Pokemon Forever - Pokemon Guides & Tutorials

[WIP] Breeding in Sword and Shield and Is it worth it?

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 09:26:16 -0800

Many sources on various websites explain the basics on breeding Pokémon in the sword and shield games, however very few have all the various specifics people will aim for when breeding competitively. This guide aims to cover EVERYTHING, from why you should start breeding all the way to how maximising a Pokémons IV's/EV's in order to make your Pokémon as strong as possible.

Before I go into the Process of breeding first it would help if everybody was on the same page and understands the key terms any breeder should know, along with the effect these have on individual Pokémon.

IV's

IV's stand for Individual values and each pokemon will hatch, or be caught with. These values range between 0 and 31 and there is a value for each of the 6 main stats, the higher the value the better the Pokémon is in regards to that stat. These values cannot be changed easily as will be explained later.

EV's

EV's stand for Effort Values. EV's are seperate from IV's and add an additional bonus on top of IV's a Pokémon starts with, they are also not linked directly to breeding as when a Pokémon hatches it will have 0 EV's. EV's range from 0 to 252 in each stat, however a Pokémon can never have a total number of EV's higher than 510 meaning it is impossible to maximise each stat's EV's. EV training is covered in the after breeding section later on.

Egg Moves

Egg moves are what we call moves which cannot normally be obtained on one species of Pokémon but can be passed down from a male parent of another species. There are exceptions in certain generations such as the Pokémon in the wild with an orange aura in sword and shield that can be caught with egg moves already but in general these moves will not be found on wild Pokémon and cannot be taught by TM's.

Egg Group

Nearly every species of Pokémon is assigned one or more Egg Groups, Legendaries and a select few others have an egg group simply called undiscovered which prevents them from breeding under normal circumstances. Egg groups are used to determine what Pokémon can breed together, if two Pokémon share at least one egg group an egg can be produced which contains a baby Pokémon of the same species as the mother. (To find a Pokémons egg groups I recommend looking them up on Serebii or Bulbapedia)

There exists one very common exception to this rule when it comes to breeding, and that exception is ... DITTO! Sitto can breed with a Pokéon of any egg group so long as it is not a Pokémon such as a Legendary that cannot breed at all. This makes ditto very valuable to breeders! An egg produced with a ditto and another species will always contain the other Pokémon species. It is impossible to produce an egg containing a ditto.

All egg group names:

Hidden Ability

Hidden abilities are special abilities Pokémon can have instead of their regular abilities, these abilities wont be found simply by catching or breeding regular Pokémon and the main way to get Pokémon with Hidden Abilities in Sword and Shield is through beating and catching Pokémon in Max Raid Battles. However be warned that the Pokémon will not always have the hidden ability even if you do catch it in this way.

Hidden Power

I won't go into much detail on this one but hidden power is a move which was removed for sword and shield which changed type and power based on a Pokémon's IV's

Now that's out of the way, let's cover the basics, why should you start breeding Pokémon? Is it worth it?

For Curry, Obviously...

Ok, I was only kidding about the curry thing...

But in all seriousness, breeding is a great way to get Pokémon that are much stronger than those in the wild (Higher IV's) and also teach them a selection of specific moves (Egg moves) that are otherwise only available randomly from catching Pokémon with orange auras. This allows you to make Pokémon that can specifically be used to battle people online or advance in the Battle Tower to earn BP (more on BP later)

One big thing to mention is that although breeding has been a staple of the main series of Pokémon games for some time there are a few differences this time around, which will be explained as the guide unfolds.

A new feature of Sword and Shield is that you can now change a Pokémon's nature AFTER breeding. This is done with mints bought with 50 BP each over the left side counter at the battle tower.

Since forms of Hyper Training have been around for a few generations now as well this actually provides a way to Maximise IV's without breeding. This is done using bottle caps by talking to the man in white behind the right side counter of the battle tower, with normal bottle caps raising 1 IV to max and Gold bottle caps raising all IV's to max. HOWEVER, this only works once the Pokémon has reached level 100, and you have to access the Battle Tower!

It is also possible to obtain Eggmoves without breeding. During your adventure you will likely encounter Pokémn with an orange aura around them, these Pokémon will have at least 3 Maximum value IV's and potentially some egg moves, although it is important to note that this is mostly down to luck as to which egg moves a Pokémon will know

This is the main reason it is important to state the significance of breeding, most of the previous goals of breeding can be achieved without any actual breeding being involved. However it is worth bearing in mind that this will cost you a hefty amount of time, BP and bottle caps in the long run.
EXAMPLE

With this explained, feel free to make your own judgement on whether breeding is worth it for you or not. But personally I believe breeding still has some value.

How to start Breeding.

The first step to breeding in any Pokémon game is finding where you can potentially breed Pokémon, in sword and shield there are two potential places you can do this, one at the Bridge Field zone in the Wild Area and one on Route 5. as shown below.

Once you arrive at one of these areas you can simply talk to the nursery worker who will ask which Pokémon you want them to take care of, if you leave one female and one male (or one of either gender and a ditto) these will become the new Pokémons parents. Remember that these Pokémon must be in the same egg group unless one is a ditto and unless using a ditto the egg will always contain the same species as the mother.

When an egg is ready to be collected the nursery worker will change postions and move their arms to appear as shown below:
.

This process can also be sped up by obtaining the Oval Charm, This charm can be obtained after beating Leon in the Pokémon League. The oval charm can then be given to the player simply by besting Shigeki Morimoto in the Hotel Ionia within Circhester.
.

Obtaining High IV's

Before attempting to obtain high IV's it will be important to gain the ability to see Pokémon's IV's, in order to do so a few conditions must be met. Firstly you must have completed the main storyline of Pokémon sword and shield, then you must challenge the battle tower and beat multiple trainers before then beating Leon which will put you at battle tower rank 4. From this point onward you can check a Pokémon's IV's in any PC by simply pressing the + button.

Bear in mind that this is not an exact measure of the IV's as it will instead give you one of 6 descriptions for each of the stats which correspond to set IV values as follows. (remember 0 is minimum, 31 is maximum)

No Good: zero

Decent: 1- 10

Pretty Good: 11 - 20

Very Good: 21 - 29

Fantastic: 30

Best: 31

EXAMPLE:

Now we know how to check IV's lets get to breeding Pokéon with High IV's. When two Pokéon breed, the offspring hatched from the egg will have 3 values which are completely random between 0 and 31 and 3 values which are each indivdually identical to one of the parents. For example it could be that speed, defence and attack are chosen to be inherited from parents but speed could be identical to the mother and attack and defence would be identical to the father with the other 3 stats generated randomly.

As breeders we want to guarantee more than 3 of the stats are passed down using a Destiny Knot. When one of the parents holds a destiny knot (it doesn't matter which parent) then 5 IV's will be identical to either of the parents. This means that you can switch out the mother (or father if with a ditto) with newly hatched Pokémon as you breed them to increase the number of 'best' stat's with a value of 31 between both of the parents and hopefully get a baby Pokémon with 5 or 6 'best' stats as generally a Pokémon will not need all 6 to be perfect and the last one is always left to chance.
The only way to change one of these values after a Pokémon hatches would be to hyper train them by speaking to the man on the right counter of the battle tower after completing the game and raising the Pokémon to lvl 100. This will also cost bottle caps which, for a normal bottle cap raising one IV to max, will cost you 25BP each meaning this is quite expensive.

Getting the correct nature

Obtaining the Correct nature on Pokémon could be left up to chance, with each Pokémon having one of 25 different natures upon hatching, however most breeders want guaranteed natures for obvious reasons!

To guarantee the egg will hatch into a Pokéon with the correct nature all you need to do is make sure either of the parents has the nature you want and then make them hold an everstone. This way the parent holding the everstone will always have the same nature as the hatched Pokémon

Adding Egg Moves

When talking about egg moves, not much has changed since previous games. However it is important to note that there has been a wide variety of moves that have been cut from the new games and as such don't expect to find these moves in sword and shield, through breeding or otherwise. The list is quite long as it also includes a large number of Z-moves from sun and moon so the list of cut moves can be found in the spoiler below:

002 Karate Chop
003 Double Slap
004 Comet Punch
013 Razor Wind
026 Jump Kick
027 Rolling Kick
041 Twineedle
049 Sonic Boom
082 Dragon Rage
096 Meditate
099 Rage
112 Barrier
117 Bide
119 Mirror Move
121 Egg Bomb
125 Bone Club
128 Clamp
131 Spike Cannon
132 Constrict
134 Kinesis
140 Barrage
145 Bubble
146 Dizzy Punch
148 Flash
149 Psywave
159 Sharpen
169 Spider Web
171 Nightmare
185 Feint Attack
193 Foresight
216 Return
218 Frustration
222 Magnitude
228 Pursuit
237 Hidden Power
265 Smelling Salts
274 Assist
287 Refresh
289 Snatch
290 Secret Power
293 Camouflage
300 Mud Sport
301 Ice Ball
302 Needle Arm
316 Odor Sleuth
318 Silver Wind
320 Grass Whistle
324 Signal Beam
327 Sky Uppercut
346 Water Sport
357 Miracle Eye
358 Wake-Up Slap
363 Natural Gift
373 Embargo
376 Trump Card
377 Heal Block
378 Wring Out
381 Lucky Chant
382 Me First
386 Punishment
426 Mud Bomb
429 Mirror Shot
431 Rock Climb
443 Magnet Bomb
445 Captivate
456 Heal Order
466 Ominous Wind
477 Telekinesis
481 Flame Burst
485 Synchronoise
498 Chip Away
507 Sky Drop
516 Bestow
531 Heart Stamp
537 Steamroller
563 Rototiller
569 Ion Deluge
622 Breakneck Blitz
623 Breakneck Blitz
624 All-Out Pummeling
625 All-Out Pummeling
626 Supersonic Skystrike
627 Supersonic Skystrike
628 Acid Downpour
629 Acid Downpour
630 Tectonic Rage
631 Tectonic Rage
632 Continental Crush
633 Continental Crush
634 Savage Spin-Out
635 Savage Spin-Out
636 Never-Ending Nightmare
637 Never-Ending Nightmare
638 Corkscrew Crash
639 Corkscrew Crash
640 Inferno Overdrive
641 Inferno Overdrive
642 Hydro Vortex
643 Hydro Vortex
644 Bloom Doom
645 Bloom Doom
646 Gigavolt Havoc
647 Gigavolt Havoc
648 Shattered Psyche
649 Shattered Psyche
650 Subzero Slammer
651 Subzero Slammer
652 Devastating Drake
653 Devastating Drake
654 Black Hole Eclipse
655 Black Hole Eclipse
656 Twinkle Tackle
657 Twinkle Tackle
658 Catastropika
671 Spotlight
695 Sinister Arrow Raid
696 Malicious Moonsault
697 Oceanic Operetta
698 Guardian of Alola
699 Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike
700 Stoked Sparksurfer
701 Pulverizing Pancake
702 Extreme Evoboost
703 Genesis Supernova
719 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt
723 Light That Burns the Sky
724 Searing Sunraze Smash
725 Menacing Moonraze Maelstrom
726 Let’s Snuggle Forever
727 Splintered Stormshards
728 Clangorous Soulblaze
729 Zippy Zap
730 Splishy Splash
731 Floaty Fall
732 Pika Papow
733 Bouncy Bubble
734 Buzzy Buzz
735 Sizzly Slide
736 Glitzy Glow
737 Baddy Bad
738 Sappy Seed
739 Freezy Frost
740 Sparkly Swirl
741 Veevee Volley

In order to add egg moves onto a Pokémon first use a website such as Serebii or Bulbapedia to check which egg moves they can learn and what other species can potentially pass along these egg moves. After you have done this small bit of research you simply need to ensure that the male Pokéon you leave in the nursery is one of these compatible Pokémon who already knows the egg move. This ensures that the hatched Pokémon will be the same species as the Female while also having the Egg move passed along by the Male.

[WIP] Below this Point, will be finished by the end of tomorrow.

Ensuring Pokémon have the correct ability

Optional: Increasing chance of shiny's hatching

After Breeding: Training your newly hatched Pokémon

Level training
EV training

Helpful Item Locations

Pokemon Sword & Shield Shiny Hunting Megathread

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 16:52:55 -0800

Hi all! It feels great to be in a brand new Generation of Pokemon, and with each new Gen comes a new way to shiny hunt, so I'll help break down everything we know about hunting these elusive Pokemon so far in this thread, and give my own insight as to how the new method works.

1. What's Back?

Well the two mainstay shiny hunting methods are back in this gen of course, with Random Encounters and Masuda Method Haatching. To quickly go over these, Full Odds Random Ecounters offer the usual 1/4096 chance of finding a shiny, and with Shiny Charm that gets cut in half. Masuda Method offers you a 6x multiplier (so 6/4096, and the same for Shiny Charm, but cut in half), if you breed two Pokemon from different languages with each other. You can start Full Odds Hunting after exiting the Slumbering Weald, and you gain access to two daycares, one in the Wild Area and one on Route 4. Ditto can be found in Raids or at the Lake of Outrage.

2. What's Gone?

Well, besides a few obvious ones like Horde Hunting and S.O.S. encounters, Chain Fishing, and device specific hunts (Dex-Nav, etc.) are also gone. You also cannot soft reset for stationary Pokemon, and although this was stated before launch, I'll remind everyone here, you cannot reset for a shiny starter, you'll have to breed for it. Along with Catch Combos, another feature from Pokemon Let's Go that is gone is Pokemon appearing as Shiny in the overworld. You will have to encounter each Pokemon to see if they are shiny.

3. What's New?

Now we're really getting into the bulk of it all, heres a quick summarry of our new hunting method. Start a chain of 25 Pokemon by defeating or capturing them to increase the odds of finding a shiny Pokemon from that same species. Now this is pretty standard for Pokemon, and you can just go in with 25 Chained Pokemon and try get a shiny, your odds for this are a 25% increase, so roughly 1/2090 or so. However, you can drastically increase your odds, up to 1/598. Here's how it works.

When you have a chain in SwSh, it will automatically check to see the total number of Pokemon you have battled before, and depending on the number there, you will be given an additional reroll. A reroll is what determines the likeliness of a Pokemon to be shiny, and obviously the more rerolls the better. For example, full odds hunting gives you no extra rerolls, but the shiny charm will give you an additional two. Essentially, you can have a current chain going which gives you your standard increased odds, but if you've battled a certain ammount of Pokemon, you'll gain additional rerolls for a Shiny. Specifics below.

While that looks a bit confusing, just remember that your chain will add on to how many Pokemon you've battled, and increase your odds accordingly. For the Number Battled count, you dont have to battle, say, 500 Pokemon in a row, just over time. You can, but it isn't needed, the only number needed is the 25 chain.

Heres a rundown of how I got my first Shiny, Nickit yesterday.

I got my number battled count to 500 to help increase my odds when I started my chain, from there, I saved the game before beginning the chain just in case i messed up, and proceeded to defeated 25 Nickits. I don't think it's needed, but I didn't run into any other Pokemon while doing this and only fought Nickit. After the 25, I decided to run from battles to see if this method worked. And, after 19 run aways after maxing my chain, I found the shiny. So, tl;dr to maximise odds. Get the Pokemon you want to 500 Battled, chain it to 25 without battling or catching any other Pokemon, then run until you find the shiny.

