelson here is your standard first opponent who didn't realize you had to have a post-game team for this game. For some reason, Serebii lists him as having two Ledyba but... wait... that's illegal. Just another mistake I've noticed in this section. He actually has a Yanma. Needless to say, Gunthur was able to sweep through this team effortlessly using Rollout.

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Round 2

Swimmer M Bruce

Bruce's team is another staple. A natural follow-up to the bug catcher who doesn't know to bring a post-game team is the mono-type trainer who doesn't know what type coverage is. Magnanimus was able to tear through this team no problem, though due to relying on Thunder instead of ThunderBolt, it took a little bit longer than it needed to.

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Round 3

Hiker Chester

I actually really liked this guy's personality. He was surprisingly wholesome and just here for fun.

His team, though, isn't much better off than the Swimmer before him. Totalleon was able to make quick work of this entire team and there wasn't really much he could do about it. He is the first trainer to have a full team that takes full advantage of the level boundaries, though not in a particularly useful way. His Onix and Phanpy are both level 53, so they can't be used on the same team. The rest of his pokemon are all level 51.

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Round 4

Super Nerd Clifford

Clifford's team is mostly level 50 with a level 55 Electrode and Porygon. Obviously, he'll choose one of these two and build the rest of his team around it. His team has a bit more diversity, but it's still very weak to Ground-types. I opened with Gunthur, but when he sent out his Porygon, I decided to play it safe and switch to Cross on the off-chance that it knew Ice Beam or Blizzard to cover for the rest of his team's weakness to ground. This was a bit of a mistake, though, because instead it opted to go for Swagger. While my Bitter Berry protected Cross from the first swagger, the second left her confused with +4 attack. I got the bad end of the coin toss for the rest of the battle and to add insult to injury, Porygon's tri-attack burned Cross which made it so that she could survive hitting herself one more time, but then died immediately after to the burn. Unfortunately, no perfect on this round. On the flipside, I now had soft confirmation that this Porygon didn't have an Ice attack, so Gunthur was safe to come back out and finish it off.

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Round 5

Beauty Alissa

Alissa's team ranges from 51-52 with her two 52's being her Skiploom and Qwilfish. This is the first team that at least makes an attempt to cover for its own weaknesses. Magnanimus was able to tear away at her team without much of an issue, though.

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Round 6

Burglar Jenson

As a Burglar, Jenson likes to steal your Held Items with thief. This isn't too much of a problem for me as none of my pokemon rely on their items too terribly much here. His Charmeleon and Electabuzz are both level 53 while his Gligar and Houndour are level 52. This means that Charmeleon and Electabuzz can't be on the same team and if either of them are there, then he also has to make a choice between Gligar or Houndour. His remaining Persian and Quilava are both level 50 so they can fit on any team. Obviously, Gunthur and Totalleon both helped out here. He tried to wall Gunthur with Gligar, but a quick switch to Totalleon allowed me to make quick work of it with Ice Punch.

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Round 7

Boarder Claude

Claude threatens to "freeze your entire team". Once again, though, that's illegal. Freeze Clause! Funnily enough, the only pokemon on his team that's even capable of freezing you is his Sneasel which knows Ice Punch. The rest just use Icy Wind which only lowers your speed. I would have used Quilliam, but his Vaporeon scared me into going for Magnanimus as my lead instead. Unfortuantely, he led with Tauros. Afraid of an Earthquake, I swtiched into Cross only to be hit instead with... thunder? Yeah, this Tauros has a bizarre special moveset with his only particularly useful move being Strength. Turns out Magnanimus would have been able to stay in just fine. Regardless, this was a good opportunity to set up Swords Dance and tear through his team with Metal Claw and Slash.

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Final Round

Psychic Mason

Smeargle is always a scary pokemon to see. Because its only move is Sketch, it can legally know literally any combination of moves you can think of. It suffers in the stat department, but don't underestimate its ability to ruin your day! This one in particular knows some annoying moves: Spore, a 100% accurate sleeping move, and Confuse Ray on top of Seismic Toss to get around defenses and Lugia's signature Aeroblast! Mason's Raichu, Clefable, Slowpoke and Natu are all level 52 meaning she can have at most two of these. His Growlithe and Smeargle are both level 51 meaning one of these will always be on her team and it's a pretty safe bet that'll be Smeargle. His team is pretty well-balanced. I decided to lead with Gunthur but I was worried about his Clefairy's moveset potential, so I switched into Totalleon expecting an Ice attack. Sure enough, Totalleon took an Ice Punch. I used Earthquake but was met by a Thunderpunch, so on the next turn I decided to switch back to Gunthur and then finish it off with another Earthquake. He next sent out his Slowpoke which had me worried about its potential moveset. I switched back to Totalleon and this thing decided to use Curse. I was a little worried about whatever this thing could do to me, but I kept Earthquaking away knowing that, worst-case scenario, I'd be able to send out Magnanimus to finish it off. This thing baffled me, though. Instead of using any physical move after all of its Cursing, it just used Psychic, completely ignoring all of its Attack buffs. In hindsight, the only physical attack it knows is Dig so it does make sense that it wouldn't use this against an opponent that's spamming Earthquake, but I still thought it was kinda funny. Of course, his last pokemon was his Smeargle which only used Seismic Toss against me, so I actually had no idea about his other absurdly powerful moves. It's a good thing I didn't take any chances when I sent out Magnanimus, either. I just parafused this thing because I'd rather not figure out what its other moves could be. After that, it went down pretty easily.

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And with that, we won the Pokeball Division trophy! But of course that's not all, there's three more divisions to go in this tournament!

May 17, 2020

Poke Cup -- Great Ball Division

Unlike in Stadium 1, it turns out the opponents for each division are completely different! This is certain to make stadium mode much less repetitive this time around!

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Round 1

Pokefan F Carmen

Carmen's team is much more balanced than Nelson's and her levels are mostly at 51 with her Pikachu and Meowth at 52. On the surface, Gunthur seemed like the perfect start, especially when she opened up with Pikachu. But she caught me off guard when her PIkachu pulled out Dynamicpunch! It didn't do much damage, but the confusion coupled with PIkachu's Double Team made this a bit of a nightmare to open up with. Unfortunately Pikachu was able to take out Gunthur, but thankfully Totalleon was able to get an Earthquake off without too much of an evasion issue. After that, the rest of her team was a breeze. It seems she likes to use Encore to trap you into a bad move, but when all you're really doing is spamming Earthquake, that's not much of an issue. I suppose her main focus is trapping your pokemon with Shuckle's Wrap then letting Swagger make you take yourself out. But thanks to some quick switching into Katana, I was able to get Toxic off before it set up Safeguard, so its fate was sealed.

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Round 2

Youngster Wyatt

Wyatt's team is actually lower level than Carmen's with his team being level 51 across the board. His team is pretty vulnerable to Fire-Types so I led with Quilliam whose Thunderpunch would also help deal with his Pidgeotto if necessary. Katana was also a pretty obvious choice to wall his more physical pokemon and make quick work of Heracross and the grass-types. With those two, this team didn't stand much of a chance at all. All of their movesets were pretty standard stuff. I can see his Pidgeotto being a little annoying if only because it likes to spam Sand Attack, but Toxic and Sandstorm are always a wonderful duo~

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Round 3

Firebreather Cliff

As you can probably assume just by looking at it, Cliff's team loves Sunny Day. Which made it all the more satisfying to jam his Vileplume's Solar Beam strat with a mixture of Sandstorm and Fly. Unfortunately, he did see through that strat and paralyzed Katana with Stun Spore, but even then Solar Beam only did a quarter damage against an already especially bulky pokemon. Other than that, Gunthur and Totalleon were able to make quick work of the rest. His Vileplume and Cubone are both level 53 while his Rapidash and Ninetails are level 51. So he can only use either Vileplume or Cubone and if he does, then he also can only choose Ninetails or Rapidash.

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Round 4

Biker Dillon

I actually had to use a continue on this battle. Not because I was caught off guard or outsmarted or anything, just because his Koffing used Destiny Bond and I misunderstood how the move worked based on one of the Pokemon Academy lectures listing working around Destiny Bond as a benefit of Speed. For some reason, I thought that Destiny Bond would only work on pokemon who attack you after you use it in the same round. So, when I saw that Gunthur outsped his Koffing, I just went ahead and used Earthquake and embarrassingly walked headfirst into his Destiny Bond. With Gunthur down, I had no answer to his level 55 Ampharos and lost the battle there. Rest in peace.

The second time, I smartened up a bit. I went in with the same team and same lead, Cross. I originally switched out in fear of Smokescreen, but this time I left Cross in and set up Swords Dance. My goal was to max out my attack while Koffing tried to wall me with Destiny Bond. Swords Dance would certainly allow me to outstall the max PP of Destiny Bond if need be, but that didn't prove necessary because he quickly caught on to my plan and exploded on me instead. Unable to set up more than one Swords Dance, I wasn't confident in Cross' ability to take out Ampharos with Slash, so I switched instead to Gunthur knowing from experience there was little to nothing Ampharos could possibly do to a Golem. After that, all it took was a Fly from Skarmory to pick off his Weepinbell. His entire team is built around hindering your pokemon in preparation for Ampharos, so once you take that central pillar down the rest of his team just crumbles away.

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Round 5

Teacher Molly

During the battle, it wasn't totally clear what Molly's strategy was other than confusing my pokemon, but looking at her movesets now it's clear she's all about Baton Pass and I simply never gave her the chance to build her stats. She led with her Aipom against Cross and I must say something about getting hit with Swagger while holding a Bitter Berry makes you feel like an Shonen anime villain. Unfortunately, I missed with Steel Wing which led to Cross getting confused anyway. Thankfully, I was able to outlast the confusion and take it out. Totalleon and Magnanimus were enough to take care of the rest of her team pretty easily. Her Dragonair caught me off guard with a Fire Blast. I'm used to these things knowing Blizzard or Thunder. Fire Blast is a bit of an odd choice given these team setup as well, but it's all fair, she just got a surprise KO on Cross. Her last pokemon was her Ledian and, well, Ledian's just a joke of a pokemon period. I could have dealt with this thing using a Hoppip.

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Quarterfinal

Sage Chen

Chen's team features two level 53's, his Murkrow and Jynx. Neither of which he actually used against me, to my surprise. Instead, he went for his level 52 Zubat, 51 Haunter, and 50 Mystreavous. His Spinarak is also level 50. This is a pretty out-of-place easy battle. Sinc emost of Chen's pokemon are unevolved, they all lack the stats to really pose a threat. They all open up with Mean Look to trap you into battle. After Earthquaking his Haunter, a Defense Curl Rollout was enough to take care of the rest. Though it turns out his Zubat knows Giga Drain, so it probably could have taken Gunthur out pretty easily had he thought to use that. Not entirely sure why he didn't.

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Semifinal

Pokefan M Baxter

Baxter's team has some decent variance, but Totalleon was pretty well-equipped to deal with the majority of it between Earthquake and Ice Punch. His Octillery is level 53 while Serebii lists Lickitung as 52 but I seem to recall it being level 53 in the battle. It's possible I'm mistaken, but given the track record of these Serebii pages for this game I wouldn't be surprised if the page is wrong on this one as well. Lanturn and Pineco are 51, and Magcargo and Sunflora are both 50. Octillery makes it impossible to use Lickitung and vice versa. His team has mostly pretty predictable movesets though I'm surprised to find out his Magcargo and Sunflora don't know Sunny Day. When I saw these two pokemon together I figured that was exactly the strategy he'd be going for between them.

