Battling and catch up

My Rainy Day team has gotten beaten up a lot in the wi-fi random battles in Pokemon Battle Revolution. So many people battling with uber-Pokemon (Darkrai, Palkia, Dialga, Giratina, even an Arceus). I'm building some Pokemon that I can pack as my 2 extra Pokemon, to function as my thugs in case of ubers.

Once I test them, I'll post my answering Pokemon, along with how the worked out in the field. One of them is Porygon-Z. The IVs on it were crazy good. I wanted a Togetic with a move from the Emerald move tutor, but all of my Togetic Pokemon are no longer in the gameboy advance games...and you can't find them in the wild. Tough love!

Upcoming download! I don't think it's official from the Pokemon site yet, but people have been saying that the Arceus download event for D/P/Pt will be at Toys R Us from November 7th - November 15th.

New Battles

I recently started battling again, this time with a friend I haven't seen for awhile. We organized a late night wi-fi double battle, 4 Pokemon, level 30 - expanded Sinnoh dex.

I got crushed, his 3 matches to my one. We swapped out Pokemon between matches - I stayed away from my favorite Weavile, as he was running it consistently. He had some killer Pokemon - Drapion, Gliscor, Blissey, and Scizor, to name a few. (His Umbreon was a tank!)

My Sunny Day team didn't get off the ground - Weavile's Ice moves wrecked shop on all the Grass Pokemon. I figure I need to get a fast Fire-type to get Sunny Day started. That's some good feedback, at least.

Double battle is tough - you don't have time for a lot of tricks, because you have two Pokemon threatening to double team your set-up. My only win came from using my better Pokemon from an earlier tournament, and my opponent using a 'B' team. My next post, I'll cover my new Pokemon team, for the rematch!

Oak's Letter for Platinum

You'll be able to download "Oak's Letter" for your Pokemon Platinum game, from Monday September 28th through November 8th. (2009, probably US only.)

This Mystery Gift can be received through the Ninteno Wi-Fi Connection, which will unlock a special event to catch a Level 30 Shaymin.

In a related note, you can stop by Floaroma Town, and pick up the Gracidea Flower key item - this will allow Shaymin to use its Sky Forme - it has a higher Special Attack and Speed, as well as different move tutor attacks.

Explaining Catch Rates

You’ll probably want to refer to guides to see what the catch rate for individual Pokemon are. (Serebii lists the Pokemon catch rates.) CatchRate is specific to each Pokemon. Higher is easier to catch. Abra is a 200, which means it is more difficult to catch than Geodude, which is 255.

There’s a math formula for figuring out how easy it is to catch a Pokemon:

( ( 3*MaxHP - 2*CurrentHP) * CatchRate) / 3*MaxHP

When you throw a PokeBall, it’ll quickly figure out your chances, against a random number that is generated between 0 to 255.

Let’s try to catch that Abra. It uses Teleport as its only attack, so we'll only get one shot at it. The level 8 Abra has 24 HP. I’ll try to throw a regular Pokeball, while Abra is unhurt. It’s MaxHP and Current HP are the same – it works out to 3(24) – 2(24) = 1(24) = 24. Multiply it by 200, Abra’s CatchRate, and you end up with 4800. Divided by three times its MaxHP, it’s got a 67. Against the random number generator, you’ll catch an unhurt 24 HP Abra about 25% of the time, before it teleports away.

Improving capture methods:

The actual formula adds more modifiers, for special conditions and what kind of ball you use:

Status * BallModifier * ( ( 3*MaxHP - 2*CurrentHP) * CatchRate) / 3*MaxHP

Status is the effect of a special condition, the higher the number, the better.

Frozen or Asleep: 2

Paralyzed, Poisoned, or Burned: 1.5

Other conditions/no condition: 1

As you can see, Asleep is the best modifier (Frozen is really good, but hard to use - there aren't a lot of moves that freeze reliably.) If Asleep won't work against the Pokemon, I'll try Paralyzed...it doesn't run the risk of KO'ing the Pokemon, like Poisoned or Burned does.

The higher the BallModifier, the more your chances improve:

(Specialty Balls always have a minimum multiplier of x1.)

Poke Ball, Premier Ball, Luxury Ball, Heal Ball: x1

Great Ball: x1.5

Ultra Ball: x2

Dive Ball: x3.5 for underwater Pokemon (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald) or Pokemon in water for other games

Nest Ball: x3 for Pokemon levels 1-19, x2 for levels 20-29

Net Ball: x3, but only for Water-type and Bug-type

Repeat Ball: x3, but only for Pokemon you’ve already caught

Dusk Ball: x4, but only works at night or underground

Quick Ball: x4, but decreases every 5 rounds – after round 16 it stays at x1

Timer Ball: x4 at 30 rounds or more, x3 for 20-29 rounds, x2 for 10-19 rounds

Let’s take a second look at catching that Abra. If I manage to get it Asleep before it uses Teleport, I double my chances catching it with a Poke Ball. If I use an Ultra Ball, it doubles my chances again – my 67 * 4 = 268 will always be higher than the random number being generated.