Additional stuff, I didn't leave the route when i did this. Now I don't know if this affects anything, but I kept resetting the route earlier when I was chaining and didn't find anything, but as soon as I stayed on the route, I got the shiny. So it is likely that leaving the route or entering a building, flying etc, will break the chain. You can also find yellow aura Pokemon when you start chaining, it is currently unkown if these have higher shiny odds, but they have a high chance of having a Hidden Ability and come with at least one perfect IV and an Egg Move. Lastly there is a chance that you will find a shiny Pokemon in a Max Raid battle, however we don't know the odds for this, or if they have increased odds. This will be updated when we find out. If you have any questions, ask below!

Shiny Legendary Pokemon hunting guide for Pokemon USUM (Updated)

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 09:58:02 -0700

ABOUT:
Pokemon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon intruduced a new Shiny Hunting method known as the Ultra Wormhole. It represents a minigame in which the player rides Solgaleo or Lunala by their choice in the Ultra Space and can enter Ultra Wormholes who contain either Ultra Beasts, Pokemon who can not be normally found in Alola, or Legendary Pokemon. The minigame is located at the Altar of the Sunne/Moone, depending the version of the game, after the player defeats Ultra Necrozma in the Ultra Megalopolis. All Pokemon who can be found in the Ultra Wormhole can be Shiny.

PREPARATION:
The most important thing is to change your controls from motion controls to circle pad, because it is much easier and less tiring to control the Pokemon you ride. The controls can be changed at the Game Freak office at Heahea city (on the second floor of the building next to the Dimensional Research Lab) by the Aether Foundation scientist next to the bookshelf.
The second most important thing is to buy enough Pokeballs. I require at least 100 Ultra Balls, 150 Timer Balls (can be bought at the Thrifty Megamart near the Battle Royale Dome), 30-50 Quick Balls (can be bough at the Route 8 Pokecenter) and as much Master Balls as you can obtain.
The next most important thing that you need is a Pokemon that knows the Move False Swipe (the TM is given by proffesor Kukui post-story). This move can't faint the opponent, but can leave it with minimum 1 HP, putting it to the catch HP range. I recommend Aegislash because of its great typing of Ghost and Steel who resist alot of Types, access to Swords Dance to boost its Attack stat, and access to King's Shield, a move who protects the user and drops the opponent's Attack stat harshly if contact has been made on the same turn the Move is used. Other good option is Breloom, since its also got access to Spore and Swords Dance.
If you use Aegislash, have a Pokemon with Thunder Wave or Spore/Hypnosis in other slot of the Party, since the Status Effects they inflict on the opponent boosts the catch rate and makes the usage of PP smaller. There are alot of other Pokemon you can use if you have trouble obtaining these two, or work better for you.
Another important move is Heal Block, a move who prevents the opponent from using Healing moves. For it I recommend Silvally, since you can easily obtain a Type: Null and evolve it with high Friendship.
Another thing you need is a bunch of Roto Catches who can be obtained via the Roto Lotto (they boost the Catch Rate when used in battle).
The last recommended thing is the item Shiny Charm (A item, rewarded for filling the Alola Pokedex, who is given to you at the Game Freak Office). It increases the odds for a Shiny Pokemon to appear from 1/4096 to 1/1365.

ULTRA SPACE:
When, after all the preparations, you enter Ultra Space you will first see alot of orange orbs. Collect as much as you can, since they boost your speed. Soon you will start coming across different wormholes and blue orbs filled with electricity. Avoid the blue orbs, since they remove speed equal to the speed you gain by collecting two orange orbs. As you get further, more blue orbs will appear and less orange orbs will do so. The wormholes will be either green, blue, red, yellow, and white and will look different the further you get.
Avoid white Wormholes, since they will always contain Ultra Beasts. You can tell a wormhole's rarity by its look. Wormholes with no rings around them are the most common type of wormholes and only have 1% chance to contain a Legendary Pokemon. Wormholes with one ring around them are the next by rarity and have 5% to contain a Legendary Pokemon. Wormholes with 2 rings around them are the next rarest and have 20% chance to contain a Legendary Pokemon, but the chance increases the further you get. The rarest type of wormhole are the wormholes with two rings and aura around them, and will always contain a Legendary Pokemon. They only appear after 2500 light years distance and are the type of Wormhole you will be looking for.

WORMHOLE COLORS AND LEGENDARY POKEMON:
The color of the wormhole is very important as mentioned, since it depends what Pokemon appear in the wormhole. Here is the list of what Legendary Pokemon can appear in the different colors of wormholes:

The red Wormhole will lead you to a area in the sky, which may contain:

- Articuno

- Zapdos

- Moltres

- Cresselia

- Ho-Oh (Ultra Sun only)

- Tornadus (Ultra Sun only)

- Thundurus (Ultra Moon only)

- Landorus (requires both Thundurus and Tornadus in your Party)

- Yveltal (Ultra Moon only)

- Rayquaza (requires both Groudon and Kyogre in your Party)

The green wormhole will lead you to a rocky area, which may contain:

- Cobalion

- Virizion

- Terrakion

- Mewtwo

- Raikou (Ultra Sun only)

- Xerneas (Ultra Sun only)

- Dialga (Ultra Sun only)

- Reshiram (Ultra Sun only)

- Entei (Ultra Moon only)

- Zekrom (Ultra Moon only)

The blue Wormhole will lead you to a lake with a waterfall, which may contain:

- Azelf

- Uxie

- Mesprit

- Latios (Ultra Sun only)

- Latias (Ultra Moon only)

- Kyogre (Ultra Moon only)

- Lugia (Ultra Moon only)

- Suicune ( requires both Raikou and Entei in your Party )

- Kyurem ( requires both Reshiram and Zekrom in your Party )

The yellow Wormhole will lead you to a deep cave, which may contain:

- Regirock

- Regice

- Registeel

- Groudon (Ultra Sun only)

- Heatran (Ultra Sun only)

- Palkia (Ultra Moon only)

- Regigigas (Ultra Moon only)

- Giratina ( requires both Dialga and Palkia in your Party )

Note: One of Giratina's Types is Ghost, so have a Pokemon with the Moves Foresight or Odor Sleuth, else False Swipe won't affect it.

HOW TO HUNT:
When you find a Wormhole, who contains a Legendary Pokemon, after the message who tells you your distance, the screen will flash white and there will be a message that there is a mysterious presence. As you walk closer, you will hear the Pokemon's cry and see its silhouette. Get as close as you can to the pokemon before encountering it, and then save every step forward until you encounter it. If its not Shiny, you must soft reset the game by pressing the L button, the R button, and the start/select button. This will restart the game and when you load it again, you will be at the place you saved last- just before encountering the Pokemon if you did everything correctly. Then encounter it again, and if its not Shiny soft reset again. Repeat this method until you finally encounter it as a Shiny.

THE BATTLE:
First, before finding the Shiny, battle normally the Pokemon and catch it. This will help you, because you will know what moves it has in the battle. Then you can keep reseting for the Shiny. Happily, the creators programmed all of the Legendary Pokemon to not have Moves who can cause the user to faint, like Lunar Dance or Take Down, so don't worry about recoil damage. However, some of the Pokemon know recovery Moves, so they can heal themselves and exit by the required HP range who makes them easier to catch. Some of these
Moves are status Moves, meaning you can prevent the Pokemon using them by using Heal Block, but some of them are HP draining attacking Moves, which are attacks who return the user HP, so it will be best to switch into a Pokemon that resist the attack's Type.
Here's a list of the Pokemon that can heal themselves:

- Mewtwo has Recover (use Heal Block)

- Latias has Wish (use Heal Block)

- Rayquaza has Rest (use Heal Block)

- Cresselia has Moonlight (use Heal Block)

- Virizion has Giga Drain (switch to a Pokemon that resists Grass-Type attacks)

- Xerneas has Horn Leech (switch to a Pokemon that resists Grass-Type attacks)

- Yveltal has Oblivion Wing (switch to a Pokemon that resists Flying-Type attacks)

When you finally encounter the Shiny, first throw a Quick Ball, since it has a 5x catch rate if it have been used on the first turn of the battle. If it fails to catch it, Paralyze it or put it to Sleep (preferably), and then False Swipe it till its at red HP. If you have put it asleep instead of paralyzing it, put it to Sleep again every time it wakes up. When you get it to red HP and have inflicted status, start throwing Ultra Balls. After you have used 10 or more Ultra Balls and you haven't caught it, start throwing Timer Balls, who become more effective the longer is the battle, having a maximum 20% catch rate if the battle is longer than 20 turns.
Keep throwing Timer Balls as they before more and more effective and most likely will catch the Pokemon, but if your Shiny really is stubborn and you think the battle got way too long and it will Struggle, throw a Master Ball, which will never fail.

BONUS TIPS:

- Never bring a Golisopod. If its Emergency Exit Ability activates, you will run automatically from the Pokemon.

- Regirock, Regice and Registeel have the smallest amount of PP of all of these Pokemon, two of them having 30 PP and one having 25 PP. If you don't want to risk a fail, throw your Master Ball instantly when you encounter the Shiny.

- If you don't carry a Pokemon with False Swipe, never weaken the Shiny with moves who can Burn, Poison or Confuse, such as Flamethrower, Tri-Attack, Water Pulse, Sludge Bomb, Ember, etc....

- Critical hits can occur anytime. If you are not weakening with False Swipe, don't risk a Crirical hit to occur and leave the Pokemon on yellow HP.

- Always be careful when you are soft resetting. If you get distracted, you may accidentally reset over your Shiny, especially Regice since its almost impossible to notice if its Shiny straight away.

- If you have captured Cobalion, you can use it as your False Swiper, because of its decent Defence, access to Swords Dance and Thunder Wave, and a typing of Steel and Fighting, who resists alot of types.

That was it about this guide. It's my first guide and I hope it helped. I'm sorry if there are any grammar errors/mistakes, since my English isn't that good. Anyway, thanks for reading and I wish you good luck !

A Mod's Guide to Fashion in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon!

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 22:01:40 -0700

Legends in making! I'm 0kamii, and tonight I'd like to offer my two cents on a very different type of post. This is my first guide in a lot time, since my Salazzle post, I believe. So let's hope I don't embarrass myself.

Trainer customization was one of the largest items requested by fans for the main series Pokémon games. It only took six generations, but with X and Y came the very first instances of players being able to throw their characters into whatever apparel they desired. Now, five years later, the ways to customize our trainers have gotten even more personal. We can change their hair, their eye color, their skin, even their lipstick if one so desires. The more clothes added to the games, the more I've seen people throwing together outfit that'd make any fashion designer cringe, and thus I've taken it upon myself to try and create a guideline of sorts to help would-be fashionistas dress to impress! After all, clothing can do remarkable things for confidence, and if you go into a battle wearing your Sunday clothes, that boon may be just the thing you need to turn an L into a W. With that, here's:

A Mod's Guide to Fashion in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon!

Before I begin, let me begin by answersing the biggest question you've probably asked yourself: why should I care about my trainer's clothes? You don't. I honestly couldn't care less what y'all wear. In fact, most of you are probably reading this for the kicks. This post is merely here to aid those that do want to dress their best, and if you feel comfortable slapping together any outfit and jumping on Battle Spot, then godspeed. Another thing I'd like to introduce you all too before we begin in the color wheel. See below.

There are many renditions of this model, but we'll be using this one for simplicity sake. There are far more advanced models out there, but this one will do fine for what we need. The color wheel will be a good reference point during our design period if we don't know which colors pair well with each other. Take note of which colors are directly opposed to each other on the wheel, such as yellow and purple, green and red, etc. This is part of a style choice known as contrast: two strikingly different colors combined in one look.

Last thing we need to go over are the types of colors, before we cover the styles available within the games. These will be very brief, so I'll go over them quick.

Types of Colors

Cool colors: blues, greens, purples
These colors are more easily accessible in Ultra Moon, and work well on tees, accessories, and footwear. They'll most easily pair with their direct opposite or their neighbor color

Warm colors: reds, oranges, yellows
Most easily accessible in Ultra Sun. Best used for dresses, skirts, and accessories. Not wise for shoes, but pair very well with their opposites. Not as much with their neutrals.

Neutral colors: blacks, whites, grays, and brown (beige)
These are accessible in both games, and serve as transition colors no matter what or where it is within the outfit. Typically used for accessories, but can be used on main apparel.

And finally the seven distinguishable types of styles within the game and how to dress up to them accordingly.

The Seven Styles

1.) Casual

The casual style is the style that most people would assume within the games. This particular way of dress typically involves shorts, t-shirts, sneakers, and backpacks. It's about what you'd expect to see on a trainer running around on a journey and catching wild creatures. This style works well with warm colors, as seen above, but can do well with cool and neutrals as well. Casual is the easiest style in US/UM to pull off, and almost any combination of these types of clothes can be passed off as casual. In this case specifically, I used orange as my foundation color, balanced it out with a plain designed white tee, and threw in black to anchor the colors. I found this matching hat as well as a tie-in, and now I don't just look good, I look casually good!

2.) Retro

When trying to dress in the retro style, try and imagine if it's something your parents would wear to an old 1960s concert. The retro style relies heavily on things that seem old-fashioned or outdated to an extent. The key to making the retro style work is to fluff it up with accessories, such as handbags, hats, or hair bonnets. Here I've dressed my avatar in a neutral outfit (all black, white, and beige), and added those gym socks to have texture. The large glasses are very reminescent of Iris Apfel, a fashion icon from the 20th century. The secret of this outfit is the balancing of the tones, despite it consisting of the same colors. There's black in the hat and shoes, pulling the eye from top to bottom. The brown of the hat matches that of the bag, and the stripes on the shirt add dimension. A classic example of retro style fashion in US/UM.

3.) Beachy

Game Freak must've known what they were doing when they designed the default outfit for the male playable character. The outfit that he comes with is actually a very accurate representation of beachy style fashion, the kind we'd usually see in places like Hawaii where Alola is based. Beachy style outfits are generally going to include soft colors, like the teal, white, and gray that you see here. The red of the hat and shoes is used as an accent, and the bag ties-in with the Z-ring. The Z-ring normally wouldn't be part of an outfit because it's impossible to alter, but here it works well with the colors already in use. US/UM also comes with a variety of floral pattern shirts that would go well with the beachy style as well. They may be tacky, but don't be afraid to give them a whirl! You might just feel the spirit of the islands.

4.) Punk

Exactly what it sounds like, punk is a hybrid style between retro and casual. Anyone that dresses in the punk style wants to be comfortable, but they want to show they mean business as well. This type of clothing never does wrong with those sludge pieces you find in Heahea City' apparel shop, and here I used the sludge tee as my inspiration piece. I paired that with the sea cucumber cap to pull attention using the two shades of pink, added the red of the shoes for the same eye-drawing effect as on the retro outfit, and gave the character a neutral bag for balance. The bright pink glasses are an accessories that harkens mostly towards the retro half of the style, with the rainbow of colors drawing inspiration from the 70s trends that fit the punk style. The lowcut jeans were pruely aesthetic, any size can work with this style. I'd avoid using skirts and capris in the punk style, too dainty for the look desired.

