#pokemon playthroughs

[shoppncart]

8/16/2024 - Pokemon FireRed Completed (first vanilla playthrough i think!)

It's got its charm but Kanto does really feel like it is the First Pokemon Generation, it has some little overarching problems that got annoying. Little things that add up to waste your time and thus feel more noticeable (mostly lots of Grimers and Koffings using smokescreen and minimize). I can see how the simplicity would be appealing. While there aren't super recognizable landmarks like future generations have the region is nicely designed and loops around on itself well. I don't see myself coming back to it often in the future though.

[matthaisstupidus]

How do people just casually use pokemon in multiple playthroughs

Okay do I'm a bit of a hypocrite in saying this since I've actually used repeat team members myself (Skarmory in Moon + Alpha Sapphire and Eelektross in Scarlet and Black1) but the first example was when I was barely even in my teens and first getting into the series and the other involved a replay with a weird team and BW1 only having Unova mons so my options were limited

But like in BW2 I'm teamplanning rn and I feel a bit... wrong for planning to use Krookodile because of how it fits my team perfectly when I used it in Scarlet before.

Then you have Sinnoh fans over here (or at the very least the unfunny elitist Sinnoh fans) who apparently use the same team of 6 with 3 alternating slots depending on starter choice (and 90% of that starter choice is just Infernape).

Idk maybe it's just because I like using new/unique stuff to each region on first playthrough but I just prefer doing it that way, at least on first playthrough. Anybody else like me when teamplanning or am I just weird?

[jaybug-jabbers]

Bug Run 9: Fruitful Battles

Hello, all! I’m back again with a bug run for Scarlet/Violet. Gosh. We’ve reached Generation 9 already. Sure makes you feel old, doesn’t it? That’s a lot of pokemon generations.

Because this gen is all about the open world and freedom of choice, the game opens up quite a bit in terms of the ways we can go about playing it. But because this is a challenge run, I’m going to stick with the same rules I’ve always had for these runs:

1.) The team must be bug types only. (Any bugs new to this gen must be included on the team.)

2.) No using items during battle. (Hold items such as berries are allowed)

3.) No over-levelling. (This rule is a bit harder to follow in this gen but I am going to do my absolute best to challenge gyms and bosses when my levels are around the same levels as theirs)

I am also going to add a fourth rule for this particular generation:

4.) No terastallizing unless it’s Terastallize Bug Type!

That may seem a bit harsh, but this run is all about proving that bug types can beat the game. If we terastallize to remove our Bug type at any point, we’re not really winning on the merits of bugs, are we? 

Anyway, it’s time to dive in and see how the early game treats us in the wide world of Paldea!

In this gen, as with all pokemon games, we are forced to have our first battle with our starters. But after that, we are free to ditch the starter and catch our first wild-caught beauties, who we shall treat as our true starters for this game. Our rival Nemona leads us to Baby’s First Pokemon Route and we are set free to catch stuff.

Fortunately for us, Nemona gave us a lot of balls, because I'm gonna be picky. I wanted to choose pokemon with good natures. I also wanted the proper Abilities. I spent around half an hour or so hunting and catching things until I found the lucky chosen ones: an Adamant Tarountula (Increase Attack, Decrease Sp Attack) which I named Lollipop and a Timid Scatterbug (Increase Speed, Decrease Attack) with Compound Eyes, which I named Pixel. Nemona was perhaps getting bored waiting for me, but we finally moved on with our tour of Paldea; we had a lot of sight-seeing to do. Which included a random angsty teen giving me a gigantic dragon motorbike. Look, I know this run is about the bugs, but I need to show you a photo of my son anyway. I love him more than anything and will protect him with my life.

Now, the first hour of this game is sort of a giant tutorial + cutscenes/story, so there are not a lot of challenges early on, other than the occasional Youngster with a Houndour. However, there is one tricky battle we must pass before moving the rest of the game forward, and it comes when you’re about to enter the gates to Paldea’s largest city-- Nemona steps in and wants a quick second battle. And she has a few surprises to throw your way; a second member to her team already, and a surprise Terastallization to boot. 

