/v/ - Video Games

I know it's autism but why not just play a better game if this is the kind of thing you need to do for a challenge?

>Pokemon Sword has a No Homo challenge.

The whole game is about a Scot traveling down to London to beat the shit out of Freddie Mercury.

>Side quests beat the shit out of Cuck Tony Stark and the Bogdanoff twins.

I want to try a nuzlocke with Sword but its just so fucking stupid. It actively kills off brain cells while you play it.

>>16914156

Don't insult Freddie by comparing him to that shit.

>>16914688

>Defending a fag.

Bump. Opted to no longer fuck with evasion cheese. Got Spearow done at level 82, but after that run, I decided not to abuse the fast-forward feature on the emulator, and won with just Ekans at level 70. On one hand, I wouldn't consider it a consistent win, since I had to take multiple attempts at Blue, and only really won with some absurd luck, most notably Alakazam using Reflect on turn 1 and me getting a 1-shot thanks to a crit. Psychic was a 1-shot from full health, and Psybeam took out like 97% of my total health on average. And even then I wasn't quite out of the woods. Rhydon is kind of a nuisance thanks to only really having Fury Attack, since Horn Drill didn't work on me, and his other 2 attacks actually boost my stats thanks to the badge boost glitch. Gyarados opted for Leer, so I was able to instakill him with Horn Drill (which I mimicked off of Rhydon). Ditto for Arcanine, who didn't actually damage me. Venusaur was the last one up, and I kept whiffing Horn Drills until I managed to get one to hit before he could get off a Solarbeam that would have finished me off. On the other hand, I did lose a fair chunk of time grinding on some of the trainers on Cycling Road and east of Fuschia. Plus, I had rare candies I could pump for a more consistent strategy.

Long story short, I'm pretty happy with this run, since it was nearly identical to Jrose's Bulbasaur run (level 69 and 6:32). Was expecting Ekans to be a bit more painful, even though it gets some pretty solid moves early in.

Took a bit of a break, but I'm at it again.

>Sandshrew

Basically Ekans, but better. I ended with an identical movepool, but Sandshrew having a higher attack than Ekans plus STAB on Earthquake ended up being a huge plus, as did Sandshrew's higher HP pool.

>Nidoran F

This one kinda sucked early game due to not getting access to any decent moves until the S.S. Anne, but things quickly got manageable after that. Upside is that I didn't really have to make many pokecenter trips before Brock due to the insane amount of attack PP she has at that point in the game, between Tackle, Poison Sting, and Scratch. That said, getting Body Slam and soon after Thunderbolt made this run a lot smoother for the midgame. Her relatively decent tankiness was also a huge plus for a number of midgame encounters, notably Koga, who didn't really have any answers outside of accuracy cheese. Rival 5 (The Silph Co. one) was a pretty big wall thanks to Alakazam, and the Elite 4 wasn't better. For the first time in my runs, Agatha was probably the worst of the bunch, thanks to Nidoran having no real answers for her ghosts, due to lack of either Ground or Psychic moves. I ended up having to opt for a rather unorthodox strategy of mimicking Night Shade and running through with that. I did need a bit of luck on her due to her wonky AI either being useless or making my life hell. On the flip side, Lorelei and Bruno were practically free, so I was actually able to farm them for XP rather than my normal strategy of grinding at the Pokemon Mansion.

>Nidoran M

As one might imagine, this is basically Nidoran F but better. Having access to Horn Attack instead of Scratch at level 8 made early game go by significantly faster, and his higher attack and speed more than made up for the lowered HP and defense. The former was excellent at midgame, while the latter helped get over many critical speed humps throughout the game, including Brock's Onix and Agatha's Gengars. Having an identical moveset to Nidoran F at the end wasn't ideal, but it was serviceable. As an aside, this run may have had one of the most insane Koga battles I've ever done, and is a testament to how Gen 1's AI makes these sorts of runs much easier. I was having bad luck on his third Koffing, who got multiple accuracy drops on me and whittled me down to 10 health. I was tempted to reset, but knowing I still had a chance, however slim, I pressed on, continuing to attempt to get the killing blow on him. He kept using non-damaging attacks, allowing me to get the kill after a few whiffs. Once Weezing came out, I attempted Horn Drill and it managed to hit on the first try. It was one of the two notable times of me using it, the other being on the asshole in Rock tunnel with 2 Geodudes and a Graveler.

>Clefairy

This may have been the most fun run for me yet. Brock took a bit to get past even with its fast leveling curve, only being able to get through it after getting Doubleslap at level 17. But the game opened up shortly after, getting access to Water Gun and Mega Punch in Mount Moon, then Bubblebeam to replace Water Gun after beating Misty. The S.S. Anne gave me Body Slam, then Lt. Surge gave me Thunderbolt. At this point, I could basically truck through the game, getting carried by Clefairy's respectable stat pool and diverse move pool. Ice Beam would replace Bubblebeam in Celadon, and Psychic would replace Mega Punch in Saffron. Body Slam-Thunderbolt-Ice Beam-Psychic would remain my moveset until past the Pokemon Mansion, where Ice Beam would be replaced by Blizzard, finalizing my moveset. Chugging to the Elite 4 and farming a few levels later, and I was able to pretty easily clear through it. Probably a top-5 unevolved Pokemon for this type of run. It's below Gastly and a bit below Poliwag.

>>16933592

(Con't.)

>Vulpix

For the first time in these runs, Brock wasn't a huge brick wall. Getting Ember right off the bat made it a significantly easier battle (I beat it at level 12), to the point where the Nugget Bridge rival battle was harder. Thankfully I opted to knock out a few optional trainers in Mount Moon, shaving off a good few minutes of grinding on wild pokemon on the route before Cerulean, which I had to do a bit regardless. For obvious reasons I opted to save Misty for after doing the S.S. Anne. Having access to both Dig and Body Slam was huge, as they were the best physical attacks Vulpix could get. For the first time in these runs, I forgot to do Surge before going through Rock Tunnel, which I learned shortly after trying to use Fly outside of battle for the first time. Thankfully having access to Saffron made getting back to it fairly quick and painless. Beyond that, my final moveset ended up coming pretty quickly, getting Flamethrower and Confuse Ray via level up. I opted to boost up my attack with vitamins, which ended up coming in handy for the brick wall near the end of the game. Pretty much everything up to the Elite 4 was doable enough. The Silph Co. rival battle required a little bit of trainer grinding beforehand, as it usually did, but after that, things were fairly straightforward. Once I got to the Elite 4, though, I had to level grind. A lot. Lorelei was surprisingly manageable, although I needed some Confusion cheese early on to get past her. Bruno was basically free, as was Agatha once I could outspeed her Gengars. At this point I dumped some PP ups into Flamethrower, since it was by far my most used move here. The real issue here was Lance's Gyarados, who always just tries to spam Hydro Pump. There was no real way around this without at least a bit of luck, thanks to my best attacking option being Body Slam, which did less than half of his health. I either needed a bit of confusion cheese or Hydro Pump to not land. By my last run, Hydro Pump only did a bit more than half of my health, so I could realistically get hit by one and still win, and that's exactly what happened. I had a bit of luck between Paralysis and Confusion, allowing me to escape the battle with about 17 health. After that, the last Rival battle was a walk in the park. The only real threat was Blastoise, who had a 50% chance of using Withdraw instead of Hydro Pump anyway.

Side note: Apparently the guy who's also been doing these runs is running on somewhat sped-up emulation, which explains the discrepancies between my times and his. Definitely worth me pondering if/when I make a finalized tier list. Jigglypuff is next, and its horrendous stats make me not look forward to it. At all.

>>16933639

The only "cheat" I've been using is using the Universal Pokemon Randomizer to change one of the starters for my pokemon of choice. Beyond that, I only savestate at points in the game where I'd be able to save on a physical version.

If you know what you're doing, Pokemon really isn't a super long game, if you've been keeping an eye on my times. Keep in mind that you can add about an extra hour or so, maybe two at most off of resets. The simple version of the "how" is as follows:

>Use UPR to change the starter in a way that theoretically maximizes the difficulty of the game due to shifting the rival's team

>Boot up edited ROM

>Play through ROM

>Beat game

I can go more into detail on routes and strategies if you're insatiably curious.

That said, I'd like to make a quick addendum to an earlier post. Sandshrew did NOT have the same set as Ekans, instead having Swords Dance instead of Mimic. Also, add another to the pile.

>Jigglypuff

This thing was pretty much a much worse Clefairy. It has excellent base HP, having the most of any unevolved, non-single stage pokemon, and passable attack for an unevolved pokemon, but everything else was garbage. It's so slow that I almost fainted just getting from Pallet Town to Viridian City due to having issues running from the Route 1 shitmons. Once I got through that, I could drain my Sing PPs in Viridian Forest on Metapods/Kakunas and start running struggle strats. Thankfully its excellent health made it a surprisingly decent candidate for this, and I was able to get to level 9 to learn pound off of the mandatory trainer in that area. Even better, it has a pretty good leveling curve, so getting to level 19 for Brock wasn't the most tedious thing in the world. Once again, its health ended up bailing it out, and pretty bad move choices by Brock definitely didn't hurt either. Was honestly not expecting to get past him for another few levels. Similar to Clefairy, the game opened up thanks to the having access to all of the same relevant TMs as Clefairy. I was kinda hoping that Bide strats would actually be useful, but that day never came, as Mega Punch was enough to make quick work of Misty and the Nugget Bridge rival, and the run basically operated in similar fashion to the Clefairy run from there to the Elite 4, barring a couple of levels of difference, thanks to Jigglypuff's noticeably lower Special. I was able to get to the Elite 4 at level 62, at which point I once again opted to farm as far as I could for leveling. Lorelei was pretty much a brick wall for several levels, and only really became consistent after pumping some Rare Candies to get Jigglypuff to level 85. From there, the later members weren't consistent, and resulted in some fairly close calls. I came out of Lance with less than 50 health left (and I had about 340 at that point), and I came out of the last rival battle with a similar amount of health on top of a cheeky burn. In theory, with a bit more luck, I probably could have completed this a few levels lower, but at this level I was able to have a decent shot at it on any given run, even though it probably would never be a 100% chance since Agatha's Gengars would most likely both outspeed even a level 100 Jigglypuff.

Enjoyable thread, OP

>>16933863

It's definitely not for most people. Especially if you opt not to speed things up. Anyhow, new shit inbound.

>Zubat

This one's already been done a few times, but none of the runs that have been recorded in a video were really close to my ruleset and/or weren't attempting optimal efficiency, so I didn't skip this one. As you may be able to imagine, this was a shitshow where I hit multiple bottlenecks. Brock surprisingly wasn't terrible, thanks to Supersonic doing a decent chunk of the work for me, with Bite doing okay damage, so I was able to sneak past that at level 15. Misty wasn't awful thanks to Leech Life, nor were the second or third Rival battles, since I was doing numerous optional battles. Surge was much trickier than usual due to a combination of Electric weakness and lack of good attacking moves, so it took me a few attempts whereas 99% of the time the fight is an afterthought. I got walled again in Rock Tunnel thanks to the 3 Selfdestructors Hiker, so I couldn't get through until roughly level 40. Things got much easier, thanks to getting access to Mega Drain and Double-Edge, the latter surprisingly not showing up in any of the runs I found. While I didn't hit any gigantic walls for a while, Koga, Rival 5, and Sabrina all took a few attempts to get past. Rival 6 took a good few levels of solid grinding to get past, and the Elite 4 wasn't much better. Lorelei effectively required some Confusion luck on Lapras, since it just shits out Blizzards. Agatha also required a bit of luck as far as her move choices went. Lance was free as fuck, and the Champion battle was surprisingly doable with a bit of confusion luck.

>Oddish

This had the strangest early game I've done so far. Brock was a cakewalk as one might expect, but everything around it was a shitshow. Oddish's only damaging move before level 24 is Absorb (if you don't count Poisonpowder), and multiple mandatory trainer battles involve things that resist Grass type. The mandatory Bug Catcher in Viridian Forest has a Weedle who quad resists grass, so I had to rely on Struggle strats to move past him. I ran into similar issues immediately after Brock, and barely eaked past the first 2 mandatory battles afterward. After that, I opted for the very unusual option of going for the Lass next instead of the Bug Catcher, since you have to fight one of the two. The latter has 4 pokemon, 2 of which quad-resist Absorb, so there was no real feasible way to get past him with what I was working with. After finally getting to Mount Moon, I ran into yet another wall in the form of a mandatory Team Rocket grunt fight. He runs a Zubat on his team, so I once again needed to rely on Struggle strats to get past him. I could have made it a bit easier on myself by saving a few Absorbs for his Rattata that he opened with, but I wasn't thinking. At the level I was at, I had to deplete a whole 100 PP across my attacks to get into Struggle range, so setting up for it was especially tedious. As an extra middle finger, the Super Nerd fight immediately after it can't be done with struggle strats, so I had to run back to the Pokemon center and heal up to deal with him. Thankfully the game got much easier after that fight, with Misty being pretty easy and Rival 2 also not being awful due to leveling up enough to learn Acid, thanks in large part due to using a Rare Candy early, which hasn't happened in a run before this one. I didn't hit any major walls until the Elite 4, relying heavily on Sleep Powder to get through major battles. Oddish didn't quite have the Oomph to get through them at the level I arrived at, so I had to grind a fair bit on them. Agatha was also unusual with Oddish. Since Oddish lacks Ground or Psychic attacks, I originally opted to use the Mimic Night Shade strategy before a lightbulb went off in my head. I had Sleep Powder, so I instead started going for mimicing Dream Eater, which was much more effective. After that fight was generally just leaning on Sleep Powder to do its thing. This run didn't feel as long as the time indicated.