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Final

Pokemaniac Pedro

Pedro's team is shockingly average compared to the final round of the Pokeball Division. I thought this team would be a bigger threat at first because I mistook his Seadra for a Kingdra. His Seadra, Noctowl, and Raticate are all level 52 while the rest of his team is only level 51. His team is pretty varied in terms of types, but Quilliam's Iron Tail was able to deal with Pupitar pretty nicely. Granted, he did take a solid hit from Earthquake, but he was able to hold on with a little bit of health left and even get a Thunderpunch off on Seadra! His Raticate was surprisingly the biggest threat on his team thanks to Super Fang, but Magnanimus was able to take him out with Thunder.

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And now the Great Ball division trophy which disappointingly looks identical to the Pokeball trophy is ours! Two more divisions to go!

May 18, 2020

Poke Cup -- Ultra Ball Division

It turns out the Ultra Ball Division actually has the same trainers as the Pokeball Division but with upgraded teams!

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Round 1

Bug Catcher Nelson

Nelson's team is once again very vulnerable to Rollout, but not completely this time around. Still, when he led with Scyther, all it used was Metal Claw, even after switching to Quilliam. I took advantage of this by setting up Sunny Day and with that was able to sweep the rest of his team with Fire Punch.

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Round 2

Swimmer M Bruce

Bruce's Slowbro and Quagsire are both level 54 meaning one of these two are pretty much guaranteed. His Kabutops and Poliwrath are level 51 so only one of these two are likely to be chosen while his level 50's are Magneton and Dewgong. I actually pretty severely underestimated the AI in this battle and ended up losing an easy opportunity for a perfect. He loves making it rain then swtiching to Magneton to use Thunder. My underestimation came on several levels. First, I opened up with Magnanimus and tried to use Thunder, uncertain of whether or not he had his Quagsire to switch into. (I have a bad habit of not looking at the levels before starting the battle). He of course switched into Quagsire to block the attack, so I switched into Katana anticipating an Earthquake. With this matchup, I figured he'd go for an Ice Punch. Knowing Quagsire's special attack isn't too impressive, I stayed in and used Toxic. It instead used Rain Dance. I considered for a moment he might be using his Magneton, but I assumed the AI would want to keep this pokemon in if it had an advantageous move as I was still expecting an Ice Punch (it turns out this Quagsire doesn't actually know Ice Punch at all, but I didn't know that at the time). I went for Fly with the intention of stalling out his Toxic, then he switched into Magneton... it's pretty clear how that went for me. Thankfully, Totalleon was able to tank the rest of the battle and Rain Dance powered up his Surf making Quagsire an easy kill due to its relatively low Special Defense.

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Round 3

Hiker Chester

Chester loves to use Defense Curl and Rollout. Leading with Cross, I was able to set up a bunch of Swords Dance on his first pokemon and tear through the rest of his team, though naturally Foretress put up a decent fight because of its naturally high defenses. I could have switched into Quilliam to take it out, there's no doubt in my mind Quilliam would have been able to take a basic Rollout from this thing. But, I didn't want to lose Cross' high attack so I just went along with my superpowered Steel Wing which was still dealing some respectable damage. Due to Forretress' low attack, it took a while for its rollout to deal any respectable damage, even with Defense Curl. His Ursaring almost took Cross out thanks to surviving with its Focus Band, but for some reason he went for Lick instead of any more powerful move so Scizor was able to hold on with just one HP getting me a perfect sweep!

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Round 4

Super Nerd Clifford

Clifford's Skarmory and Porgyon2 are both level 53 so they can't be used together while is Corsola and Tentacruel are both 52. When he led with Tentacruel and stayed in to take Magnanimus' Thunder, I thought this would be a pretty easy battle. But his Ampharos was a mess of surprises, or rather a lack thereof. When he sent it out to answer Magnanimus after I took out his Tentacruel, I thought for sure I could anticipate a Fire Punch as it's a pretty solid staple for type-coverage on Ampharos. Anticipating this, I switched to Totalleon instead of Gunthur only to get pelted in the face with a powerful Thunder. Totalleon barely hung on with a sliver of health left, so I switched into Gunthur and got hit with Swift. I half-expected him to switch to a Skarmory when I used Earthquake, but thankfully Porygon2 was his last pokemon of choice. Ampharos couldn't do anything at all to Gunthur and his Porygon2 was able to take a few hits and was able to take out Gunthur before I was able to finish it off. No perfect here, unfortunately.

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Round 5

Beauty Alissa

I actually had quite a bit of fun with Alissa's team. Her Miltank and Wigglytuff are both level 53 while the rest are 51. Between Magnanimus, Katana, and Totalleon, I was able to Toxic her Lickitung and Mantine and switch or Fly until Toxic took them both out. Her Mantine was able to take out Katana only to be met with a Thunder from Magnanimus. I wasn't totally confident Thunder would deal too much damage because even though it's 4x strong against it, Mantine tend to have really high special defense. They can take some solid hits. I was able to finish her Persian off with simple parafusion. Normally I'm a bit more hesitant to rely on that strategy here because there's always the chance the opponent has a Miracleberry, Bitter Berry, or PRZCureBerry all of which severely hinder that strategy. Unlike in Gym Leader Castle, you have limited Continues here, so you don't want to be resorting to scoping things out. However, Persian happened to use Thief to steal my Quick Claw -- which in turn confirmed it didn't have a held item. So, I was able to parafuse to my heart's content.

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Quarterfinal

Burglar Jenson

Once again, Serebii mistakenly lists Jenson's Houndoom as a Houndour. Anyway, his Dugtrio, Gligar, Magcargo and Stantler are all level 52 so he'll always have to at least use his level 51 Typhlosion or Houndoom. His Houndoom, as usual, is a pretty heavy threat here due to its incredible speed. Its Crunch can deal tons of damage making it pretty scary. Totalleon was able to deal with most of this team, though I actually lost one of my continues here because I got greedy and switched Golem into his Houndoom trying to pursue a perfect victory. Yeah, you're gonna want ot let something go down to this thing rather than switching because almost nothing is going to outspeed it. This battle isn't too bad, though. In fact, I'm pretty confident I would have gotten a perfect the second time around had his Typhlosion not critted with Thunderpunch.

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Semifinal

Boarder Claude

Claude's team has been upgraded to make him a bit less of a liar. Now he has two ways to freeze you as his Delibird knows Blizzard. It's still clearly not a part of his strategy though and the presence of Flareon on his team makes that very clear. His Blastoise, Sneasel and Delibird are all level 52 while the rest are 51. There wasn't much to say here. I led with Cross but when he switched his Sneasel out for Flareon, I made the obvious switch to Totalleon and took it out. His last pokemon was Vaporeon which I may have been able to switch out for, but I learned my lesson against Jenson and I wasn't going to be making any decisions purely for the sake of earning a continue. Ideally, I won't be using any continues at all, so there's no need to get greedy! I let his Vaporeon take out Totalleon only to be finished off by a Slash from Cross. I had Magnanimus in my team to deal with Vaporeon, but Totalleon did enough damage on his own and Cross was a better fit to make quick work of Sneasel.

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Final

Psychic Mason

Mason's team consists of two level 53's: Arcanine and Xatu, two level 52's: Hypno and Smeargle, and his others are level 50. This means that, unless Arcanine and Xatu are both really bad matches for your team, he's likely to choose one from each category. I used my last continue for my first try because I assumed that due to the number of pokemon on my team weak to Fire, he'd go with Arcanine over Xatu, so his Xatu caught me off guard. Not only that, but Katana missed two Toxics in a row and it was using Night Shade and ever turn was healing the damage I'd dealt with Totalleon's Ice Punch with its leftovers. Thankfully, my second attempt I used the same pokemon and he did go with his Arcanine. Raichu of course landed a DynamicPunch and confused Gunthur. Gunthur was able to attack through confusion and hit it with Earthquake, but hit itself against Arcanine. I suppose that's a fair result. Arcanine's moveset actually isn't anything too terribly impressive so it didn't really have an answer to Totalleon. His last pokemon was Hypno which just spammed Shadow Ball. His Smeargle had me worried for the same reasons it did in the Poke Ball Cup, but looking at its moveset now, it looks like this thing is all about stalling you out by obnoxiously piling on Glare, Sweet Kiss, and Attract to get your pokemon Paralyzed, Confused, and Infatuated all at once. Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with this and even if I did, I think I'd likely be able to take it out with Toxic before it could take Katana out with confusion and headbutt.

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And now the Ultra Ball Division is behind me, leaving only the Master Ball Division to go through!

May 19, 2020

Poke Cup -- Master Ball Division

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Round 1

PokeFan F Carmen

Carmen's team is once again 51 across the board. Her Raichu was a bit annoying to the point where I actually just straight-up restarted against it. It uses Attract and Paralysis to stop your attacks. My first attempt, I didn't really have an answer to it because I figured I'd just be able to use Totalleon to take a Thunder/Thunderbolt and then tear through it with Earthquake, and I probably could have, but since switching in wasn't an option, that would have costed me a perfect and I figured there was no point in letting myself miss a continue here in Round 1, so I just started over. The second time, I led with Gunthur but she use her Raichu. Instead, she led with her Persian followed by Bellossom and Azumarill. None of which were particularly threatening, espeically when I was able to lock Bellossom into Petal Dance, giving me the chance to set up Sunny Day with Typhlosion.

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Round 2

Youngster Wyatt

Wyatt's Nidoqueen and Primeape are both level 53 while Pinsir and Raticate are 52. My battle with him turned out to be a little humorous. Totalleon seemed like a pretty solid lead against the majority of his team and I was able to deal with most of it pretty well, but his Raticate got me in a corner due to flinching with Hyper Fang, so I had to switch into Quilliam to finish it off. When Ditto came around was the interesting part. My initial plan for Ditto was to let it transform into Skarmory then take it out with Typhlosion or Totalleon, but since they were both low on health, my best bet here was to just leave my own Skarmory in. Since my Skarmory had Leftovers, there was nothing he could do while I slowly whittled its health away with Steel Wing. This took quite a long time, but it wasn't too bad.

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Round 3

Firebreather Cliff

Cliff's strategy was much the same as before, just with stronger pokemon. His Arcanine and Dodrio were both level 54. Dodrio is a very strange pokemon for his second level 54, but I suppose it's to switch in against Ground-type attacks, but it still seems really out of place since he also has an Exeggutor to counter Rock and Ground-types as well as Water. Anyway, nothing much to say here. His Houndour is still a bit of a powerhouse, but I was a bit more prepared this time around. Unfortunately, it was able to take out Quilliam, but I'd managed to do enough damage with ThunderPunch that he couldn't do anything to Gunthur.

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Round 4

Biker Dillon

In hindsight, I probably should have read Dillon's strategy just by looking at his choice pokemon. He uses Toxic, traps you in battle with moves like Clamp and Bind, then stalls you out. His Arbok and Cloyster are both level 51 so he's guaranteed to use at least one of them since the rest of his team is level 52. Both of them know Protect to help stall along with Wrap and Clamp respectively to keep you trapped. Arbok knows Dig to deal with Steel- and Poison-types while Cloyster knows Surf to counter the Ground-types he's weak to. It's actually a pretty well-put-together Toxic team. I went in the battle with Quilliam, Totalleon, and Gunthur. Had I been a bit smarter, I probably would have used Magnanimus instead of Totalleon to help deal with Cloyster. I think when I was selecting my team, his Cloyster just blended in with all the Poison and Rock types in my mind, so I don't think I really registered that he had a Water-type on his team. Totalleon didn't really have a proper counter to its high defense and the Protect strat put me in pretty big danger. As soon as I caught onto what was happening, I quickly switched to Quilliam in anticipation of a Clamp, but he strangely just went for another Protect which obviously failed. Thankfully, Quilliam's Thunderpunch was able to take it out in one shot--Cloyster severely lacks in special defense. He's one of the pokemon that were hurt pretty badly by the special split in gen 2. I unfortunately had to switch away from Quilliam against Rhydon. Otherwise, I'd have had no answer to his Venusaur which would be able to rip through the rest of my team. Otherwise, I definitely would have let Quilliam go down after getting a solid Iron Tail or two on it. His final pokemon turned out to just be his Weezing which was only remotely threatening because it happened to surprise me with Thunder, but it had no answer to Gunthur other than Fire Blast, so that was a win for me!