In wrap-up, there are several different formulas out there for figuring out catch rates. Some of them didn’t work mathematically, while others didn’t match my experiences. As nothing official has ever been posted about it, I’d use these as ideas on how to improve your catching experiences.

Tower Tycoon Palmer - Battle Video

I just beat Tower Tycoon Palmer for the first time after 4 months of trying.

Video code is: 68-64119-31924

Happiness

I was on instant messenger last night, and a friend asked me how about I go about raising happiness for a Pokemon. It's necessary for certain evolutions, like Espeon, Munchlax, that sort of thing...

First, some rules about Happiness.
1) Happiness is reset to a specific number (70) if a Pokemon is traded. (It doesn't hate you, or like you all that much.)
2) Maximum happiness is 255, minimum is 0. Maximum happiness will give allow you to get a ribbon from a guy in a house just east of Pastoria. For the Pokemon who need happiness to evolve, they don't always need the maximum.

I usually just get it two massages in a day (one in Veilstone, one at the post-game Ribbon Syndicate), and then feed it berries. According to Bulbapedia, starting at 70 and then two massages puts it at 78. 220 happiness would need 142 more points, or 71 EV-reducing berries (#21-#26)...a really high number, which I recall being about 20-40 berries.

Luxury Ball is supposed to raise happiness faster - if Bulbapedia is right, it's anywhere from double to triple the gains of a normal Pokemon.

How do you guys raise happiness?

Pokemon tournament at PAX

There's supposed to be a Pokemon video game tournament at the Penny Arcade Expo on Labor Day weekend (Sunday, 11am-4pm). Rules haven't been posted, so who knows what the format is supposed to be. It'll be in the handheld lounge, so it's unlikely that it will go through Pokemon Battle Revolution.

Depending on the format, I'll play. 5 hours of Pokemon play? PAX has almost too much stuff going on to be tied down for that long.

Trials of a Level 30 Magnezone

I’ve been engaging in a relatively fruitless quest over the past several weeks. I train most of my competitive Pokemon for level 30. It’s partly from the format I started with in competitive battling, but also a recognition of the difficulty of training a Pokemon within set limits.

The challenge? Magnezone. If you haven’t followed Magnezone before, it’s pretty awesome. Its Magnet Pull ability prevents Steel-types from escaping. It has excellent stats, focusing on Special Attacks. The drawback is that Magnemite evolves to Magneton at level 30. Magneton evolves into Magnezone in Mt. Coronet, during a level up – standard tricks, means that I have a level 31 Magnezone.

The answer? Find a wild Magneton, below level 30. Sometimes wild Pokemon will exist in forms that you can’t duplicate, such as a Magneton below level 30. You can find them in the wild in Platinum, but they’re all too high in level. Diamond & Pearl don’t have them showing up at all, only Magnemite. I dusted off my Ruby game – meaning I can find them in New Mauville (just south of Mauville City, then Surf east). Unfortunately they’re rare. As in, out of 150 Pokemon, I’ve seen 3. (“150” is a loose number. It could easily be higher. And that means hours of play, but something you can do while you watch a DVD or bust out on a bus.)

The primary drawback to using wild Pokemon as a base to build from is that you can’t breed a bunch of them, check their IVs, and use the best one. Finding one of even the right nature and ability is hard enough…waiting for amazing IVs seems like a lost cause.

But I want a Modest-natured Magneton. Modest gives its powerful Special Attack stat an even higher boost, at a cost of Attack. Sadly, I migrated most of my Pokemon up to Diamond back in the day, so I have very little ‘catching’ Pokemon in reserve. I really wanted a Modest Abra with Synchronize (if it leads the party, half the Magnetons I would run into are Modest), which meant a long exile into the caves by Dewford. Abra tries to teleport out, so you either have to put it Asleep, or throw money/balls at it. I decided that Hypnotize would be the fastest route, so I found a Spinda and was in business.

Except it wasn’t perfect. Hypnotize has a 70% accuracy and I kept having to catch a lot of Abra, and none of them were Modest AND Synchronize (Inner Focus is useful as an ability, but not for what I wanted the Abra for). I realized I went about it all wrong, and started catching Ralts instead. If the wild Ralts used its “Trace” ability on my Spinda, I knew I didn’t have to catch it…and it also doesn’t know Teleport for those times where Hypnotize would miss. Catching a Modest-natured Ralts was fast - I had one in 20 minutes.

