challenge Beating the Game's Bossfights in the Least Turns Possible

[Vivi the Blossom]

A Pokemon LTC(sort of)

 

Anyone familiar with Fire Emblem may have heard the term LTC or Low Turn-Count playthrough before. I've been wondering what that might look like in a Pokemon game: Beating the game in the smallest number of turns you can manage. Now, it's easy to notice that doing that for every single battle in the game, including wild ones, leads to some pretty uncool scenarios. You'd be resetting for multiple critical hits in most battles, and you would barely be able to train up any Pokemon. So I've decided to do things a little differently, and seek to clear only the game's boss battles(my discretion) in the minimum number of turns while putting no restriction on all the other battles. It's also much easier to record this way.

 

 

I will attempt to make all strategies reliable to reproduce, so I won't rely on critical hits or otherwise unlikely scenarios. This helps with recording, too. I can't promise it will always be this way, though. I'll also be playing on set mode.
Passwords used:
-earlyincu
-easyhms
-hardcap
-nopoisondam
-norolls
-fullivs
-weathermod
I'll also be using debug a lot to speed up my preperations astronomically, but anything that's impossible to get without debug is not allowed to be used.

If you've done a faster solution for a fight, feel free to reply with it.

So without further words, let's get into it. I'm recording the battles, so I really won't have all that much to say here. 

Here's the playlist if you wanna get an overview of all of it right away: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRLXvq9dm8OQ-CATNnHYYV80joiUBWaDN

 

Start to Florinia

 

Fern 1(3 Turns) and Julia(6 Turns):

Spoiler

 

 

Victoria in the slums(4 turns) and the first Pulse Tangrowth(1 turn):

Sorry for skipping Cain. Cain is an easy guts Raticate sweep so I didn't go back to record it. I initially didn't count either his or Victoria's battle, but went back to record Victoria because it's actually interesting. As you see, playing around Fake Out will come up every now and then. Here I have to use my own Fake Out, but in the future I will mostly deal with it by using a ghost type to sweep the trainer. Coming in poisoned doesn't just activate guts but also gives me control over what turns my Pokemon die on, letting me send out something else. Controlled deaths are a main strategy in this run. Pulse Tangrowth is pretty easy to understand. Sun is required so if you're not using the weathermod you might have to wait quite a while for that to happen at random, or figure out another way.

Spoiler

 

Finishing off this first post are Fern 2(3 turns) and Florinia(6 turns):

Fern 2 is a complete joke in the face of a guts facade sweep, something which will come up quite a few times again in this run.

Florinia, however, is pretty interesting. Cradily is incredibly difficult to kill, as is Ferroseed. While Ferroseed easily falters against (strong) fire moves, Florinia isn't very likely to send it out when you have your fire type out. So after setting hail with Snover and conveniently dying, I use a pre-damaged Pokemon with Endeavor to kill Ferroseed and thus leave the team ready for a sweep with Castform. The personality quiz in peridot is a godsend here, because it allows me to get an ice gem at this point. Without that, Cradily still refuses to die to Castform's weather ball. After taking a mach punch and having to get lucky to hit Cacnea despite sand veil, Castform dies on the correct turn when the hail runs out and Raticate finishes the fight.

Spoiler

 

 

It took me a little bit to actually pull myself together and start a topic about it, so I've played quite a further than to this point. The last thing I did was defeat Aya in 3 turns. But this will be it for the first post.

Edited May 8, 2022 by Vivi the Blossom
added turncounts for each battle

[Vivi the Blossom]

As of right now I already figured out(thanks to Aya and Pulse Garbodor) that my solutions for Shelly(3 Turns), Aster and Eclipse on Azurine Island(3 Turns) and Aya(3 Turns) can theoretically be improved upon. That's because they're all double battles.