5.) Sporty

I mean to do a side-by-side comparison for all the styles like this, but clothes in US/UM are not cheap. So I had to use what I had. The sporty style is when the casual style is taken up a notch. The clothes one's wearing look fancy and high-class, but are actually rather basic. They just look more sophisticated when worn together. Typically clothes you'll want to use when trying to achieve this style on the striped tees, the polo shirts, buttondowns, blouses, and capri pants. You typically don't see loafers or espadrilles with this style, as that's considered too formal. Wear sneakers or sandals for footwear here, and don't be afraid to try on trilbys as opposed to baseball caps or the 'casual' cap that comes with the player at the beginning of th game. In both these looks, I chose a foundation color, pink and green respectively, and used neutrals to accent it. On the boy, I used red to tie in with the backpack, and white to offset the black. The girl I used more black, and contrasted it with white. The bright orange handbag is called a statement piece, which is an anomaly used to catch the eye. It's also nearly opposite to green, creating visual contrast with the rest of the outfit. Personally, sporty is probably by favorite style in US/UM.

6.) Regal

Regal is the most elegant of the styles, and most commonly seen on female trainers. There are not a lot of options for male trainers if they want to dip into the regal style, but the Gracidea shop in Hau'oli City will be your best bet for apparel in the regal style. Be warned, though. It is very expensive. As if it wouldn't be, right? To dress in the regal style, imagine that you are among the same status as Lillie, or Lusamine. Esteemed, froufrou, royal. Try to imagine what your rich alter-ego would wear and that's the regal style. This is the style that you'll usually see with long, flowy hair, big hats, heels, and dresses/skirts. For this outfit, I styled it with a bright orange skirt to break up all the white, and couple it with a ruffled blouse. The pink flower was used for a pop of color, and the black handbag ties-in with the bottom of the shoes. Regal can be beautiful, but given that the pieces used to make it possible are so radically priced, you really have to want it to look it.

7.) Costume

Not so much a style, more of a feature, costumes are available that you can use to dress up as your favorite characters and pokémon throughout the game. Here I have the Team Skull costume, available to boys and girls, and on the right I have the Nurse Joy costume, exclusive to girls. Other costumes available are Kommo-o armor, karate gi, various pieces of Pikachu apparel. These outfits don't require much additions to look good, as they are the only pieces of clothes in the games that are meant to be part of a set. Everything else is up to the player, these are ready-made. So if you want to look good and don't feel like putting in the work, go for these!

Here's a video link showcasing all the clothing for boys in US/UM:

Here's a link for all the female's clothing in S/M. Couldn't find one for US/UM, but most of it should be the same.

Other than these, the only other things I would say regarding hair, eye color, lipstick and skin, those are all entirely up to the trainer themselves. Far as I can tell, they make little difference in the outcome of the outfit, so feel free to mix and match those things all you want!

Conclusion:

Whew, that was sure a lot of information. Obviously none of this is intended to be serious, and as I mentioned prior, y'all are free to wear whatever you want, however you want. This post merely serves as a waypoint for all those trainers that actually do want to look good in-game, and hopefully I've provided a way of helping trainers do that. Any questions, comments, or suggestions on how to improve this post are welcomed in the thread below, and if I think of anything to add I'll be sure to throw it in somewhere. I haven't made a guide like this in a long time, so hopefully it made sense.

Can't thank you all enough for reading, and if nothing else, I hope this post gave you a good laugh. I'll be here tomorrow 3pm EST for the Battle the Mods Weekly Stream, so don't be a strange to our weekly stumblings. I'm sure you'll get as much a kick out of it as we will. "All Our Favorite Ultra Beasts" is coming soon, and be on the lookout for a special announcement Amethyst 0mega has planned for the upcoming month! Be sure to post screenshots of your character's outfits in the thread below, and let me know if this post was at all helpful.

Thanks so much for reading, everyone! Battle onwards, friends!

- 0kamii

Spreadsheets for Breeding: a Guide

Sat, 31 Mar 2018 23:34:41 -0700

Warm greetings everybody! Welcome to Spreadsheets for Breeding: a Guide!

For some reason I have been asked by some users for tips on how to create a spreadsheet on Google Sheets, and since many others may have the same interest, I thought that it would be nice to organize all the information I have on the subject and make a thread for future reference. However, note that I am not exactly an expert on Google Sheets, so let us help each other: if you happen to know of any other useful tips or material please don't hesitate to share them with us here!

In this guide we will show you how to create a spreadsheet to track your breedjects step-by-step — more precisely, you will learn how to create a sheet with twenty rows for breedjects (whose details are described in thirteen columns) and in-cell images, in-sheet images, unicode characters, alternating colors, drop-down lists, filters and much more.

Here is a simple preview of our goal:

Disclaimer: All Pokemon described above are fictional breedjects used only for illustrative purposes.

We will be using illustrations such as this one above as much as possible to exemplify each step described in this guide.

Before we start, we should mention that the above spreadsheet is available online in the following link:

My Awesome Spreadsheet — You are invited to make a copy of it and try it yourself. You can do this accessing the link above and choosing the 'Make copy' option under the 'File' tab (apparently using 'Download as' might break some of it formulas).

I encourage you to play with this spreadsheet while you are reading the steps described in this guide.

1. Creating a spreadsheet

In the following we will assume that you already has a Google account (you can create an account here)

Creating a spreadsheet in Google Sheets is very easy. From the Google Sheets home under the 'Start a new spreadsheet' tab, click in 'Blank' to create a new spreadsheet from scratch.

Now that you have created a blank spreadsheet we can proceed to the next step.

2. Detail your Pokemon

It is now time to insert all the relevant information you want to include for your Pokemon, in our case: species, icon, gender, ball, level, nature, ability, IVs, move slot 1, move slot 2, move slot 3, move slot 4 and OT. Note that there is absolutely no general rule here since this is the part where you should custumize your spreadsheet. That said, people prefer to organize Pokemon details horizontally to allow their mons to be listed in a vertical way.

Following this idea, we want to add a column for each one of the above mentioned names. This can be done by clicking on a cell and pressing enter to type a value. For example, assuming that we want to digit those values in the first row of the table, we would have something like this:

As a matter of fact, you can do the same thing to enter your all your own Pokemon data as well if you want to, but let's just focus on the 'Species' entry at the moment. To give a illustration, suppose you want to list: Abra, Absol, Aerodactyl, Aipom, Alomomola, Amaura, Anorith, Archen, Aron, Audino, Axew, Azurill, Bagon, Baltoy, Barboach, Basculin, Beldum, Bellsprout, Bergmite, Bidoof — as shown below:

3. Inserting in-cell images

Now we would like to display the icons of those Pokemon using in-cell images. To insert an image in a cell you just need to click on the desired cell, press Enter or F2 to enter the formula mode, and then type the command `=image("URL",mode)` (without the outermost brackets) where 'URL' is the web address of that image you want to add and 'mode' specifies what to do if the image's size do not fill in the cell.

There are four modes named from 1 to 4 (for more tips about the image function see this and this page)

1 resizes the image to fit within the cell and maintain the aspect ratio;
2 stretches the image or compresses it to fit inside the cell, it ignores the aspect ratio;
3 leaves the image at original size;
4 allows you to specify the image’s width and height;

We will be using the only the third mode in this guide (resizing often makes images look weird).

A more important question at this point is: how do we find the icons for those mons on the web? I learned from my buddy Tenebris_Kane that you can find literally thousands of icons (for mons, items, balls, body styles, TMs, HMs and more) in msikma's pokesprite Github repository. In sum, this is what we have now:

When an image don't fit in the cell, you can simply adjust the row height and column width of the cell. You can actually do this uniformly for every row and column of your sheet by clicing on the blank cell below the formula bar to select every cell. Now our spreadsheet looks like this:

4. Coloring Alternate Rows

Okay, that was a nice start for our spreadsheet. But it still looks too simple, right? What about having alternating rows formatted with different colors?
This can be easily done in Google Sheets: choose 'Alternating colors' from the 'Format' menu. Select 'Apply to range' enter the desired range.

In Google Sheets every range has the format FIRSTCELL:LASTCELL, where 'FIRSTCELL' and 'LASTCELL' are respectively placeholders for the first and last cell you want to include in the range. In our case we want to cover from Species (Column A) to OT (Column M), and from Abra (Row 2) to Bidoof (Row 21), so we choose the range A1:M21. You can also choose the colors you want to use as well. After all that, we have the following:

5. Unicode characters & Centering

Google Sheets has support for unicode characters, which means that we can add fancy symbols such as '♀' or '♂' to our spreadsheet in the same way we type any other character. You can also center your cells clicking on 'Center' in the toolbar.

6. Drop-down Lists (Part I)

What if we had a drop-down list that allows you to select whether a given Pokemon is female, male or genderless?

Drop-down lists are only visible to those who have edit permissions for the document. There are many ways of creating drop-down lists in Google Sheets and we will be using two of them in this guide. We will begin with the easiest one: Select the cells C2 to C21 and choose 'Data validation' from the 'Data' menu. Select 'List of items' from the dropdown in 'Criteria' and put '♂, ♀, -' in the input box.

Now we have a drop-down list for the gender of each Pokemon from the rows 2 to 21!

7. Inserting images to a sheet

Now we would like to create a nice five-rows header for our spreadsheet. Unfortunately we have no room for it, since we started our list from the row 1 and not row 6. But we can solve this problem easily with a simple cut and paste, cutting the cells from A1:M21 to (say) A6:M26.

Now that we have enough room for it, what about inserting an image to the header of the sheet? There are essentially two ways of inserting images to a spreadsheet in Google Sheets:

In-cell images are locked into a particular cell you choose. We already covered them in Step 3.
In-sheet images are locked into a particular sheet (page) you choose but you can click and drag those images anywhere in the sheet.

To insert an in-sheet image click in 'Image' under the 'Insert' tab and choose how you want to add the image you want. I usually choose to insert images by URL. For example, this is how we insert the Pokémon: Gotta Catch 'Em All logo (available online in this link):

As a side note, this is also how you insert a gif without breaking its animation: you just need to paste the public web address of the gif you want to add.

8. Merging cells

To merge a set of cells you should highlight the cells you want to merge and select the merge type on the main toolbar (you can either merge all selected cells, or merge them vertically / horizontally). Note however, that when you have data in the cells to be merged, only the data in the leftmost cell is preserved.

The picture above shows the result of merging the cells from A1:M1.

7. Adding new sheets

Before introducing a new way of implementing a drop-down list we should say a few words about how to create new pages (sheets)

Many people like having a spreadsheet organized with multiple sheets. This feature is particularly useful if you want to have just a single file to keep track of your breedjects, mons for trade, event mons etc. You can go under the tab 'Insert' and click on 'New sheet' to add a new page to your spreadsheet.

10. Drop-down Lists (Part II)

That being said, we want to create a drop-down list that contains all (non-neutral) Pokemon natures:

Adamant (+Atk, -SpA)
Bold (+Atk, -Def)
Brave (+Atk, -Spe)
Calm (+SpD, -Atk)
Careful (+SpD, -SpA)
Gentle (+SpD, -Def)
Hasty (+Spe, -Def)
Impish (+Def, -SpA)
Jolly (+Spe, -SpA)
Lax (+Def, -SpD)
Lonely (+Atk, -Def)
Mild (+SpA, -Def)
Modest (+SpA, -Atk)
Naive (+Spe, -SpD)
Naughty (+Atk, -SpD)
Quiet (+SpA, -Spe)
Rash (+SpA, -SpD)
Relaxed (+Def, -Spe)
Sassy (+SpD, -Spe)
Timid (+Spe, -Atk)

But the problem is that we cannot simply validate the data using the 'list of items' criteria as we did before because Google Sheets automatically separates items whenever it parses a comma: on the other hand, each one of the above identifiers have one occurrence of commas inside them!

So we will be using the 'List from a range' data validation criteria instead. For that we shall create a separate table of natures in our sheet 2 (Data).

After that we go to our sheet 1 (Breedjects), select the cells F7 to F26 and under 'Data validation', we select the criteria 'List from a range' and put the range A2:A21 from our data sheet, i.e. `Data!A1:A21`.

and this is what we have now:

Now we are almost done! There are only two other things that I would like to talk about, the first one being:

11. Filters

Sometimes your spreadsheet has too much data that you have trouble organizing it or you may want to hide some data temporarily. This is when filters may be useful for you because they temporarily remove rows, based on what you need to show at the moment — in other words, you don't need to delete any information! Needless to say, only people with edit permission can see and manipulate filters.

To begin with, let us add some random data in the nature field for our breedjects. Now we select the cells from A6:M26 and select 'Create new filter view' under the tab 'Filter views' from the toolbar. This should be your output:

Suppose that now we want to remove the rows with male and genderless mons and display only the female ones. In that case you just need to click on the filter arrow from C6. You will see a checklist with all existing values in this column, like this:

and, after clicking on the 'Ok' button, the selected filter will be applied:

To undo the filter you just have to check the values back. Since we still have one last function that I would like to stress, we will undo the above filter (and for the sake of completeness fill all other fields with some random data)

12. Freezing rows and columns

Freezing a row or column means to fix this row or column allowing it to be visible no matter how a reader scrolls your spreadsheet – a trick that is very handy when you want to emphasize a particular piece of information in the spreadsheet. To freeze a row or column, highlight any cell in the desired row or column and under the 'View' tab click on 'Freeze' and 'Up to current row' or 'Up to current column'.

Say we want to freeze the cells A1:M6. To do that we simply highlight a cell in row 6 and freeze up to the current row.

Sometimes you will get an error message such as 'sorry you can't freeze rows which contain only part of a merged cell' at this point. This only means that you probably have a merged cells occurring at the exact row (or column) that you are trying to freeze, so there are two ways of solving this problem: you can either find the merged cells and unmerge them or you can freeze more rows (or columns) to include the complete merged cells.

--

I guess that this is it for now! I will be updating this thread with new content depending on the community's feedback. Again, I am not exactly an expert on Google Sheets but please feel free to ask any questions (or PM me) and I will try to help you as I can.

That's all folks!

Pokemon Crystal Odd Egg Guide

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:45:30 -0800

With the release of Pokemon Crystal imminent, players will be able to get access to an ingame event unavailable in Gold / Silver called the Odd Egg. The Odd Egg can get you a cool baby Pokemon that can usually be harder to find, but that's not all.

What is the Odd Egg?

The Odd Egg is a Pokemon Egg you can get from the Day Care Man just before Goldenrod City. Unlike the Togepi Egg, the Odd Egg can hatch into one of several baby Pokemon being Pichu, Igglybuff, Cleffa, Magby, Elekid, Smoochum and Tyrogue. These Pokemon all hatch with the Move Dizzy Punch, a move these Pokemon cannot learn through normal means. Of course this isn't the only thing about the Odd Egg Pokemon, they also have a drastically increased chance to hatch as a Shiny Pokemon.