Because I chose Fuecoco as my starter, Nemona’s starter was Sprigatito, and that one wasn’t really a problem. The trouble was her Pawmi, which only knew Thunder Shock and was boosted with sparkle power. After levelling my team up to 9 and equipping them with Oran berries, it still was not quite enough to survive. I wasn’t sure what to do, because I scoured the area and picked up all the TMs I could, but my team could use none of them. I didn’t have a lot of options so early on. However, I finally discovered a solution while fooling around. I could make a TM that was actually relevent to my team: Struggle Bug. My Tarountula already knew the move, but my Spewpa normally would need to wait for level 12 and its final evolution to acquire it naturally. By teaching it early, it was the bit of edge that I needed. With a string shot and a bunch of Struggle Bugs, which thankfully decreased Pawmi’s special attack, my team managed to squeak by.

After that, there’s our first run-in with Team Star, but that was not anything noteworthy. And then we complete Act One. Before Act Two, which is the game proper, I buy some cute clothes and pick up a Silver Powder for Lollipop, and then they let me lose on the world.

I choose to start West. Immediately I run into more bugs and add them to my team, a Kricketot and a female Combee. I name them Vyn and Ruby. My Spewpa evolved into Vivillon as well. Our first gym, the bug gym, is destroyed without breaking a sweat. It was actually pretty pitiful. It makes me sad when these games make the bug gyms so easy, because I know bugs can put up a proper fight when you do things right. Alas, Katy is added to the list of weak bug users. Still, I admit seeing all the people in that town enjoying the company of bug pokemon is absolutely adorable. Also, Katy’s character design’s pretty cute too.

The next gym is a grass gym, so to no one’s surprise, this one’s not exactly difficult for us either. Kricketune’s powered-up Fury Cutter mowed his team down with ease.

After the first two gyms being such a cakewalk, I hold out hope that the first Titan, a Rock type, will present a challenge. Alas . . . Klawf falls to Vivillon’s Struggle Bugs anyway. Did he even have a rock move? A single rock would have obliterated my Vivillon, but it never came. 

In Cortondo, the bug town, there’s a child who wants me to trade a Flabébé for his Snom. I thought I was being all smart by taking note of this and deciding to hunt down a Flabébé right away. This was a very time-consuming and difficult quest for me, because it was hard to read the Pokedex map indicating where they spawned, and then traveling to that location and searching the area. Nothing was showing up so I looked up where I could buy a meal that would give me a boosted Fairy Encounter power, then tracked all the way back to search some more, and still couldn’t find it. I was about to give up when finally I see a little Floette in the corner of my eye. So I capture it and then I need to breed it, so I go catch another fairy to breed it and then have a picnic and wait for the egg, and then hatch the egg, and then go trade it . . .

Then I decide I don’t like the Snom’s nickname so I need to breed the Snom I received, and that takes MORE work, because they won’t breed and I need to find a meal with Egg Power 2, which is in a town very far away, but finally I succeed and I am happy with my little Snom. “Good thing I noticed this trade! It must be the only way to get Snom in this game,” I think to myself.

. . . we’re not gonna talk about it ok, just pretend I was right

ANYWAY, during all that madness I also caught a Nymble for our team (named Hunter) and did a little work fighting some trainers. Then I decided to head for the first of the Team Star bosses-- Giacomo. Since he was a Dark type user, once again I did not expect much of a challenge here. However, it actually took some work. My team at the moment was still mostly unevolved, except for Vivillon, Spidops and Kricketune. Spidops takes time to truly hit his stride, though, so in the early game, Vivillon and Kricketune really were the MVPs. Pixel took care of the Pawniard (the Defiant boosts were annoying, but we coped) and then Vyn was bulky enough to have plenty of time to power his Fury Cutter up. (Oddly, the Revavroom is unaffected by Sing for some reason) This is how the team fared after the fight:

(please ignore the fact that my character looks like she just stepped in dog doo)

That was enough adventuring for one day! Tune in for the next chapter soon.