So I have Ralts, have Spinda, and now spend all of my time in New Mauville. The three Magneton that I have caught so far aren’t Modest – I’d even settle for a Timid one at this point. But the upside has been that in one of the random battles, a Shiny Magnemite showed up…and the 50% paid off, so I’ll have a sparkly Modest Magnezone for my level 50 build!

Member's Card for Pokemon Platinum

Pokemon.com have today announced that the Member's Card will be distributed over Wi-Fi from August 3rd until September 13th. Pokemon Platinum Version owners will first need to activate the Mystery Gift Function before being able to receive the rare item.

To activate Mystery Gift head to the Jubilife TV Station, on the second floor is a man who will ask for a response from you, simply answer "Everyone Happy" then "Wi-Fi Connection" and Mystery Gift will be unlocked. Save your game and reset it so you are once again on the main menu, scroll down to Mystery Gift and enter the option. Here you are to select "Get Via Nintendo WFC" and you will receive the Member's Card if near an active Wi-Fi connection.

Once you've obtained the Member's Card head to Cavalave City, you may have noticed a locked house you couldn't previously enter, well guess what? Now you can. The building is a secret hotel where you can spend the night, in doing so you will fall asleep and find youself on Newmoon Island. After chatting with Edward Cullen you'll encounter Darkrai which you can then battle and capture, once the battle is over you'll wake up still in the hotel... Was it all a dream?

Shiny Graveler

I caught my first Shiny Pokemon today. It was a Shiny Graveler. I did have one shiny Pokemon before but I didn’t catch it, I had lent my game to a neighbor kid at a Halloween party and 5 minutes later he caught a shiny Electrode.

I had my Hunter at the head of the party and was able to Hypnotize it, I was worried that it would self destruct and I would loose it.

Now I am thinking of move set and I am open to suggestions.

Its got a Naïve nature and I was thinking of these 4 moves.
• Earthquake
• Explosion
• Double Edge
• Stone Edge

Hunter Gallade

Hunter Gallade

I have to give Jimmer credit for this Hunter, my first Hunter was a Scyther with False Swipe, It worked but having a way to keep the Abra’s from running away via Mean Look and putting a status on them making them sleep via Hypnosis, I thought was a cool idea.

I am keeping Magical Leaf until they hit Level 100 then I change it for Swords Dance.

Breeding:
Male Ghastly w/Mean Look Lv1
Female Adamant Ralts holding Everstone

Baby is Male Ralts with Mean Look

Leveling:
Level 21 get Magical Leaf
Level to 43 to get Hypnosis
Evolve into Kirlia
Use Dawn Stone to Evolve into Gallade
Level 45 get False Swipe

Nature: Adamant

EV Trained: Attack & Speed

Move Set:
• False Swipe
• Mean Look
• Magical Leaf
• Hypnosis

Heart Gold/Soul Silver Trailer

Abra Synchronize Team

A few post back Jimmer mentions his Abra synchronize team for catching Pokemon of a specific nature. Synchronize gives a 50% encountering a wild Pokémon with the same nature. So all you need is 1 Abra with the synchronize ability for each of the natures.

Its simple right, catch a male and female Abra put them into the day care and hatch eggs until you have the team.

I found 2 Abra, level 5 to start.

That’s when things get harder; seams Abra also have another ability called Inner Focus. So I had to release about half the Abras caught and then after a while you start to get more and more repeat natures.

I was down to needing 3 more natures when Jimmer was able to help me out with the last 3. Thanks Jimmer!. And my starting Abras went from level 5 to level 45 in the daycare.

Why have Abras? To catch Dittos of a specific nature. A Ditto or a female Pokémon that holds an Everstone has a 50% chance of passing its nature to its offspring when at the Pokémon Daycare.

Using my Abra Team I caught my Ditto team fairly easily.

Single Battle Strategy - Walrein + Gorebyss combo

I thought I’d try my hand at combos, after discussing Battle Tower with Joel at lunch. They’re generally tricky and difficult to pull off, but what the heck…

I decided to start the combo with a Pokemon that could learn Baton Pass and some cool defensive buffs. I settled on Gorebyss – it could pick up Aqua Ring, Baton Pass, and Amnesia…the fourth move slot should be an attack, just in case it has to come back out. I settled on Toxic, although I might come back to Water Pulse.