Odds and Hatching

In the international release of Pokemon Crystal, the Odd Egg has a 14% chance to hatch as a Shiny Pokemon, in the Japanese version, the Odds are higher still at a 50% Shiny chance. The reason for this is because these Pokemon, once hatched, can have only 1 of 2 IV Spreads. They are as follows;

Non Shiny IV Spread: 0 Attack, 0 Defense, 0 Speed and 0 Special with Hidden Power Grass that has a base power of 31
Shiny IV Spread: 2 Attack, 10 Defense, 10 Speed, and 10 Special with Hidden Power Fighting that has a base power of 49

Save before getting the Odd Egg, as this is your only Odd Egg you get in the game. The average hatch time for these Pokemon is about 11 minutes, so although this hunt seems easy, it's really time consuming, and the only way to get a second Odd Egg is to trade the hatched Pokemon to another game and restarting Pokemon Crystal from the beginning, cloning eggs can be very dangerous to corrupting your save file, so heed my warning and don't try it.

Extremely Efficient and Effective Way to Earn Poké Fast in US/UM

Wed, 03 Jan 2018 05:35:54 -0800

Running low on money for Poke Balls or Revives or whatever else you may want? Just use this step by step tutorial and you'll be making Poké fast.

What You Need

A Pokemon that can learn Happy Hour and Pay Day. The only Pokemon who can do this currently are; Meowth, Persian and Smeargle
An Amulet Coin, found behind the truck on Paniola Ranch
Adrenaline Orbs for SOS chaining
Although not required, you can make this easier by having a Trevenant or Exeggutor with the Harvest Ability, Skill Swap, Bestow (or Trick on Trevenant) while holding a Leppa Berry to initiate an infinite SOS Chain

After giving your Happy Hour Pokemon the Amulet Coin, find your target Pokemon, something on Route 1 will be perfect, and start an SOS Battle. Use Happy Hour, then once new Pokemon get called in, only use Pay Day. The amount of Prize Money you get will actually stack, I've seen someone get upwards to P 12,000. It's extremely easy and very efficient, and if you use Smeargle you can give it Roost or Recover (personally I will use Ingrain) to restore HP. If you plan on using this method for a while, be sure to stock up on Leppa Berries. That's it. Enjoy.

A How to Easily Beat all of US/UM Totems

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 19:28:13 -0800

Hello Pokemon Forever,

Now after Christmas I expect that a lot of people who haven't got the two new Pokemon games before, might have gotten it as a present. And as to be expected, with all the new changes to the totems in these games some of the strategies you have from sun and moon won't work here. And so, as someone who has just gotten the game too, I will be helping to make this guide to best each of the trials in this games.

In here will be a list of pokemon that will fair well against the totems and their allies and any moves that could help too.

This will only cover the regular captain's trials and not the grand trials.

NOW TO BE EXPECTED THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE, SO IF YOU WISH TO PLAY THE GAMES WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT TO EXPECT IN THE TRIALS CLICK OFF NOW.

Still here? Yeah ok lets go

TRIAL #1 NORMAL TRIAL

Now for those playing Ultra Sun you will have a Gumshoos, and in Ultra moon you will face an Alolan Raticate.

These both are normal types with a defence boost with their aura. Now a common Idea is to poision these totems so they will die after a certain amount of time, however these totems are holding a Pecha Berry which cures poision so that statigy takes more turns than it would with a far more easiy strategy. Now outside this trial site, there is a berry tree which you can easily find a Crabrawler, which has a type advantage on both. Now in the trial site you can find a tm for Brick Break, a high power fighting type move. This gives a stab super effective move on both of these to your team, which will lead to either a OKO or a TKO on both of these pokes.

TRIAL #1 WATER TRIAL

Now a big surprise for this totem was that the Wishiwashi was replaced with Araquanid.

Now this pokemon gets a Speed boost with the aura which doesn't make a lot challenge. HOWEVER this pokemon is holding a Wacan Berry. This berry weakens electric attacks and makes attacking it much harder. Now an easy strategy to avoid this is to have a pokemon knowing Pluck, which eats the berry the other pokemon has. So by using an electric type pokemon like the cap Pikachu event, or Magnmite you can eaily beat this totem. Now I highly advice against using a Rowlet or Dartrix as it has the move Aurora Beam, which his 4x super effective.

TRIAL # 3 FIRE TRIAL

The second surprise in these totems is that we have to face an Alolan Marowak

Now this pokemon is a huge theat. It has a Thick Club which doubles its attack power. Not to mention its +2 Boost to speed. For this pokemon I HIGHLY RECOMMEND KNOCK OFF. This will give super effective damage and get rid of that thick club. To fight this pokemon I suggest using a pokemon like Makuhita or Machop which both learn Knock Off around the same level of the totem, not to mentinon that makes you immune to Marowak's stab hex attack.

Trial # 4 Grass

IT'S BACK LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TOTEM LURANTIS

THIS THING IS STILL A MONSTER. TOXIC IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN AND BRING PROTECTS AND CLOUD NINE. Also keep that Kecleonon the field as long as possible, if that Comfey hits the field, KILL IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You may find use with a Golduck which can easily be found prior, however a much better one will be Swablu or Altaria. Your knock off user should also be used here in the first turn, as it can get rid of that power herb it holds. Disable will also help with stopping that Synthesis if you can time it correctly.

TRIAL NUMBER # 5 ELECTRIC TRIAL

THIS IS A NEW KILLER, A GIANT PIKA-CLONE, THAT IS TOGEDEMARU

This Pokemon has been a struggle for most people who walk in unprepared. It has one of the most rage inducing movesets of Zing Zap, Iron Head, Spiky Sheild, and Bounce. Now to easily beat this I suggest a Stammina Mudsdale. Its stab ground type moves will be able to take it out quickly. Togedemaru's attacks are all physical and will slowly be weakened by your raising defenses. Also it's Zing-Zap move is useless against the ground type. If you also want another suggestion, Inner Focus will allow you to bipass the constant flinching that this entails.

TRIAL NUMBER # 6 GHOST TRIAL

A semi challenging trial is back with Totem Mimikyu

Now this isn't that hard of a trial in my own opinion, dispite it's omni-boost its stong physical attacks can be easily defeated by a attack lowering status move, but avoid using wilo-wisp as it is holding a lum berry. if you can lower it attack stat enough, the leech life move looses it effect to heal it. I even am thinking about using a mold breaker pokemon to avoid the disguise ability. Also the steel type z crystal is obtained prior and it will deal one of the only super effective attacks you can find that is safe to use, as ghost types will also take super effecive damage. If you use the Pluck strategy like before, you will be able to take out that Lum Berry and use wilo wisp better and get rid of that disguise too.

TRIAL NUMBER # 7 DRAGON TRIAL

One of the best pokemon specific Z move users is here and he is GIANT. Kommo-o

This Pokemon gains a strong boost to all of it's stats, which makes it rather powerful. However it's weaknesses is found in the faults of it's movepool, It has no good coverage option to stop it's Psychic type weakness. It's only conter to that is with its ally Sizor, which you can take out with a fire type move easily. I also suggest bringing a wilo wisp user to this fight. If you use the Pluck strategy like before, you will be able to take out that Roseli Berry and spam fairy type moves as well.

TRIAL # 8 FAIRY TRIAL

SO YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT THIS DUMB FAIRY GETS DOUBLE THE BOOST THAT THIS SUDO LEGENDARY GETS?!

But all joking aside, this thing has little defenses so you can easily defeat this totem. Its totem is also holding an Orca Berry which weakens fire type moves, so pluck will do well here too. Also watch out for the Blissey as it has heal pulse.

Conclusion,

So all in all there are a lot of moves and abilities which will help you to avoid the pain some of these trial bring. As it turns out, moves like Pluck and Knock off become your best friends, and you can work around these issues. Hope this helps to any of you people who run into problems on your own island challenge.

Have a Good day and thank you for reading and feel free to post any of your own tactics below,

~FireTaco

Ultimate Shiny SOS Guide

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 22:41:10 -0800

Firstly, hey. I decided to write this for Gen 7, because this looks like this hasn’t been done. And shinies are what everyone wants.

Second, this may be a bit lengthy, as certain pokemon/movesets need an explanation.

Third, there is a link for all to look at that explains where I get this from; Yeah

Now we have a link for overview, I will explain how each pokemon works, in turn. Also note, everything in the link from the thicker black line down is fluid, depending on the situation. Also note, all the pokemon are level 100, and have EVs, IVs and natures that compliment their job. Plus Maximum PP, and Max Affection (it can help). Also, some are from Generation 6, cause of Move Tutors, and some are Hidden Abilities. However, with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the Move Tutors are there too.

ONTO THE POKEMON.

First in the team: Dugtrio.

Why that one in front over others you ask? How did you get th-

Simple answer, its the Kanto variant. Its Ability, Arena Trap, works like Illuminate, which increases encounters. It also holds a Smoke Ball, which means if you are searching and don’t encounter what you want, you can escape without worry. Its for finding the pokemon you want, and being able to flight or fight.

The moveset:

Stealth Rock via Move Tutor, which is useful for hunting anything with Sturdy.

Sand Attack via Level Up, which reduces accuracy of the 1st, useful to keep other things going.

Growl via Level Up which reduces Attack Power.

Confide via TM which reduces Special Attack Power.

Second on team:

Smeargle #1.

Why Smeargle?

Its versatile as heck, with an infinitely customizable moveset, through Sketch. It is the main battler. It holds Leftovers, because. All 3 Smeargle do. It has Technician as Ability

The moveset:

Substitute. Why? It will stop some moves injuring and affecting you. And with other things, it is easy.

Aerial Ace. Why? It is a never-miss move, you never hit your opponent directly (which stops some abilities proccing) and it will injure anything. With Stealth Rocks, you can KO and KO until the cows come home.

Reflect Type. Why? Typically your opponent has moves that do a persistent effect (burn, poison, etc), and usually its own typing (Fire, Poison, etc) can stop the effect hitting.
- You CAN swap Reflect Type for Conversion 2, if you go against something that uses Take Down a lot (see Beldum) or uses similar moves.

Skill Swap. Why? Its needed for the 6th party member guest stars. To get the Ability onto Smeargle.

Third on team: Smeargle #2.

Reason why is as above. The job is VERY different though. It also has Own Tempo over Technician because of Confusion.

The moveset:

Soak: Why? It is the crux of the catcher. It weakens the harder defense types, makes Ghosts vulnerable to Normal Type moves, and makes Grass Type Spore moves hit it too.

False Swipe: Why? You will never KO the Shiny when you hit them. Easy.

Spore: Why? Sleep the Shiny, and you increase the catch chances. Useful for if you want a particular ball for it, plus things that can auto-KO (with moves) are unable to act for a time.

Gastro Acid: Why? Because, despite Soak being brilliant, it can’t account for Insomnia, Early Bird, and similar abilities.

Forth on Team: Smeargle #3.

This may get boring. Also has Own Tempo though.

The moveset:

Baton Pass. Why? To get the stat buffs onto Smeargle #1.

Aqua Ring. Why? Health recovery. And for those opponents that hit like a truck, that being higher level ‘mon, those that cut your HP with dirty tricks, and make Substitute Useless, it can be clutch. Its 1/16 + 1/16 = 1/8 per turn. Never hurts.

Dragon Dance. Why? Attack and Speed Buff. It can help with KOing. Buff to +6.

Minimize. Why? Dodging things are good. Also buff to +6.

Fifth on team: Trevenant

Finally a different pokemon. The pokemon has Harvest as its ability, and holds a Leppa Berry, the reason of which will be explained in due course. Why Trevenant? Its typing (Grass/Ghost) is better than other people may use (Alolan Exeggutor (Grass/Dragon)) and its moveset will reflect that.

The moveset:

Skill Swap. Why? Putting Harvest on the first pokemon you fight. It is half of a tactic called Infinite Chaining. There are a few abilities that Skill Swap doesn’t work on, as a word of advice. Get this from Move Tutors.

Trick. Why? The other half of the Infinite Chaining game. You give the first pokemon the Leppa Berry it holds. The advantage Trick has over Bestow (which Alolan Exeggutor gets as its pre-evolved form) is that you need not worry about your opponent holding an item. Another Move Tutor Move.

Thief. Why? You want to potentially get that Leppa Berry back at the end, and KO the Infinite Chainer in the process, right? Unless you have enough Leppa Berries to fill a landfill. This is a TM move.

Forest’s Curse. Why? It can give Grass typing to a pokemon. Can be useful maybe. Learned from levelling up.

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

Because it seems people may need this, I am adding this in. Alternate main fighters.

Why do we need this? Have you gone ma-

No, I haven’t. But some things need specialized jobs, and movesets. The things will usually have, as normal, a Leftovers though, unless mentioned.
Suction Cups Cradily There is a reason for this, instead of Dugtrio. Fishing. Suction Cups allows for instant fishing up of things. Which means easier things showing up. You will need to breed in Gen 6, for reasons that will become clear. It holds a Smoke Bomb for the same reason as Dugtrio too. Moveset:

Stealth Rock via Move Tutor mainly, for the same reason its on Dugtrio. Tickle via breeding from Omanyte and Omastar, to reduce Attack (and Defense).
Confide via TM to reduce Special Attack.
Flash via TM from Generation 6 to reduce Accuracy.

Lockdown Smeargle.

Why? Its got the same ability as the normal fighting Smeargle. Its moveset is different though.

Aerial Ace. As above, so below.

Skill Swap. Yup. If there is another move you need locked down, swap out for it.

Imprison. This is a new one. Its for the 4th move.

This move is the move you want to lock down, being maybe Spite, or Absorb (and its upgrades), etc.

Parasect

This may be a confusing one. Its good for Alolan Geodude hunting, with Damp as its ability.

The moveset.

False Swipe. You want to get caught out by a grumpy exploding Geodude? Its a TM in this case.

Spore. Sleeping the Geodude. Learned by Level Up.

Brick Break. Beating down the Geodude. You will hit regardless. You will need Stealth Rock to make sturdy useless on the opponents. A TM.

X Scissor. Another damaging move. Level Up too, or TM.

There are other alternate fighters (Lightning Rod A-Marowak, Intimidate Mawile, etc) but it depends what floats your boat.

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

Now the main 5 and alternates have been explained, onto the 6th members. These are there to give Abilities. I would have more, but there are some I can’t access that would be useful. There are some that are Ultra Sun/Moon exclusive too, which will be pointed out. When brought, these hold a Leftovers. There are also more that can be added, with different abilities, but because of the abilities disadvantage, I don’t use it, or it seems useless. These are the ones I personally use though. FYI *cough*StillNeedaHASpritzee*cough*

How these work. First, research your opponent, find out its moveset, Its call rate, anything that you need to, and work out what is your best 6th member. When the pokemon calls its first ally, move the ability onto the first called with the move provided. Then buff with Smeargle #2, swap to Smeargle #3 with Baton Pass, and Skill Swap the ability off the ally. Then go to town on the allies, attacking with Aerial Ace, using PP restores (usually Leppa Berries of your own) every so often, and using Adrenaline Orbs when no ally is called, and you don’t need PP, until a Shiny shows.

