AyTales

If you're using my spreadsheet, I hope it's accurate enough!! I did go through on my own playthrough and confirm, but it's hard to be 100% sure. How will you handle stone evolutions? Theoretically, you can evolve every stone evolution mon right after Shelly, with some before her. Takes a lot of mining luck, though.

So I will eventually have videos for these (I did record them), but I'm now at Shade! Shelly: Porygon and Buizel managed to do this on their own with a mix of luck and abusing protect and helping hand. Electroweb was the key here without a doubt, and I eventually used Charge Beam to help boost my spatk. The Volbeat is unironically the most difficult mon in this fight, because unlike most of her other mons, it dies in 3-4 hits normally, and *on top of that*, lowers my spatk with Struggle Bug. I got lucky enough with my charge beam boosts that I manage to 3hko it with electro web after getting spatk lowered, and won by one turn. Sigmund: This was tough. Being a bug is the right call here in general, but he has too many fire moves for it to be a guaranteed win. Buizel already shows it's uselessness as an attacker, since it does literally nothing except be a sacrificial pivot for Porygon. Archer: So I had gotten to Shade and attempted it a few times with just Porygon and Buizel and... no dice at all. Porygon simply can't OHKO enough mons to not get taken down, so a sweep is not possible. However! I realized that the second gang quest was available, so I could pick up the mandatory Houndour. I eventually needed to overlevel here to get Tri-Attack and set the sun so Archer's drizzle would create a rainbow field. After that, I swept with Tri Attack since it's super boosted on that field. It *could* be done with Electro Web theoretically, but I was tired of resetting for an Aqua Tail miss that never came from Blastoise. And now we're at Shade. Foul Play Houndour w/ Destiny Bond consistently takes out Gengar, Doublade, and Mimikyu, but I haven't found a good way to deal with Dhelmise. Theoretically, you'd think Porygon's signal beam could manage it, but it is tanky, and I'm having trobule. I also learned that somehow I've been mistaken this whole time and the Upgrade for Porygon2 isn't available until Tanzan Depths??? Don't know how I made that mistake, but it's thrown into question Porygon as a starter choice. Will update y'all with more later.

New development: We entirely forgot that the gang quests are mandatory for story progression and they force you to accept two mons. Two additional mandatory mons are either: Buizel/Houndour or Ponyta/Carvanha Interesting, interesting.

So what's next, folks? Well, I want to pick up a second mon that works well with either Porygon or Porygon2. If we do Porygon, we ideally want to capture a mon that is fully evolved *or* only has one evolution to keep us at 3. There are a few spots that can work here, but nothing is really amazing. If we do Porygon2, we want something that can help support it, can take advantage of glitch field, and can take advantage of trick room. There are a few interestins picks. Kecleon is one, but it comes online super late. Noctowl is another, but it falls off. What's the answer? Mantyke. This run will be attempted using Porygon2/Mantyke. Wish me luck. First up, Shelly.

So. Shelly is possible with solo Porygon. It is, I promise. It's just... so fantastically low odds it's not worth it. Here's the Porygon: Porygon w/ Telluric Seed, Modest, Analytic IVs 28/28/25/31/21/8 EVs 252/0/6/252/0/0 Electroweb/Conversion/Recover/Magic Coat Here's the first three turns: T1: Spiky shield activates. Illumise rain dances. Porygon uses Electroweb (~95% chance), hits Illumise, KOs Masquerain (~18.8% chance). Anorith sent out. T2: Porygon magic bounces. Anorith rock slide misses (~10% chance). Illumise confuse rays, gets bounced back. T3: Illumise swapped for Yanmega. Anorith rock slides misses (~10% chance). Porygon electrowebs (~95% chance), KOs Yanmega. To have this all happen is .17% chance. That's not even to *win* the fight. That's to make it past T3. I never managed this, so I never could strategize out the rest of the fight. Theoretically, Porygon gets hit by a bubblebeam from Araqnid and 2HKOs it, and then gets struggle bug'd by Illumise and Volbeat and it needs to move to a stall game a little bit. Would that work? I think so. Will I ever see it? lol no. For anyone that would like to try, save file is attached. Game_12.rxdata

Y'all are amazing. Thank you all for the absolutely amazing work and all you've accomplished. I'm honored I got to be a small part of it.