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Round 5

Teacher Molly

Molly's Lapras and Politoed are her level 53's while Lanturn and Mr. Mime are level 52. Her strategy clearly seems to be about building up her stats and then using Baton Pass to switch into Lapras or Politoed. She managed to get partway through her setup before I think she realized that her Reflect wasn't going to carry her against Cross' Swords Dance so she ended up with no choice but to Baton Pass into Politoed after a single Meditate which only increases attack by one stage. While Reflect did in fact make this battle a bit more difficult, Slash was able to deal enough damage to overcome it. With nothing to set up for, her Mr. Mime and Aipom went down without much of a fight.

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Quarterfinal

Sage Chen

Chen's Mysdreavus and Gengar are both level 51 meaning at least one of them are guaranteed. Again, the rest of his team is level 52. Just like in Great Ball, he loves to trap you with Mean Look and use various annoying moves on you. Confuse Ray and Perish Song being some of his favorites. Just take advantage of the free turns from Mean Look and Switch out whenever you're not locked in and you should be good to go. Gunthur was taken out by Umbreon's Confuse Ray and Screech combo before he was able to get a solid Rollout going, but after that I just switched back and forth between Magnanimus and Quilliam to take out the rest of his team.

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Semifinal

PokeFan M Baxter

This son of a bitch gave me a hell of a time. I actually lost all of my continues and game overed against him my first run because of constant RNG shenanigans ranging from his Blissey paralyzing me with Thunder, lucky burns from Typhlosion's Flamethrower, or even downright just happening to have chosen the perfect pokemon to counter my remaining team as his last choice every single time no matter how many times I changed up my team choices. His Feraligatr got a lot of lucky crits too, but I'll give that a pass because, just like Clair's Kingdra, it's holding a Scope Lens. His Typhlosion, Feraligatr, and Hitmontop are all level 52 so they can't all be on the same team, but aside from that he can use any combination of three and his team is pretty powerfully varied at that. Honestly, the only reason I won my next go around was because I got a crit against his Blissey. I think that's totally acceptable though because he also got a scumbag paralysis and burn on me in the same battle. This battle was a nightmare that I hope I won't have to revisit. I've got four continues going into the final battle, so hopefully there won't be any issues, but if RNG is this stacked against me now, I'm not looking forward to how the finals will go.

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Final

PokeManiac Pedro

This team was a nightmare just to look at. This was a collection of some of the toughest pokemon of the generation as well as some of the most infamous pokemon throughout Gym Leader Castle. Of course, his Dragonite and Tyranitar are both level 55 while the rest of his team is level 50 to compensate. Thankfully, this means you'll likely have the level advantage against most of his pokemon, but that definitely doesn't make this battle a pushover. His pokemon were all pretty capable of dishing out some heavy hits so you're gonna want to use some heavy walls to answer those. Between Magnanimus, Totalleon, and Katana who I shockingly didn't actually use all that much in this tournament, I was able to soak up enough damage to be able to counter his intense barrage of attacks.

===============

And now, the Master Ball division is finally completed and with it, the Poke Cup is finally completed!

It doesn't feel right going this far without listing an MVP for the entire cup. I can't really think of any one pokemon that really stood out across the entire cup. Quilliam really surprised me with how useful he turned out to be. I don't think I realized just how fast Typhlosion was. Similarly, Totalleon was a frequent switch-in due to just how many hits he could take. Magnanimus helped every time I didn't have an answer to a particular pokemon and its Thunder just tore through its enemies! Gunthur was a really powerful hitter and helped me out of some close calls, even surprising me a bit with his speed every now and then as well! Scizor was also a very consistent lead as he could take quite a few hits before going down. If I didn't know which pokemon to use, I'd usually just open up with Cross to scout the opponent's team out. Usually it could set up a couple Swords Dances and take a pokemon or two out. Unfortunately, it frequently got screwed by RNG and didn't end up shining as brightly as I'd hoped. Katana also surprisingly didn't see much play because a lot of opponents used Thunder which deterred me from using my Fly strategy. It was still helpful in picking off some of the more bulky opponents, though!

So, which one do I label as the best? I don't want to cop-out here and say "everyone!" but it's still a pretty tough choice. I think I'd ultimately have to go with Quilliam, though!

MVP: Quilliam

His speed consistently surprised me and allowed him to get some quick kills. I thought his not having Flamethrower would have been a bigger deal, but Fire Punch still did a lot more damage than I expected! Thunderpunch also allowed him to deal with the occasional water-type and I rarely felt the need to switch him out. Even when he would go down, Sunny Day often left a lasting impact on the battle, weakening his opponent's water attacks.

===============

Now that I don't have to worry about level restrictions, I think I'll take a brief break and focus instead on at least catching enough pokemon in Gold version to transfer my team from Red and Blue forward. From there, I think I just might play around with the idea of getting a team prepared for Little Cup. There's also Challenge Cup to stall for some extra time. I'm not really sure which of these I'll do next, but I can't guarantee I'll have daily updates due to the amount of grinding I'll have to do. I might make an update tomorrow focusing on Gold version and which pokemon I had to go out of my way to catch. I'm actually pretty excited about the idea of breeding for a competitive team! I'll definitely have to make some plans for this though.

May 20, 2020

7 hours ago, Aura said:

This team was a nightmare just to look at.

It was a nightmare to play against too. With rentals, you had to hope he either didn't bring Tyranitar at all or be dumb AI and not switch it in on your Kadabra or else you lose if he also brought Machamp. Kadabra is probably the best bet for dealing with Kingdra and you pretty much need Quagsire to handle Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, and the potential Zard. Dragonite can just go die in a fire, but he can't bring both Dragonite and Tyranitar together. Destiny Bond is used to deal with one of the big threats in this battle. Also, screw Dilan's Cloyster. In 2 failed Master Ball attempts, I lost to that thing because in the first attempt, he crit my Kadabra with Surf and got a high roll and instakilled, then on the second attempt, Kadabra lived on 3, then Cloyster's Quick Claw worked and he killed me.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to the fun you'll be having on Little Cup.

May 20, 2020

6 minutes ago, NyxAvatar69 said:

Also, screw Dilan's Cloyster. In 2 failed Master Ball attempts, I lost to that thing because in the first attempt, he crit my Kadabra with Surf and got a high roll and instakilled, then on the second attempt, Kadabra lived on 3, then Cloyster's Quick Claw worked and he killed me.

This physically hurts just to read. If this shit happened to me, I can only imagine the blind rage I'd go through if I'd struggled through some BS like that! I suppose across eight battles in a row, stuff like that's just bound to happen somewhere. Baxter gave me the most trouble with my team, but that may have been because I didn't really have a solid answer to both Typhlosion and Feraligatr and switching in against either is a no-go. Although it was certainly a welcome surprise to discover his Typhlosion didn't know ThunderPunch! But also, I still say it's complete BS that these trainers have Scope Lens given how absurdly rare the item is. Then again, he is a pokefan so if any trainer class would have access to one, I suppose it'd be one of them.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to be using a GB or Rental team for Little Cup... I suppose it's also possible to go for a mixture of the two. There are definitely some other pokemon I'd like to use before moving on from Gen 2 and I can't think of any more suitable way to prepare them than here! I just hope I have the TM's or have used them on pokemon that can pass them on... Most of my teams are Male, so that's a good sign! Though Magneton and Ho-oh are genderless, so no passing on Thunder or Earthquake from them... I'll definitely have to poke around, but Houndour and Abra I think are on the top of the list! I might even breed my Larvitar since I'm likely not going to be able to use Tyrannitar, but I'll have to see if Larvitar is even a viable option for Little Cup. I want to use Houndour now because he's basically inaccessible in Gen 3 and by Platinum, I feel like he's just not nearly as threatening anymore.

May 20, 2020

As previously stated, today I was going to be coming back to Pokemon Gold and doing a quick cleanup to catch whatever pokemon I may have missed along the way, but I decided I wanted to figure out my plans for Little Cup. That way I can go ahead and have some of my breeding going on while I'm hunting for pokemon. And let me tell you, I don't think I ever realized just how much depth there is to Little Cup until starting to make this plan.

First of all, egg moves. Many pokemon have hidden moves that they can only learn by inheriting them from their father. TM's can also be inherited as Egg Moves if the baby can naturally learn said TM. In other words, Male Pokemon are capable of passing on TM's while females cannot. Additionally, if both of the baby's parents know a move the baby can learn by level-up, it will inherit that move as well. Because of each of these mechanics, there is a lot to think about. In addition to this, you also have TM's that are only available in Gen 1, such as Ice Beam and Flamethrower. These cannot be passed on through breeding in Gen 2, but you can transfer a Gen 1 pokemon backwards, teach them the TM in RBY, then transfer them back to Gen 2. The limitation to this is that the pokemon cannot know any moves introduced in Gen 2. This means you'll have to delete any egg moves that do not exist in Gen 1 which consequently means if you want to use Gen 1 TM's, you cannot have any Gen 2 egg moves on the same pokemon.

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So, let's provide an example of one pokemon I was looking at: Porygon

Porygon is a genderless pokemon. This means its options are fairly limited in terms of inheritence. Its only possible father is Ditto. So, no matter what, it's default moves it's born with will be Conversion 2, Tackle, and Conversion 1. Obviously not a good moveset, so you'll need to spruce it up with some TM's! Porygon is pretty good at soaking up damage and dishing it out. I think some powerful special attacks as well as moves to get around specially defensive pokemon would be the way to go. I want this thing to be able to deal with as many different situations as possible without putting too much strain on it. In order to do this, I'll need to scavenge through my TM's from Gold and Silver to see just what I have access to. Some of the moves that stand out to me include:

Toxic, Swagger, and Psychic. Its speed isn't too great so I could also possibly teach it Curse.

But then a whole other can of worms opens up when I take a look at Gen 1 TM's. I could potentially teach this thing Ice Beam and Thunder Wave. The problem? I have no clue if I even have those TM's available to me in the other game. Ice Beam is purchasable thankfully, but Thunder Wave is a bit more questionable. Thing is, though, Thunder Wave actually isn't too far at all in a playthrough of Gen 1. It's totally feasible to just delete my save data in Red and scramble to Nugget Bridge then grab myself the TM no problem. Especially with the Dodrio Tower unlocked already in Stadium 1. Thunder Wave would be a bit help on a pokemon like Porygon and in conjunction with Swagger, I could have a repeat of Magnemite. On that note, I could also breed my Magneton and basically have a mini-me version of that on my team. But if possible, I'd like to use some different pokemon here.

There's also the MissingNo. Duplication glitch that can be exploited in gen 1. Any TM's there can be duplicated infinitely with very little effort. This could prove especially useful for certain moves like Ice Beam, but again, I'm limited to whatever TM's I currently have access to. It's going to take a lot of scavenging around to even figure out what my options even are for figuring this stuff out. And this is just one of six pokemon.