There is a reason I didn’t include Sylveon, which is that the Ability Cute Charm. And the reason is, while its possibly useful, it doesn’t work when you Skill Swap it for SOSing. I know this from experience.

Stantler

Ability is Intimidate. Why? Its an essential for hunting things that have a low call rate (Turtonator, Absol, Tauros as examples) because it doubles the rate of SOS calls without any disadvantages. Of which there are 2 other similar abilities, Pressure, with the disadvantage of doubling PP usage of the opponent (meaning they run out faster), and Unnerve, with the disadvantage of stopping Berry Usage (meaning Infinite Chaining would fall apart).

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Grumpig #1

Ability is Own Tempo, which stops confusion. Which means less hitting of oneself. Better than using an Ability Capsule on Smeargle (which is expensive).

Has Skill Swap as an Egg Move from Sylveon, or as a Move Tutor Move.

Grumpig #2

Ability is Thick Fat, which halves Damage from Fire and Ice Type Attacks. Its cool.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Grumpig #1.

Dusclops

Ability is Pressure. I explained how Pressure isn’t brilliant.

Has Skill Swap as an Egg Move from Solosis and its evolutionary line, or as a Move Tutor Move.

Pangoro #1

Ability is Scrappy. This could be useful if you are haunted by Ghosts.

Has Entrainment as a Move from levelling up.

Pangoro #2

Ability is Mold Breaker. Its useful if you have something that has a trolly ability, like Mimikyu’s disguise, Sturdy, etc, though with Stealth Rocks, it can be moot. It also can beat Shell Armor, Fur Coat, and Queenly Majesty. I’ve never used it, because it doesn’t fit anything.

The source of Entrainment is the same as Pangoro #1.

Hawlucha
Ability is Limber. It can stop you getting Paralyzed, which can make things difficult cause of lost turns.

Has Entrainment as an Egg Move from Buneary or Pancham and its evolutionary lines.

Carbink #1

Ability is Clear Body. It works if you are hit with a lot of moves that mess with your stats. Its a clearly useful ability.

Has Skill Swap as a Move from levelling up.

Carbink #2

Ability is Sturdy. Its useful if the enemy can do damage that 1-hits.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Carbink #1

Chimecho

Ability is Levitate. Makes you Immune to Ground Attacks. Has floaty use.

Has Skill Swap as an Egg Move from Solosis and its evolutionary line, or as a Move Tutor Move.

Sigiliph #1

Ability is Magic Guard. Stops Indirect Damage. Can have use with tricks.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Sigiliph #2

Ability is Wonder Skin. Halves the accuracy of Status moves. Some use.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Sigiliph #1.

Mr. Mime #1

Ability is Soundproof. Stops sound based moves from affecting the pokemon. This includes Roar etc.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Mr. Mime #2

Ability is Filter. Reduces Damage from Super-Effective moves by 1/4 , which could be useful.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Mr. Mime #1.

Jynx #1

Ability is Oblivious. Can stop Infatuation and similar things. Lovely.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Jynx #2

Ability is Forewarn. Warns about strongest move.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Jynx #1

Reuniclus

Ability is Overcoat. Protects from Sandstorm, Hailstorm, Powder and Spore Moves, and Effect Spore.

Has Skill Swap as a Move from levelling up.

Pyroar

Ability is Moxie. Increases Attack if you defeat a pokemon. Could be useful as you rapidly KO things, or if you have something that likes to lower attack, as a counter.

Has Entrainment as an Egg Move from Dedenne or Pancham and its evolutionary line.

Octillery #1

Ability is Sniper. Increases the damage of Criticals. Could be useful if you crit a lot.

Has Entrainment as an Egg Move from Dewpider and its evolutionary line.

Octillery #2

Ability is Suction Cups. Stops automatic switch out moves affecting you. Not sucky at all.

The source of Entrainment is the same as Octillery #1.

Remoraid

Ability is Hustle. Increases the Attack of physical moves. Useful, and works well with Aerial Ace.

The source of Entrainment is the same as Octillery #1

Araquanid

Ability is Water Bubble. Halves the damage from Fire Type Attacks, Doubles Damage of Water Type Attacks, and gives immunity to burn. Hot if Scald is involved.

Has Entrainment as a Move from levelling up.

Swoobat

Ability is Unaware. Makes Stat Changes be ignored. Useful if you want something uninterested.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Girafarig #1

Ability is Inner Focus. Prevents Flinching. Has uses from hitters.

Has Skill Swap as an Egg Move from Sylveon, or as a Move Tutor Move.

Girafarig #2

Ability is Early Bird. Speeds waking up when asleep. If you want less sleep lost, use Insomnia Instead.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Girafarig #1.

Banette #1

Ability is Frisk. Lets you check the items on opponents. Useful for pocket checks.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Banette #2

Ability is Insomnia. Prevents Sleeping. Very Useful for working all night.

The source of Skill Swap is the same as Banette #1.

Butterfree

Ability is Compound Eyes. Increases the rate that Items are held on opponents. Situationally Useful for pocket fills.

Has Skill Swap as a Move Tutor move.

Meowstic

Ability is Infiltrator. Lets you bypass Barrier Moves. Very Useful if you want to fight over the wall.

Has Skill Swap as an Ultra Sun and Moon ONLY Move Tutor move.

Beheeyem

Ability is Analytic. It increases the Damage done if the pokemon acts after others. Can be useful if you are slow.

Has Skill Swap as an Egg Move from Abra, Drowzee, Gothita, and Elgyem evolutionary lines, Mr. Mime, and Spinda, all from a previous generation, or as a Move Tutor Move.

Pallosand

Ability is Water Compaction. It raises defense when hit by Water Type Attacks. Useful if you want to sand up for yourself.

Has Skill Swap as an Ultra Sun and Moon ONLY Move Tutor move.

How I Shiny Hunt Salazzle! - Tips and Tricks

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 12:41:22 -0800

Hey, everybody! It's 0kamii, and I just recently got a Shiny female Salandit that I intend on evolving into a Shiny Salazzle!

Shiny Salazzle is easily one of the those prized Shinies from Gen 7 because of the skewed gender ratio. Approximately 7 males to 1 females makes Shiny Salazzle quite the rarity, or so you'd think. As it turns out, people discovered quite quickly how to use legtimate in-game mechanics to increase their odds of finding this reptilian ranchera. Since you're only reading this if you intend on hunting this beauty for yourself, allow me to share some of the tips and tricks that I used to obtain this Shiny for myself. This post will follow the same format as my last tips and tricks guide pretty closely, so if you only care about the tips and tricks, then you can scroll right down to them. Otherwise, let's get into it.

How I Shiny Hunt Salazzle! - Tips and Tricks

Tip 1 - Make sure you have the Shiny Charm!

Unless you're a full odds hunter and don't want it, the Shiny charm will increase your odds of finding a Shiny pokémon by roughly a 1/3. In an S.O.S. chain, this means your odds of finding a Shiny between 1 - 69 allies is about 1/1,365. After 70, through about 255, your odds will be approximately 1/683. That doesn't guarantee a Shiny any time fast, but it does increase your odds. The chain resets every 70 allies, so don't think your window closes after the first 255 allies. I don't think I have to mention that you get the Shiny charm by completing the Alola Dex, but I will say that doing so is easier than ever thanks to forums like ours! Head on over if you need help getting the last few mons for your own Shiny Charm!

Tip 2 - Use a Cute Charm Pokémon

The most obvious trick regarding this hunt, a Charm chamer will up the odds of having the ally pokémon be the opposite gender of the Charmer by about 66.6%. Therefore, if you have a male Cute Charm pokémon, the Salandit will be female about 2/3 of the time. Again, this guarantees nothing, but it certainly helps. By extension, there's a little debate about which Cute Charm pokémon to use. Most people I've seen will use Sylveon because it's one of the only mons with a high chance of being male with Cute Charm. However, I used a Clefable. Here's the set.

Clefable @ Leppa Berry
Ability: Cute Charm
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Sp. Atk / 4 Sp. Def
Calm Nature
- Substitute
- Moonlight
- Recycle
- Water Pulse

I prefer a Clefable over a Sylveon for the simple reason that it gets Recycle, so it's almost like using a Smeargle. Substitute is necessary for avoiding getting poisoned by Smog from wild Salandit, and Moonlight is for recovery. The move you chose to damage the Salandit is really up to choice, I just liked having super-effective damage, so I used Move Tutors to teach it Water Pulse. You'll lose quite a bit of health before you have to reuse Substitute, so I wouldn't worry about packing too many healing items. That being said, though...

Tip 3 - Bring healing items anyway!

It is unwise to go into any kind of hunt unprepared, as I mentioned in my last tips and tricks post. Even though Substitute is there to avoid poison from Smog, every once in a while, Salandit will use Smog on the turn your Substitute fades and you will get poisoned anyway. It happened to me several times, and that means it's bound to happen to you. Bring along a sizable collection of Antidotes/Full Heals and you'll be golden.

If you stick to these tips, and hunt with due patience, you'll one day end up like me, and all the other Shiny hunters that gambled on Salazzle. And frankly, I think my little Salandit is quite a prize to be had. Again, sorry for the low quality photo. I don't own a capture card.

Trick 1 - Do not use a fainted Cute Charmer!

I know this goes without saying, but I was surprised by how many people thought that you could use a fainted Cute Charmer in the first slot and have the same effect. Using a fainted Cute Charmer only affects the first encounter, after that it's the regular 7:1. That's why I recommend using a Clefable. It has longevity with Moonlight and Recycle, and it has Cute Charm. Sure, Clefable's male to female gender ratio is 3:1, but that's FAR better than Salandit.

Trick 2 - Remember how to use the Skill Swap/Leppa Berry trick!

Basically the core of all S.O.S. shiny hunting, it applies to this hunt as it does to every other. In case you've forgotten how this trick works, here's a link to aDrive's video on the subject to help remind you. You need either an Exeggutor or a Trevenant, and they need to be holding a Leppa Berry. Dan's got the rest.

Well, that's all for my Saturday posts! Hope you all enjoyed both. Stick around until Monday when I have a rather venomous post planned for your entertainment! And if any of these tips and tricks help you obtain a Shiny female Salandit for yourself, let me know in the thread below! Congratulation in advance, Shiny hunters! I will see you all on Monday!

Thanks so much for reading, everyone! Battles onwards, friends!

- 0kamii

How To Get A Shiny Ditto + More Easily In Pokemon Gold & Silver

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 20:48:07 -0800

So you want to start shiny breeding in Pokemon Gold & Silver eh? If you don't like the 1/8192 odds, don't fret, there's a solution and it's quicker than you may have thought! This method involves Gen 1's execution of code with the move Transform to get you a shiny Ditto, and then Gen 2's programminhg of DVs in breeding.

Explanation

In Gen 1, when a Ditto transforms into a Pokemon that has Transform and uses Transform as that Pokemon, it copies the DVs that Pokemon carries, when you catch it, normally it would reset ito it's original DVs, but if it's transformed twice, upon catching it, it will keep these DVs. In Gen 1 and 2, Shininess is determined through DVs. In generations after gen 2, the shininess is based off an XOR operation on the trainer ID (TID) and the secret ID (SID). You can see your TID without cheating, but the SID is only able to be seen by a cheating device. After these have the XOR operation applied, the two personality values also apply the XOR operation. Finally, the results of both operations have the XOR applied to both. For this reason, in every generation after gen 2, shiny Pokemon may have any spread of IVs. Also, in gen 2, the HP value isn't technically random. HP is determined by whether each DV in the other stats is even or odd. For attack, if it's odd it adds 8 to the HP DV, for odd defense it adds 4, for odd speed it adds 2, and for odd special it adds 1. For each of these stats, if they are even, it adds 0 to the HP DV. Since defense, speed, and special all need to be exactly 10, an even number, they will always add 0 to the HP DV. If attack is one of the odd values, HP DV will be 8. If attack is one of the even values listed above, the HP DV will be 0. For virtual console, the attack and defense requirements are reversed, meaning that the attack must be exactly 10 for the DV and defense must be 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, or 15. Due to this change, the HP DV for shiny Pokemon when transferring from VC to 6th or 7th gen will be either 0 or 4. To put it simply, a Pokemon's DVs are important for determining Shiny value in Gen 1 and 2. What we're going to do, is take a Shiny from Gen 2 and transfer it to Gen 1, teach it Mimic and find a Ditto to catch. The fastest Shiny you can get, is of course Gyarados.

What you need

2 3DS Systems
A copy of Pokemon Gold, Silver or Crystal
A copy of Pokemon Red, Blue, Green or Yellow
A Shiny Pokemon who can learn Mimic, preferably Gyarados
Access to Fuschia City so you can find a wild Ditto in RBGY
TM31 / Mimic in RBGY
Ultra Balls, at least 50, in RBGY

Getting Started

Start by playing through Pokemon Gold / Silver up to the point where you can catch the Shiny Gyarados, and catch it, play up to Blackthorn City and delete all of Gyarados' Moves except Leer. Now switch over to Pokemon RBGY and head to Celadon City, go to the Department Store and buy a PokeDoll. Now go to Saffron City and find the Copycat girl's house and give her the PokeDoll. In return, she'll give you Mimic. Now, trade between Gen 1 and Gen 2, giving the Shiny Gyarados to the Gen 1 game and you're set to go.

Catching Ditto

Now, you don't need Gold / Silver for the time being. Go to Fuschia City and head to Route 7. Teach Gyarados Mimic. It should only have Mimic and Leer as it's Moves. Once this is the case, start by searching for a wild Ditto. Once you find Ditto, use Mimic to copy Transform. Now, Ditto should Transform into Gyarados and only have Transform and Leer. Waste a turn by using Leer. Keep doing this until Ditto uses Transform at least once again. Don't use Transform yourself as it will mess with the game's code. Once Ditto has transformed at least twice, start throwing Ultra Balls. You'll want Ultra Balls specifically because of Gyarados's low catch rate. Now, once you catch it, the first thing you should do is check Ditto's Stats. It must be: 60 HP, 35 Attack, 35 Defense, 35 Spec, 35 Speed. This should guarantee a Shiny Ditto. It should be a Shiny, if not, try again.

Breeding

Once you have Ditto, you're able to start easy shiny breeding! When breeding with a Shiny Pokemon that isn't Ditto, it has a 50% chance to pass down it's DVs to the Child. To get a Shiny Magikarp, for example, a Shiny Gyarados has a 50% chance to pass it's DVs down when breeding with a regular Ditto, and on top of that, a 50% chance to produce a female, the only gender that can be shiny with this particular setup. If those requirements are met, the offspring has a 1/64 chance to be a Shiny. However, a Shiny Ditto in Gen 2 has a 100% chance to pass it's DVs down, so essentially, every egg from breeding with a Shiny Ditto has a 1/64 chance to be a Shiny. You must note that because of how DVs work in Gen 2, two Shiny Parents will never produce an egg, so, to get a Shiyn Natu with a 1/64 chance of being Shiny, have a non-shiny Xatu or Natu breed with a Shiny Ditto. If you use this method, post your results! I am currently hunting Magikarp with this method.