I figure it can Amnesia and Aqua Ring, then Baton Pass into Walrein. Walrein was chosen for its ability to learn Defense Curl (as Spheal), Yawn (as an egg move), Rollout (as move tutor) and Ice Ball (as a level-up). Why these moves?

First, Defense Curl is going to boost its Defense (Amnesia from Gorebyss will give it Special Defense). Defense Curl also doubles the damage of both Ice Ball and Rollout. Both of those moves continue to grow in power over multiple turns, until they miss or hit round 5. They need Walrein to stick around.

I’m hoping that Aqua Ring, Amnesia, and Defense Curl will keep Walrein around as it pounds away with its double-damaged attacks. I put Yawn as the 4th move, so that Walrein might have a slight warm-up chance. Its Ability was kind of a toss up, so I went with Ice Body, just in case I toss in Hail somewhere for more HP gain.

I bred a Sealeo with an Adamant Ditto (+ Everstone), until I got an Adamant-natured female Spheal. I then bred a male Slowpoke who knew Yawn, with the newly hatched female (+ Everstone). Defense Curl didn’t show up as one of the beginning moves – I figured I would come back to it, as I didn’t have a Heart Scale lying around. (MISTAKE! I levelled it up to Sealeo, then to Walrein, and then realized I had to Heart Scale it while it was still a Spheal. I reset the game, and it turned out that I had saved it while it was still a level 27 Spheal. Whew!)

In Platinum, it gained Rollout from the Move Tutor in the post-game island. Sadly, I was short on Green Shards! All of this training lately has been draining my Heart Scales and shards. Fortunately I had some Star Pieces still, and I ran over to the end guy in Fuego Ironworks, who gives you 1 of each shard for a Star Piece.

I’m debating its held item right now – Leftovers for HP gain, or Wide Lens for accuracy so that Ice Ball and Rollout won’t miss (and thus stop building up).

All it took after that was some levelling up after all that. Now I need to go make its combo-buddy, Gorebyss.

Castform, the Weatherdude

I decided my Sunny Day team would branch into more weather – Castform could either continue Sunny Day routines – busting out a Fire-type attack through Weather Ball, or Solar Beam as a powered-up Grass attack. As its second half, it switches into Rain Dance – Weather Ball becomes a Water attack by a Water-type Pokemon, or it could toss out Thunder at 100% accuracy under Rain Dance’s effect.

This was the most simple one to breed – Rain Dance, Thunder, and SolarBeam are all TMs you can purchase, and Castform gets Weather Ball at level 30. All I needed was a decent Modest-natured Castform.

Castform can be found in the Trophy Garden as a special Pokemon, but it took a lot of breeding to get a Modest one. After 30 minutes of random natures, I employed a Modest Ditto from another game – give it an Everstone, and you get the type you want pretty quickly.

I haven’t given Leftovers to anyone on the team yet, so I push Castform’s HP up, and give it Leftovers. Hopefully it gets two turns of actions.

Now, if only another Pokemon could complete the team of 4…one that would appreciate Rain Dance. Anyone ever try Ludicolo?

HM Slaves

I like to keep the HM's on as few Pokeon as possible, because you can not untrain them.

These 2 Pokemon are able to have all 8 HM's

Tropius

• Cut
• Fly
• Strength
• Defog

Golduck

• Surf
• Rock Smash
• Waterfall
• Rock Climb

Raising Ampharos

Selecting Ampharos
My last Pokémon was water type so I thought I would try an Electric type. I had once had an Ampharos in Pokémon coliseum and remembered likening its moves.

Breeding
Ampharos have got some great Electric type moves but I wanted more power, So Dad was a LV 26 Pikachu with Thunderbolt. Mom was an Ampharos.

I wanted a male Mareep with modest nature. After 30 eggs I finally got a female with modest nature.

So I breed one of the new baby males with the modest baby female holding an everstone and got 3 male Mareeps with modest nature.

I had just missed Jimmers post about testing IV’s so I had selected the one with high HP and Special attack stat.

I named it ‘Nervous’ after the jokes about farmers and sheeps.

I can trade the 2 others if anyone wants them.

Battle Tower
Now that I know how fast it EV train with the Battle Tower items, I headed straight there for the items for HP and special attack. With my Eevee team we reached the Tower Tycoon (21st Battle) 3 times only to be squashed like a bug.

EV Training
I tried something new this time and that’s Pokérus a little virus that helps Pokémon EV train, its awesome. It doubles the EV points for each win.
For Special Attack I went to the resort area pond and fought Golducks for 2 ea. I had 1 Pokémon tank and with the exp. share I was getting 4 ea with Pokérus, but it wasn’t long before I could use Thunderbolt and with Power Lens & Pokérus I was getting 12 ev each.
For HP’s I went to route 201 to find Bidoof’s and 10 ea (Power Weight+ Pokérus ) it didn’t take long.