[scifigirlgamez]

FINALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY I finished and uploaded part 2 of my Pokemon HG Soul Link Nuzlocke Highlights!! Hopefully it wont take me nearly 9 months to finish and upload the next one.

Please go give it some love \o/

[cubedmango]

it went like this right

[kafus]

how i caught entei in leafgreen in the most ridiculous way possible

SO last week i started a pokemon leafgreen file on my childhood cart i've had since my 5th birthday, and one my goals ended up being getting every owned dex entry possible in JUST the one copy of leafgreen without connecting to any other game… and i did. except i forgot one. ENTEI!!

like probably a lot of you reading this i COMPLETELY forgot that one of the johto roaming beasts is in every copy of FRLG. i never even caught any of them as a kid. which roamer you get is based on your starter (squirtle = raikou, bulbasaur = entei, charmander = suicune) and i happened to pick bulbasaur so my roamer was entei. it does actually ROAM in kanto, aka whenever you change locations, the pokemon moves to a new route. obviously this is a pain in the ass, but it gets even more painful because roamers can flee from the battle and they will the instant you encounter them. you get the chance to throw one ball or use one move and that's it… so like in most pokemon games, you would use a trapping move like mean look to keep the roamer in the battle and turn it into a normal legendary encounter, right? HAHA WRONG

raikou and entei are affected by the ROAMER ROAR BUG in FRLG, which means if they use roar to escape the battle (yes, even in mean look, it doesn't stop roar from working) they just disappear from the game. permanently. forever. you can never capture it. suicune is not affected by this because it doesn't have roar, but my roamer was entei, so uh. the odds were stacked against me. did i want to repetitively encounter the roamer over and over, never trapping it, just throwing one ball each time? or did i want to set up a mean look pokemon only to have to soft reset every time entei used roar? neither option sounded fun and i was going to just give up and master ball it despite REALLY wanting it in a luxury ball like all the other kanto legendaries i had already caught… UNTIL!

i am a moderator of the ribbon master discord (a different pokemon challenge) and i was just sorta liveposting my thought process about this annoying roamer when gen 3 rng manipulation extraordinaire ddeeffgg crashes into the chat and suggests this fucking bonkers idea. and his bonkers idea is galaxy brain LET ME EXPLAIN

ariados is available in leafgreen's post game by catching spinarak in pattern bush, and of course electrode is a fairly common kanto pokemon. ariados gets access to spider web, which is basically just mean look with a different name (and i completely forgot it existed), it traps the opponent in the battle. but IMPORTANTLY, it ALSO gets access to BATON PASS… which, in gen 3, passes the trapping effect! usually if you were to use spider web and swap out ariados, the opponent would no longer be trapped, but baton pass solves that! and then electrode has the ability soundproof which prevents roar from working, and it even gets thunder wave (paralysis) and sonicboom (consistent 20 damage with no chance of accidental crits) to assist in easier capture of entei! nice!! awesome!! but getting this setup in order is the most ridiculous shit i've ever done in leafgreen

PROBLEM #1: ariados gets baton pass through egg move. in gen 3, egg moves are only passed down by the father and not the mother, so i had to grab a male ledyba, grind it to a high enough level to learn baton pass, then grab a female spinarak and breed them together. unfortunately this means my ariados would be level 1 and i'd have to train it up quite a bit, which leads into my next problem…

PROBLEM #2: ariados is SLOWWW. its base speed is a measly 40 compared to entei's whopping 100! ariados needs to outspeed entei to use spider web first turn so entei can't just run away! i would have to get ariados to a very high level to outspeed entei, grinding all the way from level 1. the one plus side is that the roamers in FRLG are bugged to always have a 0 IV in defense, special attack, special defense, and speed, which means unless entei has a +speed nature, its speed would always be a predictable and relatively low 105 at level 50, which is what it's encountered at. so i had to get an ariados with a speed of 106 or higher.