Continued from previous post:

>Venonat

This run broke me. Prior to stopping the usage of VBA's turbo feature, I hadn't used any sort of speedups until this run. The Brock grind was easily the longest I've done so far, clocking in at almost 3 hours by the time I actually beat him, so I opted to speed up the last chunk of Viridian Forest grinding a bit. It still wasn't a pleasant process due to Venonat's extremely limited early-game pool of Tackle and Disable. Speaking of, fun fact: using Disable while a pokemon is mid-Bide and disabling Bide won't actually cancel the attack, but just prolong it. Thankfully Venonat has okay physical bulk, so that pretty much carried me in my win. Mount Moon was a cakewalk due to being overleveled, and Rival 2 wasn't awful either. Misty was very easy due to learning Leech Life while making my way to Bill's house, and I was able to time my learning of Psybeam so I could learn it right before the 3-Selfdestructor Hiker. Getting that and subsequently Psychic made midgame much easier, and access to Sleep Powder made much of the later game doable. The last 2 Rival fights were dicey due to being outsped by Charizard and Alakazam. I effectively had to level a bit more to get past Rival 6 and pray for bad attack choices/misses on Rival 7. The Brock grind single-handedly made this run unusually long.

>Diglett

Thankfully Brock was easier this time around, as getting Dig at level 19 basically made it a free win, and Diglett seems to be better for level grinding early on, even with a slow Experience curve. Diglett's move pool really carried it through most of the game, between a Slash that's effectively guaranteed to crit, Dig and later Earthquake, and Rock Slide for niche extra coverage (Aerodactyl and Charizard in particular). I didn't really hit any walls until the Elite Four, where I proceeded to get fucked hard. Lorelei is absolutely nasty, thanks to her entire team packing at least one attack that Diglett's weak against. Dewgong and Cloyster were able to chunk most of my health with one Aurora Beam, so I was basically forced to either get lucky Crits, knock stuff into Potion range, or level up enough to 1-shot. I ended up opting to level enough to 2-shot everything but Jynx, who was instead a 1-shot. Lapras in particular I ended up lucking out against, due to a missed Hydro Pump. Bruno and Agatha were basically both free. Lance was another fight I was expecting to be rough, due to Gyarados's Hydro Pump being a one-shot. But lo and behold, it missed, so I was able to make quick work out of the rest of Lance's team. The last Rival battle had a similar issue, that being another Gyarados with Hydro Pump, which, believe it or not, also ended up missing. Pretty much everything else on his team was a gimme, since Venusaur's Mega Drain didn't do a lot of damage, and Solarbeam requires 2 turns to use, and I was able to 2-shot it, and everything else was either a 1-shot or didn't pack any real threatening moves. Both Lance and the last Rival battle were done first attempt, so I effectively won on 1/625 Hydro Pump miss luck. A few more levels would have made the run a bit more consistent, but I was more or less done dealing with Diglett's leveling curve at that point. On that note, I'm NOT looking forward to the future Rhyhorn run.

Godspeed OP, your autism is legendary.

>>16935682

Not gonna lie, having a held speedup button sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth, given that most of the time the only spot where it's warranted is Viridian Forest if I can't get past Brock. There are a handful of other situations I could see it being useful, such as if I get hard-walled by Lorelei, making grinding against her for XP basically nonviable (I see this being an issue on Rhyhorn). We'll see down the road. As an aside, after seeing just how obnoxious the badge boost glitch is, I'm pretty convinced I could run Jigglypuff several levels lower than I actually did, but I have a feeling there will be a Jrose run of that before I'd get around to it again. Without further ado, though, I got a new batch of runs.

>Meowth

This run went better than I originally presumed, and I had pretty high hopes for it to begin with. Meowth's stats are underwhelming aside from speed, but its movepool is where it becomes solid. STAB Bite early on made Brock not eat up a whole lot of time, and getting access to Water Gun and eventually Bubblebeam allowed at least neutral damage on literally everything before Lavender Tower. Getting Thunderbolt from Surge was also a nice bonus, giving me a good anti-Gyarados measure. Once I hit Level 44, though, the game broke open. Slash is absolutely obscene on Meowth, thanks to a STAB bonus on top of guaranteed crits. Koga still remained a bit dicey though, due to the decent bulk of Poison types on top of lack of supereffective attacks in general. Rival 5, Sabrina, Blaine, Giovanni, and Rival 6 were all pushovers. The Elite 4 is where I hit a bit of a wall, though. Since Meowth can't learn Dig, Agatha in particular required a few more levels, since I once again had to rely on Mimic strats to get anything that could hit her ghosts for decent damage. Thankfully some Rare Candies did the trick. Beyond that, Lance was a simple Thunderbolt on Gyarados and Aerodactyl and Slash on everything else, and the last Rival Battle was similarly easy for a change, thanks to being able to quickly dispatch Alakazam, which is usually the #1 threat on his team. This was my quickest run so far behind Clefairy, which is a testament to how sneaky good Meowth is offensively.

>>16936924

>Psyduck

Then there's this fucker. Stat-wise, it doesn't really excel in anything, having a lowest BST of 48 (Defense) and a highest of 55 (Speed) For some reason, Psyduck doesn't get any early water moves by levelup until Gen 4. On top of this, Psyduck only knows Scratch until level fucking 28, where it gets Tail Whip. It doesn't even get another attacking move period until level 36, where it gets Confusion, the strongest Psychic type attack available to it in Gen 1. So I had to grind up to level 23 to squeak past Brock, which somehow didn't take as long as getting Venonat to level 21 did, despite being in the same experience group. The good news is it got much easier from there, thanks to being able to learn both Mega Punch and Water Gun via TMs in Mount Moon. Being fairly overleveled and getting decent move access fairly early on meant that a lot of the subsequent battles were easy. Misty wasn't even a contest, Rival 2 was simple, as was Rival 3, getting Dig meant Surge was an easy sweep, Erika was easy thanks to Ice Beam, Rival 4 wasn't awful… Well, you get the point. Didn't really run into any issues until Rival 5, which I opted to take a detour from, since for once I didn't have to either grab Lapras, which would have required me to beat him, or fish up something so I could use Surf. Needless to say, Blaine was an obvious cakewalk, I had enough levels to down Rival 5, Giovanni 2, and Sabrina with relatively little issue, and the Viridian Gym was, of course, easy thanks to Psyduck's coverage. However, even after defeating every trainer in Viridian Gym, I wasn't quite at a level where I could get past Rival 6, so back to the grind I went, going after several of the trainers I previously skipped, and returning to get past him. The Elite 4 was, again, a bit of a wall, thanks to Lorelei. While none of her Pokemon really have things that work well against Psyduck, I couldn't really hurt them either, which was a huge drain on my PP. My final set was Body Slam, Dig, Blizzard, and Surf. Body Slam and Dig were generally my best bets, but Psyduck's attack isn't particularly amazing, so I had to slowly chunk away on basically her whole team sans Jynx, who is particularly squishy. Cloyster in particular was kinda awful, between confusion bullshittery and absurdly high defense. But once I got past her, Bruno was free as he usually is, Agatha was free thanks to Dig and Blizzard (for Golbat), and Lance was pretty much free once I got past Gyarados, which wasn't the biggest of obstacles. I had a pretty decent overall set for the last Rival battle, having supereffective attacks for Pidgeot, Rhydon, Arcanine, and Venusaur. It still required a slight amount of luck Okay, I may have freezehaxed Venusaur on my winning attempt, but a win's a win.

>>16936925

>Mankey

After Psyduck, I'm glad I could get to something that was able to make pretty quick work of Brock, thanks to both having Karate Chop at level 15 and being able to outspeed Onix at that level. Thanks to being another 100% crit move, Karate Chop carried me through the next several sections, including Rival 2, Misty, and Rival 3. Dig ended up making Surge into another easy sweep. Unfortunately Mankey's frailty caught up to me pretty quickly: It wasn't quite strong enough to 1-shot a number of things near its level, and heaven forbid I miss Rock Slide on something with Flying type attacks. It was at this point where my slow ass figured out that I was best off dropping every single stat-up item on Mankey, since using them doesn't cuck you out of potential gains in other stat categories in Gen 1. Probably wouldn't have made a huge difference in my runs prior to this, but it's good to know for future reference. Anyhow, I skipped Celadon for a bit due to Erika's pokemon hitting a bit too hard for comfort, and opted to deal with Giovanni (Easy) and Rival 4 (Slightly less easy) to grab the Silph Scope. I then went straight for Koga after beating some trainers on the surrounding routes and in his gym to get my level closer to his, I believe I was 43 when I beat his Weezing. I returned to Celadon to get rid of Erika, which was much more doable with the extra few levels I got on my detour, as well as finally replacing Karate Chop with Body Slam, which may have been beneficial to do earlier. Rival 5 was surprisingly easy, thanks to Mankey outspeeding his entire team and one-shotting the biggest threats. Giovanni 2 was pretty much another Dig carry. I opted to take another detour to Cinnabar to get some levels before Sabrina, taking out all of the trainers in both the mansion and gym. Unsurprisingly having both Dig and Rock Slide made it a very quick and painless affair. I then beelined straight to Sabrina, not fucking with any of the trainers in her gym. She still wasn't a one-attempt leader, as I wasn't quite strong enough to one-shot Alakazam, so I had to reset until he didn't go for a one-shotting attack. Thankfully the rest of her team was pretty much a footnote. Giovanni was similarly doable between Body Slam and Dig, although I did deal with the other trainers in the gym for some much-needed experience. As it turns out, that would save me some time, as I was still unable to get past Rival 6, due to lack of 1-shot capabilities on most of his team. So I went and took out trainers I skipped to get a few more levels, and returned. I did get chunked a bit by Pidgeot, but I was fortunate enough with the other attack choices where I was able to survive the rest of the battle with decent health. After getting through Victory Road, I took my shot at the Elite 4, and it surprisingly wasn't awful this time around. Lorelei was still a bit of a threat largely thanks to Cloyster, but Dewgong and Slowbro were both free, Jynx was once again a 1-shot, and Lapras didn't fire off Hydro Pump or Blizzard, either likely would have been a 1-shot or close to it. Bruno actually almost got me thanks to a cheeky Hitmonchan counter, but I got through it with a sliver. Agatha was free between Dig and Rock Slide, and Lance was also basically free, thanks to being able to 1-shot Aerodactyl and having everything else sans Gyarados unable to hit me at all due to shit AI (And he was a 2-shot anyway). A few tries on the Champion battle later, and I determined I absolutely needed to pump some rare candies into Mankey to not require absurd amounts of luck to win. Even with the extra levels, nothing was a one-shot. Pidgeot thankfully didn't attack due to his lone turn being used to charge Sky Attack. Alakazam used his lone turn to set up Reflect. Rhydon was, of course, a joke, although he did get a bit of damage on me. Gyarados, similarly, got a bit of damage on me, but nothing too threatening, Arcanine surprisingly wasn't a 1-shot with dig, and his Ember ended up burning me. Venusaur thankfully showed a bit of mercy. While I was shitting out Body Slams and hoping for the best, he ran Mega Drains with a growth thrown in. 2 cheeky crits on my end ended up barely sealing a win. While I wouldn't call it a consistent victory strategy, it was good enough for me. I'll gladly take another sub-5 hour run.

Next up is Growlithe. Gonna guess that it's gonna take a decent chunk of time, but I can finally take advantage of Badge Boost shenanigans again.

>Growlithe

This didn't go anywhere near as well as I was hoping. It definitely struggled compared to its version-exclusive counterpart Vulpix. On paper, Growlithe looks better. While it has somewhat lower special attack, it gets more HP, attack, and defense, making it a fair bit bulkier. On top of this, it gets access to Agility, giving it extra stats via the Badge boost glitch if you can set up. Unfortunately, it comes with some pretty huge drawbacks. First, it's in the Slow experience group, whereas Vulpix is in the Medium Fast group. Secondly, it's forced to spend some extra time on Brock due to starting out with Bite instead of Ember. While Vulpix was able to get through the Pewter Gym at level 12, Growlithe needed another 5 levels, and even that required a bit of luck on Brock himself. I thought I'd need to get to 18 so I could just cheese it with Ember, but Growlithe's bulk came in handy. The third major issue is that Growlithe doesn't learn Flamethrower until a whopping level 50, while Vulpix gets it at level 36. This made midgame a fair bit trickier. The good news is Rival 2 was easier due to having Bite and Ember at my disposal, and Misty wasn't awful after I got Dig and Body Slam. The experience curve caught up to me pretty quickly, though, and I found myself needing to beat a decent chunk of optional trainers to keep up. I was able to sneak into the Elite 4 around level 60, and for the most part, it wasn't bad with a few levels. Lorelei, Bruno, and Agatha were all pretty doable with my attacking set. But Lance proved to be a hard wall, thanks to opening with Gyarados. It spams Hydro Pump, so setting up Agility is out of the question, and it's not a 1-shot with Rock Slide. I needed to grind on the first 3 members quite a bit. By level 83, I was able to safely take a Hydro Pump with about 25% health remaining, which was good enough to deal with it. Dragonair is pretty safe to set up on, so I took full advantage of that and swept through the rest of his team with almost no health left. The Champion fight was much easier due to Pidgeot being much safer setup fodder, leading to everything else dying with little issue. The Brock fight alone really was the difference-maker as far as time goes.

