Choose My Monotype Run

[WhiteW0lf]

I have really been interested in Monoruns recently. I completed a Dragon Run for E18 so far

Edited March 2, 2019 by WhiteW0lf

[Destrakon]

Personally, I would suggest you Water, Steel and Dark, with Steel being my most interest. You don't quite get steel types in early game.

[Scyl]

Just use a wheel randomizer to select your path of despair fate.

[Monochrome_Complex]

water sucks early game, but with the right starter it's manageable.  Julia isn't really the issue, moreso florina and the tangrowths, as well as fern's dartrix unless you have icy wind. But you do get a steady stream of mons i guess.

 

steel seems like it would kind of suck early game. You have what, piplup and burmy first gym?  Well wormadam does get quiver dance on evolution which is a godsend for her I guess. Klink is your next one I think and then after that I'm not sure. Actually I do want to try this one day since I've never played with empoleon in reborn. Togedamaru is freakin legit BTW, do NOT sleep on him, a field changer with sturdy and nuzzle is a boon that shouldn't be overlooked.

 

I'm doing grass right now. Despite the typing's flaws you can get some pretty strong pokemon early on, with roselia being a monster. I picked chikorita which made things harder than if I had picked rowlett or even chespin(dat bulletproof helps so much against tangrowth) but so far it's been fun and grass gets some high damaging moves earlier than most other types, like roselia gets giga drain by 25 and cherrim gets petal dance really early too. Speaking of, this run gave me a new appreciation for cherrim.  She sucks at first(only offensive move being tackle for like a good 15 levels) but Sunny day + growth can turn your grass types into hard hitting juggernauts, especially with giga drain to sap back health lost during set up.  Resist don't even matter, roselia with a sunny growth hits HARD.  I swept flobot using this strat and roselia was even able to OHKO cradily. You also get a nice variety of mons to choose from after julia, well provided the weather is on your side. I still haven't gotten lotad, hopefully before Cal...

   That said, that first tangrowth was a massive pain.  I think it's one of the hardest fights in a grass run. You can powerlevel and set up on the later two  since they're the last pokemon out but man, the first one sucked. It's probably much easier with chespin or rowlett, but bayleef couldn't do jack to it and I'm not sure how grotle/grovyle/ivysaur/servine would fare. Contrary might come in handy for acid spray  but then servine's damage is poor so either way it's a long fight.

  Corey isn't as bad as  I thought he would be, I ended up beating him 1st try. Shelly is tough as you'd expect. Shade isn't too bad if you know what you're doing. The 2nd fern fight is his hardest one(dartrix can take a lot of punishment at this point and can hit just about everyone for SE damage) so far, and Cain's nidoking later on can tear you up pretty badly if you don't respect its speed.

Jumpluff is great. Roselia is great, and cherrim has been great too TBH. Gloom/oddish were awesome early on but I've had her benched since corey, hopefully I find a leaf stone underground so she won't become obsolete. I used vileplume in rejuv and he was pretty cool.  Good thing about grass is that you get a lot of options, that said there's a lot of overlap in weaknesses and fire-types have remained a consistent problem for me. Lotad could fix that but the game refuses to rain lol.

   Also, nature power gets great use in grass run. 

 

dark has a lot of options early on: litten and froakie are both excellent,stunky starts off pitiful but can be pretty useful if you know how to use him right), poocheyena can carry you until after shade, pancham is solid much of the game, I hear sharpedo is alright too...dark seems like it'd be fun.

 

I never tried ghost. I think nincada is available early though? rowlett seems good for reborn at least. drifloon and pumpkaboo are not bad and useful even if just for d-bond. First gym seems like a struggle though. Oriocorio FTL.

 

electric benefits from a lot of fields but you'll have to sacrifice your starter. I feel tangrowth would be kind of rough, though I suppose pachirisu could bide him to death. But then you have to assume you'll even get pachi lol. You could just end up stuck with grubbin for julia hahaha.