to get around both these problems as efficiently as possible, while breeding spinarak, i bred quite a few to get one with a +speed nature, and ended up with a jolly spinarak. everstone doesn't work in FRLG unfortunately, so the nature was completely random each time. soon my DAUGHTER WAS BORN after like 2-3 hours of breeding because FRLG eggs are SLOOOW and i was being stubborn about the nature, which i was getting unlucky on LOL

then i maxed out her speed EVs real quick by fighting picnicker susie on route 13 over and over, who gives 12 speed EVs per battle, 24 with the macho brace, which i was using. this was just to make sure i would reach 106+ speed as fast as possible. then i grinded her levels by repetitively fighting the two trainers right outside the weird chansey dance guy's house in sevault canyon on seven island, right above tanoby ruins. using the vs seeker on them is the best grinding spot in the game since they give 20k experience per fighting both of them and there's a healing spot Right There. i was using exp share and leading with my level 100 jolteon named Egg who i adore with all my heart. ariados, now named koolaid, ended up crossing the speed threshold at level 62! yes this took a while lmao

as for electrode, i wanted one at as high of a level as possible so i hopefully wouldn't have to grind levels. i lucked out as electrode is found at a whopping level 64 in cerulean cave's bottom floor. a 5% encounter rate but as i had already caught numerous 5%s for the pokedex, i didn't really care. however it DOES have explosion and i'd rather not have the electrode explode on me before i could catch it which would then send me on a wild goose chase for ANOTHER 5% electrode… so i grabbed the random level 24 poliwhirl with the damp ability, which prevents explosion from working, out of my PC, and gave it a smoke ball from the celadon game corner so i could lead with her and easily run from each encounter that Wasn't Electrode.

now you may be wondering how i was going to handle capturing electrode once i was actually in the battle because SURELY it would just use thunderbolt or something and instantly murder my poliwhirl. however funnily enough electrode only has two attacking moves at level 64, swift and explosion. explosion obviously doesn't work, and swift is a physical attack in gen 3 due to all normal type moves being physical, this was before the physical/special split in gen 4. electrode's physical attack stat is a garbage 50 and swift only has a base power of 60 so i honestly wasn't concerned. and best of all, poliwhirl gets the move hypnosis, so i could easily put electrode to sleep and start chucking ultra balls… and the smoke ball ended up being useless because i somehow ran into electrode first try what the fuck LOL

anyways i named them gatorade to match with koolaid. truly the dream entei capturing team. i didn't even feel the need to grind any levels on gatorade, level 64 was more than enough, so i just slapped the two moves i wanted on them - thunder wave through the one-use tutor in silph co, and sonicboom through the move reminder on two island, costing me two tinymushrooms which i thankfully already had and did not have to go out of my way to grind.

however the hours worth of prep ISN'T DONE YET! because uhh…

PROBLEM #3: ariados has to be above entei's level to outspeed it (yes, even if it had a 31 IV in speed AND a speed boosting nature AND maximum speed EVs, it still wouldn't be enough at level 50), which means the repel trick can't be used to encounter it. tracking down the roamer is practically impossible without using repels to cancel out all other wild pokemon, and in gen 3, unlike later gens, you can't put a fainted pokemon in the front of the party for the repel trick instead. and if i DON'T lead with ariados, entei will run away when i try to swap into it. SO i decided i would have to run into entei once first through the repel trick method, which marks it as "seen" in the pokedex, and then i would track its location through the pokedex to encounter it while leading with ariados.

to accomplish this, i simply ran in and out of the building on route 16, going in and out of the grass in the process, which would constantly be randomizing entei's location until it happened to randomize onto route 16. i caught a staryu with illuminate as an ability to raise the chance of entei appearing, which does work while staryu is fainted (wouldn't want to go in and out of the grass while entei was on route 16 without encountering it!) and otherwise led with my level 50 magmar that was on my elite four team named Torch for the repel trick.

i bought a whopping 100 max repels for this task but i ended up getting entei within just a few lol. torch was holding the smoke ball just to be able to run away safely without any shenanigans!

and now entei was in the pokedex and able to be tracked that way!

however, there was still ONE more problem...