>Machop

Medium Slow is, in my opinion, is an excellent experience group for these runs, and Machop is good proof of it. The Medium Slow experience group levels very quickly early on, which helped cut the time I needed to grind for Brock. Granted, I didn't need to grind for too long, ending at level 16 or so. Unfortunately Machop only has Karate Chop to start with. This makes him a sitting duck against Bide a la Psyduck, while his low base speed means it isn't a guaranteed crit a la Mankey, which is a hindrance against Geodude. However, having pretty good base HP and defense on top of attack meant it could take more punishment than Mankey, which ended up being key here. Low Kick was a nice get at level 20, though hardly game-breaking. Machop's leveling moves were underwhelming beyond that point. Misty wasn't too bad thanks to Machop's leveling curve putting it at a passable level after visiting Bill, and Dig made quick work of Surge and the Rock Tunnel hiker. Beyond that, midgame wasn't too awful. Outside of Blaine, the gym leaders required a bit of leveling to get through, but nothing a few optional trainers couldn't fix. Rival 5 was sticky, since I was still getting outsped by Alakazam, so I ended up just having to get to him with decent health remaining so I could tank a hit. Before Rival 6, I decided that Submission wasn't pulling its weight, so I replaced it with Mimic, trivializing Rival 6 and allowing me to get to the Elite 4 with little issue. Lorelei was doable thanks to being able to set up mimic Amnesias for free against Slowbro. Bruno was almost free. I didn't quite have enough juice to one-shot Hitmonchan, which packs Counter. The rest of his team was fine. Agatha was easy if the AI cooperated a bit, thanks to having Earthquake and Rock Slide. Lance was also fine under similar circumstances, since Gyarados was a 2-shot, I could set up mimic Agility for free against Dragonair, and deal with the rest of his team with no real issues. Unfortunately at the level I was at, the Champion was unbeatable. However, I had quite a few rare candies I'd collected. It turns out every single one mattered, as level 76 was the magic number I needed to outspeed Pidgeot, taking a lot of guesswork out of the battle. Alakazam still outsped me, so I needed him to not use Psychic, which ended up being the case. The rest of the team after that was pretty much free. Definitely a top-tier pokemon as far as these runs go, even if the level doesn't indicate that. My strategy for this run seemed to be near-optimal, as seen by the Rare Candy shenanigans.

>>16937656

>Bellsprout

This one belongs with pokemon like Gastly and Poliwag in the top tier of pokemon for this format. Its leveling moveset is nearly perfect for early game, getting Vine Whip and Growth to start, and getting Wrap at level 13. Since Growth effectively works like Calm Mind does now, it was a very rare, if not the first instance of me keeping a starting move all game. I was able to get through the early game in almost minimum battles. I was able to get past the mandatory bug catcher in Viridian Forest at level 6 by stacking up Growths before using Vine Whip, which was able to chunk Weedle pretty badly despite a 3 level difference and quad resistance, which got me to level 7. Unfortunately my level wasn't enough to deal with the trainer before Brock, so I either had to gain one more level then fight him, or just skip him and go directly to Brock. Given how critical Wrap was for the route after, I took out a Rattata for the experience I needed to level again, then beat both Brock and his lackey in Pewter Gym, which was enough to get me to level 13 for Wrap. I took out all of the mandatory trainers, and 3 of the more lucrative ones for a bit of bonus experience, which in hindsight may have not been 100% mandatory, but it didn't eat much time up. Misty was a cakewalk. I ended up deciding to just flex on her and max out Growths on Staryu to one-shot both of her pokemon. I once again beat the optional trainer for extra experience. By this point, I got Sleep Powder, which when used in combination with Growth, is absolutely devastating. Given my moveset and having a decent level advantage for that point in the game, I got past Rival 2 and to Bill's house without any issue. I only fought one trainer on the S.S. Anne outside of Rival 3, and that was to grab an extra rare candy which I never used anyway. Rival 3 was as easy as Rival 2, and Surge was a joke, as one might expect. The path to Lavender Town also didn't provide any huge issues, although the mandatory Slowpoke trainers in Rock Tunnel did sting a bit. After getting to Lavender Town with Razor Leaf in tow via levelup, I decided to take a crack at Rival 4. Razor Leaf is a double-edged sword: On one hand, it's stronger than Vine Whip and has more PP to boot. On the other hand, it crits constantly, but not enough so where it's predictable. As such, it's kinda shit in conjunction with growth, since crits in Gen 1 ignore stat boosts because QUALITY programming. Defeated, I went and dealt with Rocket Hideout, which was piss easy. I returned to Lavender Tower to try again, and had similar issues. Defeated once again, I went to take out some optional fishermen south of Lavender. Returned to Lavender Tower yet again, still struggled. With no other choice, I opted to hit up the Celadon Gym, and immediately felt like a moron for not doing so earlier. The mandatory Exeggcute trainer just spammed Reflect because once again, Gen 1 AI, and Erika just spammed Poisonpowder on Victreebel and Vileplume, and Tangela wasn't really a threat. Wrap spam ended up winning me the day, and a critical Mega Drain TM. I immediately swapped out Razor Leaf for it, giving me my third final move in my set. With it, Rival 4 was much more doable, although the Channelers took a while thanks to having to build up Growth, since Mega Drain was the only thing that could hit ghosts, and they resist it on top of having high Special. The Rockets were mildly annoying (Particularly the first one's Golbat), but not really a huge challenge. With that I proceeded to go through Cycling Road, skipping every trainer there. I opted to deal with two of the optional trainers in Koga's Gym for experience, and Koga himself was an easy fight thanks to Powder-Growth spam. I got my HMs out of the Safari Zone and was on my merry way. Silph Co. was another easy romp. Rival 5 was another one-shot, thanks to Pidgeot being pretty easy to set up on. Giovanni was even easier. I opted to beeline towards Sabrina, which didn't quite go as expected. Beating Kadabra caused me to level, effectively erasing the Badge Boost glitch for her last 3 pokemon. I remedied this by defeating one of the Psychics with a Slowbro, causing me to get another level. From there Sabrina was also an easy win. I then went through the Pokemon Mansion and the Cinnabar Gym to Blaine, who, per usual, was a joke.

(Guess I have to split this post up into two. Continued in the next post.)

Here we go again.

>Tentacool

Tentacool is one of those pokemon that almost feels built for this sort of challenge. It has a ridiculous 100 base Special and 70 base speed, and a fairly solid toolkit to work with. Unfortunately its health, attack, and defense leave something to be desired, and it suffers from the slow experience group curse. Thankfully, Brock didn't require an insane amount of grinding, as Acid, Supersonic, and Wrap allowed the battle to be won fairly early on. At level 13, if memory serves me right, which is excellent for something with no special moves yet. Mount Moon granted me access to my first special move in Water Gun, which gave me a bit more wiggle room as far as taking out optional trainers to catch up a bit on experience. Once I hit Cerulean City, I decided to be dumb. I took a few shots at Misty, but my level wasn't high enough. I instead opted for the Nugget Bridge route, which was easy enough. Rival 2 was a relative pushover, between Water Gun and Wrap abuse. After being leveled a bit more, I tried my hand at Misty again, only to fail. I decided to come back to it afterward. The "dumb" part comes from the fact that I wasn't even thinking of Bide strats, since Misty only used Tackle on both of her pokemon. I almost certainly could have gotten past Starmie much easier if I went that route. Regardless, I made my way through the S.S. Anne, beat Rival 3 with no real issues, grabbed Cut, and made my way back to Cerulean once more with a bit more experience under my belt to beat Misty in a narrow victory (I was level 26 or so on the win). To save some time, I skipped the Vermilion Gym for the time. Rock Tunnel was simple enough, and with the game opening up, so did my move pool. I beelined to the Celadon Department Store to grab Ice Beam, then used that to deal with Erika, netting me Mega Drain, and beating Giovanni 1 for the Silph Scope (as well as getting Barrier via levelup, which helped patch up the weak defense, along with a way to take advantage of the badge boost glitch). Since I could just cut through Saffron at this point, I went back to Vermilion to beat Surge without issue, then went to Lavender Town, where Rival 4 was a pushover thanks to my fairly solid coverage. After grabbing the Poke Flute, I beelined towards the Safari Zone to grab Surf, then completely shut down the Fuschia Gym. While I could have taken out Rival 5, I instead opted to go to Cinnabar for some easy experience and the Blizzard TM. I made sure to defeat every trainer in the gym before dealing with Blaine, who was an even bigger joke than normal.

(Continued in next post)

>Ponyta

It was really hard to tell how well Ponyta would do going in. On one hand, it has excellent stats, having solid Attack and Speed, and passable everything else. In fact, its stat total is roughly on par with many second-stage pokemon, which surprised me. On the other hand, its moveset is trash on paper. It literally only has two attacking move types: Fire and Normal. Fire-wise, it doesn't even learn Flamethrower, instead only getting access to Ember, Fire Spin, and Fire Blast. In addition, it only has one attacking move by levelup (Ember) until level 30. Thankfully, Ember is actually a solid starting move. As such, I was able to quickly dispatch of all 3 Viridian Forest trainers, and used the rest of my embers to get some more experience on wild pokemon there. That and Brock's lackey gave me enough experience to beat Brock after a few attempts. Only having Ember makes it a very RNG-dependent fight: Geodude has to not use Tackle too much, and Onix has to use mostly Tackle and Screech until it's almost knocked out, at which point Bide is safe. If it uses Bide early, that's most of Ponyta's HP gone in a few turns. Regardless, the trainers after Brock are quite easy, thanks to the abundance of things weak to Fire. I go after a few optional Mount Moon trainers for extra experience, which I knew I'd need. Even attempting Misty when I got to Cerulean was a foregone conclusion, but I was able to at least deal with both trainers in her Gym, due to one a total of one pokemon across both teams actually having a damaging water move. Rival 2 took a few attempts, but eventually did buckle. Nugget Bridge wasn't a huge issue, aside from having to run to the Pokemon Center once to restore Ember's PP, since it was still my lone attack, outside of Bide, which I never actually used. Still not at a point where I could deal with Misty, I went to the S.S. Anne, wherein I grabbed Body Slam for much-needed coverage and fought Rival 3. Thanks to a bit more leveling and not-Ember, it was terribly easy. One cut HM later, and I was on my way back to Misty, with no real other options outside of grinding. It ended up being a pleasantly easy one-shot, thanks to how strong Body Slam is on something with a base attack of 85. Knowing I needed levels, I then went to deal with Surge and his lackeys, which was also an easy win thanks to being able to outspeed everything thanks to having a 90 base speed. Rock Tunnel wasn't as bad as I presumed it would be, thanks to the 3-Geodude-line Hiker not using Selfdestruct once, although an earlier hiker did boom on me, taking out most of my health. So clearly I was about where I needed to be level-wise. I beelined for the Celadon Gym, taking full advantage of my typing and dealing with all of the trainers within before easily defeating Erika. The Rocket Hideout wasn't too bad, even if I was still rocking Ember and 2 of Giovanni's pokemon resisted it. Next up was Rival 4 which was a pushover at my level, although the mandatory channelers were a tad dicey due to Ember still being a range against Gastlies. I got the Pokeflute and made my way to Fuschia. I cleaned out the trainers in Koga's gym for some much-needed experience. Koga himself was an RNG-fest. A combination of early smokescreens, minimizes, and poisons made the fight take multiple attempts. On the upside, I had learned Fire Spin up to this point, finally replacing Bide. Koga's first 3 pokemon were still Body Slam spam until I won, although to reduce the risk of a Selfdestruct 1-shot, I used Fire Spin to keep Weezing from attacking until I could safely chunk the rest of its health although this didn't go to plan, as I got him down to a sliver, but he didn't boom, so I still won.

(Continued in next post)

>>16938062

I did a bit more leveling in Silph Co., getting myself Agility to replace Stomp. After making sure I was freshly leveled, I went for Rival 5. Pidgeot ended up cooperating with me, not setting up any Sand Attacks while I set up Agility for that sweet badge boost. Body Slam and Ember made quick work of the rest of his team. Giovanni was once again terribly easy. I got a fresh level then went for Sabrina. It ended up being very easy, due to outspeeding and 1-shotting Kadabra, setting up on Mr. Mime, then just wrecking the rest of her team. Cinnabar was also simple. I took out a few more optional trainers for experience, although I didn't deal with every single trainer I found. As an added bonus, I got Fire Blast out of it, where I finally took Blaine's advice on who to teach it to. I immediately replaced Ember and dumped my 3 PP ups into it. I ended up defeating every trainer in the Viridian Gym before dealing with Giovanni, who was very easy thanks to Fire Blast and Body Slam together. I got myself another fresh level before dealing with Rival 6, setting up Agilities and just sweeping through his team once more. I once again fought as many trainers as I could muster in Victory Road before getting to the Elite Four. I was still a pretty low level when I got there, and I did end up needing levels. Lorelei was narrowly doable with a few more levels, Bruno was free per usual, and Agatha was trolly, but doable with some luck. Lance, however, was once again a hard wall, thanks to Hydro Pump fuckery. I tried using all the Rare Candies I had to get past him, but to no avail. I had to accept that I needed more levels. Between chugging all but one of my rare candies and grinding out a bit more, Lorelei and Agatha were both becoming fairly consistent. At level 79, I was finally able to get a decent run on Lance. Hydro Pump was no longer a one-shot, but it still took out about 70% of Ponyta's health in one hit. If the dragons were free, I wouldn't care, but their AI isn't trash against Fire types, so I still ran the risk of being defeated. Not taking any gambles, I only set up two Agilities against Dragonair, as it whittled my health away a bit. Body Slam ended up one-shotting both it and its followup, and Aerodactyl went down with 2 Fire Blasts. Dragonite took one hit, used fucking Agility of all things, then went down with another attack, as I just barely lived. Incidentally, Dragonite provided me with a fresh level, so I didn't have to worry myself about using my last candy. The Champion fight went about as well as I could have asked for. I set up my 3 agilities on Pidgeot, as it went for Whirlwind, missed Sky Attack, and used whirlwind again before getting knocked out. Alakazam was an easy one-shot, but Rhydon wasn't. Thankfully it doesn't have any good attacks against me, so it only chipped me with Fury Attack. Exeggutor was an easy Fire Blast one-shot, Arcanine was a 2-shot with Body Slam, only using Roar on me, and Blastoise missed Hydro pump (not that it would have mattered outside of a cheeky crit), allowing me an easy 2 shot there. Honestly, I'm surprised Ponyta was able to outperform Growlithe and Vulpix despite the absence of Flamethrower or Dig. Fire Spin bailed me out a few times, even though it's a very spotty move. I guess this is one of those instances where stats really are a difference-maker.