Campaign Team Building in Pokémon Silver/Gold/Crystal

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 07:14:44 -0700

WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILERS (the games have been out for roughly 18 years though, just saying)

Generation 2 is where I, PerchPond, started my Pokémon adventure. I've spent countless of hours with these games, so I felt like sharing some insight and good-to-knows that I've gathered.

Building a solid campaign team to beat the gen 2 games is harder and less liberal than in later generations due to a couple of reasons. 7 HM moves are needed to access all areas of Johto and Kanto, making HM-slaves a must, or spreading the HMs out through your team. Leveling is much slower and methods to do so are more limited than in newer generations, making planning your team more important. Red is one of the strongest in-game characters to be found in a Pokémon game, which means that having the right typings and high-enough levels is key to beating him.

Lets get to it.

Picking a starter

This is mostly based on preference, but I'll give some pointers to all three.

Meganium is a pivot/staller/screener with 80/100/100 defences that uses dual screens, Giga Drain and Toxic to beat oponnents. It learns Cut, Strength and Flash as HMs, which is good. First 2 gyms are very difficult without a second Pokémon to help with Flying- and Bug-types. Hard mode for the veteran player.

Typhlosion only really gets STAB Flamethrower/Fire Blast, but it's fast and hits relatively hard. It gets Strength and Cut as HM's, which is good. A solid choice overall.

Feraligatr is the worst of the three in my opinion. Water moves in gen 2 were all special, meaning Feraligatr had to use STAB moves coming from base 79 Special Attack. It's rather slow for a sweeper, and worst of all, it isn't even a complete Water HM-slave since it doesnt learn Waterfall. (This isn't SS/HG Feraligatr)

Key HM-categories

Waterslave: This refers to Pokémon that can learn all 3 Water-type HM's: Whirlpool, Waterfall and Surf. Noticeable examples are Gyarados, Golduck, Kingdra and Lanturn.

Flyer: This is the pre-historic age of generation 2, where features such as the Eon Flute and Charizard Glide are not even theoretical. Pokémon that learn the move Fly are what I call flyers, and serve as a mean to quickly travel between places. Mons worth mentioning are Crobat, Murkrow, Pidgeot, Dragonite and Skarmory.

Other HM-slaves

The remaining ones are Flash, Strength and Cut. I usually spread these out through out my team, but Pokemon such as Furret, Dragonite and Parasect learns several of them and can be used as pure HM-Slaves.

Mons for catching Legendaries

Silver and Gold feature roaming legendary hounds with a tendency to flee, as well as more common stationary legendaries such as Lugia.
In order to catch these, having specific Pokémon's moves makes it easier.

EDIT: Mean Look does not trap the three legendary hounds, since they can just Roar and the battle will end, HOWEVER, in gen 2 some wild Pokémon can flee from encounters, but are prevented from doing so by Mean Look.
Mean Looker: ~~Prevents the hounds from fleeing while the user stays in combat.~~ The foremost users of Mean Look are Gengar, Crobat and Jynx. They are fast and they all learn sleep-inducing moves which helps when catching Pokémon.

False-Swiper: Unfortunately, False Swipe is not a TM yet, making Scyther/Scizor the best users of the move. After putting the hounds to sleep, switch in your Swiper and put them as low as possible to increase the odds of getting yourself a new pet dog.

Types needed to smash Red to oblivion

So as I mentioned, Red is really strong. Like REALLY strong. Having the following Pokémon-types makes this battle easier and less impossible.

To beat Pikachuuuuu: Ground-types are the best, you take no damage from STAB Electric moves and you KO right back. Examples are Dugtrio, Donphan, Golem and Nidoking.

Snorlax: This guy is probably the hardest one to take down. Rest and high bulk means that if you lack power, it will regenerate over and over again. Snorlax, however, only carries Body Slam as an offensive move, making Rock-types good. Examples are Golem and Sudowoodo. I usually set up a couple of Curses and then use Earthquake if I have Golem and Low Kick for Sudowoodo. Fighting types are theoretically strong, but gen 2 lack heavily in strong STAB Fighting-type moves, leaving Machamp as the only strong option.

Venusaur: Quite easy to beat, use pretty much any Ice-types, Flying-types, Fire-types or Psychic-types.

Blastoise: Also rather easy. Electric-Types are the strongest, because Red's Blastoise carries Blizzard so Grass-Types can be detered (Light Screen Meganium doesn't care too much though). Examples are Meganium, Jolteon and Ampharos.

Charizard the crowd favorite: Easy I tell you, easy! Water-Types, Rock-Types and Electric-Types make quick work of the famed gen 1 starter. Examples are Jolteon, Ampharos, Golem, Sudowoodo and Kingdra.

Espeon: Fast, hits hard and has few weaknesses, which can make Espeon quite strong, unless you are a Dark-type, then you good. Ghost-Types, Dark-Types and Bug-Types are strong, such as Gengar, Houndoom and Scizor.

That's all the necessary considerations for generation 2 team building for your campaign that I can come up with. Now I leave it to you to try and fit all of this on 6 Pokémon mohahaha (Okay not a MUST, but convenient)
Feel free to point out inaccuracies (That's probably not a word) or things that are unclear.
Hopefully this was helpful and thanks for reading.

UPDATE FOR THE RELEASE OF POKÉMON CRYSTAL ON VIRTUAL CONSOLE:

The core of this guide applies to Crystal aswell. Sadly, Ampharos is not available in Crystal. The Odd Egg introduced in Crystal lets you hatch one of Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Tyrogue, Smoochum, Elekid and Magby, with increased Shiny-odds. This gives you early access to some strong and useful Pokémon (mostly Tyrogue's evolutions, Jynx, Electabuzz and Magmar) The Egg can be Soft-resetted just before hatching, both for a specific Pokémon of the 7 aswell as for getting a shiny. Any shiny you get can be transferred to newer games through the PokéBank.

Electabuzz is a good substitute for Ampharos with strong Electric STAB and Ice-coverage, aswell as getting the HMs Flash and Strength, on top of being available early through the Odd Egg.

Suicune will no longer roam Johto, but the other hounds will. Following some of my tips mentioned about catching mons with sleep and False Swipe will help when facing the stationary Suicune or looking for the other hounds.

A special Dratini with ExtremeSpeed can be obtained in the Dragon's Den.

Also, let me know if I've missed anything that's relevant to Crystal.

Cheers

A completionist's guide for the Johto Pokedex

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:06:18 -0700

No intro needed really. Gold colored text indicates a Gold Version exclusive, Silver colored text indicates a Silver Version exclusive.

Kanto Starters: Transfer from R/B/Y
Caterpie: Routes 2, 30 and Ilex Forest - Bug Catching Contest
Metapod: Routes 2, 30 and Ilex Forest - Bug Catching Contest
Butterfree: Route 2 or evolve Metapod - Bug Catching Contest
Weedle: Same as Caterpie in Silver - Same as Caterpie in Gold
Kakuna: Same as Metapod in Silver - Same as Metapod in Gold
Beedrill: Same as Butterfree in Silver - Same as Butterfree in Gold
Pidgey: Routes 1, 29 and 30
Pidgeotto: Routes 8, 15 and 43
Pidgeot: Evolve Pidgeotto
Rattata: Routes 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, Sprout Tower, Burned Tower and Union Cave
Raticate: Routes 7, 27, Burned Tower and Union Cave
Spearow: Routes 22, 33 and 42
Fearow: Routes 16, 17 and 18
Ekans: Goldenrod Game Corner - Routes 3, 32 and 33
Arbok: Evolve from Ekans - Routes 3, 4 and 27
Pikachu: Route 2
Raichu: Evolve from Pikachu
Sandshrew: Union Cave and Mt. Moon - Goldenrod Game Corner
Sandslash: Routes 26, 27 and Mt. Moon - Goldenrod Game Corner
Nidoran (Both): Routes 35 and 36
Nidorina/o: Routes 13, 14 and 15
Nidoqueen/king: Evolve from Nidorino / Nidorina
Celfairy: Mt. Moon
Clefable: Evolve Clefairy
Vulpix: Routes 36, 37, 7 and 8
Ninetales: Evole Vulpix
Jigglypuff: Routes 46, 3 and 4
Wigglytuff: Evolve Jigglpuff
Zubat: Routes 32, 33, 42, Slowpoke Well, Union Cave, Ilex Forest, Mt. Mortar, Burned Tower, Dark Cave, Whirl Islands, Ice Path, Route 3, Route 4, Mt. Moon, Rock Tunnel and Tohjo Falls
Golbat: Slowpoke Well, Union Cave, Mt. Mortar, Dark Cave, Whirl Islands, Mt. Silver, Ice Path, Victory Road, Tohjo Falls
Oddish: Ilex Forest, Route 5, Route 6, Route 24, Route 25
[Gloom: Route 5
+ Leaf Stone: Vileplume
+ Sun Stone: Bellossom]
Paras: Ilex Forest, National Park, Mt. Moon
Parasect: Evolve Paras
Venonat: Route 43, National Park, Route 24, Route 25
Venomoth: Route 24, Route 25
Diglett: Diglett's Cave
Dugtrio: Diglett's Cave
Meowth: Route 38, Route 39, Route 5, Route 6, Route 7, Route 8
Persian: Route 7
Psyduck: Route 35, Ilex Forest, Route 6
Golduck: Route 35, Ilex Forest, Mt. Silver, Route 6
Mankey: Route 42, Route 9
Primeape: Route 9
Growlithe: Route 36, Route 37, Route 7, Route 8
Arcanine: Evolve Growlithe
Poliwag: Route 30, Route 31, Route 35, Route 44, Violet City, Ecruteak City, Blackthorn City, Ruins of Alph, Ilex Forest, Mt. Silver, Route 6, Route 22, Route 28, Viridian City
[Poliwhirl: Route 30, Route 31, Route 35, Route 44, Violet City, Ecruteak City, Blackthorn City, Ruins of Alph, Ilex Forest, Mt. Silver, Route 6, Route 22, Route 28, Viridian City
+ Water Stone: Poliwrath
+ King's Rock Trade: Politoed]
Abra: Route 34, Route 35, Route 5, Route 6, Route 8, Route 24, Route 25
Kadabra: Route 8
Alakazam: Evolve Kadabra
Machop: Mt. Mortar, Rock Tunnel
Machoke: Mt. Mortar, Rock Tunnel
Machamp: Evolve Machoke
Bellsprout: Route 31, Route 32, Route 44, Route 5, Route 6, Route 24, Route 25
Weepinbell: Route 44, Route 24, Route 25
Victreebel: Evolve Weepinbell
Tentacool: Route 32, Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, New Bark Town, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Union Cave, Whirl Islands, Route 12, Route 13, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Route 26, Route 27, Pallet Town, Vermilion City, Cinnabar Island
Tentacruel: Route 32, Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, New Bark Town, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Union Cave, Whirl Islands, Route 12, Route 13, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Route 26, Route 27, Pallet Town, Vermilion City, Cinnabar Island
Geodude: Route 45, Route 46, Union Cave, Mt. Mortar, Dark Cave, Mt. Moon, Rock Tunnel
Graveller: Route 45, Mt. Mortar, Dark Cave, Mt. Silver, Victory Road
Golem: Evolve Graveller
Ponyta: Mt. Silver, Route 22, Route 26, Route 27, Route 28
Rapidash: Mt. Silver, Route 28
[Slowpoke: Slowpoke Well, Tohjo Falls
+ King's Rock Trade: Slowking]
Slowbro: Slowpoke Well
Magnemite: Route 38, Route 39, Route 6, Route 11 [Can flee]
Magneton: Evolve Magnemite
Farfetch'd: Route 38, Route 39
Doduo: Mt. Silver, Route 22, Route 26, Route 27, Route 28
Dodrio: Mt. Silver, Route 27, Route 28 - Mt. Silver, Route 26, Route 28
Seel: Whirl Islands
Dewgong: Evolve Seel
Grimer: Route 16, Route 17, Route 18, Celadon City
Muk: Route 16, Route 17, Route 18, Celadon City
Shellder: New Bark Town, Olivine City, Union Cave, Route 26, Route 27, Pallet Town, Vermilion City
Cloyster: Evolve Shellder
Gastly: Sprout Tower, Tin Tower
Haunter: Route 8
Gengar: Evolve Haunter
Onix: Union Cave, Mt. Silver, Rock Tunnel, Victory Road
Drowzee: Route 34, Route 35, Route 11
Hypno: Route 11
Krabby: Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Burned Tower, Dark Cave, Whirl Islands, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cerulean City, Cinnabar Island
Kingler: Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Whirl Islands, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cerulean City, Cinnabar Island - Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Whirl Islands, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cinnabar Island
Voltorb: Route 10
Electrode: Rocket Hideout
Exeggcute: Route 34, Route 35, Route 36, Route 37, Route 38, Route 39, Azalea Town, Ilex Forest, Lake of Rage, Route 26, Route 27
Exeggutor: Evolve Exeggcute
Cubone: Rock Tunnel
Marowak: Rock Tunnel
Hitmonlee/chan/top: Evolve Tyrogue
Lickitung: Route 44
Koffing: Burned Tower
Weezing: Evolve Koffing
Rhyhorn: Victory Road
Rhydon: Evolve Rhyhorn
Chansey: Route 13, Route 14, Route 15
Tangela: Route 44, Mt. Silver, Route 21, Route 28
Kangaskhan: Rock Tunnel
Horsea + Seadra: Whirl Islands
Goldeen + Seaking: Route 42, Slowpoke Well, Union Cave, Mt. Mortar, Dark Cave, Mt. Silver, Route 4, Route 9, Route 10, Route 24, Route 25, Cerulean City, Tohjo Falls
Staryu: Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cerulean City, Cinnabar Island - Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cinnabar Island
Starmie: Evolve Staryu
Mr. Mime: Route 21
Scyther: National Park
Jynx: Ice Path
Electabuzz: Route 10
Magmar: Burned Tower
Pinsir: National Park
Tauros: Route 38, Route 39
Magikarp: Route 30, Route 31, Route 32, Route 34, Route 35, Route 40, Route 41, Route 42, Route 43, Route 44, Route 45, New Bark Town, Cherrygrove City, Violet City, Ecruteak City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Blackthorn City, Ruins of Alph, Slowpoke Well, Union Cave, Ilex Forest, Dark Cave, Whirl Islands, Mt. Silver, Dragon's Den, Lake of Rage, Route 6, Route 9, Route 10, Route 12, Route 13, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Route 22, Route 24, Route 25, Route 26, Route 27, Route 28, Pallet Town, Viridian City, Cerulean City, Vermilion City, Fuchsia City, Cinnabar Island
Gyarados: Lake of Rage, Fuchsia City
Lapras: Union Cave
Ditto: Route 34, Route 35
[Eevee: Celadon City Game Corner
+ Thunder Stone: Jolteon
+ Water Stone: Vaporeon
+ Fire Stone: Flareon
+ Max happiness during DAY: Espeon
+ Max happiness during NITE: Umbreon]
Porygon: Celadon City Game Corner
Omanyte/star/Kabuto/tops: Transfer from RBY
Aerodactyl: Route 12 trade for Chansey
Snorlax: Vermillion City
Legendary Birds: Transfer from RBY
Dratini: Route 45, Dragon's Den
Dragonair: Route 45, Dragon's Den
Dragonite: Evolve Dragonair
Mewtwo: Transfer from RBY
Mew: Transfer from RBY or Coin Case Glitch
Johto Starters: Get from Prof. Elm
Sentret: Route 29, Route 1
Furret: Route 1
Hoothoot: Route 29, Route 30, Route 31, Route 35, Route 36, Route 37, National Park, Route 1, Route 2
Noctowl: Route 43, Route 2, Route 8, Route 13, Route 14, Route 15
Ledyba: Route 30, Route 31, Route 37, Route 2
Ledian: Route 2
Spinarak: Same as Ledyba in Silver
Ariados: Same as Ledian in Silver
Crobat: Evolve Golbat
Chinchou + Lanturn: New Bark Town, Olivine City, Union Cave, Route 26, Route 27, Pallet Town, Vermilion City
Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Tyrogue, Smoochum, Elekid and Magby: Breed from Pikachu/Raichu, Clefairy/Clefable, Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff, Hitmonlee/Hitmonchan/Hitmontop, Jynx, Electabuzz and Magmar, respectively
Togepi: Mr. Pokemon's Egg
Togetic: Evolve Togepi
Natu: Ruins of Alph
Xatu: Evolve Natu
Mareep: Route 32, Route 42, Route 43
Flaaffy: Route 42, Route 43
Ampharos: Evolve Flaaffy
Marill: Mt. Mortar
Azumarill: Evolve Marill
Sudowoodo: Route 36
Hoppip: Route 32, Route 33, Route 13, Route 14, Route 15
Skiploom: Route 14
Jumpluff: Evolve Skiploom
Aipom: Route 29, Route 30, Route 31, Route 32, Route 33, Route 42, Route 43, Route 44, Route 45, Route 4
Sunkern: National Park, Route 24
Sunflora: Evolve Sunkern
Yanma: Route 35
Wooper: Route 32, Ruins of Alph, Union Cave
Quagsire: Route 32, Ruins of Alph, Union Cave, Mt. Silver, Route 10, Route 12, Route 13, Route 14, Route 15, Route 26, Route 27
Murkrow: Route 7, Route 16, Route 18
Misdreavus: Mt. Silver
[Unown: Ruins of Alph
+ Mystery Signal will result in Unown ? + Unown ! appearing more often] [Can flee]
Wobuffet: Dark Cave
Girafarig: Route 43
Pineco: Route 34, Route 35, Route 36, Route 37, Route 38, Route 39, Azalea Town, Ilex Forest, Lake of Rage, Route 26, Route 27 [Can flee]
Foretress: Evolve Pineco
Dunsparce: Dark Cave
Gligar: Route 43
Steelix: Evolve Onix
Snubbull: Route 38 [Can flee]
Granbull: Evolve Snubbull
Qwilfish: Route 32, Route 12, Route 13
Scizor: Evolve Scyther
Shuckle: Route 40, Cianwood City, Burned Tower, Dark Cave
Heracross: Route 29, Route 30, Route 31, Route 32, Route 33, Route 42, Route 43, Route 44, Route 45, Route 46 [Can flee]
Sneasel: Mt. Silver, Route 28
Teddiursa: Route 45 [Can flee]
Ursaring: Mt. Silver, Route 28, Victory Road
Slugma: Route 16, Route 17, Route 18
Magcargo: Evolve Slugna
Swinub: Ice Path
Piloswine: Evolve Swinub
Corsola: Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cerulean City, Cinnabar Island - Route 34, Route 40, Route 41, Cherrygrove City, Olivine City, Cianwood City, Route 19, Route 20, Route 21, Cinnabar Island
Remoraid: Route 44
Octillery: Evolve Remoraid
Delibird: Ice Path
Mantine: Route 41
Skarmory: Route 45
Houndour: Route 7
Houndoom: Evolve Houndour
Kingdra: Evolve Seadra
Phanpy: Route 45 [Can flee]
Donphan: Mt. Silver, Route 28, Victory Road
Porygon2: Evolve Porygon
Stantler: Route 36, Route 37
Smeargle: Ruins of Alph
Blissey: Evolve Chansey
Raikou, Entei and Suicune: Anywhere in Johto after visiting the Burned Tower
Larvitar: Mt. Silver
Pupitar: Evolve Larvitar
Tyranitar: Evolve Pupitar
Lugia: Whirl Islands [Postgame] [Story]
Ho-oh: Tin Tower [Story] [Postgame]
Celebi: Coin Case Glitch

