Little Cup Challenge

[Kithros]

I once read about the idea of this, and I had nothing else to do so I decided to start a run a few days ago under the following rules to make it a bit more difficult:

1. I can only use fully unevolved pokemon in fights (I can evolve pokemon for the purposes of things like trading/breeding etc., however I won't use them in any actual fights)

2. I can only use pokemon that have a >100 base stat total difference between them and their full evolution (for instance, a pokemon like scyther that has obviously way higher stats than pretty much every unevolved pokemon won't qualify) in fights.

3. For all plot fights I'll fight on Set (for the purposes of grinding I can fight on shift against say the NPCs in the grand hall just to make it less tedious, but for any 'difficult' fight I'll be fighting on Set)

4. No more than 3 items per fight (so nothing stupid like using 99 potions on a level 1 sturdy geodude to PP stall the opponent), and no revives in fights whatsoever since revives are basically just broken.

5. At the start of any fight I won't use any pokemon above the badge level limit (if they level up past the badge limit during the fight that won't disqualify the fight, but I'll have to common candy it down as soon as it becomes possible afterwards). In the case of having multiple battles in a row where you can't open the menu inbetween it won't be disqualified either.

Right now I'm right after beating Kiki - the first 4 gym battles weren't particularly interesting since you'd normally be fighting them without fully evolved pokemon regardless (except maybe shelly, but I had 2 pokemon with flame burst and 1 pokemon with lava plume which kind of trivializes the fight), but it's been starting to get more interesting in the past 2 gym fights.

vs. Shade:

At first I didn't stand much of a chance as his chandelure and gengar could outspeed and OHKO most of my team, so I had to grind a decent amount to get close to the badge limit, but I didn't replace any of my pokemon. After several failed attempts afterwards I eventually got a bit lucky and the AI made some really dumb mistakes

Thinking through it more, I probably didn't need to try for the 2nd attack with the goldeen on the chandelure, as a field boosted discharge from the porygon probably wouldve finished off the chandelure anyway. Discharge would've also had decent odds of paralyzing it even if it didn't manage to KO it, which might not have been much different odds from the AI derping and using flame burst on my goldeen (I don't think my goldeen could've survived a shadow ball either, but not sure).

I also had a complete brain fart while using the ultra potion on the goldeen, for some reason it registered in my brain as though my goldeen had porygon's immunity to ghost and lightningrod so it could wall rotom effectively, and I felt really stupid when I realized that it could just shadow ball it. Wasted an ultra potion on nothing, but it worked out I guess.

vs. Kiki

I pretty quickly realized that conventional tactics weren't going to work well here unless I spent ages EV training my pokemon or somesuch, as Kiki's entire team outsped my entire team and many of her pokemon were capable of OHKOing any/almost any of my pokemon without any buffs. First I decided to breed a new Torchic (I kind of planned on doing this from the start when I picked Torchic in the first place, but breeding is still a huge pain especially with the 12.5% female rate on Torchic..) and got a new Torchic with Curse and Baton Pass (and speed boost of course). I also caught a woobat, and grinded up my Torchic, a Snubbull and Woobat to useable levels (41 for the woobat to give it psychic).

I noted that Kiki would send out Gallade if a fire pokemon KOed her Machamp, which is noteworthy because her Gallade did not have any buff/debuff moves of any kind as far as I could tell (Zen Headbutt, Rock Slide, Poison Jab and I'm still not sure what the 4th move was), so after several failed attempts I finally got a working strategy (and heavily abusing the AI's incompetence)

Behold, the all powerful Woobat:

Using curse on my torchic might have seemed strange - the reason I did that is that in a previous attempt her Toxicroak OHKOed my woobat with a sucker punch so I buffed up woobat's defense enough to survie a sucker punch (only 1 curse might have been enough since woobat had simple, but I went with 2 to be safe). I also probably could've gotten away with only 1 calm mind since between the field and simple it was already +4 special attack stages, but I decided to go for a 2nd calm mind to feel safer about being able to OHKO any of her pokemon even though I could have randomly died to a critical rock slide at pretty much any time (thankfully since I got a burn off I could have survived a critical poison jab or zen headbutt at least which reduced the risk significantly).

I'll probably try to do more detailed updates from now on - the early game of a little cup challenge isn't really much different from a normal playthrough so I kind of didn't bother posting about it before.