Next up is Slowpoke. It's going to be weird having Horn Drill/Fissure actually be threats again.

Also, may as well make a tier list for the progress so far. I went with an arbitrary combination of time and level to rank everything, also factoring in the time differences between my runs and the Jrose ones. I decided to not tier Jigglypuff due to not getting the most I could out of it. I presume that run will be done before I do all the unattempted ones.

2 more days, 2 more runs. Gonna have to split these into a few posts.

>Slowpoke

I was expecting Slowpoke to be a solid pick. So much so, in fact, that I decided to give myself an additional layer of challenge: I made an attempt to complete this run with minimum battles. Stat-wise, Slowpoke is pretty decent. It has solid bulk between a solid base 90 HP and 65 defense, although its Special is a bit lackluster, and it's really fucking slow, obviously (Although its leveling group is, oddly enough, Medium Fast). Additionally, it has a pretty solid attack stat also of 65, but this became irrelevant in due time. Slowpoke starts out with Confusion, easily one of the best attacks it could start with. Unfortunately it doesn't learn anything new until level 18 (Disable), and doesn't learn a new attack by levelup until level 22 (Headbutt). Rival 1 was an easy win since I made him choose Bulbasaur, even though his choice would have been irrelevant as far as this battle goes. I went up through Viridian Forest to deal with the mandatory Weedle trainer, who went down in 1 attempt, although Slowpoke's lackluster Special stat was starting to show. Although it was at a 3 level disadvantage, it was still using a supereffective STAB move, so Weedle should have went down easier than it did, although it went down pretty easy to begin with. Brock was next up, and it took a decent number of tries. Even with Geodude and Onix having low Special, each required several hits to take down, thus multiple attempts were needed. I needed Geodude to use minimal Tackles and Onix to mostly use Screech. A few attempts in and both occurred, allowing me to get past him. Learning from the Tentacool run, I taught Slowpoke Bide for future reference. I grabbed Water Gun from Mount Moon just so I'd have a Water attack, not that it really mattered, since Confusion was better for the two mandatory trainers in there. I did have a bit of issue with Zubats, since my speed prevented me from always running away, and Leech Life did a decent chunk of damage. But I was able to make my way out. Once I hit Cerulean, I dealt with the mandatory lackey in the Cerulean Gym, leaving me with two options: Misty or Rival 2. With the set I was working with at the level I was at, both were effectively impossible. Slowpoke didn't have enough bulk to execute Bide strats against Misty, nor did it have the oomph to get past Rival 2. I had no choice, and had to use an unusual strategy: I used up both my Rare Candies to get Slowpoke to level 19. While it wasn't enough to get past Rival 2, I was able to eventually get RNG to swing in my favor against Misty, barely taking out her Starmie after she used an X Defend on turn 1 then tackled 3 times, one being a crit. This not only got me a level up, but got me access to Bubblebeam, which would be my go-to attack for a good while. Rival 2 was a surprisingly easy romp after this, and nothing en route to Bill’s house really presented any issue. The first mandatory trainer before Vermilion was annoying to deal with, thanks to all of her Pidgeys having Sand Attack, and all three being able to get at least 2 attacks on me before going down. At this point, “True” minimum battles was out of the question, as I needed to grab a Spearow to trade for Farfetch’d for Cut (with bonus Fly), but outside of mandatory HM slaves, I was still en route to finish this run according to plan. I grabbed what I could off the S.S. Anne without running into extra trainers, begrudgingly skipping both a Rare Candy and the TM for Body Slam, since both required one battle apiece. Rival 3 took a few attempts, as everything on his team could, and usually did, chew away at me a bit, which added up. One cut HM later, and I could safely progress. I opted to skip the Vermilion Gym for obvious reasons. Rock Tunnel wasn’t awful, although one of the mandatory hikers did boom on me, but Slowpoke’s bulk made it survivable. Now that the game was opening up a bit for me, I was expecting things to ease up, and that ended up being the case. I quickly opened up Saffron to get Psychic to replace Confusion, and grabbed Ice Beam, although I didn’t teach it yet. I then went through the Rocket hideout to deal with Giovanni, which was painless between Bubblebeam for the Rock and Ground types and Psychic for everything else. Next up was a return to Vermilion, which even with the extra levels I had, took a few attempts to deal with Surge. At this point, my only available options were Erika and her mandatory trainer, and Rival 4. Once again for obvious reasons, I opted to deal with the latter, which once again took a few tries, thanks to once again being at the mercy of RNG as far as damaging moves went.

>>16938527

>Magnemite

On paper, Magnemite is awful. It’s tied for the third-worst base health in the game with Abra, only above Diglett and Magikarp. Its attack is pretty awful, being tied for 8th-lowest with fellow special attackers Kadabra and Gastly, as well as Weedle. Its speed isn’t terrible, but it’s far from good. It really shines in the Defense (Base 70) and Special (Base 95) categories, however. Unfortunately for it, it can’t really take full advantage of its high Special, as it only learns Electric and Normal-type attacks. Given this questionable stat line and shallow movepool, Magnemite found itself on a “Top 10 worst solo pokemon for Red/Blue” list. So calling it awful should be a fair assumption. Or is it? It had a very rough beginning, losing the first rival fight. I didn’t even bother trying Brock until I learned Sonicboom at level 21, since I figured it would be effectively impossible otherwise. Grinding took a fair bit, since a low attack stat + Tackle meant I usually needed multiple hits to take out things several levels below me. But once I got to that magic level, Brock was a breeze. Sonicboom would be my bread and butter for the next few levels, blowing through Mount Moon with relatively little issue. It wasn’t enough to get me to level 25, however, so Misty was still out of the question. I instead opted to take the other route, dealing with Rival 2, who was fairly easy thanks to Sonicboom spam. On the way to Bill, I hit level 25 and learned Thundershock, finally giving me a special attack, which replaced Sonicboom outside of Ground and Grass types, which were still subject to it, although it was already starting to show its age, and it would only get weaker. After getting the S.S. Ticket, Misty was a complete joke thanks to Thundershock, as was the annoying Pidgey trainer before Vermilion. Since I figured I needed the levels, I dealt with some optional trainers on the S.S. Anne, focusing on the sailors for easy 1-shots. Rival 3 was trivial between Sonicboom for Ivysaur and Thundershock for everything else. Surge was an easy win, since his team couldn’t do much for me, and gave me a much-needed Thunderbolt TM, which quickly replaced Thundershock. Rock Tunnel was surprisingly easy, since only one of the mandatory trainers ever boomed on me. Since there was nothing of real value in Celadon or Saffron for me this time around, I opted to deal with Rival 4, who was trivialized thanks to Thunderbolt wrecking his team, with even Ivysaur getting in on the action. I then went to Rocket Hideout, grabbed the Double Edge TM just in case, and dealt with Giovanni. Sonicboom was quickly showing its age, taking a few hits to deal with Onix and Rhyhorn, as well as the Sandshrews and Sandslash on the Rockets before him. While I was tempted to replace it with Double Edge, I ended up deciding against it. I climbed Lavender Tower with no real issue to speak of, grabbed the Silph Scope, went down Cycling Road taking out a few trainers for some more experience, and made my way to Fuschia. On the way, I hit level 41, allowing me to learn Swift, which I replaced Sonicboom with. I grabbed my mandatory items from the Safari Zone before dealing with Koga, who was extremely easy due to Thunderbolt’s raw power. I then went to Silph to take a shot at Rival 5, who I wasn’t quite strong enough to do yet, since his team chipped away at me over time. I then went to deal with Erika, since I was several levels above her by now. Even with Thunderbolt being resisted, she went down with relatively little issue. I took out some optional trainers back at Silph before taking Rival 5, who ended up being much easier with a few levels. I grabbed Lapras, and took a detour before dealing with Giovanni, who I suspected would be rough due to having 2 ground types. I went to Cinnabar, took out all the trainers in the Mansion and in the gym, culimating in wrecking Blaine without issue. I made my way back to Silph to deal with Giovanni. The trainer before him was a nonissue, but he took two attempts. As it turns out, my concerns were justified, as I had to rely on Supersonic and Swift to chip his Rhyhorn and Nidoqueen to death. But it ended up working out with barely any health left, so on to the Saffron Gym I went.

>>16922000

>He called the Ekans "Snek"

Got a few more runs in, I'll try to be a tad less verbose. No promises.

>Farfetch'd

Given the reputation of a shitmon that Farfetch'd had developed for the longest time, you'd think this would have been much worse. And to be fair, it does have a bit going against it. Its stats aren't awful, but it doesn't excel in any category, its strongest base stat being Attack at 65. It also has a very, very limited move pool, similar to the other Normal/flying types in this gen. However, it makes up for this by being a total setup beast, eventually learning both Swords Dance and Agility. Brock wasn't too awful thanks to starting out with Sand Attack, and grinding was quick thanks to having Peck. I got to level 15 just so I'd have Fury Attack for extra PP, but once I got there, it was an easy one-shot. By the time I got to Cerulean, I wasn't quite strong enough for Misty, so I went for Rival 2. I slightly out-leveled his team, and thanks to Farfetch'd having stage 2 pokemon stats, it had little issue getting past him. On the way to Bill's, I got Swords Dance, allowing me to slaughter Misty after getting back to Cerulean. Rival 3 saw a similar fate, as did Surge, since I could easily set up on Voltorb with little concern, and having STAB Body Slam was a huge plus. Around this time I leveled up to 31, giving me access to Agility. I weighed whether or not to replace Sand Attack, knowing that Rock Tunnel was coming up. I decided to get rid of it, which was easily the right call. Despite my bad coverage, Swords Dance with Body Slam made Rock Tunnel completely doable without any extra grinding. I quickly nabbed Fly to replace Peck and give me my final set extra-early, and swept through Erika's team. Setting up Swords Dances allowed me to sweep Giovanni's team as well. From there on out, it was pretty much a slaughter. I set up Swords Dance and/or Agility where necessary, and cut through teams with Body Slam and Fly. From that point, the most annoying fights were Rival 5 and Koga, due to Sand-attack and Smokescreen, respectively. But even with that, Koga? Sweep. Rival 5? Sweep. Giovanni? Sweep. Blaine? Sweep. Sabrina? Sweep. Giovanni again? Fucking sweep. Rival 6? Sweep. Did you think the Elite 4 would stop my dominance? While Lorelei was able to safely 2-shot me with Dewgong's Aurora Beam going in, I had some Rare Candies in my back pocket that turned her 2-shot into a 3-shot, allowing me to get through her team with less issue. Bruno? Sweep. Agatha? AI decided to cooperate with me, so after some careful plays on my end, sweep. Lance? Once again, AI decided to play nice, so sweep. Champion fight? Pidgeot never got a Sky Attack off, so it was another easy sweep. And with another sub-4 hour run in my pocket, I can safely say Farfetch'd's excellent stat-boosting moves more than made up for its faults, making it a top-tier pokemon for this format.