 

 

 

[Neco]

So far, I finished to Monoruns in Reborn: Grass and Fighting, with an Ice one ongoing, but as I modded a few mons in there, I'm not going to talk about it.

 

In Grass, you probably want to train a lot of different mons. I started my run back in E16, so the game changed quite a bit (I think the AI improved as well, so walling Tangrowth with a Bulletproof Chespin might not be easily possibly) and with the addition of Gen VII, you have even more mons to choose from. Throughout my run, I probably trained 20 or more different mons to handle different situations, as I found it hard to use a small amount of members to cover everything (e.g. I needed different strategies to handle Charlotte, who turned out to be one of the easiest leaders for me, surprisingly, while Titania was by far the hardest). I think E18 content was the first instance I managed to beat everything with just one team (or I should rather say with 7 Pokemon, as I bred one mon with Wide Guard to keep my sanity against Hardy while setting up), of which three members are helpful throughout the game (in my case, Chesnaught, Roserade and Ludicolo (who I only started to use around Shelly, though, because I wanted Energy Ball in its movepool), but Whimsciscot would be a fourth member, if you get it via Mystery Egg/mod it in if you're unlucky).

If I compare that with Fighting (started in E17, so slightly different experience), I had a rotation of maybe 10 or a bit more mons I used, with a relatively stable rotation after Samson ( of which only Charlotte gave me major problems/I had to differ in my strategy, funnily enough compared to my Grass run).

 

I guess choose what ever Type to like/know something about (which I did with Grass) or use a type you want to experiment with (in my case, Fighting). If you plan a bit beforehand, I'm sure you'll be able to beat the game (e.g. I've seen people succeed in mono-steel and heard of people managing Water/Electric/Ghost). I found Grass fun and voted for it, but I imaging the rest is fun as well but I guess you need to be an early-game masochist to like Water/Steel lol

 

Have fun in your run~

[Nicocchi]

I've just recently finished a Steel Monotype run (on set with no items in battle) and it was really fun in my opinion! Definitely recommend it. I chose steel because it's one of my favourite types, and Mawile is like my favourite Pokemon (even though I didn't get to use its Mega).

There's quite a steady progression of Pokémon available to you, but most of the early ones are quite weak and forces you to use. Wormadam is really strong early thanks to Quiver Dance, especially with a beneficial Hidden Power type. By the end you can have some real monsters on your team, though. Like Excadrill, Lucario, Aegislash, Magnezone, etc.

 

If you're gonna do a Steel run and need any advice, don't hesitate to ask. I've recorded (almost) all of my boss battles if you'd like to see them. My biggest struggle early game was, surprisingly, Shade and a couple of Fern fights. Later on Charlotte, Terra, and Amaria posed a lot of trouble for me personally.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Nicocchi

[Azeria]

Done Ghost, Steel, Dark and Dragon monos.

 

Dark is an incredibly good one. Vast amount of options and once you get Krookodile, doubles may as well not EXIST because they will pose 0 trouble to it. A combination of Tailwind + Gravity + Helping Hand will have it's earthquakes devastate entire teams. Houndoom with Sun late game and the myriad of other ridiculous sweepers like Tyranitar, Hydreigon, Greninja, Honchkrow, Weavile + OP support Pokemon in Murkrow, Sableye and Umbreon that you get make for a varied but very easy monotype.

 

Steel is a joke. It's incredibly easy and I had to actively restrict myself from most of the better steel types to have any real challenge. That being said if that's not your active point of interest, do go for it. It'll provide you with everything you could want and Excadrill frankly just destroys the entire game. I've mostly recorded this run so if you want any tips, just hit me up.

 

Ghost has a bit of a rough early game but once you get NIncada and Gastly from the eggs in Jasper & Beryl, you're set for life. Marowak+Trick Room later on only solidifies this.