Move Tutor
One of the reasons I liked Ampharos so much is they are resistant to most attacks, but they are weak to ground attacks. Magnet Rise makes Ampharos immune to ground attacks so I had to get that on my move list. I went to Snowpoint city to the Move Tutor and discovered I needed shards to buy the moves, This is new to platinum. I needed 2 Blue shards, 4 yellow shards, & 2 green shards.

Underground
To get shards you need to dig for them in the Underground, I like the mini game where your digging for items, plus you can find some great stones for later. I have been deleting the Spheres that I found they fill up my bag and I don’t know what to do with them. As far as I can tell you can just buy decorations and traps with them.

Leveling and Final Move Set
I leveled up to get Charge and Signal Beam.

• Thunderbolt
• Magnet Rise
• Charge
• Signal Beam

Mistakes in breeding

I'll quickly relate my most recent breeding idea...

Lucario. It's fast, with good stats. Normally, I've always trained it to specialize in the Attack stat, and use its large varieties of options for Attack-based moves. I decided this time - let's make a Special Attacker, and get some quality eggs for friends.

Female Lucario are rare - a 1 in 8 chance. I was breeding a male Lucario with a Modest Ditto (+Everstone), hoping to get one. I bred a lot of Riolu - not only is the female 1 in 8, the Everstone only gives you a 50-50 chance for getting the right nature. The breeding took about 2 hours of time, riding buses + watching a DVD.

My thought was - level up both Pokemon so they get their level 47 Dragon Pulse move, so they can pass down all of their level-up moves. Specifically:

Aura Sphere
Dark Pulse
Dragon Pulse
Vacuum Wave (I didn't Egg move this - I grabbed had the father learn it through the Move Tutor)

If you don't see the train wreck coming, you've seen some slight hints.

The tricks for breeding moves into offspring:
1. HM/TM's breed from their father, if it's on the offspring's list.
2. Move Tutor moves do not breed down, unless it's on the offspring's list.
3. Level-up moves only breed down if both parents have them, and it's on the offspring's list.
4. Custom moves do not breed down. (Event Pikachu with Surf is an example.)

I failed in #3. Yes, if Lucario + Lucario bred into Lucario, I was aces. Instead, they breed little Riolu's, which don't have any of those moves except for Vacuum Wave. (This topic was also covered in a previous discussion of Gyarados+Magikarp. I was too excited to breed a special attack Lucario, methinks.)

A related hassle is breeding something like Bronzors - they only breed with Dittos, so you can't pass down Level-up Moves - both parents can't have the moves.

That is today's admitted mistake. Stay tuned for my next installment, "Of How Mistakes Are Made..."

I've only bred a few pokemon for moves and honestly I've forgotten the exact recipes.

I generally start one of two ways.

A. Select a pokemon that looks cool or generally has good stats

B. Select a move combo and find a pokemon that can host it well

Most of mine were based on the second stratagem and generally I took the shortest recipe to get there.

First up

Tigger the Archaine LV: 30 Intimidate

Heat Wave, Body Slam, Flare Blitz, Helping Hand

HP - 96 Attack - 81 Defense 49 Sp At 80 Sp Def 54 Speed 68

This was made for team dueling to use Helping Hand to deliver a beefed up sucker punch (or other key move). When not helping he's a mixed attack fire poke with passable speed. Not great but pretty solid at dolling some damage.

his parther (bred by Jimmer)

Mugin the Honhcrow LV: 30 Insomnia

Mirror Move, Drill Peck, Roost, Sucker Punch

HP - 105 Attack - 96 Defense 42 Sp At 61 Sp Def 43 Speed 50

I use him as an opening with sucker Punch at fast but frail pokemon. With the strong attack, STAB and helping hand from Tigger it can one shot a fair number of speedy foes. Defenses are weak though so I find his other moves often don't get used much except as parting shots. Mirror move does have some advantages against status effect pokemon.

Also on my level 30 team was a defensive type I bred

Honker the Probopass LV: 30 Sturdy

Toxic, Rest, Sandstorm, Discharge

HP - 83 Attack - 38 Defense 105 Sp At 59 Sp Def 111 Speed 36

While he has some weaknesses he's a brick wall for some pokes able to poison them up and then hibernate through their attacks. Not exactly exciting though. I find he makes a great final pinch hitter if you can lure out pokes he has a weakness to earlier in the battle.

Raising Gyarados

Selecting a Pokemon

My search for the right Pokemon with the goal to raise a Pokemon to beat Champion Cynthia's Garchomp.