The key is to put down stealth rocks on turn 1 and defeating both Pokemon. On the next turn you'd theoretically use a fast Pokemon to put both of the opposing Pokemon to low enough HP that they'll die to stealth rocks, then have them attack both of your Pokemon, each triggering a red card and switching for another Pokemon. The new 2 Pokemon are now killed by a slow Pokemon of yours, and when the original 2 come in they die to stealth rocks before the next turn can start.
Needless to say this is a pain in the ass to actually execute, but it is theoretically possible and I might experiment trying to get it done for those double battles and future ones.

I'll appreciate it if anyone else wants to take credit for putting these theoretical improvements into practice instead of me. I'll gladly point out that my solution is proven to be suboptimal and link their solution.

Edited May 8, 2022 by Vivi the Blossom
typo

[Vivi the Blossom]

Florinia to Shelly

Next up are the 2 new Pulse Tangrowths and Corey: Taka(3 Turns), Ace(5 Turns), Corey(6 Turns)

Spoiler

Adding Corey in here as well since he's so basic:

 

The first one is straighforward. Taka's ice weakness exists. The second one is interesting, mainly due to Zorua'stelluric seed which protects it in the first turn. You can see me using the mystery egg of Shroomish to deal with it, as Breloom's Feint is strong enough to kill. There's no destiny bond available at this level cap so the options to deal with protect at this point are very limited. Hariyama could do it, too, but it requires a breeding partner for Feint and I picked the wrong starter to do that. Fingers crossed that I'll never need a drought Vulpix for minimal turns anywhere.

Corey is a very simple fight, since he's designed to be demolished by Facade. The focus sash on Skrelp provides very slight resistance but self-destruct in the fiel does the job.

 

After this we have some meteor and rival fights leading up to Shelly: Aster&Eclipse(2 Turns), Victoria(4 Turns), Fern(4 Turns), Cal(5 Turns)

Spoiler

 

Doubles battles where you only get to control one half of your side are without a doubt the toughest part of this challenge. Luckily, Aster and Eclipse fall to the right spread moves and Victoria is somewhat helpful. After that are 2 rival battles in a row. The heal in between means you can't go into Fern pre-damaged or pre-poisoned. The issue of sending out the right mon for each of these fights is dealt with by the conveniently deadly move Explosion, allowing me to die controllably while still taking out the opposing Pokemon. Bless this move, it's one of my favorites. And yes I joined the magma gang mainly for an earlier choice band Explosion on my hands. Cal isn't worth wasting any breath on.

 

Finally we get to Shelly: Shelly(3 Turns)

Spoiler

 

Abuse her strategy of setting up rain to counter with sun, changing the terrain and preventing Anorith from using its telluric seed. From there, flower gift's attack boost is very helpful getting us the kills we need and the rainbow field conveniently buffs weather ball.

The hypothetical 2 Turn clear involves setting up stealth rocks turn 1 and changing the field and killing both opposing Pokemon. This could be done with a fast stealth rock setter like Onix holding an eject button, and switching out for drought Vulpix(so I'd have to reroute mystery egg). The other Pokemon concerns itself with the violence. That's all fine and doable.
The real issue after this lies in the careful AI manipulation and careful traits of our Pokemon after that. Whe need:

1. A Pokemon which outspeeds both incoming opponents and can damage them both precisely into stealth rock death range without killing them in 1 move

2. The faster one of the opponents cannot use a spread move(of which Shelly has plenty), as that would set off both red cards at once

3. The slower opponent has to target the Pokemon which the faster didn't target to set off the other red card

4. When the second Pokemon of hers is switched out this way, the Pokemon which got red card-ed just before it can't be the one that comes back in. This is just RNG and a 50/50.

5. Our second Pokemon needs to live all this and then kill both the Pokemon that just came in.

Point 1 and 5 should be fairly managable, after all we have access to stuff like rock slide and explosion. If Yanmega is among the 2 opponents, we may not need to hit it at all due to its x4 rock weakness. Getting 2 and 4 to work out requires some manipulation of the AI. 

All in all this is pretty daunting so it's on the back burner(especially since I don't have a save from that point in the game anymore).

 

So that's it for this part of the game.