 

[Nicocchi]

6 minutes ago, not Azery said:

Steel is a joke. It's incredibly easy and I had to actively restrict myself from most of the better steel types to have any real challenge. That being said if that's not your active point of interest, do go for it. It'll provide you with everything you could want and Excadrill frankly just destroys the entire game. I've mostly recorded this run so if you want any tips, just hit me up.

Are you hacking in a Drilbur and/or Pawniard when you get to the Mystery Egg? Since you mentioned getting Gastly from it. In that case, yeah, I can imageine a Steel run becoming sort of a joke... But that seems a bit counter-intuitive to the challenge. If you refrain from getting Excadrill until it's naturally available post-restoration the difficulty is fine IMO; not super hard but not a breeze either. But I'm no God - maybe I approached things incorrectly in my run.

[Azeria]

12 minutes ago, Nicocchi said:

Are you hacking in a Drilbur and/or Pawniard when you get to the Mystery Egg? Since you mentioned getting Gastly from it. In that case, yeah, I can imageine a Steel run becoming sort of a joke... But that seems a bit counter-intuitive to the challenge. If you refrain from getting Excadrill until it's naturally available post-restoration the difficulty is fine IMO; not super hard but not a breeze either. But I'm no God - maybe I approached things incorrectly in my run.

I personally restricted myself from Excadrill since I know from personal experience that it just tears the entire game apart. I do set the Mystery Egg usually though as it is particularly essential for some monos(See Dragon needing Axew to beat Corey.) It was definitely on the easier side but I had done mono Dragon before hand and that mono's early game is hair pullingly hard(Payoff when you curbstomp the rest of the game is so worth it though.)

 

For most of the run I ran a hazard stack core of Forretress/Steelix to allow for Agility Empoleon to get clean sweeps going. Fern/Shade were somewhat tough but personally my hardest fights were definitely Solaris 3 or Titania(though the latter was mostly because i was at level 60s lmfao.) Solaris' team genuinely brutalised most of what I had trained up and took countless attempts. Charlotte/Terra/Amaria all got beaten first attempt. In fact Amaria was actually the easiest fight I had all game.

Spoiler

A level 90 Empoleon can one shot her entire team with Hydro Pump. It's a joke.

 

[Nicocchi]

5 minutes ago, not Azery said:

I personally restricted myself from Excadrill since I know from personal experience that it just tears the entire game apart. I do set the Mystery Egg usually though as it is particularly essential for some monos(See Dragon needing Axew to beat Corey.) It was definitely on the easier side but I had done mono Dragon before hand and that mono's early game is hair pullingly hard.

 

For most of the run I ran a hazard stack core of Forretress/Steelix to allow for Agility Empoleon to get clean sweeps going. Fern/Shade were somewhat tough but personally my hardest fights were definitely Solaris 3 or Titania(though the latter was mostly because i was at level 60s lmfao.) Solaris' team genuinely brutalised most of what I had trained up and took countless attempts. Charlotte/Terra/Amaria all got beaten first attempt. In fact Amaria was actually the easiest fight I had all game.

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Ah, yeah, I can imagine some types like Dragon needs the Mystery Egg. Cause you only have Noibat at that point, right? Dragon run seems pretty crazy.

 

Cool strat with Power Trip setup Empoleon! Didn't even know it got that move through Krookodile. I didn't breed Agility or anything onto mine, partly because I didn't feel like getting the appropriate breeding partner and grind a new one up the levels and partly because I was never really forced to. The only thing I bred was Counter onto an Alolan Sandshrew to beat Solaris Garchomp on Pyrous Mountain, as I really couldn't work out another strategy that would work.

I guess not having to "resort" to breeding egg moves onto Pokémon might speak to the difficulty (or lack thereof) of the run, in a sense. I also sort of prefer when possible to fight without setups but I do recognize that support + setup is usually the best strategy and I did do it in a few fights. Slush Rush A-Sandslash saved me a few times, I remember.