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Let's take a look at another pokemon I'm considering, Houndour:

By default, Houndour will know Leer, and Ember. Not a very impressive moveset. But, unlike Porygon, Houndour cannot be transferred back to Gen 1 to take advantage of MissingNo. So we'll have to stick exclusively to moves available in Gen 2. Now, before we can even start thinking of getting a baby Houndour, we'll first need to get a Female Houndour or Houndoom. This shouldn't be too difficult because Houndour has a 50/50 gender ratio. Even if we catch a male, we can simply breed it with Ditto until we hatch a female.

Now that we have our female Houndour, next we need to figure out how on earth we're gonna use it to breed the perfect Houndour. None of its Egg Moves really stand out to me except for Beat Up from Sneasel: A move that hits up to 6 times depending on the amount of pokemon in your party. But, in Stadium rules, you'll only have three pokemon in your party so this move is significantly hindered. TM's look like the way to go here. We can inherit TM's from Houndour's father, or simply teach it the TM's directly. Ember is pretty pathetic, I think it could use a more powerful Fire-type attack! But... I really don't want to grind out in the Game Corner for Fire Blast... Thankfully, there's an alternative! Because Houndour can learn Flamethrower by level up! If we can get Houndour's mother and father to both learn Flamethrower, Houndoom will be able to inherit the move at level 5! Thankfully, since we don't need any Egg Moves, we can go for the simple solution of raising a Male and Female Houndour both to level 43 so that they learn Flamethrower and Crunch. But what about its last two moves? If we wanted any Egg Moves, we'd have to make sure the parent is capable of learning Flamethrower and Crunch which isn't an option at this point. With these two moves, there aren't many types Houndour would struggle getting around, but his physical attack isn't too shabby either. I do happen to have a spare Iron Tail TM to give it! I could also go for Sunny Day and Solar Beam, but I feel that's a bit too situational for a pokemon like Houndour to set up. Hidden Power, depending on the type, could also prove pretty beneficial. I'd probably hope for Flying or Psychic type to help it counter Fighting-type opponents. I could also hope for Fighting, Water, Rock, or Ground to help it deal with opposing Houndour. However, Hidden Power varies in strength. Even if I get a good type, I can't guarantee a good power. I believe the best bet here would be to teach the father Hidden Power and have it be inherited across several Houndour until I get a desirable type and power.

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The third pokemon I'm looking at is Abra and what a struggle this one is. So, Abra is a gen 1 pokemon meaning he has access to Gen 1 TM's... but there's also some pretty nice Gen 2 TM's he can inherit as well. I could use TM's directly on him, as well, but that's pretty undesirable. Plus, my selection of remaining TM's is already pretty limited to begin with. If he relies on inheriting TM's though, then he won't be able to transfer back to Gen 1 unless all of the TM moves also existed there. Additionally, Abra doesn't get the benefit that Houndour does of being able to inherit level-up moves. The only move in its learnset is Teleport which I'm sure will be useful.

Now, Abra actually can be a pretty varied attacker with some pretty accessible moves. I'm primarily looking at Ice Punch, Fire Punch, and Psychic which are all pretty easy to get. Taking a quick peek at my Gen 1 pokemon and I've found that Donut, my Hypno from Yellow, is Male and already knows Psychic! I could very easily transfer Donut into GSC and then breed an Abra that inherits Psychic, then teach it Fire Punch and Ice Punch. If that's my choice, then I'll also need to figure out one more move... Its physical stats are atrocious, so going for a physical attack to help deal with other Psychic-types isn't the best idea. If it's stuck in battle against a physical attacker, it's just gonna have to stick to hoping for a burn with Fire Punch. If I have access to Thunder Wave in Gen 1, I just might be able to take advantage of that along with Reflect! But again, that hinges on whether or not I even have access to those TM's... If I don't have access to Thunder Wave, I just might go with ThunderPunch instead. I'm also not sure how useful Fire Punch would be when I have Houndour already covering Fire-type attacks. Porygon is also covering the Ice-type and will be a pretty solid switch-in for a lot of situations. Still, I'd like Abra to be able to deal with a variety of situations on its own. Psychic on its own will be really powerful, and Reflect will help Abra with its defenses as well as the rest of my team. Thunder Wave will really help slow down fast opponents. Lastly, I'm stuck between Fire- or ThunderPunch. Fire Punch will be able to cover Steel-types that Psychic can't hit very hard, but will be resisted by Houndour which seems like a huge threat in this cup. ThunderPunch, on the other hand, will be resisted by many Steel Types making Abra effectively useless against them. Thinking more on it, though, I've come to realize that there really aren't any Steel-types that are legal in this cup except for Magnemite which will likely be better countered by a Ground-type attack. With that in mind, I think ThunderPunch is my best bet here.

--------------------------

Looking at my team so far, I have three pokemon that are all pretty specially-focused with one that is a bit of a mixed attacker. I'll need to look at where the weaknesses lie in this setup. I already have some pretty solid counters to most of my weaknesses among these three, but it wouldn't hurt to play it a bit safer. My biggest threat right now seems to be opponents that can take lots of special blows. I think I'll want a physical attacker on my team.

Scyther is a pokemon I've been looking at for quite a while. It's a pokemon that even rivals its own evolution in usability. It's technically legal in Little Cup, though! Its Base Stat Total is very high for Little Cup and while it somewhat lacks in moveset potential, I think these stats will make it more than enough of a threat. It's even banned according to Smogon Rules, so I guess that makes it a must-have for me! Most of its best moves are pretty easily accessible as well. Wing Attack, Quick Attack, and Swords Dance are all in its standard move pool. All I'll have to do is teach it Steel Wing with a leftover TM and I've got a pretty powerful offensive force!

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Looking at the team from here, it's easy to tell I have a pretty solid weakness to Rock-types. So I'll need something to counter those!

One pokemon that I think will be able to take a pretty solid hit and dish out some pain in return will be Phanpy! It's got some pretty solid stats and even more solid moves! Plus, it's got a pretty convenient parent already in the form of Axel, a male Quagsire! Earthquake from Quagsire is a must-have and Strength isn't too shabby either. In a beautiful dream, I'd be able to inherit Surf as well. But let's not get too crazy. As for its remaining moves, I was thinking Curse and Sandstorm, but without other Ground, Rock, or Steel-types, that may not be the best choice. Instead, I may want to give it Rest and Sleep Talk for a 2/3 chance of using either offensive attack every turn it's asleep.

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We now have five pokemon and I feel I've missed some types. Water and Electric. Water can help further cover for Houndour while Electric can help cover for Water-types. Since Abra already has ThunderPunch, I don't think it's necessary to stress over that too much. However, and I don't look forward to the effort this would take, there is one pokemon who can fill in both roles pretty nicely.

I am of course referring to Chinchou. But this is a very scary idea because Chinchou's best Electric move is Spark which, while not too terrible, isn't nearly as good as what it could be using. I think you see where I'm getting at with this. I'd probably want to give this thing Thunder. But as previously suggested, Thunder isn't exactly passable from Magnanimus. Which means... That's right. It's back to the Game Corner for me. Now, I do have a bit of a consolation this time. I can feel free to burn through what's left of the money in my copy of Silver to just buy up as many coins as I can afford, then transfer the Thunder TM back to Gold. This is entirely viable. Other than that, Surf will more than suffice for Chinchou's Water-type STAB move. It's born naturally with Thunder Wave and it learns Confuse Ray at level 29. Outside of Thunder, there shouldn't be too many issues getting the appropriate moves on a baby Chinchou!

========================

So, looking into my plans so far...

Porygon will be going on an adventure through time!

I'll transfer Porygon from Gen 1 and breed it with a Ditto in Gen 2 for a level 5 Porygon.

I'll then take it to the move deleter to have it forget Conversion 2 so that the baby can be transferred back to Gen 1 and taught Ice Beam and Thunder Wave. I'm not completely above restarting a save for Thunder Wave if I don't have it. If possible, I could also teach it Psychic. In fact, I could get Psychic in the same file using an exploit with Stadium 2. It could be considered cheating, but I call it using my resources!

I can then transfer it back to GSC and teach it Swagger by TM.

In the end, we'll have a baby Porygon with the moves Thunder Wave, Ice Beam, Psychic, and Swagger!

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For Houndour, I'll hunt down and catch one in the wild.

I'll have to breed it at least once to get a second Houndour. I'll need at least one male and one female.

I'll raise both Houndour up to level 43 without evolving them so that they learn Flamethrower and Crunch as early as possible. Then, I can teach the male Iron Tail and Hidden Power by TM.

I'll try to keep breeding until the baby's hidden Power turns out to be a suitable type.

In the end, I'll have a baby Houndour with Flamethrower, Crunch, Iron Tail, and Hidden Power (Water, Rock, Ground, or Fighting will do)

------------------------

Abra took me a while to finalize its moveset, but it seems pretty simple in hindsight.

I'll start with Donut from Yellow version. It already knows Psychic and I can get a TM for Reflect pretty easily at the department store. I'll teach it Reflect then transfer it forward.

The Abra I caught just outside of Goldenrod, Barabara, is already female, so I can breed it with Donut to get a baby with both Psychic and Reflect already! But it's not quite complete yet.

I'll have to transfer the baby Abra back to Gen 1 in order to teach it Thunderwave before transferring it back to Gen 2.

From here, I can easily buy a TM for ThunderPunch from the GoldenRod Department Store

The result will be a baby Abra with the moves Psychic, Reflect, Thunder Wave, and ThunderPunch.

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Scyther is so close to being simple to breed for that it's almost painful that Cross is female. If Cross were Male, it would be as simple as breeding with a two-step chain breed to pass both Steel Wing and Wing Attack onto the offspring. But alas, that's just now how we do things here.

Of course, I'll likely be starting with Cross. I may need to breed for a male Scyther and train it up until it learns Wing Attack and Swords Dance.

I should be able to breed Cross with that Scyther in order to produce another Scyther, this one female, with two of the necessary moves already in place--Swords Dance and Quick Attack. All I'll need to do at that point is raise the new one up until it learns Wing Attack.

Then it's just a matter of teaching the male Steel Wing by TM and breeding it for a Scyther that already has all of its moves in place. No strings attached! I mean... let's just ignore the multi-generational inbreeding we did to make this happen.

The result will of course be a Scyther with an admittedly pretty standard moveset: Swords Dance, Quick Attack, Wing Attack, and Steel Wing

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Phanpy isn't going to be too much of an issue but there are some small hiccups I'll have to work around. Surprisingly enough, the male for the breeding this time around is already prepared. All I really need is to get a female.

The Donphan I caught in Silver is Male, so it'll take some breeding to get a female Phanpy.

Since Axel already knows Strength and Earthquake, he's ready to breed! I could stop here, but there's actually one more change I want to make... Instead of Strength, why don't we go for a stronger move? If this Phanpy happens to be Male, it will be able to pass on Earthquake to its offspring. But, breeding it together with another Phanpy can give it access to the rest of its move pool. In which case, it has access to Double-Edge! I can also teach the male Rest and Sleep Talk to pass those on as well.

After teaching the Male Phanpy its proper moves, I'll simply breed it for the perfect baby Phanpy!

The result will be a baby Phanpy with Earthquake, Double-Edge, Rest, and Sleep Talk.

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For Chinchou, the most difficult part is just getting ahold of another Thunder TM. I am NOT making the mistake of teaching this to another genderless pokemon. Not here. Not now.

All I'll need is a Chinchou or Lanturn to start out. I can breed it for a second one if necessary and raise both of them to level 29 so they learn Confuse Ray. I'll teach the male Surf and Thunder.

From there, it's just a simple breed away from the final baby!

The result, of course, is a Chinchou with Thunder Wave, Confuse Ray, Surf, and Thunder. A pretty powerful force to be reckoned with to be sure.