Enjoy dexing!

(GLITCH) How to duplicate any Item in Pokemon Gold and Silver

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 18:27:52 -0700

This glitch works on the Virtual Console versions of Pokemon Gold and Silver. Although unlikely, it is possible you can corrupt your SAVE data, so have a second 3DS with Pokemon Gold or Silver on it or access to Pokemon Bank to store your special Pokemon. Perform this glitch at your own risk.

[REQUIREMENTS]
- A copy of Pokemon Gold or Silver
- Access to a PC in a Pokemon Center
- A dummy Pokemon (in case you mess up)
- The item you wish to duplicate

[STEPS]
1) Save your game beforehand.
2) Make sure you have at least one open slot for a Pokemon in your party.
3) Deposit the Pokemon you want to clone (preferably the one holding an item you want cloned)
4) Switch boxes.
------- When it asks for you to save, hit yes. When it usually says "SAVING...DON'T TURN OFF THE POWER.", turn off the game while it's typing out the message, and before "POWER" shows up (I usually do it between "OFF" and "POWER"). Turn on the game, and you should see the Pokemon you wanted to clone in both your party and the box you deposited in.

Good luck and enjoy glitching!

(GLITCH) Pokemon Gold & Silver: Get every obtainable Pokemon

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 03:16:27 -0700

Pokemon Gold and Silver has an infamous glitch that allows you to obtain every Pokemon in the game. This will be useful if you, for example, don't feel like catching every Pokemon or you don't have both versions to trade between and complete the Pokedex normally.

(REQUIREMENTS)
- Following items IN ORDER inside your PC; Anything, Anything, 13 X Accuracies, 1 TM28, Anything, 33 Super Repels, 1 TM39, 38 Pokeballs, 1 TM30, Anything, 37 Pokedolls, 34 Awakenings, 62 Antidotes, 22 Great Balls, 1 TM22, Anything, 30 Paralyze Heals, 18 Ragecandybars, 46 Repels, HM03, 1 X Speed, 18 Full Heals, 51 Flower Mails, 1 TM06, Anything and any amount of TM41
- Quagsire with Sleep Talk in the 1st Attack Slot and holding a Protien in the 4th slot of your Party
- A useless Pokemon in the 3rd slot of your Party, if the glitch fails you can go catch another Pokemon.
- A Pokemon in the 5th slot of your Party whose HP stat corresponds to the Pokedex Number of the Pokemon you want. i.e. A Pokemon with 150 HP will yield Mewtwo. HP Stat is based on the current HP, not Max HP, so I recommend a Chansey as your HP user.
- Party Slots 1 & 2 are not important, but I recommend using a dummy Pokemon in these slots as it may turn into a different Pokemon, I'm not sure what triggers this.

(STEPS)
- Arrange the items listed above in your PC in the order listed
- Go inside Prof. Elm's Lab, save the game and then reset
- Go outside and move 4 steps right
- Open the Pokedex and listen to Machop's cry
- Go to your pack, move at least 1 pocket (i.e go from TMs/HMs pocket to Key items pocket) and then use the Coin Case
- At this moment you're in the Glitch Dimension. Just exit the menu, and you will be transported to the Bug Catching Contest where you'll then recieve your Pokemon.
- The Pokemon will have a Glitch moveset and EXP bar, just go the Daycare and deposit and withdraw the Pokemon for it to be fixed. The moves however will stay the same. The Level/DVs/Moveset will correspond to the last Pokemon you caught in the Bug Catching Contest, i.e. A Level 8 Caterpie with String Shot and Tackle will result in your |EXAMPLE| Mewtwo being Level 8 and have String Shot and Tackle. If you've never caught a Pokemon in the Bug Catching Contest, the Pokemon will be Level 0, have no stats or moves. The Daycare will fix this.

I have done this on the original copies, and on an emulator, considering all of Red, Blue and Yellow's glitches were left in, I presume this Glitch will be in the Virtual Console releases of Gold and Silver. I'll update this if I'm later proven wrong/right.

Tips for Soft-reset Shiny Hunting!

Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:07:53 -0700

Hey, everybody! It's 0kamii, and for Friday's post, I want to keep it short and simple!

Soft-resetting is the second most common way I hunt for Shiny pokémon. As most of you know, my preferred method is Masuda Breeding because you can customize the Shiny. But when it comes to things like starters, legendaries, Fossil pokémon, or event in-game gifts like Type: Null, soft-resetting is the only way to go. I've heard too many horror stories where people don't know what to do, and/or accidentally reset over the Shiny once they find it. So today, on this lovely Friday, I'm going to share some tips and tricks that I've developed over the last few years to help beginning and experienced hunters soft-reset effectively. With these pointers, you should be able to find any Shiny you want via this method, as with the Shiny Regice I just recently obtained as seen above.

Tips for Soft-reset Shiny Hunting!

Tip 1 - Choose your target wisely!

I know this seems like a no brainer, but you'd be surprised by how many trainers just run head first into a soft-reset hunt for which they're not prepared. Usually, since you'll be soft-resetting for legendaries, it's wise to research your target beforehand and bring the necessary pokémon to hunt accordingly. As with the Shiny Regice I just successfully hunted in Alpha Sapphire, I knew that it had meager defenses and little offensive with which to retaliate, so I proceeded to tip 2.

Tip 2 - Research your target!

Again, you'd think this should go without saying. Going into a soft-reset hunt, unless you intend to use a Master Ball, you should always know what moves your target has, and how much PP they have total. The total amount of PP will usually equal how many turns you have to try and catch the Shiny, otherwise you risk losing it to Struggle. In the case of Regice, it had 55 PP total, and nothing it had was super-effective against my Shiny hunting Breloom, Kung Fungus. Therefore, I could send her in safely and spam Spore after using False Swipe to get it to 1 HP. By then, it was only a matter of time until I caught it.

Tip 2.1 - Plan for your target's moveset!

Kind of an extension of Tip 2, but I feel it's worth a little more explaination. Take Palkia in Omega Ruby, you encounter it at level 50 knowing Hydro Pump, Spacial Rend, Aura Sphere, and Aqua Tail. That's a total of 40 PP. So roughly 40 turns to catch it, give or take 10 turns of paralysis or so. To hunt it, I got a Jellicent with Water Absorb to sponge its attacks after I had paralyzed it and used False Swipe. It could only hit me with Special Rend, and thanks to Water Absorb any damage it did do was immediately recovered. Of course, that's just one example. If you need help planning for your hunt specifically, let me know what Shiny you're hunting and I'll tell you what I used to hunt it. If I have.

Tip 3 - Overstock on Poké Balls!

This, this! One hundred times this. I've never ran out of balls on a soft-reset hunt, but that's mostly because I always over-prepare. If you think you'll need about 50 balls, get 70. If you want to try using a Quick Ball, bring a backup 30 Timer Balls. Since most of these Shinies are being hunted in Gen 6 and earlier, getting a plethora of Poké Balls shouldn't be a problem. Especially in Gen 6. It's also worth noting which balls are most effective against your specific target. I personally like to catch all my Shinies in Poké Balls, which I know is a terrible idea, but I always bring backup Ultra and Timer Balls as a fail-safe. If I were smarter and I hunted Regice differently, Dusk Balls would've been the best choice because they have boosted effectiveness in caves. Or if you're hunting Lugia in Alpha Sapphire, try bringing Dive Balls! And again, Timer Balls are always a good idea. I believe their effectiveness maxes around 30 turns, and most Legendary hunts will go beyond that. In short, bring more balls than you think you'll need! It never hurts to be over-prepared.

Tip 4 - Beware the groove!

The groove is a term I've heard used to describe the pattern of motion Shiny hunters get into after soft-reset hunting for roughly 25 - 30 minutes. Start the game, check the pokémon, reset if not Shiny, rinse and repeat until the motions are automotized. There's plenty of videos on YouTube of Shiny hunters getting into a groove and then accidentally resetting over a Shiny because their hands acted before their brain. It's never happened to me, but it probably will one day, and I'm dreading the day. Try to stay in control when you hunt. Don't lose a Shiny like this poor guy:

Paragon example of the groove trap.

Tricks for Soft-reset Shiny Hunting

Trick 1 - DO NOT USE RUBBER BANDS!

Using the rubber band trick makes it very easy to accidentally reset over a Shiny once you find it, because it only takes one button as opposed to three. Nothing beats using your own hands to press those buttons, and it decreases your chances of blundering into the next reset autonomously.

Trick 2 - Keep one hand off the 3DS

Here's my personal favorite trick to use. Every time I soft-reset, I make sure to always keep one of my hands off the 3DS. Once you get into the groove of resets, it's easy to absentmindedly move both hands into positon and click Left + Right + Start. However, if you consciously remind yourself every reset to keep a hand off the 3DS, it virtually negates all chances of you accidentally resetting over the Shiny, and forces you to watch for the sparkles.

Trick 3 - Keep the sound on!

I've made the mistake of hunting with the sound off before, and it almost cost me a Shiny Lillipup. When I saw it, I looked at my screen and thought something was off, but I just couldn't tell what. I caught it just in case, and sure enough it was Shiny. For Legendary and starter hunts, this usually isn't a problem. But every once in a while you have mons like Regice, or Palkia, or Heatran, or any of the Sinnoh starters that look a little too similar to their non-Shiny counterparts. The volume doesn't have to be blaring, just loud enough that if you happen to be looking away from the screen, you can clearly hear that long-awaited sparkle.

Well, those are all the tips and tricks I have to share. If you have any tips of your own, feel free to insert them in the thread below. Let's make sure to ban together so that we don't accidentally lose any more Shinies! See you all on Monday with my "All Our Favorite Shadow Pokémon" post!

Thanks so much for reading, everyone! Battle onwards, friends!

- 0kamii

Alola Dex Completion

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 08:31:21 -0700

Ever since the 2nd generation, alternate colorations of pokemon were added, known as "Shiny Pokemon". As mentioned before, Shiny Pokemon are rare alternate colors of a pokemon, however they serve no purpose other then to look different. In the 4th Generation, Methods were added to increase the chance of a shiny pokemon appearing. 5th Generation comes along and we get can item called the Shiny Charm, an item that triples the odds of finding a shiny, making it effectively 1 in 2730 compared to 1/8192. However the 6th gen rolls around and this doubles the odds of finding a shiny to 1/4096 1/1365 or so. How do I get the Shiny Charm? The catch is, you must complete the Pokedex before you can get the Charm.

