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…