Use the grand hall trainers

So it's been like a month! And I haven't updated. Because I haven't wanted to. We theorycrafted some more. And in that time, the monowoke password got added! So we could add Porygon into our theorycrafting and well, what do you know, Porygon's kinda sick. It starts with Electroweb (replaced Conversion2, suppose the devs didn't want us setting up glitch field that early) which is neat! And super useful. So I decided, fuck it, let's see how far Porygon can get! Porygon2 is a wildly good mon, and *technically* not fully evolved so we can later use eviolite on it! That's nuts. And awesome. Especially since it gets access to trick room and glitch field, which means it's slow bulk can turn into sweeper levels of speed and attack. Pretty cool mon. Downside. We have to get past Shelly. Which, granted, is a very tall mountain to climb. Well, Porygon absolutely manages early game without issue. Electroweb makes up for the things Psybeam and Signal Beam don't hit. I decided on a low speed IV, Analytic Porygon. Between Analytic and Conversion, I essentially had a +1 special attacker w/ super effective STAB at all times. Throw in recover, and it shouldn't be a surprise that Porygon has literally no issues until Corey. Corey walled me. For a while. The problem was the poison, really, that would eat away at my health too quickly for me to sweep. Now, Porygon has access to Recycle and the seed on Poison Mist field boosts Spatk and Atk and harshly poisons the user. SO the strat is to just recycle and sweep, right? Nah. Corey's AI and team set up is actually really good at taking down one big boss mon. Skrelp will smokescreen you (-2) twice, and then he'll bring in Skuntank to make it -6. Orrr Skrelp will Venom Drench you and *then* smokescreen. So I didn't have a lot of turns. I had to re-EV train Porygon entirely, and I think the battle went like this: Porygon w/ Download, pre-Burned, Elemental Seed, EV set up so you can outspeed Skrelp, spatk invested Porygon needs to be level 30, so that the AI attacks immediately instead of status'ing you Psybeam right out the gate, eat a Bubble Outspeed it on the second turn to KO because of the Electroweb speed drop Crobat gets brought out, use Electric Gem boosted Electroweb, eat a hit Outspeed and KO Crobat, Corey usually sends out Mearanie This is great because Mearanie can do nothing to us. So now we just set up using seed recycle, recover when safe, and generally sweep him. Corey too me like 4 hours of trying different things out? Rough fight. After Corey, you have Aster & Eclipse Victoria & Fern Gauntlet Cal Shelly Before you can evolve into Porygon2 (or evolve Happiny into Chansey, haven't decided which route to go down). Aster & Eclipse unfortunately just needs good RNG. You can use download for the special attack boost, but you just need to not get hit for a bit. Rely on misses. An Elemental Seed (one hidden one) makes this a guaranteed win, but we need it for Cal. Cal isn't possible without that seed. Electro web is our only recourse here, btw. Victoria & Fern gauntlet is very rough. You need to ensure that your moves are set up in a way that you can manage Fern after doing Victoria. For example, I beat Victoria using a set of psybeam/electroweb/conversion/recover. Great! Except I literally couldn't hit Krokorok. The answer was rain. Set the weather to rain, convert to Bug t1, sweep mostly with Signal Beam. Pretty sure I even use that against her starter? For Fern, you do the same thing. His starter has HP Fire, which is why we needed the rain. Cal is... he was impossible until I went back an redid Aster & Eclipse to save myself a seed. With the Elemental Seed, Porygon can recycle itself to a +6 spatk which is nuts. I eventually needed to redo this fight and realized Agility was needed, so the set was Electroweb/Conversion/Recycle/Agility. One important thing to note!!!! Throughout all of this, there were three moves that we lose until Spinel if we forget them: Electroweb, Sharpen, Conversion. I ditched Sharpen, seeing that the only decent attacking moves for Porygon are Facade and Frustration. Every one of these fights needed to be won without ever forgetting Electroweb or Conversion, because I'm pretty certain I need one or both against Shelly. Which is where I'm stuck. Shelly seems unbeatable. We'll see. Until next time.