I needed an Ice move and Flying would be great to avoid the earthquake, also it needed to be a water Pokemon.

Gyarados fit those requirements and I had one in my party, however I didn't train his Ice move and his attack was very low.

It was time to raise a new one.

Breeding

I started looking into what kind of moves I wanted, as was thinking Flamethrower and Ice Beam would be awesome.

• Step 1, Breed a lv 42 M Charazard with Flamethrower to a F Gyarados.
• Step 2, Breed M baby of step 1 to F Remoraid, Passing the Flamethrower
• Step 3, Breed M baby at lv 40 Remoraid to a F Gyarados. Passing Ice Beam, Flamethrower & Water Pulse

The down side is Gyarados have low Special Attack and Ice Beam and Flamethrower are Special Attack moves, so I scrapped it for a wild one.

Catching Magikarp in the wild

Loading up Pokemon Diamond, I went to the Resort area with my Super Rod to try to catch a lv 99 Magikarp, after a few tries switched to the old rod and then started fishing for a low level Magikarp with Adamant nature it took 12 tries but got one with a net ball.

I named him Apalala after a Buddhist myth of a water dragon.

EV Training Part 1

There are limits to how many EV points you can get, and this is why people EV train. The most you should have in one stat at 252, because for each point in the stat you need 4 EV's, so 252 / 4 = 64.

My plan is to raise Attack 252, Speed 252 and HP for 6 for the total 510 EV's.

For the first 100 EV in each stat I gave the Magikarp 10 Protein, and 10 Carbos. I don't recommend doing this as they were very expensive

My Magikarp only had splash as an attack so I gave it an XP Share, this lets it get half the xp & half the EV of a defeated Pokemon.

I headed to Route 212 with my Scizor in the lead and proceeded to beat 60, yes 60 Kricketune & Bibarel, they are worth 2 EV towards Attack and with the XP share my Magikarp was getting 1 each. After beating the 60 Pokemon my Magikarp evolved to a Gyarados.

Now I could use my Gyarados to defeat the Kricketune & Bibarel, but after 10 or so wins at 2 EV each I was thinking this would take forever.

Battle Tower

I picked my 3 favorite Pokemon that survived the Great Pokemon Cataclysm and headed to the Battle Tower. I needed to buy the Bracer and Anklet for a total of 32 BP's

For each group of 7 trainers I would get 3 BP's, and on the 21st consecutive if you win you get 20BP's. I only got to the 21st guy once and lost. I could pass the first 2 rounds of 7 pretty easy but the third round was always very hard. So it took me 11+ battle rounds to get all the BP's I needed.

EV Training Part 2

With the new bracer I headed back to Route 213 and now the Kricketune & Bibarel for attack, they were worth 6 EV's each, I think I needed 6 or 7 to finish. It was very fast. 152 + the 100 Protein got me the 252

Then I headed to Route 201 to hunt Starly with the Anklet for Speed, 20 of them with the Anklet @ 5 ea and 2 without the anklet for a total of 152 + the 100 Carbos got me 252

The last 6 was for HP and hunted 6 Bidoof the same time as the Starly's

Leveling and Final move Set

Trading Apalala back to Pokemon Diamond to finish leveling and the final move set will be per Jimmer'srecommendation

• Ice Fang,
• Dragon Dance
• Bite
• Waterfall

Battle Tower Wonders

(As a heads-up, this won’t be about breeding. I use items gained from the Battle Tower to train Pokemon more quickly, so imagine this as a useful side trip.)

I don’t know how much my fellow contributors have played in Battle Tower, but it’s a source of Battle Points (BP). The BP gain feels like a trickle, compared to what you want, but there are some quick ways to get points. The Battle Tower shows up during post-game, located in the Fight Area on the map.

Why would you go there?
There are some good TMs and items you want, that can be most easily gained with the expenditure of BP. The most important items that you spend BP on the EV-training items – they’re only available in the Battle Tower. (16 BP per item, 6 different items)

How do you get points?
The best way I’ve found is playing Single Battle, 3 Pokemon. You get BP for being undefeated, every 7 matches. First 7, 3 BP. Second 7 (14 defeated in a row), 4 BP. Thid group of 7 (21 defeated in a row!) you receive -20- BP. The subsequent rounds will have slight increase in BP (5, 6, etc) until you get to your 49th match for another 20 BP.

How hard is it?
The first 20 matches don’t break you too much. The earlier battles feature unevolved Pokemon, slowly climbing in power. Match 21 against the Tower Tycoon (Palmer, your rival’s father) is tough – after this match you get 20 BP, so it’s worth winning. His three Pokemon are Rhyperior, Dragonite, and Milotic – all with solid move selections and good stats.