Right now I have a level 45 Goldeen, Espurr, level 44 Porygon, 43 Vulpix, Numel, 42 Woobat, 36 Snubbull, 32 Torchic (and my original level 42 Torchic that I probably won't use again as it doesn't have baton pass), and a bunch of other random low level pokemon. My IVs/EVs/natures are pretty much all over the place (my Porygon even has a +speed nature along with it's analytic ability which feels particularly silly). Honestly I have almost no idea which kinds of pokemon are going to be good in this kind of playthrough as I've never really played with unevolved pokemon (especially unevolved pokemonw ithout TMs), and I'm kind of just making it up as I go along for the most part.

[Simon]

Very cool. Will be interested in this Challenge for sure.

Best of luck.

[Xiri]

This sure sounds like a pretty tough challenge. Good luck with this! I'll be keeping track of your progress

[heloo5t5]

This miiight prove to be *very* difficult

But good luck

[Kithros]

This miiight prove to be *very* difficult

But good luck

It was kind of the point - in my previous playthroughs I could pretty much always get through all of the fights by just brute forcing them without really changing my team up significnatly, and I wanted to have a playhtrough that would actually make me really struggle without limiting team diversity so much like a monotype challenge does.

Anyway, after beating Kiki I went to Azurine Island - Aster+Eclipse were actually fairly difficult to beat with my gimp pokemon (had to reload i think 3-4 times, but that's still relatively easy compared to the gym leaders). Starting the fight with Goldeen + Espurr worked out once I stopped getting trolled by flinches with a light screen from Espurr while Goldeen could OHKO/2HKO most pokemon with waterfall with a bit of support healing the goldeen part way through the fight. I beat Taka on the first attempt by baton passing some speed boosts/curse to my goldeen and it did most of the work against his team between waterfall+megahorn. It was pretty close though at the end - my Vulpix survived a chatter from his Chatot with exactly 1 health left which allowed it to finish it off, and I'm not sure any of my other pokemon could've survived a hit from his Chatot right at the end.

At Mt. Pyrous the Garchomp fight isn't really much different from how it normally is - I got a level 22 hoppip for leech seed and a level 1 sturdy geodude and save/reloaded until he missed the hoppip and landed a leech seed and stalled it out with geodude. I put a rawst bery on the geodude in case fire fang burnt it once (I got the berry from a wild numel while I was breeding curse onto my Torchic), but it never got burnt anyway. I could've avoided some of the save/reloading if I had used a focus sash, but being that focus sash is something in very limited supply I'd rather avoid using it unless I'm really stuck since it's an item that can have a huge amount of value in a playthrough like this.

Against Cain I had to reload a few times (like almost any fight against important characters) - I can't remember the fight very clearly but I think I beat his first pokemon with my vulpix, then he sent out samurott which I hit with will-o-wisp and finished off with my porygon with discharge, and then my numel KOed 2 of his pokemon and yawned his haunter to easily KO with espurr after my numel fainted.

Fern wasn't too too difficult either (though, on my first attempt I realized how infuriating it is that my torchic couldn't OHKO his ferrothorn even with a 4x effective STAB attack, and then gets OHKOed by a not very effective power whip...), my vulpix OHKOed hsi ferrothorn, then beat krokorok thanks to the AI being stupid and using fire fang and OHKOed the scyther after surviving a wing attack before losing to roserade. Woobat set up calm mind and 2HKOed serperior and roserade with wing slashes.

vs. Aya:

As I suspect will be the case for every gym leader from now on I pretty much just get wrecked the first few times while I think about how I should start the fight off. I once almost set up a +2 speed +4 SpA woobat that could sweep most of her team with psychic by baton passing to it with torchic, and then my woobat leveled up to 46 and stopped obeying and lost the fight after I had KOed 3 of her pokemon with it (promptly common candied the woobat down to 44 after that attempt...).

After a few more changes and several more attempts while getting trolled by critical hits it eventually worked out:

And yes, that Dragalge did just survive a 2x effective STAB +4 SpA (including simple) psychic from my woobat.

[Shadow Tack]

this is something i would do, i approve.