So I did all of the Smeargle prep... got a bunch of moves. Fought bennet, got quiver dance during the battle. Fought Serra and... holy fuck Smeargle trivializes this challenge in every way. Thinking about it, only the gauntlets in main and post game will provide any challenge, and even then, they won't be hard. It'll just take time to get the specific smeargle moveset. I'm unsure if I want to continue with these rules. I may add these rules: 1. No Smeargle 2. No Duplicate mons

I really don't get your reasoning on things like this. The idea is that PC is influenced to use mons from people that have helped them. Mimikyu is encountered in Mirage Tower while Taka is travelling with you through the desert. After Glass, it makes total sense for the PC to want to have a tribute to Shade on their team. But I'm kinda done talking to you about this, considering I dislike your implication that I'm somehow just trying to power game this and have no reasoning behind my choices. >allthough i wouldnt know why the canonical mc would denie takas whish to fight him in the WT Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Just because you don't understand someone's motivations doesn't make their decision wrong or make no sense.

Garchomp specifically is because you can get it with Taka and he tells you to capture it instead of having him get it as a family mon. The main character doesn't 'do' anything, and Shade absolutely helps a lot so having a mon that reflects his help would make sense. Mimikyu is his ace, no? Yes, the PULSE hurts and kills them, which is why I can see the player picking up the same species afterwards as a tribute to them all. Why can't Medicham, Gradevoir, or Steelix? So confused. The Absol is Ame's that you encounter in Route 4 after her death.

These are a few that for E19, I consider story relevant: Primariaia - Ame makes positive comment Kricketune - First Shelly interaction Tangrowth - First 3 Pulses Arcanine / Mystery Egg - Police Officer help Nidoqueen / Salazzle / Corey Mon - Corey's team Medicham - Kiki Steelix - Mega Steelix Abra - Pulse Magnezone - Pulse Absol - Ame Garchomp - Taka Quest Mimikyu - Shade's Help Umbreon - Luna's Help Gardevoir - Glass Gauntlet A. Tales - Ame Sylveon - Final Sticker

Pre-Serra I haven't documented any of this, but I've done it twice now. The strat: Rash Eevee, EV-Trained in Special Attack and Speed, using Swift and/or Echoed voice! Even Shade doesn't need to be re-EV trained, since Bite will OHKO everything without any investment. I chose Rash for that very reason. I didn't want to limit my attacking power at any point. This only needs to change once! You need to re-EV train Eevee into full attack and speed, and you need to make sure you never forget Double Edge. Slap a Normal Gem on Eevee, get it to around level 100, and watch your Eevee OHKO Garchomp. It's quite amusing. I do level Eevee to 100. There's no way to beat Aya without getting that high, unfortunately. Even then, all of my attempts end with Eevee in red HP and barely surviving. It is noteworthy that Salazzle *will* always Disable when it shows up and will not faint in one hit. When Salazzle comes out, use another move on it to break its Sash, then Swift next turn. Smeargle So Smeargle becomes the crux of this challenge. It needs to support Eevee in every way possible, and this isn't going to be easy. I compiled a list of all moves I might want, and found wild mons or trainer mons with those moves. At minimum, we need Electric/Psychic/Grassy/Misty terrain. It's lucky that Smeargle comes at Chrysolia Forest, because the only person who sets Psychic Terrain is Sigmund during the Tanzan Cove fight. So we'll need to grab that. I'm now collecting these moves on Smeargles. I'll update once I actually beat Serra. Smeargle Moves https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1n-iHCVl8YIg9BWSM6cCm9NDE57LGLXvGdp4SkluLGzY/edit#gid=859399924 If you're interested in which moves I'm going for, check this sheet and look at Smeargle Sketch Moves.