The matches after Palmer get tougher – the furthest I think I’ve gotten is 50. If you’re just focusing on getting BP quickly, lose the match after Palmer, battle 1-20 to reach Palmer again.

What kind of team should be used?
I don’t feel like I’m an expert here – I’ve played around with different level 50’s, and still feel like I’m learning. The team I’ve had the most success with:

Garchomp (starts) – Outrage, Shadow Claw, Earthquake, Rockslide. Held item: Lum Berry.
Milotic – Surf, Ice Beam, Recover, Toxic. Held item: Leftovers.
Metagross – Thunderpunch, Earthquake, Meteor Mash, Bullet Punch. Held item: Metal Coat.

Garchomp is a favorite of mine from the start of Diamond/Pearl. I was happy to find out that it was fast and powerful – I trained it more in both Speed and Attack. It takes x4 damage from Ice-type attacks, which is what it really fears. If I see an Ice- or Water-type Pokemon come in, I switch out immediately. Both Milotic and Metagross take ½ damage from Ice, which makes it a good switch.

Milotic is amazing. At level 50, it has 138 for Special Attack, Defense, and Special Defense. Ice Beam KO’s most Dragon-type Pokemon, and Toxic/Recover+Leftovers has won more matches than I could have ever imagined.

Metagross is my third that I switch out of the team sometimes. It’s got good defenses and a powerful attack stat, but I never feel like the held item is good enough, or that it does enough damage. Bullet Punch is a recent change, which has added to Metagross’s power – I mainly wanted a Steel-type to wipe out those pesky Ice-types.

I’ve liked using Gyarados*, I’ve tried out Dusknoir, Registeel, Salamence, Rotom, Hippowdon, Sharpedo, and most recently – Hitmonchan. I’m keep returning to my original team of 3, but always looking for suggestions.

* I want to give a special thank-you/shoutout to my former coworker A., who traded me her Magikarp (named Fishy) at some point. I had never raised a Gyarados before, but when someone recommended that I at least play one for a little bit, I used a traded Magikarp for the faster experience gain. Fishy helped me get BP for the training items used for the others. And I recommend a pet Gyarados for every trainer starting out – just watch out for those Lightning-type attacks!

Chim-chimney, Chim-CHERRIM Cher-roo!

My last Pokemon I bred was Roserade, part of a Sunny Day team idea. Next step, I needed a Pokemon that added the Sun part of the equation.

Cherrim is another one of those Grass-type Pokemon I’ve never raised. In Double Battle, I can see how it would be pretty excellent – its ally gets Attack and Special Attack boosted 150% during Sunny Day. (Thus mandating its held item, a Heat Rock.)

Its goal is to stay alive as long as possible, helping its ally’s attack. To that end, it’ll use Synthesis, just like Roserade did. Aromatherapy is a decent Egg move, wiping out special conditions. Sunny Day is a given. I need an attack ability – while I have Solarbeam on Roserade, I’m almost guaranteed to get Sunny Day + Solarbeam.

A brief problem crops up – I don’t have a Cherubi in my Platinum game. I fly around, putting Honey on a bunch of trees, and will need to come back in 8-12 hours. In the meantime, I can level up the male parent to get Aromatherapy. This turns out to be a level 43 male Roselia! From my last experience, I have some spare ones lying around at level 22…to level up, I usually go battle the furthest-west Trainer on the beach (Route 222, two Gyarados).

Fortunately, the honey trees are generous. I manage to get a good range of Pokemon, including several Cherubi and even a female Combee (female Combee = 1/8 chance, necessary for Vespiquen). I take the female Cherubi + male Roselia and put them in daycare, hoping for a Bold-natured one. It’s completely random, but I end up getting a female one about 4 eggs in. If you want a lot of candidates to pick from, you need a consistent way of getting Bold. I ended up switching the mother out for the Bold-female-child+Everstone. Bang! 5 kids with Bold, one of them with really solid IVs.

The rest of it is pretty basic EV training from there – 10 Zincs (I hate training for Special Defense), 26 Bidoof, and 16 Geodude. Power Weight and Power Belt (combined with Pokevirus) makes each of those defeated Pokemon worth 10 EV. Arriving at the final moves - Solarbeam and Sunny Day TMs were lying around, Synthesis was a Move Tutor pickup, and Aromatherapy came from the father. Heat Rock came up in a previous mining trip in the Underground.

Overall, this was a lot less awkward than Roserade’s need for Tangela or the time spent on Black Sludge. Ah…now I just need to figure the remaining parts of my team – ooh, Castform!