[Kithros]

After beating Aya I went and caught a gastly - Torchic spammed sand attack on the Medicham a few times before getting OHKOed and then vulpix burned and I slowly killed it. I got pretty lucky and the gastly has a timid nature which was pretty much the exact nature I would've hoped for (the main reason I want the gastly is for dealing with troublesome pokemon with destiny bond, so speed is almost the only stat that matters). I started grinding the gastly at Yureyu but it's still only a level 34. I fought Sigmund and considering I had 1 underleveled pokemon and 1 HM mule with me at the time he was pretty easy and I beat him on the first attempt - I used all my pokemon other than goldeen while Cain's Nidoking was still alive and then switched to goldeen after his Nidoking fainted (my goldeen has lightningrod so I wanted to switch it in while Cain wasn't also using something immune to lightning) and then finished everything off with goldeen.

After that there weren't really any noteworthy battles until Bennett - I had a bit of trouble at first until I realized I could just send woobat in against any of his special attackers and set up calm mind pretty easily. I didn't really expect it at the time when I caught it, but woobat is actually a really strong pokemon in a playthrough like this.

Vs. Serra:

My first attempt against Serra was 'kind of' close, in that I KOed her cloyster and then completely crippled her Abomasnow and I could set up freely against her - the catch is that I had no pokemon there that could actually sweep her even if I set up on it. My woobat with +6 special attack +6 speed couldn't OHKO her froslass (let alone the lapras...), and frost breath easily OHKOs the woobat since it ignores the special defense boosts on criticals. Curse on my Torchic was the only other set up move, but I didn't really have any pokemon suitable for buffing with curse (a buffed up goldeen would still have trouble with lapras, and my other pokemon all preferred special moves). A buffed up goldeen might have still worked, but I never really put the effort into trying it. I might have even been able to beat this fight fairly conventionally instead of trying to go for a setup sweep, but instead I decided on getting a fighting pokemon.

There were 3 main options I considered, there was Meditite, but it didn't really have any moves that could deal with the froslass without going through a lot of effort (breeding fire punch onto it for instance seems like way too much of a pain). I guess it would've been possible to set up both calm mind and curse on the meditite to shadow ball the froslass and use physical attacks for the rest, but spending more time setting up means more time potentially getting KOed by a critical etc.

Makuhita was another option, with thick fat making it pretty safe even if it got crit by an ice move, but as silly as it sounds at first, I was actually worried that makuhita wouldn't outspeed all of her pokemon even with +6 speed stages.. I didn't really want to EV train it so it would be sitting at around 25 base speed, which is pathetic and I didn't want to grind it up when I thought there was a high chance it wouldn't even work. It also probably wouldn't have much use after Serra (it has really really bad stats - it has a base stat total of 237..)

Ultimately I settled on grinding up a Mankey to level 49 to get it close combat. I didn't really intend to EV train it exactly, but since I was just butchering Unowns it has almost maxed out attack EVs too. Mankey is pretty squishy, but it has really good offensive stats for sweeping (for this runs standards anyway..) as long as I can do the setting up on Torchic.

I was using strength up until the Avalugg was damaged because I didn't want to reduce the Mankey's defense (Avalugg has sturdy so there was no avoiding taking a hit from it). Even with +5 defense stages the Avalugg did about 3/4 of the mankey's health with an avalanche, but luckily it didn't die so it could finish off the sweep.

The paralysis + confusion hax from the Porygon wasn't truly necessary, but it certainly didn't hurt either (most of the time I just burned it with the vulpix instead which causes the AI to spend a few of its turns healing similarly to how paralysis takes a few turns away from the AI).

[Kithros]

After Serra I had a rather annoying fight against Sirius - the fight itself might not have been too too hard if I would prepare properly for it, the thing that made it annoying is that there was a fight with 2 orderlies right before Sirius and I couldn't access the menu/PC between the fights. After beating the orderlies I quicksaved so I wouldn't need to fight them over and over again (the random team meteor grunts and orderlies etc. are actually somewhat difficult to beat - it's not unheard of for me to have to load because I lost to a team meteor grunt...), but my first pokemon sent out and the overall party I was using wasn't really optimally set up for Sirius. Eventually I 3x captivated his Chandelure and baton passed a bunch of buffs to goldeen to sweep with though. Not that it really matters for anything but I chose to go upstairs this time simply because it was one of the possibilities I hadn't tried in my previous playthroughs.