>>16938921

>Doduo

Finally, I got to test the last of the Normal/flying types for this run. Doduo, simply put, is Spearow, but better. Similar-style stat spread, but with better attack (base 85) and speed (base 75). Even its movepool is better, getting access to Body Slam to use instead of Double-edge. However, Doduo struggles a bit more early-game, due to smaller movepool at low level. While Spearow gets a full attack set by level 15, Doduo doesn't learn a new attack outside of Peck until level 20. Thankfully, Doduo's high attack meant it was able to chunk Brock's team pretty well. I grinded up to level 19, giving myself enough experience to level up on the Geodude, so I'd have Growl for Onix. This strategy gave me an easy Bide counter, and made Brick a 1-shot at this level. Much of the game from there was very easy. Rival 2 was a nonissue, nor was Misty after getting back from Bill's. Rival 3 was another rout. I gave up on Surge after a few tries, since my damage wasn't quite enough to cut through his team without getting wrecked because Doduo is very frail. Rival 4 went much more favorably, between having no Electric types and picking up Drill Peck along the way. Erika was predictably free, and Giovanni 1 wasn't awful due to easily being able to brute-force him. With ~10 more levels under my belt, I went back for Surge, who was an easy sweep this time. From there, I went to Fuschia to down Koga. Since his team is tanky, I needed to take out a few extra trainers for levels to down him. Around this point, Around Rival 5, I got Agility, giving me access to some much-needed badge boosting to more easily cut through his team. Giovanni met a similar fate, as did Sabrina, who is always pretty easy with a high-attack, high-speed pokemon. Blaine was simple, per usual. By Giovanni 3, I took a detour to grab the Mimic TM to make him much easier. I brute-forced Rhyhorn, Mimiced Dig off of Dugtrio, and swept through the rest of his team. Rival 6 was basically set up Agilities and win. I knew the Elite 4 would give me issues, so I took on as many Victory Road trainers as I could, and even that wasn't quite enough. I blew all my rare candies except for the last one before even trying Lorelei, and even that wasn't enough to clear her out. Aurora Beam was a 2-shot even with a several-level advantage, so all I could do was grind. So I dealt with a multitude of optional trainers before going back, getting a few extra levels. With that, I was finally able to at least consistently get some of her team down, although I needed a bit more leveling to pass her. After that, it at least got much easier. Bruno got deleted, and Agatha was pretty much hopeless, since Drill Peck made quick work of her team at this point, and I outsped everything. Lance was a bit of a step up, requiring a bit of badge boosting to cut through his team. The Champion fight saw similar results, but was very doable. While Doduo is easily better than Spearow (at least on paper since that runs needs a second take) or Pidgey, it's well below Farfetch'd, pretty much solely due to lack of Swords Dance, although lower bulk didn't help either.

>>16938923

>Seel

I was expecting early game to be really awful, having only Headbutt by levelup before level 30, and an underwhelming base 45 attack. Apparently I got good Attack IVs and/or bad Special IVs, because those two stats were pretty close to each other. Between that and Headbutt having a pretty good Flinch Rate, I was able to deal with Brock around level 19, using Struggle to get the last bit of HP off of Onix. I grabbed Water Gun from Mount Moon, dealing with some of the more lucrative optional trainers, before getting to Cerulean. I opted to deal with Misty first, and her AI cooperated with me, allowing me to down Staryu with Headbutts and downing Starmie with a Bide + headbutt (Shit's seriously broken on high-HP Water types in that gym). With Bubblebeam giving me an upgrade on neutral targets, Rival 2 and the subsequent trainers provided no real threat to me. The S.S. Anne granted me Body Slam, giving me 2 solid attacking options fairly early on. It made Rival 3 a cinch. I opted to skip Surge for now, blowing through Rock Tunnel to Lavender. I went to Celadon to grab Ice Beam and dealt with Giovanni. After that, I went back to Surge, who was pretty much a sweep sans Raichu, then Lavender, where Rival 4 was a pretty simple in-and-out with my pretty-solid coverage. After getting the flute, I went down to the Safari Zone to grab Surf to replace Bubblebeam, then went for Koga, who was a very easy win with my two strong STABs. I took a detour to Cinnabar to beat up the trainers in the mansion and gym for some extra levels before dealing with Rival 5, who was similarly pretty simple as a result, ditto for Giovanni. Sabrina took more than one try due to uncooperative AI, but Giovanni 3 was a punching bag. By Rival 6 I grabbed Mimic, allowing me to set up on Pidgeot to sweep his team. One victory road and learned Blizzard with PP ups later and I was at the Elite Four. Lorelei was a bit of a wall, but a few Rare Candies quickly fixed it. Body Slam dealt with Dewgong, Surf dealt with Cloyster, I set up Mimicked Amnesias against Slowbro, and swept her last two easily, without killing my PPs, no less. Bruno was a painless sweep. Agatha was annoying, per usual. Seel lacks good tools to deal with her team, outside of neutral special STABs. But with a bit of cooperative AI, she went down eventually. Lance was simple once I got past Gyarados, thanks in part due to her Dragonite wasting a turn after I got a cheeky Blizzard miss. The Champion fight was pretty easy as well. Blizzard was a one-shot on Pidgeot, I took Recover from Alakazam before Body Slamming it to death, topped off against Rhydon before downing it, then downed Gyarados, topping off again on Arcanine, and downing Venusaur with 2 Blizzards. I'm surprised at how quick this run was, given how Lorelei's Dewgong is usually a punching bag on these runs. Then again, Ponyta was in a similar boat, and that turned out decently too.

>>16938925

>Grimer

Grimer runs into the exact same issue as Seel: No levelup moves till 30, and worse still, it gets Pound instead of Headbutt, although it gets Disable to serve as a Bide counterplay. On the flipside, it has higher base HP and Attack (both 80). Still, it took a bit more leveling to get past Brock, solely due to the extra bulk needed to compensate for weaker moves. As tends to be the case, things got a bit easier after that. Bide Strats were able to make quick work of Misty, Rival 2 was surprisingly cooperative, Rival 3 was even easier thanks to getting access to Body Slam, Surge was pretty easy due to not being weak to Electric. As an added Bonus, Grimer can learn Thunderbolt via TM, so I slapped that on, despite Grimer's underwhelming Special. It definitely helped with Rock Tunnel, as Slowpokes were free wins, as well as Rival 4, due to Gyarados's quad weakness. I opted to not to Erika till later, due to Grimer's awful speed. Rocket Hideout was next up, and it wasn't a complete walk in the part. Grimer doesn't really have any answers for Ground types, much less Rock/ground types without learning Mega Drain, which would require me to get rid of another useful move. So I decided to just say "fuck it" and just brute force it, utilizing Bide strats on Giovanni's Rhyhorn, while just using Body Slam/Thunderbolt on Onix and Kangaskhan, respectively. I went to get the Pokeflute, which wasn't awful due to surprisingly cooperative Channeler fights, where their Gastlies both outsped me and weren't 1-shots. Around this point I got Sludge, giving me a nice STAB move. I went for Koga next, who was still a bit too much for me. I leveled on trainers a tad more to get me to level 42, giving me Harden, and by extension a way to abuse badge boosting. Harden is especially good for Koga, due to all of his attacks being physical, and me not being able to be poisoned. It was a pretty painless procedure after that, although I did need his Koffings to not spam Smokescreens on me. Weezing went down with a boom that didn't really hurt much. With more levels in tow, I went for Erika next. Victrebell still outsped me, but it missed its first Wrap, and I misclicked Thunderbolt, of all things. A few turns later and it missed again, allowing me to get the killing blow. Tangela and Vileplume were formalities in comparison. I dealt with the dojo to get some quick experience and made sure to have a fresh level before Rival 5. The play was to get rid of Pidgeot ASAP so it wouldn't set up Sand Attack and set up on Exeggcute, who couldn't attack due to Gen 1 AI. After that, it was a simple sweep. Giovanni wasn't terrible, since his team really couldn't hurt me much after setting up 6 hardens. Was more tedious than anything else. Before even trying Sabrina, I went to Cinnabar to get a few more levels and the Special stat part of the badge boost. Next up was Sabrina. First attempt was a wash, but second one went much better. Her Kadabra still outsped me, so it chunked about half of my health with Psybeam. Mr. Mime was next. I started setting up Hardens, while it used a single Confusion against several Light Screens.

I got sidetracked by various shit, but I got 2 more to add, even though my memory is a tad fuzzy on the first run.

>Shellder

Despite being Water type, Shellder doesn't learn any Water type moves by levelup until level 23, or any special moves at all until that level. Add to that being in the slow experience group, and you have a fairly long gauntlet to get past Brock. Level 18 was an absolute must, since it allowed me access to Supersonic, on top of Tackle and Withdraw. The strategy simply became "keep enemy pokemon confused, get a few Withdraws up, and Tackle otherwise". Took a few attempts to pull off, but I eventually got the win. Thankfully Mount Moon offered me Water Gun to give me much-needed coverage. Misty was a joke, since both of her pokemon only ever use Tackle due to her AI, allowing me to just set up Withdraws and Tackle/Supersonic my way to an easy win. With Bubblebeam in tow, Rival 2 and the path to Bill were easy. Similarly, Rival 3 was a nonissue, although I had to take a detour, since Surge was able to outspeed me and crush me with Electric attacks. Rock Tunnel was simple enough, and access to Celadon meant access to Ice Beam, which ended up replacing Clamp, which unfortunately wasn't of super much use due to Shellder's fairly low Base 40 speed. Said speed also made Celadon Gym out of the question, since Shellder isn't terribly tanky against special attacks. Thankfully Rocket Hideout was a much simpler affair (I made sure to pick up Double Edge here as well), and Rival 4 was a breeze with my levels and type coverage. The rest of Lavender Tower was fairly simple as well. I then finally went to the Vermilion Gym to clear out Surge so I'd be able to fly around, then went to Fuschia, first heading to the Safari Zone for Surf, then to Koga, who was a simple rout. Since I didn't need to rely on the gift Lapras for Surf, I went straight to Cinnabar to get some easy XP from the Pokemon Mansion and gym trainers, as well as the Blizzard TM for later. Finally, I returned to the Celadon Gym to wipe the floor with Erika before heading to Silph Co. to deal with Rival 5. It took a few attempts due to Pidgeot's Sand Attack, but with a few badge boost Withdraws, I was able to sweep through his team. Giovanni was a joke once again, and Sabrina was fairly simple: Kill Kadabra, set up on Mr. Mime, sweep team. Finally, Giovanni was predictably an easy sweep. Rival 6 was also pretty easy due to no more issues with Sand Attack, so it was a rout with badge boosting. Finally, I got to the Elite Four. Lorelei was doable, since I could easily set up, it was a race against my PP, though. Bruno was a joke, as he generally is. Agatha, however, was a wall, and why I was forced to level up a bit more. Shellder simply lacks answers against her ghosts, since Double Edge was useless, and special attacks don't deal much damage. Upon getting to level 62, I used up all but one Rare Candy, which allowed me to brute force her team with a bit of cooperative AI. Lance was thankfully easier, since Shellder's pretty tanky against physical attacks even without factoring in Withdraw, so the only real threat was Dragon Rage. It was a simple sweep with Blizzard. Finally, the Champion fight was quite easy, since Pidgeot was easy setup fodder, and the rest of his team sort of fell over, between Blizzard for Pidgeot, Double-edge for Alakazam, Surf for Rhydon, Blizzard for Gyarados, Surf for Arcanine, and Blizzard for Venusaur. Overall, I'd consider Shellder a pretty middle-of-the-road pokemon compared to everything else that's been tested so far.

>>16940450

>Onix

For anyone unfamiliar with Pokemon stats, Onix has a rather odd stat line. Insane Base 160(!) defense, okay speed, bad everything else. I actually checked how good my Onix was, and apparently it had pretty much the best attack it could start with, while having a lower speed, which I was perfectly fine with. I thought I would end up needing Bind for Brock, but I didn't even need to get that far. Screech is invaluable for Brock, and my defense was high enough at level 13 where I was basically taking no damage from his team, although it still took a few attempts due to getting hit by some screeches myself. With that section being fairly quick, I opted to take on some optional trainers on the way to Cerulean, grabbing Bind and Rock Throw en route, which would be invaluable as far as getting chip damage against pokemon I couldn't one-shot, but could one-shot me. I skipped over Misty for obvious reasons, instead going to Bill's first. Rock Throw made Pidgeotto a cinch once I could get it to actually hit, and the rest of his team was pretty free once I got decent Bind luck against his Bulbasaur. By Rival 3, I had acquired Dig, finally giving me a good STAB move, making that fight much easier, although still not a first-attempter. At level 29, I tried Misty again, and even with an 8 level advantage, Starmie still outsped and one-shot me with even a noncritical Water Gun, so I clearly needed a bit more experience. I went back at level 31, and was able to outspeed, although Dig still wasn't a one-shot against Starmie. So I got a few binds in against it before digging, where I got it down to a sliver of health. It used water gun against me, getting me down to a sliver as well, but another Dig finished the job. I decided to not deal with Surge quite yet to save time. A few of the trainers on the way to Lavender were a bit spicy, but there were no real roadblocks. I then went to Celadon to replace Rock Throw with Rock Slide, grabbing Fly, then going back to Vermilion to easily sweep surge. Oddly enough, he was able to get an X speed on Pikachu on the turn I dug underground, despite the fact that I was faster. Didn't really affect anything, but was still interesting to see. Fucking Gen 1 man. Anyhow, Rocket Hideout was easy since nothing in there could really harm me. My coverage made Rival 2 simple, although Ivysaur prevented it from being a one-shot. The rest of the tower was easy largely thanks to Dig. One flute later, and I got to Fuschia to deal with Koga, who, unsurprisingly, was super easy thanks to Dig once again And Weezing just boomed while I was underground, which is always fun to see. Before dealing with Rival 5, I leveled up a bit more to get to 43 to get Harden, finally replacing Screech. I fought a few more optional trainers since I needed the experience anyway, as well as a fresh level for Badge Boosting fun. I opted to not set up too much against Pidgeot so I wouldn't have to dick with Sand Attack. I instead set up on Growlithe, one-shot everything up to Venusaur, got a bit of chip damage on it via bind, then finished it off with my fairly freshly-learned Earthquake, which replaced Dig, finalizing my moveset. After another easy Giovanni battle, I went to Cinnabar next for some easy levels, then to Celadon for a one-shot sweep on Erika, then Saffron for an easy sweep against Sabrina, once again setting up on Mr. Mime, then finally Viridian, where took out all of the trainers in the gym before making quick work of Giovanni. I took a slight detour to beat a trainer I missed for a fresh level for Rival 6. It was much easier than Rival 5, since I could set up on Pidgeot. I still had to chip Venusaur with Bind before hitting it with Earthquake, though.