=======================

Little Cup Team Plan

And that's my plan of attack for Little Cup. Like I said, it was a lot more complicated than I expected it to be, but I'm kind of excited to see my plan in action! Part of what makes me excited is that most of these pokemon are pokemon I wanted to use for my teams in Gold and Silver but opted not to for one reason or another. In fact, I was very close to using Alakazam instead of Gengar in Silver, but I went with Gengar solely because I'd need Mean Look to help in dealing with the Legendary Beasts. The only reason I didn't use Houndour in Silver was because it's not available until Kanto. Chinchou was because I either had another Water or Electric type on the team, so I had no need for a pokemon that tried to be both and Phanpy was also a little too late-game to use in Silver. Porygon was a pokemon I've wanted to try out for a while. It's such a strange, obscure pokemon so I really want to see what it's capable of in a cup that it's supposedly one of the top three in.

I'll definitely be working on as much of this breeding as I can while catching my 150 pokemon and hopefully it won't be too long before I can transfer the necessary pokemon to and from the older games. I'm sorry today's update didn't cover any actual progress in any of the games, but this took a very extensive planning process and I'd say this in and of itself is a good part of the game! With my plan set up, next time I think I'll be taking measures to at least get started on the pokemon that don't need transferring. That's Chinchou and Houndour!

May 21, 2020

And now it's time for the Pokedex cleanup operation!

At the start of this cleanup, I currently have seen 214 Pokemon and own 111. That means I have about 39 more to go before I can transfer pokemon from RBY, but I'm going to try to and catch as many pokemon as available in the standalone game first.

Most of the pokemon I missed during my playthrough are pokemon that are found in special ways such as Headbutt, fishing, Rock Smash, and, of course, Breeding.

My approach here is going to be pretty simple, I'll start from the beginning in New Bark Town and retrace my steps, catching any pokemon available in each area that I don't already have. But before we begin, we'll also want to get started on our breeding as soon as possible.

I went to the Daycare and dropped off a Pikachu and Ditto for the first of the missing baby pokemon. I should get a call from the Daycare Lady when an egg is discovered. Until then, I'll go back to New Bark Town and start catching pokemon.

And, believe it or not, NewBark town is home to our first missed pokemon!

Shellder, Chinchou and its evolution, Lanturn, can all be found here by fishing with the Super Rod! Shellder at 30%, Chinchou at 40% and Lanturn at 10%. Technically I can evolve Chinchou into Lanturn, but as I said previously, I like ot catch as many pokemon as possible to minimize grinding. Granted, I'm going to be grinding Chinchou anyway for breeding, but I just like to be consistent.

Route 29 features a bunch of Headbutt trees and let me tell you, this is probably the most annoying feature in this game in terms of completing the pokedex. There are a few pokemon that can only be found in these trees. You just approach each one and use Headbutt and there's a slim chance a pokemon will pop out and attack you each time. I'll sometimes hit the same tree up to about 14 times in a row without a single encounter. I'm not sure if encounter rates vary from location to location, but encounter tables across most areas are pretty much the same.

In almost every tree in Johto, you'll be able to find Spearow and Aipom. Aipom is of course a pokemon we're after. You can always find it at 20%. But there's more.

In most of these trees, you can also find Heracross at 30%. Notice I said most. Certain trees across Johto have higher encounter rates. These are commonly referred to as "special trees." Which trees these are are randomly generated based on your Trainer ID which means they will always be different each playthrough. Even if you find a special tree with a high encounter rate, you could still simply be unlucky and get a bunch of bad rolls in a row, making you think you've found a non special tree and move on. Now, this doesn't seem too bad then, right? Just keep headbutting around until you find a tree that has a high encounter rate and then keep going until you find the pokemon you're after.

...That would be great if Heracross could be found in these special trees.

That's right, perhaps due to a developer oversight, Heracross can not be found in special trees. It can only be encountered in standard, low-encounter rate trees. Which means it could take hours to find one of these even with an encounter rate as high as 30%. What's more, there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between special and non-special trees outside of RNG trends because the only variance in encounter tables is whether or not you'll encounter Heracross at 30%. In a special tree, you'll encounter Spearow at 80% instead of the typical 50%. Aipom is still at 20% so you can't even judge by the frequency of Aipom encounters.

It pretty consistently takes me around 29 headbutts just to encounter a Spearow on these trees. The wait time is absurd. If you told me on the pkayground as a kid that this was how you caught Heracross, I would have called you a liar.

To make matters worse? Once you finally find your Heracross... yup, they're capable of fleeing. Make sure you paralyze, put it to sleep, or use Mean Look on it immediately. What a nightmare of a pokemon to catch. What's even more irritating is that I have a personal theory that Heracross may have at one point been considered to be an evolution to Pinsir, perhaps using a King's Rock. There's no real basis to that theory other than aesthetic similarities and the fact that Pinsir learns a lot of Fighting-type moves, but it's always been odd to me that Scyther got an evolution in Gen 2 and Pinsir didn't, yet we got a seemingly completely unrelated Bug/Fighting type. I believe part of the leaked demo rom included a scrapped PInsir evolution as well. I'm mentioning this because, if Heracross was an evolution to pinsir, obtaining it would be as simple as, obviously, evolving Pinsir. But sadly, its its own pokemon... so just headbutt away...

But don't worry, it's not nearly as bad as some of the other pokemon in the near future. There are some that are so bad to catch in future games that I will genuinely transfer them in from other games rather than go through the hell of capturing them which is a solution I'm typically pretty adverse to.

So, after hours and hours of hunting down Heracross the only way I knew how, I found that the information on both Bulbapedia and Serebii seems to be... incorrect. The special trees in GS do in fact hold Heracross. It's just that trees don't have two versions, there are three. Normal, Moderate, and Rare trees. Normal and Moderate trees share the same encounter tables. Normal trees only have a 10% chance each hit to spawn a pokemon, Moderate trees have a 50% chance, and Rare trees have an 80% chance and pull from special rare encounter tables (the ones with Spearow at 50% and Heracross at 30!)

I only figured this out because I got sick and tired of hunting down Heracross. I resorted to a quick google search to see if there was any way to track them down and came across this Reddit post. Thanks to the tool linked here, I was able to track down the appropriate tree above all the misinformation across both Bulbapedia and Serebii (both of which I've always thought to be pretty reliable sources... from now on, if I start having doubts, I might have to rethink my approach...) Anyway, I finally managed to catch a Heracross on Route 29!

Now then, we can finally move on to Cherrygrove City and from here on out, until we have to catch the Legendary Beasts, things should be pretty smooth sailing. Here, there are a few more fishing pokemon I could pick up.

I caught both a Krabby and a Corsola here. I can also catch Kingler, however Kingler is also available alongside Staryu at night time.

In the Ruins of Alph, while there weren't any new pokemon to catch, at least not from the part accessible from here, I am able to reach two of the puzzles to unlock some forms of Unown. I've already completed the Kabuto puzzle at the start of the game. I was originally considering completing the Unown Dex, but that might be a project I leave behind. Still, I suppose these puzzles are a fun distraction so I'll take note of them.

In the depths of Union Cave, you can encounter a Lapras on Fridays. I'll definitely have to come back here for that, but until then there is a little bit of significance to this place.

On the B1F of Union Cave, there are two exits that actually lead out into the Ruins of Alph! And here, there's a patch of grass where you can encounter some new pokemon!

The two new pokemon you can meet here are Natu at 90% and Smeargle at 10%! And Smeargle is actually a very useful pokemon for many reasons. Most notably, its Sketch allows it to pass on any egg moves to any pokemon in the Field egg group! Anyway, since you can technically get here as soon as you get Surf, the pokemon here are both pretty low level.

Additionally, this exit as well as the next other exit which requires Strength lead to two more puzzles to unlock the rest of the Unown forms. These feature Ho-oh and Omanyte respectively!

The next new pokemon are found in Azalea Town and once again require Headbutt. These guys aren't nearly as frustrating, though. Using the same tool as before, I was able to find the rare tree where these pokemon appear.

At these rare trees, you can find Pineco at 30% and Eggsecute at 15%. You can also find Butterfree at 5% but you'll likely have better luck finding one in the Bug Catching Contest. In a normal tree, Eggsecute and Butterfree will remain unchanged but Pineco will be replaced with Metapod at 15%. Caterpie fills in the remaining percentages. And of course in Silver, Caterpie and Weedle are swapped along with their evolutions.

The most annoying part of catching these two comes from Pineco happening to know SelfDestruct. It likes to blow up the moment you encounter it. Thankfully, it's not too rare once you find a special tree, so just keep trying!

There were no pokemon on Route 34, but I was able to check up on the Day Care center to see that my pokemon had laid an egg! I actually forgot that the Day Care doesn't give you their number until a future game. You do have to manually check up on the Day Care in this game.

Naturally, I then picked up my Pikachu and dropped off a Jigglypuff for the next egg. I'll come back for this egg once my Pichu hatches!

In Goldenrod, there is one gift pokemon we can pick up that will lead to us getting two new pokemon!

I'm of course referring to the fan-favorite Eevee! You could have obtained this earlier in the game, as soon as you meet Bill in Ecruteak he heads back to his family's house in Goldenrod. If you talk to him there, he'll give you an Eevee to look after!

Thankfully, since breeding is a thing this time, you don't have to stress over doing multiple playthroughs just to get the other Eevolutions. You can just breed it yourself!

All of the Game Corner reward pokemon can be obtained more easily elsewhere, though. Ekans and Sandshrew will be available in the opposite version, however, so keep that in mind!

In the national park, only during the middle of the day (not morning!), you can find Sunkern at 25%! Despite being a near-useless pokemon, it actually has a shockingly low catch rate, so be prepared to use up a few pokeballs on this thing.

On route 38, west of Ecruteak, there is a single pokemon I'm actually a bit surprised I missed.

During sunlight, you can find Farfetch'd here at 10%!

I haven't missed anything else down this path, so on the other side of Ecruteak, Route 42 is our next destination! There's one new pokemon here that I'm pretty sure I only missed because tall grass on this route is entirely optional.

Mankey is available in the tall grass at 30%. Not a problem at all to find!

My next targets were on Route 44. Weepinbel is available here at 35% and Lickitung at 15%! Lickitung is only available during the day, while Weepinbel is available at all hours. This also happens to be where Weepinbel is most common so I may as well catch it while I'm here!

In Ice Path, you can find Jynx at all hours, but only during the middle of the day is it at its most common at 10%! During the morning and night, it'll only be available as a 5% rarity, so try to look for it at the right time!

In the Dragon's Den with the Super Rod, you can catch Dratini and Dragonair at 30% and 10% respectively! I've caught almost all of the pokemon availalbe in the Johto Region and my pokedex is still only just now at 130! The only pokemon missing are Kingler and Staryu which I can catch together at night. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed I didn't end up running into Entei or Suicune along the way, but I can always hunt them down at the end.

That's all for Johto and this post is already getting really long as it is, so I think I'll split this post into two chapters as I detail my journey through Kanto next!

May 22, 2020

Well, I unfortunately was unable to get back to the game during night hours to catch Staryu and Kingler, but that's okay because I'll have to come back today to battle Lapras anyway. For now, though, I'll search Kanto for the next remaining pokemon.

Before leaving Johto, I made sure to hatch my Pichu and pick up my Igglybuff egg.

I then dropped of Jynx only to make a very unfortunate discovery... Jynx and Ditto weren't interested in each other! After a quick google search, I found out that apparently, even if two pokemon would normally be compatible with each other, they will not breed if they share the same Defense or Special IV's or if their special IV's have a difference of 8... what...

