How did you do your Mono-Type run?

[Cyclonegale]

I've always entertained the idea of trying a monotype run of Reborn up to whatever the current episode is, but being as how i've mostly relied on item spam and brute force to get through the majority of the game, I never found myself confident enough to start. So for those of you much braver than I, how did you do your mono type run? What type was it? What were the biggest challenges, and what strategy did you come up with to beat it?

 

I also think i'm finally going to attempt my own Mono run, but i've no idea what type to pick first. I've been thinking of maybe Ice or Fighting, but what would be the type that might be good for 'beginners' to the challenge?

[Gurken]

I have completed monoruns in steel, ground, dragon and psychic and fighting up to ciel. I have mostly bruteforced my way in all other runs of pokemon games, but needed some more in depth tactic for monoruns.

Dragons was a pain in the ... with only having access to noibats until quite late in the game was no fun. Becomes easy when you get evolved dragons. Not recommended.

Steel was quite hard, especially Charlotte, so empoleon became the MVP of that run. 

Ground was okay, some struggles here and there, but nothing too painful.

The easiest of my completed runs was psychic, with access to a lot of different types and many of these quite powerful as well.

Fighting stopped at Ciel, as her archeops outsped all of my pokemon and one shotted. This was my first run however with very little tactics, so this should be possible with some more tactics and planning ahead. 

 

For what is an easy start to the monoruns for your part, I think dark, psychic and poision should be fairly ok, access to lots of different pokemons from the start. Ice as you mentioned would be "almost" impossible as you will only have a vanilite for a while. 

[Elmo]

I did a ghost mono run where I hacked a gastly and a sableye in my team, since the first ghost pokemon I could catch was after Florinia and I was not going to go through two gyms with only rufflet. I had the most trouble with Luna's dark team, which I won by evading everything with a baton-passed 3x minimize (and a lot of soft resetting). Having support moves is essential in a mono-run. My SO did a fighting run. He took ages to get past Corey and eventually dropped it, since pretty much all fighting type pokemon are meant for attacking, while he'd like some defenders or supports on his team as well. 

 

When deciding what type to choose, check which pokemon are available early-game. Below's an useful thread for that.

 

It's also useful to check if the type you want to use has pokemon with a second type that covers its weaknesses. 

 

Ghost is an ok type if you can get one or two extra pokémon at the beginning, but I think the types Gurken mentioned are good as well. I wouldn't recommend fight or ice. 

 

 

 

 

[Anstane]

I have done three Monotypes and am on my fourth now. The ones I have done are Ice, Water, Dark and am currently on Psychic.

 

One thing I can honestly say, purely to break the misconception: an Ice Mono is not as hard as people often make it out to be. Sure, I strongly recommend adding in a starter (my preference is on Swinub, would be a good idea to give it a physical Ice attack for Oricorio), but, honestly, once you defeat Shelly, the difficulty drops massively. You get so many options that, if you play it right, you should not have many issues. I have a thread of this run, written back in E15.

 

 

 

As for the other runs, they are similar. Some harsh hiccups (Like Blake on my Water Mono, or Noel on my Dark Mono), but otherwise they are not that hard. I've even started to use fewer and fewer items on the runs (Down to no in-battle items used on my Psychic Mono). So, honestly, yeah.

 

As for good starting Mono runs, Poison and Dark are likely going to be the best ones purely for the sheer  number of options you start with.

 

As for the hardest monotypes, I think the general consensus that the hardest ones are Dragon, Fairy, Electric and Rock.

[DemICE]

All my monoruns follow the same rules:

1)if you can have 4+ Pokémon of the type before the first gym, do not generate any extra, otherwise generate pokemon until you have 4 total.

2)Set mode

3)No healing items in battle

 

I have  grass mono in rejuv intense where I have recorded all the battles if you are interested. Channel name same as me

[Zargerth]

I've done Normal monotype run of Reborn (and Psychic of Rejuvenation Intense mode as well as Ground monotype of Desolation). For me personally good availability right off the bat is important: I wanted to have options at any point in the game and not having to trade or generate mons.