After that there weren't really many noteworthy fights - the giant steelix was a pushover since vulpix outspeeded it and could will-o-wisp it. The abra was more difficult, but I got it to use hyper beam on my woobat and sand attacked it with my torchic, swaggered it with my mankey and whittled it down.

vs. Noel:

This strategy is getting a little bit repetitive, but it's so effective (when the AI is incompetent and never switches and savescumming until they never get criticals is an option at least..) that it's hard to not use it.

There were a few things that could go wrong in it still (other than criticals) - Wigglytuff was 75% female which made it a bit more annoying to need to reload to be able to captivate it, he only had 1 attacking move with only 10 PP, and as soon as Dazzling Gleam reached 0 PP he would immediately switch to Porygon Z which could OHKO my Torchic with any of its attacks (and Torchic can't outspeed it since the Wigglytuff paralyzes it), so I had to cut back on some of the sand attacks to ensure I set up fully before he spent all 10 PP.

The Clefable could also survive 1 hit from any of Mankey's attacks, but thankfully his Clefable is the last pokemon he sends out so even if it OHKOs Mankey I still have the rest of my team to deal with it.

My pokemon are actually underleveled right now because I didn't really feel like grinding and this strategy works even with pretty underleveled pokemon anyway.

Yeah, pretty much the same thing as vs. Kiki and Serra - though I don't think this strategy will work well on many of the gym leaders from now on. Radomus is a 2v2 fight which makes it nearly impossible to set up properly for this, but I can probably beat Luna using a similar strategy.

After that I don't think I'll be able to reliably tank Samson's hits even if I debuff his pokemon to hell because he can do up to 2.5x damage when he gets the over 9000, Charlotte and Blake it obviously won't work against, and for Terra it would be really hard to debuff her pokemon since they're mostly special attackers with the gen 1 mechanics (I'd need to debuff both her special attack and special defense which is awkward to do) - it might be possible to do against Terra if I get her to switch into a physical attacker though.

[Kithros]

Fern was really annoying - his Fraxure had taunt and dragon dance which made it really awkward to set up against, and his Krookodile and Roserade both could outspeed anything unboosted of mine and either OHKO or get *really* close to OHKOing them (and once his krookodile KOed anything of mine it would sweep me with Moxie). Eventually I managed to set up a bit with my Torchic and baton pass some speed buffs to my Woobat and used calm mind a few times to sweep (I think this is the first time Taunt from a NPC in a pokemon game has actually been a major nuisance for me). It would've been a lot easier if I had just leveled my pokemon up a bit more, or if I had headed back to reborn city to relearn flame burst on one of my pokemon to set the field on fire, but I didn't want to walk all the way to reborn city and back especially when I'm getting close to being able to go through the main gate.

On the other hand, Cain got single handedly swept by a Woobat on the 2nd attempt (the first attempt his absol KOed it, but on the 2nd attempt he tried to swords dance and then got OHKOed by wing slash). The field making calm mind give +2 instead of +1 along with a simple woobat, not to mention the 1.5x power boost on psychic was pretty perfect for Woobat.

I got the scraggy (truthfully when I think about it it was relly silly for me to grind a Mankey up when I could've gotten Scraggy, but I had forgotten about Scraggy at the time) to help deal with Radomus since I didn't really have 6 good pokemon to use against him since Mankey had no good attacks to use and my fire pokemon were weak to psychic since it becomes part rock type in the chess field. I also got a sturdy magnemite with thunder wave, and then i went to the Arceus Ditto and thunder waved it, switched to scraggy after the magnemite fainted, then switched to another fodder pokemon to get KOed before switching to gastly to destiny bond KO it. Scraggy gained 24000 exp from it, immediately bringing it up to level 30.

From there I did a bunch of things - I was expecting the fight against Radomus to be more difficult to deal with than the past few I was against since I wouldn't really be able to set up + sweep the way I have been in a 2v2 fight. I grinded scraggy and gastly up to level 60, with my other pokemon between level 55-60, did all of the sticker quests I could and got brightpowders for my entire team since I didn't really have any other good items to use.

Vs. Radomus:

It turns out I pretty much completely overprepared for the fight (keeping feint attack over crunch on my scraggy for the +10 power boost in chess field may make me waste a heart scale later for no reason since I'm pretty sure I could've beaten him easily with crunch anyway), and I beat him on the first attempt. It wasn't really even close - I think I'll attribute it to him trying to use a trick room strategy, since my problems in the past have usually been with pokemon that outspeed my entire team.