I'm sure there's some technical limitation to this related to calculation of IV's or something, but this arbitrary limitation just might prove extremely frustrating when breeding for Little Cup. Thankfully, I did have another Male pokemon in the Humanshape egg group.

I left Magmar in the Daycare with Jynx and these two were interested in each other! I really hope this is the last I'll see of this limitation because otherwise, breeding for Little Cup might prove to be a bit more of a nightmare than I was already anticipating.

Anyway, Route 7 features the two new pokemon Murkrow and Houndour, but they're both only available at nighttime, so we'll be coming back here.

The small pond in Celadon City has become polluted. This is a sad, but it does mean that we can catch Grimer and Muk here at 90% and 10% respectively!

On Route 16, we can catch Fearow and Slugma, but Slugma is more common here on Route 17 instead, but only during the middle of the day. Since it's still morning, I'll pass on this and come back to it in a bit.

Here on Route 15, we can catch Nidorina and Nidorino both at 30%. You can also find Chansey here if you're lucky, but it's only a 1% rarity. If you're incredibly lucky, you could even get a Lucky Egg! Odds are it's not going to happen, though. I'd recommend just transferring a Chansey in from RBY.

We can catch Skiploom on Route 14, but again, it's more common during Day hours. On the off chance that you do manage to catch a Chansey, you can trade one with the lady in this grass for an Aerodactyl!

On Route 11, I could catch Hypno at 10% but I see no reason to since I already have plans to transfer a Hypno from Yellow version to breed for my Little Cup Abra anyway.

We can catch Kadabra on Route 8, but at 5% rarity and knowing Teleport? I think I'll probably have an easier time simply evolving Abra.

In the basement floor of Rock Tunnel, you can catch Kangaskhan at 5%! Surprisingly, though, I found the 30% Cubone much more difficult to catch. They really love to flee on sight, so you may want to consider bringing in a pokemon with Mean Look. If you're down to just looking for Cubone, then you can find it more commonly on the first floor at 35%.

While hunting for Cubone, my Igglybuff egg hatched! So it was off to the Day Care to pick up the next egg!

The next egg wasn't quite ready yet, so while I was in Johto, I decided to go ahead and catch that Friday Lapras in the depths of Union Cave!

After a bit of running around, a new egg was laid and I swapped my Jynx out for Ditto. Ditto and Magmar were compatible, thankfully.

By this point, morning hours were over so it was time to return to pick up on some of the pokemon we'd been passing on!

At night, we can come back to Route 5 to catch a Gloom at 10%.

Likewise, on route 25, we can find Venomoth at 20% only at night as well.

On Route 9, we can find Primeape at the fairly elusive 5%.

While the powerplant is no longer abandoned, the grass outside it on Route 10 holds some of the pokemon that were once available inside. Most notably Voltorb and Electabauzz. Up until here, Voltorb has only been available in the Rocket Hideout as traps where they're very prone to exploding. Due to their low level here, though, they don't know SelfDestruct yet, so they should be a pretty easy catch! During day hours, Electabuzz is at its most common at 10%.

That's the last of everything I missed on the east side of Kanto that I can get right now, but there's still a little bit more on the West Side!

In the grass at the north end of route 21, just south of Pallet Town, you can catch Mr. Mime at 10% during day hours!

On route 1, you can catch Furret at 5% but I genuinely see no reason to do this since Sentret evolves so easily. It seems like an absurdly low encounter rate for such an easy evolution.

Of course, Diglett's Cave boasts Dugtrio at 10%.

On Route 27, Doduo is at its most common at 50%, however...

if we're looking for Dodrio, we may have better luck searching for both at route 27 where Doduo is dropped to 40% but Dodrio is available at 5%!

All of these pokemon together brings our total to 149. Hatching our Smoochum will bring us up to 150, finally allowing us to transfer pokemon through Pokemon Stadium! But at this point, we may as well keep pushing to finish the pokedex once again...

So, I can give it some time and come back for the Night-time pokemon I'm missing: Staryu, Houndour, Murkrow, Gloom, and Venomoth.

And that's exactly what I did!

Of all of these, Houndour was basically the final boss among the wild pokemon. It's only available at 5% rarity, but it also knows Roar! Even if you have Mean Look, you'll still have to struggle with this annoying factor. Of course, that's not really the most annoying pokemon to deal with, oh no. For that we'll have to look no further than the last three wild pokemon that are available in the game.

I'm of course referring to the legendary beasts Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. In Crystal, Suicune becomes a static encounter. But here, Suicune a roaming legendary just like the others. What does this mean? These pokemon will run around Johto and you may or may not encounter them during your Johto Journeys. After the first time you encounter one, you can then track its location with the area function of your pokedex. but until you find them once, you're stuck blindly searching.

Thankfully, they will retain any damage sustained, so if you paralyze it, it'll still be paralyzed the next time you see it. Of course, completing the pokedex means also catching all three of these. One benefit to doing multiple playthroughs is... multiple master balls! Throwing Master Balls though just isn't enough. We'll need to catch at least one the old fashioned way!

May 23, 2020

Challenge Cup

Like I said before switching back to Gold, I would likely be using the Challenge Cup to pad out some time while we prepare for the Little and Prime Cups. I think now that we've collected the majority of the Wild Pokemon with the exception of the Legendary Beasts, which will likely take an entire day in their own right, now is a good time to get started on the next Stadium challenge.

The Challenge Cup is very different from the others. Instead of using a select team of Rentals or bringing in your own team, the game automatically provides you with a randomized team of pokemon, moves, and held items. It's up to you to improvise a strategy with the team you're given. Your opponents also have randomized pokemon so there's no way to anticipate what you're going up against. There does seem to be some logic involved in the randomization. It seems like you won't ever get a completely useless held item, for example.

====================

Challenge Cup -- PokeBall Division

My Team:

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Sandshrew

Item: Gold Berry

Moves: Iron Tail, Double Team, Dig, Rollout

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Sunkern

Item: PRZCureBerry

Moves: Curse, Solar Beam, Swagger, Sludge Bomb

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Magnemite

Item: Scope Lens

Moves: SuperSonic, Thunder, Rain Dance, Swift

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Zubat

Item: Sharp Beak

Moves: Haze, Giga Drain, SuperSonic, Wing Attack

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Ditto

Item: Pink Bow

Moves: Transform

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Horsea

Item: Mystic Water

Moves: Smokescreen, Headbutt, Endure, Surf

-----------------------------

I may have gotten lucky with my Magnemite. I have high expectations for that one. I can pretty much guarantee that Sunkern and Ditto won't see any use at all and Horsea will probably only see play exclusively for Surf. It's not a miserable team, we'll have to see how it goes.

===================

Round 1

Camper Marcus

Right off the bat, this is a pretty unfortunate team for my opponent. They're all Ground- and Fire-type pokemon making almost his entire party weak to Horsea's surf. Horsea was obviously able to take out his Charmander which only used Flamethrower. This Wooper set up Curse, but I switched into Zubat to Giga Drain it away in an instant. His last pokemon, Geodude, was obviously no match for this.

--------------------------

Round 2

Rocket Grunt M

Seeing this team kind of makes me doubt the legitimacy that the opponent's teams are randomized considering this Rocket happens to be using a mono-poison team filled with pokemon associated with Team Rocket, unless it's supposed to be a joke that the Rocket is cheating. Whatever the case, I'll have to be wary of some of these pokemon as my best counter to Poison-types is Sandshrew's Dig. I decided to lead with Sandshrew to see if I could bait him into switching to his Zubat if he had it on his team. Unfortunately, a misclick caused me to use Rollout instead of Dig like I intended, allowing his lead, Ekans, to paralyze me with Glare and then heal off the damage with Giga Drain. A fantastic start. I switched into Zubat to wall the incoming Giga Drain and finish it off with Wing Attack. His next opponent was, Nidoran. I didn't suspect much from this at all until it caught me off guard by using Blizzard! It didn't take out Zubat but came pretty close. Thankfully, I could switch into Magnemite to take the hit and take it out with Thunder. His last pokemon Oddish locked itself into Petal Dance, so Zubat was able to take a few hits thanks to his quad-resistance.

-----------------------

Round 3

PIcnicker Melissa

Melissa's entire team seemed pretty weak to Magnemite but that Machop was a little scary. I decided to lead with Magnemite and if she decided to use Machop, I'd have Zubat ready to swtich in. Zubat could also help deal with Hoppip if necessary. It was possible Slowpoke could have an Ice- or Psychic-type move, so I'd need to be prepared for that as well just in case... Unfortunately, this team was pretty ill-equipped to deal with something like that, so I'd just have to hope Magnemite is around to handle Slowpoke. Instead, I went with Sandshrew as my last pokemon. Maybe Rollout could deal some damage on some of her pokemon.

She led with her Slowpoke and I got a critical thunder thanks to my Scope Lens! Since her follow-up was Pidgey, It seemed that Machop wasn't on her team, so the rest of this battle would be pretty smooth sailing! I went ahead and set up Rain Dance just in case she'd start Evasion-spamming me. I'm not actually sure if Rain Dance guarantees a hit from Thunder or just increases its accuracy to 100, but I didn't miss despite having my accuracy lowered so the difference ultimately didn't matter. Her Pidgey and Ledyba went down as soon as they were out giving me a pretty quick sweep.

---------------------

Round 4

Guitarist Daren

Daren's team is a little more balanced than his predecessors. I decided to lead with Zubat because I'd be able to switch into Sandshrew if he led with any electric pokemon. The third pokemon was pretty arbitrary. Despite Sunkern being a pretty pathetic pokemon to go for, I decided to choose it if only because its Sludge Bomb would be super-effective agaisnt some of Daren's pokemon. As expected, le hed with Magnemite but perhaps unexpectedily, when I went for Dig it turned out his Magnemite knew... Protect... So, this battle would turn into nothing more than a battle of wits.

I decided to switch into Sunkern, believe it or not, because Swagger just might be of help here! After confusing it with Swagger, I switched back to try for another Dig. It hit itself in confusion a few times but the confusion unfortunately never stopped a protect. Eventually though, it wittled its own health low enough for me to take it out with a few Iron Tails. His next pokemon was Sunkern which naturally went down to Zubat's Wing Attack really easily. Pichu was his final pokemon. Naturally, I switched back into Sandshrew to avoid his Thunder and hoped it didn't know Protect. Sure enough, Dig collided this time and took the Pichu out! This guy was much more of a pain than he deserved to be... But, this is the type of challenge I expected from a mode like this.

-------------------------

Round 5

Fisherman Curtis

By this point, it seems pretty clear that the opponent's teams aren't actually randomized, though it's still possible the movesets are. Serebii's been wrong about a lot of things up until now so this wouldn't be too much of a surprise. At the very least, the opponent's teams must be randomly generated with logic dictating the types of pokemon they'll use. This team shouldn't give me much trouble at all with Magnemite on my team, but Zubat could play some extra support and Horsea could be a good switch-in if necessary.

Right off the bat, things didn't go nearly as well as I hoped. His Poliwag got a lucky crit on my Magnemite with Surf and my Thunder missed. It wasn't looking like a perfect was likely here. I switched into Horsea to avoid Magnemite going down so soon and Horsea was able to get a lucky crit and take the Poliwag out! His Remoraid just used Bublebeam to follow up, which was powered up by a Rain Dance he'd set up previously, but in conjunction with the rain ending and Giga Drain's healing, my Zubat was able to take a few hits and finish the job. It all came down to whether ot not my Magnemite could outspeed his Totodile and land a Thunder... and... I pulled it off! Thunder finished Totodile on one last-ditch hit. That battle definitely would have gone a lot smoother had it not been for that crit and miss right off the bat. I'm pretty confident had I had to use a continue, I would have gotten by no problem.