PROBLEM #4: luxury balls are a pain in the ASS to get in this game! they can't be bought from any shop. the only way to repeatedly get luxury balls in FRLG is to show a pokemon to selphy, a rich girl who lives in resort gorgeous on five island.

i will mostly skim over this because it's boring, but TLDR i had to continuously talk to her, fly back to the pokemon center, get the pokemon she wanted to see out of the PC because the step limit is 250 before she gets sick of waiting which is like nothing (i already had a living dex of every mon obtainable in leafgreen otherwise so this wasn't hard), surf to her, then spam A through dialogue with her butler in which i had a 70% chance of receiving a luxury ball. i did this over 40 times until i had 30 luxury balls, and sold off all the nuggets and other items she gave me. good lord this took a while

and now with ALL of that setup i was FINALLY ready to capture entei in a luxury ball. this took me literally all day and i was really excited. to consistently encounter entei, i saved in cerulean city and tracked it in the pokedex from there, opening it over and over after changing to any of the four routes connected to the city, and moving to an adjacent route from entei's location when it was close in the hopes of walking onto the same route it moved to when i did. i was following a map made by hangarofroam, he has a video tutorial on how to shiny hunt the FRLG roamers and encounter them as quickly as possible, and i highly recommend looking it up if you want to capture these roamers yourself, but tldr this is the map i was using:

and once i encountered entei i was finally able to use the strategy i had prepped so long to do... and it worked without a hitch!! entei can't try to use roar first turn because it wastes a turn trying to flee, which is prevented by ariados outspeeding and using spider web... then if it tries to use roar the next turn, i've already switched into electrode to block it with soundproof. so from there it's just a matter of whittling down entei's HP to the red with swift/sonicboom and paralyzing it with thunder wave, then tossing luxury balls until success!

and i GOT IT after 3 encounter attempts and 73 luxury balls thrown. and FINALLY i have all 171 national dex entries possible in a single copy of leafgreen with no connection to other games, and all the legendaries are in fancy ass luxury balls. i am winning.

this was ridiculous. please be proud of my accomplishments. i've had this file for less than 2 weeks and i already have over 70 hours of gameplay in it after doing all this AAAAA

also barely related but look at Egg my jolteon he had like no purpose in this story but i took a pic of him in front of entei before going on to capture entei because i love him so much pleas

thanks for coming to my fucking ted talk i am SOOO normal about pokemonsdfjkfds (joke)

[otiksimr]

The marriage quartette

[skitkattl]

she's literally me so i had to make this out of obligation

[sealsdaily]

Today's Seals Are: The Popplio Line

[moonpaw]

snivy with serperior ears

couldn't get this guy out of my head so i had to draw him

[picopubbydawg]

meganium :)

[ultipoter]

Pokemon Legends Arceus fan comic, where Jirou has disappeared and Volo has complicated feelings about it. (And maybe figures out that there's a bit of a God in that little phone of Jirou's)

[jaybug-jabbers]

Bug Run 9: Final Comments & Movesets

Hello, all! I’ve finally jotted down my comments and movesets on the team I used during my Scarlet All-Bug Challenge Run. There won’t be any descriptions of battles in here-- just a summary of the different members of the team and what they contributed. So if there’s a single post you’d like to read about my challenge run, this is probably the one to check out! ^_^

(Opening with a picture of my Frosmoth and Volcarona just because it’s so darn aesthetic.)

Lollipop the Spidops

Silk Trap/Sticky Web/X-Scissor/Counter - Leftovers

Spidops takes some patience to use. This lad has a breathtakingly slow base speed of 35, so you shouldn’t harbor any illusions that he’s going to outpace anyone anytime soon other than some rock types and little unevolved pokes. 

However, Spidops’ moveset is tailored around his low speed. He has access to moves such as Assurance or Counter, which are meant to go after his opponent regardless. He also has moves that are designed to slow down opponents and drag them down to his level. 