>>16940454

One Victory Road crawl later, and I proceeded to get walled by Lorelei. All of her attacks were at least near-one shots, and I couldn't put out enough damage to one-shot or get her early pokemon into potion range. One Rare Candy supply (bar one) later, and I was able to squeak by her. Dewgong was a one-shot at best, potion range at worst. Cloyster required a bit of luck with Bind for chip damage before Rock Sliding. Slowbro was another one that needed some Bind damage before 2 Earthquakes did the job. Jynx was an easy one-shot with Rock Slide, and Lapras was another one that required some Bind Damage before Rock Sliding into potion range before killing. Bruno was an easy one-shot with a Harden setup against his first Onix then just spamming Earthquake against his team. Agatha was even easier, since I outsped her whole team and Earthquake/Rock Slide one-shot everything without having to set up boosts. Lance was another instance where Bind saved the day, as it was needed to get Gyarados into kill range with Rock Slide. I set up a few boosts against his Dragonair, taking a decent chunk from Dragon Rages before one-shotting both of them with Earthquake, then Aerodactyl with Rock Slide. Dragonite wasn't quite a one-shot with Rock Slide, however, but Lance opted to not use a potion on it, allowing me to just Bind the last bit of health off. The Champion fight was a play-by-play repeat of Rival 6 as far as tactics. Overall, Onix is pretty above-average, surprisingly enough. Like with Geodude, having things to set up on makes the game much easier. Plus, being much faster than Geodude was a huge boon.

The tier list has been modified as well with the new runs. Someone else managed to do an itemless solo run with a Weedle as well, so I bumped that up a tier, even though it requires insane luck and apparently specialized training. Drowzee's up next. Should be a nice and easy one.

More of this shit.

>Drowzee

I was expecting Drowzee to be a solid pick, based on my previous runs and what I was working with. Psychic types are excellent, Base 90 Special is great, getting Psychic via levelup is a nice little head start, making the extra trip to Saffron unneeded, it has pretty good bulk, a sleep-inducing move, and an attack-boosting move to patch up one of its weaknesses as as well as take advantage of badge-boosting. Only real weaknesses are low base speed and a somewhat limited movepool. But the good definitely far outweighed the bad. Brock took a little while to get past, due to not having the oomph to get through his team before getting Confusion at level 17. But at that point, both of his pokemon were easy 2-shots, and everything up to Cerulean fell every bit as easily, with Mega Punch being picked up on the way. Rival 2 was a pretty easy win between Confusion and Mega Punch, and the Nugget Bridge wasn't an issue. Misty wasn't bad either, thanks to Drowzee's solid bulk, so even with Drowzee's fairly low attack, it was very much doable. Rival 3 was more of the same, although with Body Slam in play, it was a more reliable win. Surge was, unsurprisingly, simple. Confusion spam basically carried me. While getting through Rock Tunnel, I did manage to get Psychic, replacing Confusion. I decided to just get Rival 4 out of the way, and he completely fell over, to the surprise of no one. Giovanni and Erika met similar fates, and Lavender Tower wasn't an issue either. Around this time I grabbed Meditate, replacing Mega Punch and finally completing my set of Hypnosis-Psychic-Body Slam-Meditate. At this point, I was nigh-unstoppable. Koga was a sweep with Psychic, Rival 5 was a sweep with a bit of badge-boost setup, Giovanni 2 was a sweep, Sabrina was a sweep with setup once again, Blaine was similar, as was Giovanni 3. As long as Drowzee could survive long enough to land Hypnosis to start setting up, pretty much nothing was out of reach. Rival 6 was simple for this reason as well. As far as the Elite 4 went, well, nothing really changed. Well, mostly. Lorelei was safe to set up on and sweep, Bruno didn't even require setting up on to sweep, Agatha was vulnerable enough to Psychic spam where I could just brute force it with a bit of luck, and Lance was a fairly safe setup. The Champion fight was no different, and as a result, I found myself in the Hall of Fame at a lower level than any other run I've done (without evasion cheese), although the time it took to beat Brock single-handedly prevented it from being one of the fastest runs. While I could definitely contend that Sleep is one step down from Evasion as far as being unfair goes, the luck component didn't change THAT much in comparison, so I consider it entirely valid.

>>16941152

>Krabby

Krabby is basically reverse Magnemite. It has an absurd base 105 attack and a slightly-less-absurd base 90 defense, but its other stats are okay at best, and pitiful at worst. Of note, it only has a base Special of 25, on par with fucking Rattata of all things. I say "reverse Magnemite" because while Magnemite starts with a Physical attack and doesn't get a Special attack until a fair bit later, Krabby starts with a Special attack (and, cruelly enough, a defense-lowering attack) and doesn't get a Physical attack until a fair bit later, level 20, to be specific. The good news is Water is probably the second-best attacking type in early game, behind Psychic. As a result, even with Krabby's pitiful special, I only needed to grind a few levels to get past Brock, partially because I opted to defeat his optional trainer for extra experience. Brock himself was cake. Of all the things that could give me issues early game, it was one of the Youngsters on the route after. On things that water isn't strong against, Krabby needs to get a few attacks in to actually kill something. Even with Krabby's defense, the Youngster's Rattata could do decent damage with Tackle and Quick Attack and fuck me up with Leer, and Ekans could get nasty if it got poison off and Wrapped, which did end up happening. I ended up having to defeat the optional Lass before the mandatory trainers on the route for a bit more experience, and even after that, it took a few attempts to actually get past the Youngster. Thankfully things got a bit easier from there. Mount Moon gifted Krabby the Water Gun TM, effectively doubling Bubble's effectiveness. I made extra-sure to hit level 20 before getting through, so I beat up some optional trainers and wild encounters on the way through, just squeaking to that point for Vice Grip. This made the game magnitudes easier. Rival 2 was a pretty clean sweep with it, and Nugget Bridge was a nonissue. Krabby is pretty much a perfect matchup against Misty, so I took her on before heading to Vermilion. While Starmie in particular could have fucked me over with Water Gun or Bubblebeam, Misty's AI effectively prevents her from using any moves besides Tackle, which Krabby is okay with, thanks to his defense, so he was pretty much free to Vice Grip to his heart's content. After getting that done, I made my way to the S.S. Anne, grabbed Body Slam, and made quick work of Rival 3, although it took 2 attempts due to bad luck on try #1. I opted to just skip Surge for now for obvious reasons. I got Stomp while going through Rock Tunnel, giving me a bit of extra physical PP to work with alongside Body Slam. While I had thought about getting Ice Beam in Celadon, I decided it wasn't worth it and just rolled with what I had through Rocket Hideout, where Giovanni was a nuisance. I decided to skip Erika for what should be obvious reasons, and decided to deal with Surge instead. It was a 1-shot, but it very well could have turned into multiple attempts. Even with an 11-level advantage against his Raichu, ThunderSHOCK did about half of my health on a non-crit, showing how awful its special bulk is. Thankfully Rival 4 was easy, and I had surprisingly decent luck with the Channelers, who could have made my day pretty bad. After grabbing the Pokeflute, I did something I rarely do: I went to Silph, grabbed the Card Key, then grabbed the TM for Swords Dance, and the game suddenly opened way the fuck up. I blew through Koga with zero issue, learned Harden via level-up for more badge-boosting fun, went back to Erika, where Victrebell was a 1-shot, Tangela chipped me but was a 2-shot, and 2-shot Vileplume who hit me pretty hard with Petal Dance before getting knocked out. After carefully leveling up, I tried my hand at Rival 5.

Here we go again.

>Voltorb

Even if Voltorb ended up being a faster run, it just feels like a much worse version of Magnemite. While Voltorb does have its advantages, notably an excellent base 100 speed (versus 45), as well as health (base 40 vs base 25), on top of learning Sonicboom earlier (level 17 vs level 21), it's worse in virtually every other category. Its attack is lower (30 vs 35), as is its defense (50 vs 70), and there's a pretty huge gap in Special (55 vs 95). Voltorb also doesn't even learn Double Edge, whereas Magnemite does, making its strongest Normal-type move Take Down. Perhaps the most damning part of Voltorb is the fact that it can't learn Electric type moves by levelup, so it has to rely on Normal type moves exclusively until beating Surge. Beyond that, it has a similar issue of lack of coverage, only learning Normal and Electric moves, and no moves to abuse badge boosting. So what made it a faster run? The answer to that question begins and ends with Brock. Learning Sonicboom 4 levels earlier saves a LOT of grinding in Viridian Forest. That's all there really is to it. That said, Rival 2 took a bit of favorable AI due to only having Tackle and Sonicboom as my attacks for the forseeable future. I couldn't even deal with Misty after seeing Bill due to lack of good attacks. Rival 3 wasn't going down easily either, so I needed to deal with a decent number of optional trainers on the boat, having to grind up to the early 30s in order to actually take him down. The extra levels made Misty much more doable, and Surge was a walk in the park with Light Screen in my movepool, which would prove to be surprisingly good for a long while. More importantly, I finally got my bread-and-butter in Thunderbolt. It wouldn't be super amazing for Rock Tunnel, unfortunately, but Sonicboom did carry me through the mandatory rock and ground-type trainers. I decided to get Rival 4 out of the way, which was cake due to the addition of Thunderbolt. Rocket Hideout wasn't awful, and around that time I was able to replace Tackle with Swift, a much appreciated upgrade. The Lavender Tower Marowak could have been awful, but he has a tendency to not use Bone Club, so it wasn't bad. One Pokeflute later, and I went to work on the Fuschia Gym. I needed to get some levels off of optional trainers to tank Koga's team, though. I decided to go to the Celadon Gym afterwards, which wasn't bad. Rival 5 required some more leveling, but Light Screen helped keep Voltorb up against the tail end of his team. Giovanni 2 was obnoxious due to having to rely on Sonicboom for 2 of his team members. I hit up Saffron Gym next, which took more than one try due to bad enemy crit luck, but Light Screen bailed me out once more. Cinnabar wasn't anything to write home about. Before dealing with the Viridian Gym, I replaced Sonicboom with Mimic, since it had more than carried its weight. Giovanni took multiple attempts due to him being trolly with Dugtrio and using a Guard Spec while underground, fucking up the rhythm of mimicked Dig. Beyond that it was still pretty close, getting brought down to low health before getting a free kill on Fissure-spamming Rhydon. Without Sonicboom in the mix, I decided to mix up my strategy for Rival 6, relying on a bit of RNG cheese. After dealing with Pidgeot, I mimicked Horn Drill off of Rhyhorn, used that to kill it after setting up Light Screen, dealt with Gyarados and Growlithe with Thunderbolt, and 2 more Horn Drills for Alakazam and Venusaur. Not the most honorable strategy, but it got the job done. After taking out a few Victory Road trainers and pumping some Rare Candies into Voltorb, I finally replaced Light Screen with Toxic and proceeded to work on the Elite Four. Lorelei was about as free as you'd imagine. Bruno used the same strategy as Magnemite, with similar results. Agatha was her usual trolly self, but being able to outspeed her team was a huge help in taking out a bit of the RNG, even though her ghosts took longer to kill due to a lower Special. Lance, though, required a bit more leveling just to tank his whole team, since Voltorb didn't really have any offensive or defense answers. After getting through that, though, I got to a much easier Champion fight. Pidgeot was an obvious free kill, Alakazam made me eat a bit of damage, bit nothing awful. I took Psychic as well to make the rest of the fight a tad easier. Rhydon was free thanks to it, and the rest of his team would fall. All in all, definitely a much trickier run than Magnemite was.

>>16942025

>Exeggcute

This run was PAINFUL. Exeggcute has a lot more going against it than it has going for it. First of all, its stats aren't anything to write home about for this point in the pokedex. It has decent bulk, but that's about it. Second, it's cursed with the slow leveling group. Third, its starting moveset is trash. Barrage is not a good move (moreso combined with base 40 attack), and its the only damaging move Exeggcute learns until level 28. Fourth, the rest of its movepool isn't amazing. It does get Psychic via TM as well as starting with Hypnosis and eventually getting Sleep Powder, but not much more. The only grass move it learns is Solarbeam, and for some bizarre reason, it only gets it via levelup, and can't learn it via TM. On top of that, it doesn't learn any badge-boost attacks. Unsurprisingly, Brock took quite a while to grind up for. Not as long as I presumed, thanks to also starting with Hypnosis, but easily at least a good hour and a half of in-game time. I believe I got past him at level 18. The path to Cerulean took a fair bit of time thanks to still only having Barrage (nor did being weak to Poison help). Misty went down with Bide strats, and the path to Bill wasn't pleasant due to Bide being unreliable for that area, and Barrage still being Barrage (Also, poison weakness). Rival 3 took some trainer grinding due to needing more levels, so I once again found myself cleaning the ship. I decided to deal with Surge later, since I didn't immediately need him. On the path to Lavender, I got Leech Seed, which is a nice little defensive boon, which did help with Rock Tunnel. I immediately grabbed Psychic from Saffron, and Double-edge for Rocket Hideout, replacing Leech Seed and Barrage, respectively. My move pool was finally starting to get passable. The next stretch of the game wasn't awful, even if I needed to grind a bit for Koga due to my poison weakness. Erika was a stomp, though. Rival 5 took a few attempts due to relying on Hypnosis on a few members of his team to stay alive, a strategy that would similarly show up in Sabrina's gym. Blaine was actually legitimately difficult, since his AI is at least smart enough to spam Fire attacks. As such, I needed some luck with the newly-learned Sleep Powder hitting and Fire Spins missing to win. Giovanni was much easier, at least, thanks to having Solarbeam and Psychic. Rival 6 was pretty much a repeat of Rival 5, and frankly, part of me was wishing I kept Leech Seed, even though I'd need my full moveset for the Elite 4. Speaking of, after some candies and grinding, Lorelei was still difficult to deal with, once again relying on Sleep strats, and letting Solarbeam do the dirty work. Bruno was free, Agatha was a bit finicky due to Exeggcute's low speed, but with a bit of good RNG was doable. Lance was another matter of Sleep strats. The Champion involved, you guessed it, more sleep strats. Thankfully Sleep is so busted in these games, otherwise this would have taken even longer, and it was my personal third-longest run as-is, not counting my early speedup-laden runs. Having decent bulk also allowed for a bit of wiggle room with the sleep strats.