-------------------------

Quarterfinals

Medium Peggy

Another team that didn't look too inviting... That Dratini was looking pretty unpredictable while this team seems to pretty strongly counter a lot of each other's weaknesses. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room for me to work with here. Sandshrew seemed like a must-have for this battle, but those Psychic types were gonna be a bit of a pain. I figured, at worst, Magnemite could soften up Exeggcute and hopefully Zubat would be able to finish it off before it could hit with a psychic attack. An alternative solution could be to have Ditto copy Dratini and hopefully be able to do something against the rest of the team, but that seemed a little risky, so I decided to go with my first idea to at least get a feel for this battle.

She led with her Dratini against my Sandshrew. It opened up with Outrage so I figured my best bet was just to spam Double Team hoping it wouldn't connect any hits. It's a sad strategy but I really had nothing to do against this thing... After maxing my evasion, I went for rollout to hopefully start building up some damage. I wasn't going to be switching this thing out at this poitn anyway, so my as well go all out. Her Cyndaquil was next and managed to land a Flamethrower while dodging a Rollout, but it didn't quite take me out and I was able to heal with my Gold Berry. Her last pokemon, Ekans happened to have Protect which jammed both Dig and Rollout, so I had no choice but to spam Iron Tail. The only thing it seemed able to do was spam Swagger against me which was pretty unlikely to land... unfortunately, it did manage to land making my hits more of a gamble. For some reason, she didn't follow up by Protect stalling, presumably to protect herself from Dig and Rollout, but thanks to this I was able to continue using Iron Tail until I managed to get a hit through...

Evasion spamming is not a strategy I like to rely on but with that Dratini there I really didn't have much of a choice. I don't like using moves like Double Team and typically try to get them off of my party as soon as possible because while it seems useful for your opponent to miss just about every attack, it's absolutely no fun to use or battle against and it just bogs the game down with way too much reliance on RNG. But, since these pokemon were decided for me, I have to use the tools at my disposal. Hopefully the next opponents won't be like this.

-------------------------------

Semifinals

Rocket Grunt F

This seemed like a pretty straight-forward battle, but dealing with a Rocket, I expected to see some shenanigans... She led with Togepi but only went for Headbutt against my Magnemite. I took advantage and set up Rain Dance to guarantee my Thunders would land. I got a crit on Togepi, taking it out effortlessly. Jigglypuff followed up with Fire Punch. This would ahve been scary, but Jigglypuff has next to no special attack, so there was nothing to worry about here. Her next pokemon Snubbull went down like paper.

---------------------

Finals

Juggler Dwight

Yes, that's a Krabby. I'm not sure what's wrong with its picture on Serebii, but it just looks like that for some reason.

Anyway, this is a team I could believe was randomized. None of these pokemon look especially threatening. I think the biggest threats would probably have to be Mareep and Swinub. However, there isn't a whole lot of consistency here. Magnemite seems like the best opener and Zubat and Sandshrew would have to be my switch-ins. Seems simple enough, but with these three, that Swinub would be a bit of a pain. I'd just have to hope that Sandshrew and Zubat would be able to take whatever Ice moves it might have.

He opened up with Krabby but immediately switched to Swinub. What he was going for couldn't be more obvious, so I answered by switching to Zubat. From there, it would take a few Giga Drains to take this thing out. STAB Blizzard of course hit like a truck... Sandshrew's Iron Tail missed but so did Swinub's Blizzard! Unfortunately, I missed again and took another Blizzard to the face... went down to it... The only thing I can hope for at this point is that SuperSonic would be able to take it out but I'd still have two whole pokemon to go through and with Mud Slap lowering my accuracy, that wasn't likely.

So, arguably due to RNG, I had to use a continue. Not too much of an issue since I'd managed to build up six on the way here.

I decided this next time to use Horsea instead of Sandshrew. This came at a risk though because now I wouldn't have much of an answer to Mareep. He opened up with Krabby again. Anticipating a switch, I went for Supersonic, but missed and he hit me with... ugh, Mud Slap. I may as well go ahead and give up here. Because of the Mud Slaps, the rest of my Thunders missed and I was down to Zubat and Horsea to deal with the rest of his party. It took all of my pokemon to deal with his Krabby and of course his next pokemon was Mareep which I now had to deal with using just Horsea. My best bet was to just spam Smokescreen. But of course unlike my luck, his Thunder hits even with his accuracy lowered... Sure.

With another continue, this time he led with Tyrogue. Naturally, I switched into Zubat to be met with a Strength. That would do a lot of damage if it wasn't for Tyrogue's pretty pathetic stats as a baby pokemon. He followed up, naturally by switching into his Mareep... I managed to get a crit with Wing Attack, but that didn't mean much. After missing two Supersonics, I was able to confuse the Mareep and then take it out with Thunder while it hit itself repeatedly. Thankfully, Mareep set up Rain Dance so I was able to get a free Thunder on his Snubbul. He was left now with just his Tyrogue. There was no point in switching out of Magnemite, so I just went for another Thunder. It missed, but it seemed all this Tyrogue could use was Strength. With three against one, even if he managed to take out Magnemite, his Tyrogue was going down against Zubat.

MVP: Magnemite

The RNG here was extremely annoying, but as expected, Magnemite helped out a lot with completing the tournament between having a pretty powerful combo of Rain Dance and Thunder along with a Scope Lens giving it some chances for some powerful crits, this thing carried me through a lot of tough situations.

Other honorable mentions are Sandshrew which proved to be a pretty favorable matchup to most of my team, but didn't make the cut because too many pokemon were able to Jam its Dig. Zubat also proved to be a much better wall than I initially anticipated thanks to Giga Drain, but it ultimately wasn't able to deal a whole lot of damage on its own.

Sunkern actually did prove to be useful for a single battle, to my surprise, but it was nowhere near honorable mentions tier and Ditto saw absolutely no play at all.

The last battle got on my nerves but it was mostly just due to bad RNG. But if I had this bad luck in the Poke Ball Division, I am not looking forward to the Master Ball...

====================

One last step before being done for the day, I stepped into the GameBoy Tower and did a quick Bug Catching Contest. I won with a level 14 Scyther and earned another Sun Stone! I repeat from the first time I did the contest, it's important to do well in these because it's the only way to get a Sun Stone in gen 2 and two pokemon require a Sun Stone in order to evolve.

As an added bonus, depending on how poorly things turn out, having an extra Scyther for breeding purposes isn't a terrible idea either.

May 24, 2020

15 hours ago, Aura said:

I am not looking forward to the Master Ball

I'll be saving my "how I got screwed by the game for the xth time" horror stories for then. Until that point, Challenge Cup comes down to strategy and "don't get bad mons," so you'll be fine.

May 24, 2020

Challenge Cup -- Great Ball Division

The Great Ball Division is focused around level 45 pokemon as well as what appears to be a mixture of basic and evolved pokemon.

My Team:

------------------------

Elekid

Item: Magnet

Moves: Thief, Thunderbolt, Toxic, Psychic

(Remember how I said there seems to be logic about useless moves? Yeah... while Elekid is holding this Magnet, Thief cannot be used to steal held items, making it almost entirely useless. Still, the other moves are pretty powerful so Elekid might see a lot of play here.)

------------------------

Phanpy

Item: Soft Sand

Moves: Take Down, Attract, Rollout, Earthquake

------------------------

Aipom

Item: King's Rock

Moves: Sand Attack, Iron Tail, DynamicPunch, Headbutt

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Chinchou

Item: PSNCureBerry

Moves: Water Gun, Double Team, Thunder, Protect

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Magcargo

Item: MiracleBerry

Moves: Rollout, Swagger, Flamethrower, Mud-Slap

--------------------

Ledian

Item: Miracle Seed

Hyper Beam, Safeguard, Giga Drain, Baton Pass

(again... Baton Pass is a near-useless move because there is no way Ledian can increase its own stats...)

--------------------

So, this time around I seem to have a bit more flexibility with this team. I imagine I'll be using a wider variety of my team going forward. Some of my pokemon are lacking in the stats department and Chinchou definitely could have used a beter Water attack than Water Gun but I suppose you get what you get. We'll have to see how things play out going forward.

==================

Round 1

Twins Jan & Jane

A team with decent coverage for weaknesses here. Houndour is always scary to see as well. I decided to lead with Magcargo due to the majority of her team's weakness to Fire, but I don't want to go for Rollout until I know for sure Mankey is out of the picture. Ledian is here as a decent switch-in against Mankey and Phanpy will help me deal with Houndour if necessary. Sure enough, the twins led with Mankey so I immediately switched to Ledian. It used Dig, giving me a chance to set up Safeguard. Not sure if that would help at all, but Mankey stayed in to take my Giga Drain and only used Scratch and a Cross Chop that was about as powerful as one due to the quad-weakness. She answered with her Houndour. I had nothing to do against this thing but I wasn't going to swtich into a Houndour's attack, so I just decided to let Ledian go down with a Hyper Beam. I missed the first hit but managed to survive a Fire Blast. When I sent out Phanpy, Houndour tried to go for SolarBeam for... some reason. It went down easily to Earthquake. After that, her butterfree would go down pretty easily to Rollout and Flamethrower if it managed to get past Phanpy. Unfortunately, I didn't get a continue though perhaps I would have had I switched into Magcargo on one of Houndour's Fire Blasts...

----------------------------

Round 2

Schoolboy Oliver

As appealing as using Water attacks against this team seems, I just don't think Water Gun will have enough power to get through it at this level. Sadly, I think I have much more confidence in Ledian's Giga Drain. Elekid may be weak to the inevitable Ground-type attacks I'll be shaking off, but his Psychic attack combined with his pretty high speed should hopefully carry him through those. Lastly, I was stuck between Phanpy and Aipom. Phanpy resists Rock but is weak to his water pokemon, while Aipom's Iron Tail and DynamicPunch aren't super reliable and likely won't be getting as many one-hit kills. I ultimately decided to lead off with Ledian and have Elekid and Phanpy as support. Hopefully Ledian will be able to outspeed everything and one-shot it all with a 4x Giga Drain. He went iwth Omanyte, Kabuto and Rhyhorn against my team and, sure enough, Ledian was able to outspeed them all for a clean sweep and continue!

---------------------------

Round 3

Sailor Curt

Curt was running some pretty familiar pokemon... That Smoochum of his was pretty scary to see. I didn't have any hard counters to it that weren't weak to the rest of his team. I figured I could run Magcargo as a switch-in in anticipation of an ice attack. In addition, I'd run Phanpy as a switch-in against Elekid. My own Elekid would of course be doing most of the fighting against his water-types. He led with his Smoochum and I decided to check how much Thunderbolt would do to it. It did a decent amount but I didn't appreciate how much Ice Punch did. I switched into Magcargo and Ice Punch froze it! Thankfully, my MiracleBerry kicked in and protected me. When I went for Flamethrower, he switched into Corsola and that was where I knew... I fucked up. I switched back to Elekid figuring Corsola wouldn't do much damage and then threw out another Thunderbolt. It didn't do quite as much as I'd hoped and Corsola finished me off with an ancientpower... I followed up with Phanpy and finished it off no problem. Unfortunately no perfect this round. Once again, he sent out Smoochum so I switched back to Magcargo. I was able to tank her Ice Punch and Psychic before finishing her off with Flamethrower. As expected, his last pokemon was Elekid. There was no point in switching out since I'd already lost my perfect, so I decided to go for Swagger on the off chance he missed. It came down to Phanpy against Elekid but his Elekid surprised me with Ice PUnch! Thankfully it didn't do very much and Phanpy was able to get a one-hit KO with Earthquake.