His signature move is Silk Trap, which is like Protect but will slow down the opponent if it’s a contact move. Thus, you can get a speed drop for free, basically. I made extensive use of Silk Trap, surprisingly. For example, when I was in a desperate situation where even my fastest pokemon could not outspeed an opponent (such as when Vivillon couldn’t outspeed to use her Stun Spore), Lollipop could get in there and slow it down enough for a Stun Spore. The move is also helpful when you’re dealing with pokes who are just a little too fast for Spidops.

Spidops was also very good at taking some hard hits. He was bulky enough that Counter was a very useful and viable move on him. This was important, because I didn’t have a ton of bugs on my team that were tanky, so his role was crucial. His bulk also meant he could almost always get Sticky Web on the field, despite being slow himself. This role was important because several of my pokes were on the slower side, and thus they needed that extra help.

When combined with Leftovers, Lollipop could get in, slow down his immediate opponent, Sticky Web for the rest of the team, and then surivive long enough either to hit with Counter or a super-effective move of my choice. Spidops has a rather wide pool of coverage moves, including Trailblazer, Brick Break, Shadow Claw, Rock Tomb, Poison Jab and Aerial Ace. With Silk Traps in between moves to regain as much lefties as possible, he can wear down his opponents and often come out on top. And when he failed to do so, he’d slowed things down enough that his teammembers could easily come in and finish the job.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Trailblaze, Rock Tomb, Toxic Spikes

Pixel the Vivillon

Energy Ball/Hurricane/Stun Spore/Quiver Dance - Wise Glasses

I have a bit of a soft spot for Vivillon, it being one of my favorite bug pokes in general. I’ve especially felt close to it after my Gen 6 All-Vivillon challenge run. It’s a plucky pokemon, and while its base stat total is not particularly high by any means, it manages to get a lot more done than perhaps it should. That is to say, Vivillon can really punch above its weight and surprise you.

In the early game, Vivillon’s speed meant it outpaced nearly all its foes. Armed with a selection of Powders, Vivillon could then serve the extremely utilitarian functions of Stun Spore to make a dangerous foe manageable for the rest of my team, or she could instead choose to poison and use Protect to stall out her opponents. Either way, her speed meant that for a large portion of the game, she was essential to the team in her role. Also, Vivillon learns high basepower moves very early on when compared to other species, which meant in the early game, she also was my go-to special attacker. She also was fast enough to run from wild pokemon, haha, so she was often in the lead slot of my party, both for coping with wild pokemon and with trainer battles.

When you reach mid-game in Scarlet, you gain access to other bug special attackers, namely Frosmoth and Rabsca, who both boast higher Spec Attack and tankier Special Defense. However, Vivillon still outspeeds both of those teammates, so her ability to get in and fire first meant she remained important on the team. Even when facing opponents with terrifying 4x effective Rock moves, Vivillon often could kill them first and succeed where Frosmoth would fail. 

During the late-game, you would think a pokemon that’s found in the Route 1 tall grass would start to struggle. But Pixel remained useful all the way to the end, largely due to the wonderful STAB Hurricane + Compound Eyes + Decent Speed combination. When she picks up Hurricane in the late game, she’s scoring essential kills still, and she also had important coverage moves such as Energy Ball to deal with Ground/Rock/Water pokemon. It does sound strange a Flying/Bug type was still going toe-to-toe with Ground and Rock types, but like I said from the start-- Vivillon can punch above its weight and really surprise you. 

Favorite Alternative Moves: Poison Powder, Protect, Psychic, Hyper Beam

Hunter the Lokix

Lunge/Sucker Punch/Throat Chop/Axe Kick - Black Glasses/Silver Powder

Hunter was my second physical attacker. While Spidops is a physically and specially defensive tank (and uses his bulk as a weapon, such as with Counter), Lokix is about being fast and hitting hard. He had synergy with the rest of the team because the others could do the main bulk of the work, fall, and Hunter could come in as a guaranteed revenge-killer, or the others could run more support roles (Powders, Screens, Weather, Tailwind, etc) and then he could come in, terastallize, and just sweep. Because his defenses were pretty low, it was all about setting Hunter up in a position where he can wreck face uninhibited. He also does not have a particularly large coverage movepool, so he could not always just sweep a foe’s team-- which was why he often ended up revenge killing after a teammate had done most of the damage with their SE moves.