 

I guess it depends on your type how you tackle (some) Gym battles. In my Normal monotype run, Kiki was one of the hardest to beat, while Titania was not so tough. I have to admit that I got a bit lucky there since Himtonlee's High Jump Kick in most of my attempts OHKO'd my Slaking, but not in my winning attempt. Other than that, since I had such a good variety of mons, I kept switching them around and seeing what works. The ones I grew attached to or who pulled more than their weight I kept around. 

 

At the end of the day it comes down to how well you know your mons as well as the tricks the Gym Leaders have. With those in mind you can create a strategy for any battle. Heck, there's been folks who defeated Charlotte thanks to Wide Guard Parasect of all things. As for using items, it's up to your own preference, really.

[ZEL]

I've done Psychic, Ground and Steel, have a Normal/Flying run that I haven't played since Luna because E18 distracted me, and am currently doing a Dark mono that I started for alpha testing.

If you're not sure how well you would do I'd definitely pick a type that has a good early availability.

Psychic was my first pick because it's one of my favourite types, and gives you a decent number to choose from even early in the game. There's a lot of variety in second typings and your access to new mons grows steadily. It also benefits from Psychic Terrain - a move that you get access to with Musharna and Beheeyem (and can breed onto Drowzee and Fennekin, among others). Having a move that can overwrite existing fields and give your typing an advantage is pretty significant.

Personally I also found Dark to be an easy type to play with early on because you can throw together a team right away (the alleyways alone give you three different Pokemon already) and because Mightyena with Moxie is actually amazing.

 

Depending on what type you pick and what 'mons you use I'd consider at least some half-hearted EV training, though. I've not bothered with it in my mixed run when I first played, but I've had battles where the investment really paid off. In my Normalbird run, for example, the Speed EVs on my Swellow determined whether or not I could beat Serra. (Untrained I got outsped by Froslass, trained I did not.)

 

You may also have to warm up to the idea of rotation, and occasionally raising 'mons you don't necessarily want to use. Sometimes it really is that much easier to grab a temporary team member for a battle you're stuck on.

 

It's a lot of fun, though! You're sometimes forced to get creative in ways that you wouldn't if you could just pick up anything convenient, and I like that about challenge runs. It also doubly makes you consider mons you'd have ignored previously (hello, Wormadam :'D)

[Azeria]

I've done Dragon, Ghost and Steel. I personally couldn't care less about availability, what matters most is how much I like the type. Ghost and Dragon are my two favourites. Steel is 5th.

 

All of them were done with set mode no items. I had to add mons for Dragon to save me a headache though.

 

 

I'll say that after I got past Shade on my Dragon mono, I really just steamrolled everything aside from Blake and Titania with little effort. The game can't really stand up to the overwhelming force of fully evolved  Dragon spam.

 

Steel I had to actively restrict myself to prevent me steamrolling the game because of how easy it was to do, incidentally I recorded that run.

 

Ghost was the nice middle ground between stupid challenge at one point that dragons early game posed and the freedom to use a lot of meme stuff to win I had with steel.

 

Personally the 3 monos I would stay away from would be Electric, Dragon and Fairy as they have the worst early game of them all.

[BlackRum]

So far I have completed Poison, Ground and Fire monotype runs. I have also started one Water and one Electric monotype run, but I've aborted these two mostly due to a lack of time and motivation.

The trick to building a monotype team is to understand your type's weaknesses and strengths. For example Dragon types have limited availability, don't have too many dual types, tend to lack access to status moves and evolve late but they also have the highest base stat totals and have strong moves with good neutral coverage. On the other hand Poison types are available early, have early access to every status known to man, do well in quite a few field effects, tend to rely on bulk rather than all out offense, but only have a few Pokemon available to deal with Steel pokemon and their immunity to poison.

 

In general it is advisable to have a diverse team with a lot of coverage, some key pokemon to counter your types main weaknesses, and reliable access to status or setup moves. Depending on the type you choose you will achieve that quite fast or not at all. As such a monotype run with Poison, Bug, Dark, Normal, Flying or Psychic is considered easier than others (In Reborn). However beating Reborn is doable with every type. Just pick the one you like best.