>>16942026

I'm too far in to stop now, damnit.

>Cubone

Similar to Exeggcute, Cubone has pretty bad stats. Even moreso than Exeggcute, but makes up for it with a much better movepool, starting with STAB Bone Club (65 base power, 85 accuracy), and having access to a much wider variety of attacks via TMs. I barely needed to grind in Viridian Forest, Brock was a pretty quick walk in the park. Thankfully the first mandatory trainer with a flying type doesn't show up until Mount Moon, after the areas that give the Mega Punch and Water Gun TMs, both of which Cubone can learn, giving it much-appreciated coverage. I took out some mandatory trainers for some needed levels before getting to Cerulean. Misty was an obvious no-go, so I instead went for Rival 2 and the path to Bill. Both were pretty easy to clean out. En route to Rival 3 I grabbed both Dig and Body Slam, further bolstering my movepool (Body Slam-Dig-Water Gun-Mega Punch). Due to the amount of coverage I had, Rival 3 wasn't an awful battle. Unfortunately, Misty blocked me from progressing. I needed to take out a few trainers to level up enough to withstand water spam, but around early 30s, I was able to squeak past and grab Bubblebeam on the way out to replace Water Gun. I didn't need Surge, so I just went through Rock Tunnel, which was ultimately uneventful. I cleaned out Rocket Hideout with no real issue, taking advantage of Bubblebeam while I still had it. I replaced it with Ice Beam afterwards before climbing Lavender Tower. It also made Rival 4 a bit easier due to being able to nail Pidgeotto and Ivysaur with it, although I barely hung on from a Gyarados Hydro Pump. Koga was pretty easy for obvious reasons, and Erika was pretty easy now that I outsped her team. I grabbed Earthquake to replace Dig in Silph, then leveled up a bit more for Rival 5. At this point, my coverage meant I could do supereffective damage against most of his team, and neutral damage to the rest. Giovanni 2 was obviously a joke. I opted to hit up Cinnabar next, dealing with the gym trainers for easy Experience (Blaine was obviously a joke at this point). After forgetting that I never dealt with Sabraina, I did so, eating some damage but coming out with a win. Giovanni 3 was yet again free. Rival 6 was more or less a repeat of Rival 5, although I needed a bit of favorable RNG against Venusaur. Unfortunately, this is where things started to go downhill. I dealt with the Victory Road trainers for experience, then blew through my Rare Candies for more levels, because I knew I sure as hell needed them. Lorelei was doable, if not inconsistent for a while before leveling up a bit more against the Elite 4. Her entire team has supereffective attacks, with the only reprieves being Slowbro going for Withdraw, Cloyster missing Clamp or Lapras missing an attack (or, of course, 1/256 misses). Cloyster hitting Clamp always significantly reduced my chances of winning. Bruno was a freebie, and Agatha eventually became very consistent thanks to eventually outspeeding her team. Lance was a wall due to Gyarados's Hydro Pump, and the rest of her team could rough me up a decent bit too. The Champion fight was also a wall. Having nothing to set up with meant there was no way past him outside of really good RNG or simply leveling up enough to brute force it. Pidgeot was free, Alakazam could chunk pretty bad, but wasn't a run-ender. Rhydon was where I ended up trying to set up by fishing for defense drops for Badge Boosting. Doing so resulted in Gyarados not being quite able to kill me, Arcanine being free, and Venusaur barely being a 1-shot. The absurdly high level required to finish this run without extreme luck is somewhat balanced out by how quickly Cubone was able to get to the Elite 4 to begin with. Overall, though, it's still a pretty bad solo runner.

>>16942029

>Hitmonlee

Single-stage pokemon have been pretty good to me so far, and Hitmonlee was certainly no exception. It has an insane base 120 attack, and a great base 87 speed. With those sorts of stats, does it really need a whole lot of bulk? Hitmonlee starts out with Double Kick, which is great news for Brock, but bad news for the mandatory Bug Catchers, since both Poison and Bug resist fighting. Thankfully it also gets Meditate, which is the only reason the mandatory Weedle trainer in Viridian Forest was doable. Brock and his lackey were both cakewalks, and even the bug trainers after Brock were easier than their Viridian counterpart. In Mount Moon, I grabbed Mega Punch, giving Hitmonlee a much-needed move to deal with the upcoming mandatory Zubat grunt, as well as any of the many other upcoming poison types. It was just enough coverage to roll through Nugget Bridge, grabbing Seismic Toss on the way, as well as Misty, who quickly fell. The S.S. Anne gifted me with Body Slam to replace Mega Punch, and Rival 3 was a nonissue. In fact, outside of a few minor snags, the rest of the game was pretty much a nonissue if my time wasn't an indicator of that, so I'll basically skip the "nonissue" content. Thankfully, Seismic Toss can hit ghosts in Gen 1, which is the only reason Lavender Tower was possible (although Bide strats would have worked too, albeit less reliably). Rivals 5 and 6 pretty much operated similarly, dealing with Pidgeot (And Gyarados for 5) before setting up on something safer and sweeping through his teams. Koga was a bit dicey due to how physically tanky his team is, so I needed a few tries (and levels) to beat him. Muk was the safest setup, so I opted to do so against it, hoping for favorable attack choices. Eventually I did get that, allowing me to take out the rest of his team, even after an unlucky crit left Koffing at a sliver of health, giving it a chance to Smokescreen me. Nothing really worth mentioning between those and the Elite Four. By this point, I learned High Jump Kick, which replaced Jump Kick, which replaced Double Kick. Having access to it made Lorelei easy, thanks to a decent chunk of her team being weak to Fighting, Dewgong being free setup fodder, and the remaining two (Slowbro and Jynx) being free due to Amnesia spam and frailty, respectively. Bruno was a High Jump Kick sweep after setting up. Agatha was surprisingly cooperative, since I outsped her. Tossing her ghosts and Body Slamming her Golbat and Arbok netted me a win. Lance was also easy, since all of his dragons couldn't even attack me because of Agility/Barrier spam, so the only real threat was Gyarados, who was still a pretty easy kill. From there, it was setup city and sweeping his team. The Champion was a bit trickier and required some Rare Candy usage. Pidgeot and Alakazam are pretty unfavorable matchups. At my level, Alakazam still outsped me, so I had to get one Meditate off so I'd outspeed it thanks to Badge Boost. One turn was all the setup I needed against Pidgeot, since I outsped and one-shot it as a result, and the absolute worst it could do was crit Wing Attack, which wasn't a run-ender by any stretch of the imagination. Alakazam was a one-shot due to its horrid defenses. Rhydon allowed me to finish setting up, allowing me to sweep the rest of his team with ease. Outside of imperfect coverage, Hitmonlee pretty much has all the tools for a quick and efficient solo, and this run more than proves that.

>>16942031

>Hitmonchan

Unfortunately, Hitmonchan falls quite a bit behind Hitmonlee. Its stats aren't quite as good, trading both attack and speed for defense (which did come in handy in a few situations), and it starts with Comet Punch and Agility, an objectively much worse starting set for early game. The only fighting moves it can learn are Seismic Toss (thankfully), Submission (which I didn't even bother getting the TM for), and Counter (who cares lol). The one upside Hitmonchan has is access to the Elemental Punches, which unfortunately aren't terribly great due to Hitmonchan's bad Special, and they don't come until much later. Brock took a fair bit of grinding to get past, and I had to set up a bit by getting rid of my Agility PP beforehand. The one upside of Comet Punch is that Onix's Bide only factors in the last hit of multi-hit attacks, making Comet Punch a pseudo-counter. Around level 17 or so. I was able to eak out a victory between Comet Punch and Struggle. The path to Mount Moon is a tad easier due to neutrally hitting all of the mandatory trainers. In Mount Moon I grabbed Mega Punch, which unfortunately doesn't give extra coverage, but does give a much stronger attack. Rival 2 and Nugget Bridge weren't bad with my newfound power (And, of course, I grabbed Seismic Toss again for the exact same reason as the Hitmonlee run), and Misty was doable since the only notable difference between Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan for that fight are slightly different base Attacks and different setup moves. Once again, Body Slam was grabbed from the S.S. Anne, replacing Comet Punch and making Rival 3 simple. Surge was simple, but unlike Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan doesn't really have counters for rock-types, so Rock Tunnel was a bit trickier. However, Hitmonchan's higher defense was actually very useful, as it allowed it to more easily tank Selfdestructs. Erika, Giovanni 1, and Rival 4 were all simple enough, and by the time I was climbing Lavender Tower, I got Fire Punch, which I promptly replaced Mega Punch with. It didn't really get a lot of mileage, though, as Seismic Toss was stronger against ghosts, and at best, it did about as much damage as Body Slam did. Koga once again took a bit of leveling, more because Hitmonchan didn't quite have as much sweep potential as Hitmonlee, but hey, it's still bulkier against his team. With the Ice Punch I picked up along the way, I dealt with some Silph grunts before getting Thunderpunch at level 43, then I attempted Rival 5. Thunderpunch does comparable damage to Body Slam against Pidgeot, so I decided I may as well. It's also stronger against Gyarados, which is why I made sure to grab it beforehand. The rest of his team went down without a hitch. Giovanni 2 was a matter of Seismic Toss spam against his Rhyhorn and Body Slam for the rest. Sabrina was surprisingly not bad, since I outsped Kadabra, and could set up an agility against Mr. Mime to sweep the rest of her team. Blaine was also an easy win. Giovanni 3 was basically just a repeat of Giovanni 2. Similarly, Rival 6 was basically a repeat of Rival 5, aside from fully setting up Agilities against Rhyhorn. One Victory Road run later, and it's the Elite 4 again. Lorelei was a bit trickier this time. Dewgong was still free setup fodder, and Thunderpunch is pretty good against Cloyster in particular, although it and Body Slam were plenty for the job. Bruno was a freebie once again, although he put up a bit more of a fight due to having to rely on Seismic Toss for his Onixes. Agatha was basically the same as Hitmonlee. Toss the ghosts, Body Slam the Arbok, and the only real difference being Thunderpunching the Golbat. Lance was also mostly similar, although Gyarados was easier to deal with thanks to having Thunderpunch. The dragons were once again free, Aerodactyl was doable enough. Unfortunately, the Champion is where Hitmonchan simply needed a few more levels, so some candy usage later, and I took care of it. The key difference was in the setup move. Agility prevents Hitmonchan from being able to dispatch Pidgeot like Hitmonlee can, although it's still relevant for dealing with the Alakazam. Long story short, Pidgeot has more opportunity to get damage in. Alakazam is still a one-shot and Rhydon is still setup fodder, though. Gyarados goes down easily, and Arcanine and Venusaur quickly follow. Brock 100% fucked this run over, although Hitmonchan still is well above average in the grand scheme of things.