That said, Hunter did have access to one kind of coverage move that proved especially essential-- fighting moves. Low Kick, Double Kick, and Low Sweep were important for hitting a huge chunk of opponents. Late-game, he is one of the very few pokemon to learn the brand-new Axe Kick, which was his most prized move for taking out opponents that would otherwise probably completely wreck me. 

It should also be noted that for most of my playthrough, Hunter was the fastest poke on my team. As such, I gave him Scary Face and that occasionally played a vital role when Vivillon couldn’t outspeed and use her Stun Spore. I should also note he was the one I tererastallized the most, for the added boost on his bug attacks but also to avoid foes wanting to exploit his Dark-type weaknesses.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Scary Face, Detect (for tox stall)

Snowglobe the Frosmoth

Protect/Reflect/Ice Beam/Infestation - Never-Melt Ice

For most of the game, Frosmoth was my biggest Special Attacker. She was much slower than Vivillon but her Special Defense was much higher, so in some situations, Vivillon prevailed, but in others, I needed Frosmoth if I had to punch harder. In those cases, she could sometimes absorb a special hit and live long enough to clear her foe out. However, she was pretty frail defensively, so often her teammates needed to slow opponents down first to help her out. Once they did, Snowglobe did very important work. She was quite specialized and focused pretty much on just getting her Ice hits, but that was quite frankly just fine-- Ice is fantastic offensively, especially for a bug team, taking out the very dangerous dragons, flying types and ground pokemon that were so common in Scarlet (while also not needing to keep any Bug moves on her roster, since Ice hits Grass too). 

I did play around with a few other strategies on occasion. For the Poison or Steel types I couldn’t poison, I would sometimes use Snowglobe as a pseudo-tox staller, using Infestation and screens and Protect instead. Sometimes she traded off with Pixel to combine both poison and infestation stalling. I also had Blizzard and Snowscape on her for a short stint. 

Primarily, though, Snowglobe’s job was to use Ice Beam and the rest of the time, she played support, getting Screens up, Tailwind, and the likes.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Quiver Dance, Light Screen, Tailwind

Fireball the Rabsca

Psychic/Power Gem/Bug Buzz/Earth Power - Twisted Spoon

I’m gonna be honest. I never really figured out how to use Rabsca. I think I somehow got it into my head that he was kinda frail, but that’s just not true, as his base Spec D is higher than Frosmoth���s, and his Phys D is also higher than anyone else on the team (even more than Spidops due to a Relaxed nature). Part of the issue is that he’s so gosh-darn slow, the slowest on my team (even outslowing Spidops, again, due to being Relaxed), and it made it hard for me to figure out how to best use him. I understood how to use Spidops with his slowness, but with Fireball, he kept being outsped and killed before he could do his job. I think the other issue is that Rabsca has a lot of weaknesses (six total), since Bug/Psychic is not a great type combo defensively, so he fell to a lot of moves. I think those issues, plus me getting it into my head that he was kind of hard to use, made me under-utilize the poor guy for quite a while. 

Which is a shame, because I do think there probably are good ways to use this poke, and he has such a cool design! He can learn Trick Room, but I didn’t really have the team composition to run Trick Room. He also can learn the new Speed Swap, which offers another option to deal with his slowness, but it was difficult to find an opportunity to use that move. I dunno. 

The most exciting thing he had going for him was he could learn Earth Power, which filled out an otherwise glaring hole in my team’s coverage moves. Being able to hit Electric and Fire types hard was great, and hitting Steel types on their typically weaker side is an added bonus. Sadly, though, Fireball wasn’t the reliable counter to Electric and Fire types that I wanted him to be. It just was a rare moment he truly could do the job I sent him out to do. 