Thankfully, Alola makes it easier by having only 300 Pokemon to capture, and I will try my best to explain how to do it. For starters, this is going to take anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks depending on how far you already are and how much you really want it.
Some tricks listed below are-
• You will want to skip all happiness evolution, Legendaries and trade evolution, they are the most tedious to do.
• Use the GTS whenever you can, it is a lot faster and if you are lazy like me it helps a lot
• You will notice some pokemon are in different island pokedexs. Look at Pikipek, he is in every island pokedex I think, this goes for a lot of others, cutting it down by a lot
• This is so boring, you may want to put on some music or watch a video in the backround
• It helps psychologically to go line by line
• USE THE ISLAND SCAN, I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT FEATURE EXISTED AND IT HELPS A TON

What you will need-
• Kartana or Decidueye with False swipe
These are the most avalible and reliable pokemon to choose
• 20 Luxury balls
Friendship evolutions will take a while, trust me with this
• 100 Nest balls
Akala and Melemele will allow you to get in the high range
• 100 ultra balls
They are cheap and they are good on higher level pokemon
• Spare Pikachu
this is the only way I think you can get Castform
• Lots of hyper potions and full heals
Dont use full restores, they are expensive

Okay, starting off we have Melemele Island. Getting the starters is very easy, if you want to keep your starter breed a clone of it
As mentioned before, most pokemon are also in another pokedex, Pikipek is a great example.
many pokemons evolutions can be found via SOS, this is mostly Stone evolutions and Happiness. If you want to pick them up, go ahead.

Here is a reference picture for Melemele

Keep in mind to use the kings rock on Slowking and not Politoed, we can catch him later

Now on to Akala Island, right? Wrong, we go to Poni Island, this is the smallest island and has a lot of reocurring pokemon there, like Golisopod.
Catch the Wimpod over on Akala island off Route 8, if not use the GTS. Do not capture a Jangmo-o, infact use the GTS for every psuedo legendary, the exp boost helps. Again, about 30% of the pokemon on Poni Island appear in both Ula Ula and Akala, so it is easy to multi task

I couldn't line them up, the pictures are not mine

Now on to the Akala Pokedex, which is Harder, but we are here for only a couple pokemon. Who are those, Beldum? No, Eevee, and you may be thinking "Why Eevee, he only has 20 egg cycles". Wrong, It has 35 egg cycles and a low encounter rate. This means you must breed all those Eevees, with Espeon and Umbreon to finish this. A minimum total of 157.5 Egg cycles, with Flame Body! The best bet is to go for the stone eevees, get 1 sinnoh eevee, trade the corresponding and the johto eevees.

Now, Ula Ula, which contains the most stone and trade evolutions, but I said earlier to skip the trade evolutions if you can. This will take a while and I have no tips. If you read all the way, I told you to save your Kings Rock. There is a reason for that. AJP Sums it up a lot better then I could, I take no credit for the video.

Okay, if you should be about 75% done with the whole Pokedex by now, or around that number. Completeing the Akala Pokedex will be easier now that 12% of it is out of the way by now. All that is left is to scan every other pokemon left. If you can't find it, one of the users on the site should have it.

The only real trouble you will have is any pokemon with Flucuating as the EXP Group, and the other legendaries.

Well I hope you all complete the pokedex, I have not but doing this made it a lot easier!

Battle Tree Guide

Wed, 12 Jul 2017 22:54:56 -0700

Hello everyone!

I am writing this guide to help people with Battle Tree.

For anyone who does not know what is Battle Tree, Battle Tree is similar to Battle Maison, a building where you battle and you obtain high streaks and earn BP items to obtain rare items, useful for competitive battling such as Focus Sash, Life Orb, etc.

But there is a problem, Battle Tree is insane hard as compared to Battle Maison because of these reasons:
* Mega Evolutions
* Z-Moves
There are even people saying it is impossible to reach 100 and 200 to obtain Lansat and Starf berries.

In Battle Tree, there is 3 types of Battles, Singles, Doubles, and Multis.

Singles:
Use the Truant+Entrainment Durant+ Set Up sweeper strategy, I don't need to explain that much for Singles thanks to Collector Togami, a Youtuber, here is his video on Battle Tree Singles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVwoQ0q-5u4 (IMPORTANT!!!! MUST WATCH!!!!)

Sample Durant set:
Durant @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 172 HP / 108 Def / 228 Spe
- Entrainment
- X-Scissor
- Iron Head
- Aerial Ace

Togami uses Scolipede as set-up sweeper, but there are many more set-up sweepers, such as:

Mega Gyaradoes (Dragon Dance), Cloyster (Shell Smash), Blaziken (Hone Claws and Speed Boost), Drapion (Acupressure), etc

Doubles:
Double is easier than Singles, I will list out some notable Pokemons that is decent in Battle Tree Doubles.

Greninja @ Focus Sash
Ability: Protean
Nature: Timid
EVs: 6 HP / 252SpAtk / 252 Spe
- Mat Block
- Ice Beam
- Dark Pulse
- Grass Knot
Greninja is popular in Battle Tree Doubles for one reason, its signature move, Mat Block. With its high base speed, it has the highest chance of going first setting up Mat Block, allowing your other Pokemon to have a free turn to set-up/attack. Ice Beam, Dark Pulse and Grass Knot is for coverage. In Battle Tree, most of the stronger Pokemons are weak to Ice, Dark, and Grass. For example, all the Forces of Natures are weak to Ice Beam. Grass Knot takes out Regirock, Swampert, Gastrodon (very bulky). Dark Pulse takes out Alakazam, Lake Guardians, Latias and Latios.

NOTE: Do not use Grass Knot on Carracostas, there is a set which has Weakness Policy and Sturdy. He will swept your team easily with Aqua Jet!

NOTE: Be careful of Thunder Wave users! Examples are Electrode, Latias, etc.

Manectric @ Manectite
Ability: Lightning Rod
Nature: Timid
EVs: 6 HP / 252SpAtk / 252 Spe
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
- Volt Switch
- Protect
This Manectric is popular for two reasons, Lighting Rod and Intimidate. In case if you guys are unfamiliar with Battle Maison/Tree. Thunder Wave is a huge problem. Lightning Rod not only solve the problem of Thunder Waves, but it boosts the power of your Electric-Type Moves.

Gardevoir+Salamence
WIP

Multi:
Hardest of the three, if possible, do it with a friend. Or do Singles to 40+ and get a veteran, some veterans are better. Choose veterans with, birds, Eon Duo, Swords of Justice or Genies, they are better partners, don't choose those with Regis!

Some extra tips:
* Only use 100 accuracy attacks, at high streaks, Battle Tree will cheat and you will miss a lot.
* AI tends to use the move that hit your Pokemons hardest my percentage of health.
* AI does not have the tendency switch out their Pokemons unless all their moves cannot hit your Pokemons.
* AI will learn from their mistake, for example using Thunderbolt on Lightning Rod Seaking will get a boost then they will switch their attack.
* At high streaks, AI will analyse your team and use your team's weakness. For example, bombarding you with other weather setters if you use weather-based teams.

Battle Tree threat list:

Ranking at Number 1 is Walrein. With its EVs investment in Def and SpDef, carries Bright Powder with Rest and Sleep Talk. Well that is not the real threat. The real threat is the two other moves it has, Fissure and Sheer Cold. At high streaks, it rarely misses. A monster in Singles.

Ranking at Number 2 is Zapdos. Same EVs investment and item as Walrein, but the difference is the Double Team and Charge Beam that will turn this into a monster. This Zapdos can be countered by Clear Smog or Haze in Doubles. A good counter is Gastrodon, walls this monster completely.

Ranking at Number 3 is the rest of the set-up sweepers, again, this can be countered the same method as Zapdos and yeah.

I will try to keep this updated. If you have any more suggestions, feel free to comment below!

NOTE: There will be a huge update after the release of USUM.

Competitive 101 Section 1: The First Steps

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 14:40:14 -0700

Section 1: The First Steps

Now that you are taking the first steps into competitive Pokemon, there are a few things that you're going to want to make yourself familliar with before you get into the more advanced stuff. Some of this might seem a bit rudimental, but you're far better off making sure that you fully understand the very basics of Pokemon before you start to dive into competitive play. Before we start I just want to say that becoming a good competitve battler isnt something that will happen over night, it takes time. But, with every battle you will get more experienced and, hopefully, with this guide we'll be able to get you on the right track to becoming the best pokemon trainer that you can be!

TYPE MATCHUPS
I know that this might sound obvious, but it is incredibly important to know this off. Mixing up a type weakness or resistance in a battle can be very frustrating and might even lead to an undeserving loss. As you become more advanced as a battler this won't be an issue. But when you're starting off, and just getting used to how intense some battles can be, you'll want to be able to list this off.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF POKEMONS TYPES, STATS, ABILITIES AND SETS
Something like this might sound like a lot of work, though it can actually can be quite fun. A good way to do this is to go onto Smogon's dex (which can be found here http://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/ ), pick out your favorite Pokemom (in my case it's Typhlosion), have a look at it's stats/abilities/moves and try to work out how you'd like to use it in battle eg. a fast attacker, bulky and defensive etc. Smogon also has a bunch of pre-made/popular sets for most Pokemon, so if you're having trouble coming up with your own, you should check them out! There's a section on the forums here that's dedicated to approved sets which would be worth checking out aswell (which can be found here http://pokemonforever.com/Forum-Competit...n-Movesets). This kind of knowledge is something that will increase as you battle, but it's better to be familiar enough with it before you start!

EFFECTS OF STATUS CONDITIONS
Status conditions are a great way to nerf threatening Pokemon in battle, but they can be incredibly frustrating to be on the receiving end of. The effects of these can range from damaging hp at the end of each turn, lowering your attack, lowering your speed and most annoyingly preventing you Pokemon from doing anything (I'm particularly looking at you frozen stat). Here's a list of all of the the effects of each status condition:

Burn: Causes the pokemon to loose 1/16 of their hp each turn. It also cuts the damage of physical attacks to half.
Confusion: Pokemon have a 33% chance of hitting themselves instead of using their selected move. The damage taken when a Pokemon hits themselves is equal to a 40 base power physical attack. Confusion will only last for between 1-4 turns.
Frozen: A frozen Pokemon won't be able to move at all untill they thaw out. There is no set number of turns a Pokemon can be frozen for, they can thaw out on the first turn or be frozen for the whole game (incredibly unlikely but possible). Pokemon have a 20% chance to thaw out each turn. If a Pokemon is hit by a fire type attack, scald or steam eruption while frozen, they will thaw out. Pokemon that know Fusion Flare, Flame Wheel, Sacred Fire, Flare Blitz, Scald, or Steam Eruption will be able to use that move and will thaw out after using it.
Paralysis: While paralysed a Pokemon's speed is cut to half. There is also a 25% chance that the Pokemon will be 'fully paralysed' which will prevent it from making a move that turn.
Poisoned: The less common of the poison stats. A Pokemon will lose 1/8 of their hp at the end of each turn while poisoned.
Badley Poisoned: Unfortunatly the more common of the poison stats. A Pokemon will lose 1/16 of their hp at the end of the first turn while badly poisoned, then 2/16 at the end of the second turn, then 3/16 at the end of the third turn, etc. up until your Pokemon faints. If you switch your Pokemon out while they're badly poisoned, the damge taken at the end of each turn will be reset to 1/16 when they're switched back in.
Sleep: Pokemon that are asleep are prevented from attacking each turn, with the exception of moves like Snore and Sleep Talk. The first turn of sleep is guaranteed, but you habe a chance to wake up on the second and third turns. Sleep will last no longer that 3 turns.

DIFFRENT FORMATS
There are two main formats in competitive Pokemon, VGC (Video Game Championships) and Smogon.

VGC is the official format run by the Pokemon Company. It's run as double battles and it's rules vary by year, eg. pokemon that are allowed/items that are allowed. You can find the current rules for VGC 2017 here http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/b...ps-format/
Smogon on the other hand is an unofficial created by fans of the the series. Pokemon are ranked in tiers by usage, eg. never used, over used etc. Smogon battles are usually ran as single battles. To find more information on Smogon have a look here http://www.smogon.com

BREEDING FOR IVs AND NATURES, AND EV TRAINING
EVs and IVs are incredibly important when it comes to battling competitively. IV stand for Individual Values and are asigned to your Pokemon when you hatch them or catch them. EV stands for effort values and and are given to you Pokemon when you defeat other Pokemon. Both of these effect your Pokemons stats, the more EVs and IVs you have in one stat the higher it will be. Natures are diffrent than EVs and IVs, but still have an effect on your Pokemons stats. Each Pokemon is assigned one of twenty five natures. Most natures raise the power of one stat and lower another, but there are a few that neither raise nor lower any stats. These are one of the more complicated parts of competitive Pokmon and I wouldn't be able to fit all of the informatin about them into this thread. Thankfully we have some amazing guides to these subjects by some users on the site!

Here's a very detailed guide on EVs and EV training by our Kahuna
http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-GUIDE-A...n-Sun-Moon
Here's a thorough guide on IV's and natures and how to breed for them by user http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-DISCUSS...#pid238933

I recommend reading both of these guides as if your pokemon aren't bred for the best possible IVs and nature, and trained for specific EVs you will more than likely be at a significant disadvantage to your opponent!

RESOURCES
Thankfully there are plenty of resources online for competitive beginners. Here's a list of a few that might come in handy!

Smogon: an incredibly useful site. Has a great dex feature for looking up Pokemon, with info on stats, moves and sets. http://www.smogon.com/
Showdown: a great battle simulator run by Smogon. Perfect for testing out teams and practice battles. http://play.pokemonshowdown.com
Serebii: a Pokemon encyclopedia. Has info on everything related to Pokemon, from the anime to the card game. But most importantly an incredibly detailed pokedex! http://www.serebii.net
Bulbapedia: another pokemon encyclopedia, but in the style of Wikipedia. Has info one everything to do with Pokemon and a great pokedex too. https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page
Our Team Builder: we're fortunate enought to have a fantastic team builder on our forums! It can tell you what your team is weak against and give you a good visualisation of what your team is capable of before you start to make it in-game. http://pokemonforever.com/teambuilder.php
Damage Calculator: going back to Showdown for a fantastic damage calculator. This is great for seeing what pokemon are capable of while team building or for using while you're battling. https://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/

Back To
Index

To Section 2
Team Building Part 1
Playstyles
(Coming Soon)

Pokémon Forever's Competitive 101 (Work In Progress)

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 14:34:57 -0700

Competitive 101: Index

Hello and welcome to Pokemon Forever's beginers guide to battling: Competitive 101. A series of articles to cover the basics of the competive Pokemon scene. Our main goal of this is to try and help anyone who may be finding it dificult getting into competitive batling, or even encorage some trainers that mightn't have thought of trying to start. We hope to make this as accessable as possible for trainers of all skill levels, with an aim of giving a general knowlege of battling, an understanding of creating teams and, most importantly, building confidence in playing.

We're going to break this guide down into 4 differnt sections. This way we can cover each topic in the best detail that we possibly can.

The First Steps http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-GUIDE-C...irst-Steps
Team Building Part 1: Playstyles
Team Building Part 2
Understanding Your Oponent
Competing in the Real World

Competitive battling can seem quite daunting at first. But once you find your feet, it can become one of the most rewarding things you can experience. Nothing beats having a new strategy work out or making a good prediction in a vital part of a battle. Hopefully this guide will be of good assitance to anyone trying to make the first step into the scene.

To Section 1
The First Steps