---------------------------

Round 4

Swimmer F Darcy

This division really loves Kabuto for some reason. Elekid seems like the obvious lead here. Nidorina is always scary to see, but Elekid knows Psychic which should make it more bearable. Toxic should also help with Porygon especially if I switch into Magcargo to use Swagger. Phanpy's also proven to be a pretty powerful force to be reckoned with, so I decided to go with him for the last choice. She led with PIdgeotto which just went for Quick Attack. She then followed up with Porgyon as expected. When I switched to Magcargo, all it could do was use Psybeam. I figured this thing would switch out before going down to poison, so I kept going for Swagger in anticipation of this. Her last pokemon turned out to be Doduo. I honestly couldn't have hoped for a more useful switch. I was now comfortable going for Rollout. Unfortunately, it attacked through confusion twice and took Magcargo down. Again, no perfect for me... But, victory was pretty much assured at this point. Elekid took out Doduo and it was down to her crippled Porygon.

Going into the second half with only a single continue isn't very reassuring, but that's just how things rolled here. It's hard to guarantee a perfect when you have no experience with your team, but what are you gonna do?

----------------------

Round 5

Officer Gerald

This team looks like it should be so simple to deal with. But again, my team isn't super great. I decided Phanpy would be a good lead and if he led with any of his Grass-types, I'd just switch ti Magcargo. It's not resisted, but Magcargo is still pretty tanky. Elekid would also be good for Psychic against his Poison-types. Again, though, his Houndour was pretty scary-looking... He led with Weepinbell and opened with Solar Beam. This was a hard hit on Magcargo. His follow-up was Growlithe which just went for Sunny Day. I went for Rollout here. If his last pokemon turned out to be a Grass-type I should be able to power through with the rest of my pokemon in spite of turn-one SolarBeams. His final pokemon turned out to be Skiploom which still outsped Magcargo despite being really slow. I'm glad it was Skiploom and not Houndour, but this was the most awkward pokemon for me to deal with. Still, its Flying typing means it isn't resistant to Thunderbolt, so I sent out Elekid after Magcargo got KO'd. For some reason, this Skiploom took the time to renew Sunny Day despite running Giga Drain instead of SolarBeam... It was unlikely to win regardless, but it was still as strange choice of move...

-----------------------

Quarterfinal

Kimono GIrl Emiko

Wobbuffet is another pokemon that's never friendly to look at. It almost always runs Destiny Bond. I decided my best bet here was Elekid for her Doduo and Staryu, Ledian as a switch-in for Graveler's grount-type counterattack, and then Magcargo might be of help against Wobbuffet using Swagger. As expected, she led with Staryu and switched when I went for Thunderbolt. Unexpectedly, though, her switch wasn't to Graveler but rather Gloom! Still, I had to get away, but switching into Magcargo here wasn't an appealing choice to be sure. Thankfully, I was able to take it out before it got a Solar Beam off. She sent out Staryu again so I naturally switched back to Elekid. She got a decent hit but it wasn't hard enough for me to fret over. A Thunderbolt from elekid was enough to take Staryu out. The last pokemon she had was her Growlithe. With a couple of Thunderbolts, I was able to get a perfect on this round!

----------------------

Semifinal

Scientist Roberto

And of course we have yet another Wobbuffet. This time, though, there's no Graveler forcing me to use Ledian. Phanpy seemed like a pretty solid lead with Magcargo with as a good switch-in and Elekid could help here and there as well! Of course, he opened up with Lickitung which is a pokemon with wide moveset potential. And he goes for... double team... Thankfully, I managed to switch into Elekid and use Toxic. Unfortunately, he has a Miracle Berry... But I was able to luckily get another Toxic off. From there, I switched to Magcargo. Hopefully this thing wouldn't know any water moves. It went for Stomp revealing its third move. I went for Swagger and managed to land another hit. Magcargo actually managed to outspeed it! It didn't switch out to survive the poison and just went down. The rest of his team isn't well-equipped to deal with Magcargo so I went for Rollout against his Natu. Perhaps a bit of an unnecessarily reckless move, but I managed to get a crit. SInce he didn't send out Wobbufet second, i didn't have to worry about Destiny Bond. Unfortunately, his last pokemon was Bayleef and I was still stuck in Rollout. Not that that ultimately mattered. His Bayleef also relied on Double Team and thankfully didn't have a PSNCureBerry. In hindsight, I probably should have used Thief first just in case. (His LIckitung had used Thief after losing its Miracleberry and stole my Magnet which I'm more than okay with. At this point, it was just a test of wills to see who could outlast the opponent. Admittedly, it was a little scary... But, I managed to hit through his evasion with enough Psychics and took it out without needing to send out Phanpy! That was honestly a really close battle. If it had gone on for one more turn, I'd have had to just hope an Earthquake from Phanpy would be enough to not only hit, but kill. That would ahve been roguh to be sure.

Now, I can go onto the finals with two continues. Hopefully I won't need any more than that!

----------------------

Final

Gentleman Travis

Once again, a Graveler forces my hand. I'll need to use Ledian for that. Elekid is going to need to lead this battle and I'm going to want Phanpy for Voltorb. That Dunsparce could be potentially awkward though if it goes for Toxic stalling. Hopefully Elekid will be able to use Toxic on it as well. He led with Voltorb so I switched to Phanpy on a Mirror Coat. From there, he had no answers so just went for SelfDestruct. At this point, Phanpy didn't serve any more purpose, so I just let it stay in against his Poliwhirl and try for an Earthquake that I wasn't able to get off. When I sent out Elekid, he perhaps predictably switched to Graveler. It seems I was right to go for Ledian~

His Graveler went for Dig so I was able to set up a free SafeGuard. Again, not sure if that was necessary, but here it was. Surprisingly, his Graveler survived a Giga Drain, but all it could do was go for Rollout. Now all there was to do was Giga Drain away at his Poliwhirl. This time, I was able to get through the finals with little headache at all!

==============

I think the MVP here goes without saying.

MVP: Elekid

This thing tore through so much competition! Most of my teams I pretty much built around him. Other honorable mentions include Phanpy for being a total Tank through the whole tournament and Magcargo for being able to take a lot more hits than I honestly expected, Ledian also proved a lot more useful than I expected going in. Aipom and Chinchou, though, those two didn't see any play at all. Their movesets just weren't as reliable and anything they could do, someone else on the team could do better. I kept finding myself wishing I had a stronger water-type, but all I had was Water Gun and that fact really crippled my team. I must have gotten really lucky to have such a good moveset on my Elekid. Here's hoping that luck continues going forward!

===============

As for my Gold homework, I took today to hunt down the legendary beasts. The true final bosses of the pokedex in gen 2. I just want to say that, while tracking these pokemon down, I've found that there is a metric ton of misinformation surrounding the best way to go about this. I want to clear up a lot of this for anyone else who may be following in my footsteps.

First of all, repels will not affect the spawn rate of the beasts. If you are on the same route as a beast, you will encounter it at the same rate with or without a repel as long as your lead pokemon is lower than level 40. If you have a repel active, and are on the same route as a beast, you should encounter it pretty quickly. Generally around 20 steps in the grass will get you the encounter. If you don't get an encounter, there is no beast on the route. Next, all three legendary beasts follow the same movement pattern. There are no differences between them. I've seen suggestions of things such as Raikou preferring the South and Suicune preferring the North. This is not the case. The Legendary Beasts will appear at a random route across the entire map of Johto, but none of them will ever appear in Kanto. When they move, they will usually move to one of the adjacent routes, but they also have a slim chance of jumping to another completely random location. They will never appear in sub worlds (caves, Ilex forest, buildings, etc.) and they will not travel onto water routes. I don't know whether or not they can be encountered on water but all evidence I could find seems to point to them only being encounterable in the grass. The beasts will move every time you change routes or maps. This includes passing the boundary between directly adjacent routes, walking in and out of towns or gateways. If you warp in any way, they will always jump to a random location. They also have a slim chance of moving if you enter battle with other pokemon, hence the importance of repels, and they will always move if you encounter one of them. All of this information combined makes tracking them down using the Pokedex virtually useless. If you try to pursue, it's likely to send you on a wild goose chase. If it passes a town with a gateway, you'll have to enter the town, enter the gate, then leave the gate, giving the beast three moves in the time it took you just to get to the route in question. By that point, it could have jumped to a random location, gotten three routes ahead of you, or even turned around and jumped right over your head. And since they can all turn around at any moment, even cutting them off isn't an option. If you're trying to track them, your best bet is to just follow one route behind them and hope they turn around and run right into you. But if they pass over a town, you may as well give up your chase. The last bit of misinformation I wanted to clear up is Fast Balls. Fast Balls DO NOT WORK! They are intended to catch pokemon that are capable of fleeing more effectively, but they are programmed incorrectly and consequently never function any better than a standard Pokeball. Do NOT use these unless you want to waste a lot of time.

The only pattern you can consistently rely on is the fact that they will never be able to move past Olivine City since the routes beyond it are only water routes. If they reach Olivine City and they don't jump to a random location, their only option is to move back to the route outside Ecruteak. For this reason, this is my preferred spot to hunt the beasts. It took all day to form a consistent strategy that worked. My strategy in the end was mostly derivative of this strategy designed around Crystal. That strategy focuses on a patch of grass that only exists in Crystal. This location is ideal because the route is a crossroads, meaning it's really easy for a beast to reach the route. It's also a patch of grass that's specifically near a gate, which allows the player to run in and out as the guide suggests to get the beasts to move. In Gold and Silver, though, the closest patch you have to a gate is the one just outside National Park. Unfortunately, the distance here is a bit further and you can't bike through the gate making it a little bit more annoying to go through. Instead, I found the best alternative to be the route immediately west of Ecruteak. This is the same route a beast has to pass twice if they're headed to and from Olivine without jumping. There's a patch of tall grass just outside the gate here and you can use Ecruteak just like the guide uses Ruins of Alph. Using this method, using my level 20 Golduck, I was able to cut out the wild encounters from all the native wild pokemon but keeping myself open to encounter the level 40 Legendary Beasts. I'd also keep an eye on the Pokedex and anytime I happened to be on the same route as Suicune, I'd switch Somnium to the front of the party so I could use Mean Look and trap it in battle. Upon encountering Raikou and Entei, I immediately threw Master Balls at these two. I chose them because they're the fastest of the three beasts and thus the hardest to outspeed. If you don't outspeed the beast, it doesn't matter if you have Mean Look because it'll just flee right away.

Once I had the method finalized, it only took a couple of hours to actually find all three legendary beasts. Just stay persistent and don't worry too much about missing the beasts. Just follow the suggestions in the guide and you should come across all three of them relatively quickly as opposed to just blindly going back and forth between two routes as most people seem to suggest. With this, I can finally say that I've caught all the Pokemon available to catch. All that's left for Pokedex completion is evolution and transferring in the remaining pokemon from other games. That'll be a project for the future. Next time I can focus exclusively on my breeding.

And speaking of breeding, during the process of hunting these legendary beasts, I was able to hatch the rest of the babies for the pokedex! It was a busy day, but I got a lot of significant stuff out of the way!

May 25, 2020

16 hours ago, Aura said:

Ledian also proved a lot more useful than I expected going in

Don't get used to it, because from this point on, Ledian sucks hardcore and never improves, even in Colosseum, which has limited options.

Disclaimer: Ledian was never good anyway. As someone masochistic enough to do a Ledian solo run in Gold, I know this all too well. Never again. You'd have to pay me to redo that torture.

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