Still. I don’t blame Fireball for that. I blame myself. I simply have yet to figure out how to best use him on the team. Hopefully I will get the hang of it during the post game.

Ra the Volcarona

Fiery Dance/Bug Buzz/Overheat/Quiver Dance - Charcoal

Ra is an interesting case, because for most of the game, he was a Larvesta. The thing about Volcarona is that it’s a late bloomer-- it evolves at the incredibly late level of 59, similar to a pseudo-legendary. And also similar to a pseudo-legendary, it has an incredibly high base stat total (550), making it the single strongest bug pokemon other than Mythicals, Megas or Ultra Beasts.

As such, I decided it would be rather boring to have Larvesta for most of my game. So I left Ra on the bench during that time, and my Vespiquen filled out my team instead. Then, when I was reaching the final gauntlet of the game, I took Larvesta back and did some power-levelling so I could place him back on the team. The “Let’s Go” feature is very handy for power-levelling, as it turns out (as well as a trusty Lucky Egg, of course). I sat there and let Ra go to town on a patch that had lots of Psychic and Grass pokemon. And then, in the middle of the Elite Four battles, Ra finally evolved. 

It’s honestly probably for the best that Volcarona evolves so late. If I had him on my team early on, things would have been far too easy, I suspect. This was supposed to be a challenge run, after all, not a spreedrun where I sweep everything with Volcarona. When Ra finally did evolve, he was able to join the team without hogging all of the limelight. I used him for important moments but I don’t feel I over-relied on him. And personally, that’s the experience I prefer. I enjoy a team that supports each other, rather than doing everything with a single poke. As mighty as Volcarona is, he is intensely vulnerable to Rock moves, and his movepool for coverage moves is pretty shallow. So he really does benefit from his teammates making up for his weaknesses. 

From a technical perspective, though, Ra was definitely my ace on the team. 

Ruby the Vespiquen

Roost/Air Slash/Venoshock/Toxic - Shell Bell

Hold on, seven pokemon?? That’s illegal! Well, it seemed unfair to not include Ruby, since she was such an important member of my team through most of the run. I caught her extremely early on, in the South Province at level 9 when she was just a Combee. (Yes, you could find Vespiquens alongside the Combee in this area, but I have a level cap if you’ll recall, so I wanted to start off with a low level). She was the third member of my team, so yeah, she was with me a very long time. 

Vespiquen is a very tanky build; slow and focused on both physical and special defense. As such, she was great to have around when I needed someone who could absorb some hits. She’s also a mixed attacker, so she has a lot of versatility. Her movepool lets her capitalize on that, offering coverage in the form of Sludge Bomb, Venoshock, Toxic, Toxic Spikes, Power Gem, and Hex; she can thus work offensively but also set up hazards and tox-stall her enemies, with Roost really enhancing her stalling tactics. Ruby remained very dependable throughout my run, and quite frankly, having such a tanky bug helped a lot when so many of my teammbers were awfully squishy when it came to defenses. Her Power Gem was a very exciting coverage move for a team that just did not have very many, and her poison moves came in handy for Fairy types, such as Ortega and Penny’s ace. 

Favorite Alternative Moves: Attack Order, Power Gem

Team Fun Facts

This team was pretty terrible when it came to its defensive type coverage. Bug types have three weaknesses, and the team did almost nothing to cover for it; we were all very vulnerable to Flying and Fire for 99% of the run (when Volcarona joined, he offered a single Neutral to Fire) and we were incredibly weak to Rock the entire run. As such, our best defense was a strong offense, wiping out dangerous pokes before they had a chance to sweep through our team.

Nemona’s Lycanroc still terrifies me, though.  😂

[prince-ically]

I just think they're neat (Hc that his original Applin was named Lilac, but since evolving he's slowly started to name them all. Silly lookin one on the very right is Rose.)

[azurityarts]

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