5/20 Update New rules are as follows: Beat the game with as few mons 'Owned' in the Pokedex as possible Level cap is in place (might allow overleveling for moves only, have not decided) Set Mode No Items in battle Passwords are allowed except fullivs, gen2mode Species clause No Smeargle Mandatory mons: Your starter Clefable Some post-game mons (see spoilers below) None of the starters can get to Clefable with the species clause active, so we're going to need more mons than this. Stay tuned! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So for the past few months Azery and I have been kicking this idea back and forth: "What's the fewest number of mons necessary to beat the game?" Now there are two ways to answer this. 1. You only choose one mon and allow it to evolve and beat the game that way. For most starters this technically means you have used 3 mons but only 1 spot in your party. 2. You use the lowest amount of mons possible. So if you choose Squirtle, can't evolve it. The goal is to have the 'Owned' number in the Pokedex as low as possible. POST-GAME SPOILERS - There are a few mandatory mons needed to beat the game. 1. Your starter ALL SPOILERS BELOW Starters For starters, we have all of the normal starters who *might* make it to a second good mon. However, they will be useless in post-game. They simply don't have the staying power, although it is noteworthy that a handful can learn Cut, Rock Smash, and Strength the only HMs needed to get to the Circus. However! With E19 we now have the notmxneeded password! So we can ignore that. E19 introduced two more passwords: eeveeplease and vulpixpls. So we have Eevee, Vulpix, and Alolan Vulpix as possible starters! The 2 Vuplix are really interesting, because they have Snow Warning and Drought. For main game, they'd be pretty interesting! You could pick up an Alolan Sandlash or Beartic, for instance. But with post-game, New World eats all weather, so they become dead weight. Eevee, though! With the freemegaz password, we can grab Eeveeium-Z! That gives a +2 omniboost to all main stats and that *never* gets old. There's *also* another Eevee in Chrysolia Forest, so you cold breed Eevee's without incrementing the 'Owned' number in the Pokedex! So Eevee is our starter. Terrain Setter So the Tapu quest forces the player to set Electric/Psychic/Misty/Grassy Terrain to proceed. Now, at first we were looking for mons that learn more than one, picking them up. Buuuut then I realized, there are two moves that can put all of these moves in one Pokemon: Metronome and Sketch. Smeargle is in Chrysolia Forest, which works out well, since the second Eevee is also in Chrysolia Forest. Now, the problem with Smeargle is that... well it's not a good target for Eeveeium-Z. It learns a bunch of moves, yes, but otherwise it can't be a power house. Sooooo... that leaves Eevee boosting to a second Eevee. We'll get into this more later! Clefable is the only fully evolved Pokemon who learns Metronome by level up. In Victory Road. So you'd have to take 2 Eevee's all the way to Victory Road. Not really viable, unfortunately. Strategy Eevee w/ Eeveeium-Z -> Smeargle w/Psychic Terrain and other Shenanigans/Boosts -> Eevee w/ Stored Power -> is Baton Pass So this is where this run might be possible! An omniboosted + smeargle boosted Stored Power can more than make up for Eevee's LC stats. It very well might be enough to make it to the late game, mandatory legendaries. That's the crux of this run. Psychic Terrain is useful for three reasons: 1. Eevee has anticipation, which gives a +2 Sp. Attack boost when Psychic Terrain is up, 2. Psychic Terrain stops all priority moves which will be super nice for sweeping with Eevee, and 3. Stored Power is a psychic move so will get boosted in the terrain. Rules 1. Level cap can be disregarded until Chrysolia Forest. In fact, it's only *just barely* possible for a level 100 Eevee to solo Aya with Swift. We tried thinking of ways to keep Eevee under the level cap the entire time, but it's just not possible. 2. Set Mode 3. No Items in battle 4. Passwords are allowed except fullivs, gen2mode 5. Duplicates of already-owned Pokemon are allowed The Goal: Beat post-game with the fewest number of 'Owned' Pokemon in the Pokedex. I'll be documenting my attempt here!

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