Breeding a Roserade

Black Sludge. It’s an extra Leftovers, but only for Poison-type Pokemon. I’ve never raised a buff Poisoner…just killers like Drapion or a speedster like Crobat. Looking over the stats for Poison Pokemon in general, it doesn’t look like any of them are super-amazing for defensive things. (I looked at Defense, Special Defense, and HP.)

The process of where to start is fun – it could be using something like Serebii.net’s “show me all of the Poison-type Pokemon”, checking out Smogon’s uber-battling guide, or just browsing old-school through a strategy guide.

I’ve always wanted to make a Sunny Day team, so I combined the two goals – a Poison Pokemon using Black Sludge, combined with a team I’ve always wanted to build. I’m training with level 30 in mind, primarily towards Single Battle, but maybe useful in Double Battle.

The Pokemon I chose for this breeding report is Roserade. First, I’ve never trained one for battle (just to complete my Poke-dex). Second, while its HP and Defense aren’t amazing, it has a good Special Attack stat in general…I could let its nature and EV-training cover the weaknesses.

Solarbeam (TM22) – available at the Veilstone Department store
Weather Ball (level-up move from Roserade, heartscale necessary)
Synthesis (Snowpoint Move Tutor move in Platinum)
Sleep Powder (bred from Tangela)

First stop, off to the Great Marsh to find a male Tangela for the father. I hung out in Area 3, until I caught one. It boiled down to 30-40 minutes of hoping that one bait + ball will work. (If anyone has better Safari skills, I’m all ears.) Second stop, hanging out in Route 212 (north), hoping to find a female Roselia for the mother. Ideally, Bold or Calm nature, which buffs Defense/Sp.Defense at the cost of Attack. Third stop, Tangela had to be heart scale’d to remember Sleep Powder.

All of this preparation takes awhile. It could have been skipped if I didn’t care about getting Sleep Powder from Tangela – just jump straight into breeding random Roselia, and find the best one. I kept thinking, if Roselia runs into something it can’t beat…Sleep Powder could give me a chance to duck out gracefully, or a couple extra rounds to pound home the win.

I settled for a Calm nature – I captured 16 female Roselia, and none of them were Bold. (There are faster ways, if you put the time into more prep stuff – you could have a lot of Dittos of different natures, or even just Pokemon with the Synchronize ability, and a bunch of natures. If you’re going to do a lot of breeding, I’d definitely get a bunch of Abra with different natures and Synchronize, then get the Dittos using those and the Poke-Radar.)

I quickly hatched 4 Eggs from Tangela+Roselia, with Roselia holding an Everstone to boost the chances of a Calm Roselia. 3 of them were Calm, so I planned to take the best of one of those. I checked IVs using metalkid.info. There are other ways, but I haven’t used them as frequently. Either of Roselia's abilities were fine, so that was not a factor.

EV Training! Remember how earlier I said “if you’re going to do a lot of breeding”? This is another one of those things. If you don’t have the Pokevirus already, trade a little on GTS – people are often kind enough to put it on their trades. But the real time saver is getting the EV-training items from Battle Tower. The time you spend getting those items is minimal on how much time you’ll save in the long run.

As far as my new friend goes, he was trained to have a lot of HP, a fair amount of Defense, and a little less Special Defense. (The specifics being 252 HP, 156 Def, 100 Sp. Def.) The training is pretty fast once you’ve done it several times. I’m starting to run low on Shiny stones in my Platinum game…I need to get a decently-leveled Pickup artist soon.

I decided not to use the Black Sludge I got in a previous game, just to remember the difficulty of getting one. There’s a team I use for finding hard-to-find held items, and I recreated it on Platinum – Butterfree with Compound Eyes (making rare items less rare), and a switch into Banette with the Frisk ability and the Thief TM. The only Pokemon that have Black Sludge is Croagunk and Toxicroak – in Platinum, they appear sometimes in south 212, unlike DP where it was Safari only.

Still I didn’t see my first one in the first 16-18 Pokemon encountered. It took me 10 Croagunk to finally find a Black Sludge. (This part of the process can be handled while watching a movie.)

Next stop, finding a Cherubi…

Platinum Elite Four

To start this blog off, I am battling the elite four in platinum, I just failed my 3rd try with them and am trying to work out how to beat just 2 Pokemon that I am having trouble with.

These 2 would be Champion Cynthia's Garchomp and Togekiss.

Champion Cynthia's Garchomp has these moves

• Flamethrower
• Earthquake
• Dragon Rush
• ?

and

Champion Cynthia's Togekiss, clearly i need to look into this one, didn't write down what it had.

• Psychic
• Air Slash
• ?
• ?