>Lickitung

Lickitung is excellent for this format. Unlike many single-stage pokemon, it learns attacks quickly, getting a full moveset by levelup alone at level 15. Its stats are pretty good outside of speed, boasting a respectable 310 total BST in Gen 1, leaning towards HP and Defense. Finally, it has an insane movepool, to a point where I had to preplan what I wanted to do. I had to decide between 3 final movesets. All 3 used Body Slam and Earthquake. Set 1 would use Swords Dance and Thunderbolt as the last 2 moves, set 2 would use Defense Curl and Thunderbolt as the last 2 moves, and set 3 would use Defense Curl and Swords Dance as the last 2 moves. After thinking on it for a fairly long time, I went with set 3, because 2 stat-boosting moves is busted in this gen. Licktung starts out with Wrap and Supersonic, and gets Stomp at level 7. I dealt with Bug Catchers to get to level 7, and dealt with a few wild pokemon for experience. Around level 10, I was completely capable of taking out Brock with some luck. I was able to outspeed Geodude, allowing me to cheese a win with Wrap. I didn't outspeed Onix, though, but Wrap with Supersonic was excellent for cheesing it to death. The path to Cerulean wasn't bad, although I did need to Potion up a few times since I didn't outspeed shit. I grabbed Mega Punch and Water Gun on the way, replacing Wrap, since my low speed meant it wasn't getting much mileage. Also once again dealt with some optional trainers for some extra XP. I wasn't quite strong enough for Misty yet, so since I didn't really need Bubblebeam, I just went the Nugget Bridge route before dealing with her, replacing Supersonic with Defense Curl on the way. For some reason, Lickitung doesn't learn Dig, so a ground-type move would have to wait. Body Slam would replace Mega Punch on the S.S. Anne, and Rival 3 would be easy enough. Surge was similar, and beating him awarded Thunderbolt, replacing Stomp. Rock Tunnel was another easy jaunt, although the trend of having to keep up on healing items would continue. Although I got the TM for Ice Beam, I never ended up using it, opting to just stick with Bubblebeam, since Thunderbolt/Bubblebeam countered everything that Ice Beam did at this point in the game. Before dealing with Koga, I took a quick detour to Silph, grabbing the TMs for Earthquake and Swords Dance, replacing Thunderbolt and Bubblebeam with them, finalizing my set. From there, I pretty much entered sweep territory. Koga took some favorable RNG, but after that, pretty much nothing could stop me, since Lickitung is bulky enough to set up fairly easily, so sweeps through Erika, Rival 5/Giovanni, Blaine, Giovanni, and Rival 6 later, and I found myself at the Elite 4. Lorelei was pretty easy, since Dewgong was fairly safe setup fodder, trivializing the rest of her team. Bruno was the same with Onix. Nothing was a really safe setup against Agatha, so I pretty much had to brute force it with Earthquake on everything but Golbat, which was pretty safe anyway. Lickitung is great for this, since its high base health means it can tank Night Shades and confusion damage pretty well. Unfortunately, Lance was a bit of a wall once again. None of his pokemon were terribly great to set up against, since all of them had Dragon Rage, which rendered Defense Curl useless. A few Rare Candies to get my HP above 200 later, and I tried again. I still needed a decent number of turns to set up, but it ended up being enough to sweep through his team with only a bit of health remaining after all was said and done. Thankfully, the Champion fight was much easier, since Pidgeot is much safer to set up against. Unfortunately I lost all my badge boosts before getting to Arcanine, even though I leveled off of Dragonite in the prior fight, but even then, +6 defense and +6 attack is super powerful, so I was still able to sweep through the rest of his team, perhaps in part due to Venusaur opting to charge up Solar Beam with the one turn it had. All in all, Lickitung is another excellent pick, arguably above Poliwag, but I decided to put it a bit below, since it feels a tad less consistent. Updated tier list related.

I'm really not looking forward to the next few runs.

>>16942072

Unironically the 'tism. I can't really put my finger on anything else that is driving me to see this to the very end.

In other news, so far I was right in saying that the next handful of runs would be bad. Not Exeggcute bad, but still easily lower tier.

>Koffing

Koffing's a bit of an oddball, with plenty of good and bad. Stat-wise, it has pretty bad HP (40) and Speed (35), which is a recipe for trouble, even with respectable defense (95) and Special (60). Attack isn't shabby either at 65. It suffers a bit movewise, though. The strongest non-boom Normal type attack it learns is Tackle, since it can't learn Body Slam, Take Down, OR Double Edge. On the upside, it does get STAB Sludge, Thunderbolt, and Fire Blast, which isn't an awful set for coverage. Probably the worst part about the moveset is how awful early-game is. It starts with Tackle and Smog, and barely learns anything else for a good while. It doesn't learn another new move (Sludge) until level 32, and it's the last good levelup move it gets (It gets no stat-boosters either). TM-wise, it learns literally nothing damaging outside of Bide until Surge with Thunderbolt. Brock is, unsurprisingly, a brick wall. Koffing's low HP and lack of nonattacking move make Onix particularly awful, since Bide more or less ruins my day. Around level 20, my winning strategy ended up being spamming Tackle against Geodude, while spamming Smog against Onix until Brock stopped full healing him to keep a poison up on him for much-needed chip damage. Still took a few attempts to get a win. I made sure to hit up a few optional trainers for extra experience, since I felt I would need it. Rival 2 and Nugget Bridge weren't anything terribly special, but Misty was simply too strong for me, so I opted to save her for later. I dealt with more trainers on the S.S. Anne before taking out Rival 3 after a few attempts. I took out even more trainers to get Koffing up to 32 for Sludge, which made Misty a breeze. I beelined to Surge for a sweep and a much-needed Thunderbolt TM, before heading off to Celadon. I tried to take out Erika after taking out all of her trainers, but Victreebel outsped me, spamming Wrap until I died. I went to the department store to grab some Carbos for a few extra speed points, which was exactly what I needed to outspeed, making Erika a pushover. Giovanni 1 wasn't bad, if not mildly annoying due to a lack of good damaging moves for Onix/Rhyhorn. Rival 4 was easy enough with my moveset, and Lavender Tower was mildly annoying at worst, since all of the mandatory ghost trainer Gastlies were 2-shots. Koga was a punchline, since I couldn't be poisoned, I resisted his best attacks, and my Defense was solid against a team with only physical moves. Rival 5 was much harder, and required some setup and luck. Pidgeot, Exeggcute, and Gyarados were easy with Thunderbolt, Sludge, and Thunderbolt again, respectively. I could safely eat a hit from Alakazam before taking out Charizard with little issue. Giovanni was simple enough. Before heading to Cinnabar I grabbed the TM for Mimic, although I didn't use it immediately.

>>16943011

>Rhyhorn

Not gonna lie, I was expecting this to be a fair bit worse than it actually was. Rhyhorn is basically a modified Geodude. More HP (80 vs 40), Attack (85 vs 80), and speed (25 vs 20), but less defense (95 vs 100). Identical Special (30). It starts with only Horn Attack, and only ever learns Normal moves by levelup, the only remotely useful one being Stomp at 30. While it has better overall stats than Geodude, it has a glaring lack of stat-boosting moves, which is particularly an issue for something so slow with quad weaknesses. As an added middle finger, it's in the Slow leveling group. On the flip side, it has access to the holy trinity of Gen 1 physical attacks (Body Slam, STAB Rock Slide, STAB Earthquake). Out of the Slow group pokemon I've worked with so far, it required the least amount of grinding for Brock. Around level 14, I could brute force it with some luck. This was one of the uncommon situations where Brock NOT using Bide on Onix is a best-case scenario, ditto for holding off on Defense curls on Geodude so I could do more than minimal chip damage against it. Eventually I did run out of Horn Attacks and had to just struggle to victory. Since I was a fairly low level, I opted to take out pretty much every extra trainer on the way to Cerulean I could. Misty was an obvious "no", but Rival 2/Nugget Bridge were very forgiving, since I could very easily tank almost every attack thrown at me. Hell, a lot of Poison Stings were so ineffective than they rounded to 0 damage, thus always missing. After that, I grabbed the TM for Dig, giving me a much-needed STAB. I took out most of the S.S. Anne trainers, barring a 3-horsea Sailor, since even Bubble would eventually do me in. I grabbed Body Slam along the way as well before dealing with Rival 3, who needed more than 1 attempt due to RNG fuckery, but was able to clear him eventually. 1 Cut HM later, and I tried to deal with Misty. Her team was still too much for me, since I was quite a few levels off from outspeeding even Staryu, and both of her pokemon just spammed Water attacks. After going back to deal with all of the trainers to the north and east of Vermilion, I went back to Misty, around Level 32 or so. I opened with Dig, she opened with X Defend. I was still able to 1-shot her Staryu even after that. Starmie used Bubblebeam on me, knocking me to a sliver, before I dug another hole. A whiffed Bubblebeam later, and I was able to 1-shot it as well. After that, I paid Surge a visit, easily sweeping him for Thunderbolt, which Rhyhorn can learn because reasons. It made Rock Tunnel a bit easier, since it gave me a nice counter for Slowpokes. Everything there was easily manageable. I grabbed Rock Slide next, and Giovanni 1 was easy thanks to Dig, and I opted to skip Erika because I sure as fuck wasn't outspeeding Victrebell for another good few levels, Carboses or no. Lavender Tower was, once again, a wall. Gyarados wasn't a 1-shot, and that presumed that he missed with Hydro Pump, which was a 1-shot even up to level ~38. I did eventually get a miss and a 1-shot at that level, making the rest of his team more manageable. This time, the Gastlies were mildly annoying due to not outspeeding them, although I did one-shot them this time around. Koga was once again a joke. First time around, I went in paralyzed from an Arbok, got fully paralyzed mid-Dig, making me invincible unless I decided to dig again. I swept him easily, but decided I was being a bit unfair, so for sake of fixing that, I went to the pokemon center, healed up, and fought Koga again, which was still a very easy sweep. I then went to Silph to grab Earthquake and level up a fair bit before going to the Celadon Gym to take out Erika and her trainers, now that I could outspeed her team, making it an easy sweep. After that, I tried Rival 5. Gyarados was giving me the same issues as Rival 4, so I went back to Fuschia, grabbed the Good Rod, and a surf HM slave, and went to Cinnabar to beat on everything I could for more levels.

>>16943013

>Chansey

This one went about as I would expect. It's no secret Chansey has absurdly lopsided stats: 250 base HP, 105 base Special, 5 base Attack and Defense. 50 speed is pretty unremarkable. Chansey is pretty shafted as far as levelup moves go, starting with Doubleslap and Pound, and not learning a single special move by levelup, but it at least gets Defense Curl for badge boosting. By TM, it gets a great variety of Special moves. Brock took a good 2 hours or so to get past, between needing a decent number of levels (I was level 19 or so when I barely got past him) and grinding taking a while due to every wild encounter taking a while due to Chansey's low attack. In fact, a random Level 5 Spearow I caught to trade later in the game for a better HM slave ended up having the same attack as Chansey did at level 18, and keep in mind that's WITH stat training. Anyhow, as far as Brock went, I just used all of my Doubleslaps against Geodude, since it did more damage than Pound, and Geodude was a much bigger threat. From there, I pounded until Geodude went down, and did so against Onix until I was forced to use Struggle until I won. Thankfully Onix isn't really a huge threat thanks to Chansey's gigantic HP pool. Even more thankfully Mt. Moon granted 2 new attacks in Mega Punch (Not amazing, but at least a step up from what I had) and Water Gun (More important). I took advantage of Chansey's massive HP pool and beat Misty with Bide strats for Bubblebeam, giving me an even better Special move. From here, things got really easy, really quick. The S.S. Anne gave Body Slam, Surge gave Thunderbolt. By this point, the only type I didn't have neutral special coverage against was Grass. But Celadon and Saffron fixed that hole up with Ice Beam and Psychic, respectively. At this point, Chansey was pretty much a death machine, trucking through midgame with minimal resets. Getting Defense Curl allowed me to finalize my moveset at Thunderbolt-Ice Beam-Psychic-Defense Curl. I did end up grabbing the TM for Softboiled as a possible replacement for Defense Curl, but I never ended up actually needing it. Honestly, I'm pretty hard-pressed to think of any actual memorable battles before the Elite Four, given how straight busted Chansey was at this point. Even AT the Elite Four, Lorelei was cake with Thunderbolt, Bruno was cake with Ice Beam/Psychic, Agatha was easy with Psychic on top of being able to tank Night Shades like no other, but Lance was a bit sticky. Thanks to his whole team packing pretty strong Physical moves, setting up was a bit dicey, even if I didn't have to fully set up thanks to Ice Beam access. I'll openly admit it wasn't a 1-shot, but with a bit of luck with his moves, I was able to eak past it. The Champion fight was much easier, thanks to being able to set up pretty safely against Alakazam, and having coverage for everything. I think the fact that Brock alone was almost half of this run is an indication of how lopsided this run was. Definitely one of the better pokemon I've used so far overall.

>>16943910

>Tangela

Tangela has pretty overlooked stats in Gen 1. While its Base 65 HP, 55 Attack, and 60 Speed are pretty middling, it boasts a solid Base 115 Defense and Base 100 Special. Unfortunately its movepool is a bit iffy, particularly early on. It has poor coverage, only learning damaging Normal and Grass moves, making it even more shallow coverage than any of the other Grass types in the game, sans Bulbasaur. As an added slap in the face, it starts with Constrict, a whopping 10 base power move, and Bind, which is fine, but makes battles take quite a bit longer. It doesn't learn a new levelup move until 29, where it gets Absorb. Thankfully it does start to pick up later on, but I'll get to that soon. I was able to beat Brock at level 17, with a surprisingly high amount of health to spare. Tangela's great defense and good Bide countermeasures were helpful, and I probably could have done it at level 15 or 16. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. Since Misty could only ever use Tackle, I went for her next. Staryu I could outspeed just fine, but Starmie required a speed drop via Constrict to beat. Still not bad, though. Just tedious. Nugget Bridge was a similar story. Thankfully the S.S. Anne gave me a much-needed breather by gifting me Body Slam, a much-needed heavy-hitting attack. I also got Absorb on the way to Rock Tunnel, giving me a nice coverage piece, particularly against Hikers. Rival 4 was a breeze, but Erika was a bit out of my reach, thanks to Poisonpowder chipping away hard at me, so I opted for the easier Rocket Hideout before returning to chip her Victrebell with Bind before finishing it with Body Slam so I didn't have to deal with Poison until Vileplume. Unfortunately Tangela struggles a bit in Lavender Tower, due to only having Mega Drain and Absorb for the ghosts, who resist grass due to also being part-poison. Regardless, I took a detour to Silph to grab Swords Dance so I had some sort of boosting move. I also got Sleep Powder via levelup, making setting up much easier. Koga was pretty easy with this, even though Muk and Weezing were both 2-shots even with maxed attack. Still, the Sleep and Sword combo was able to cut through Rival 5, Giovanni, and Sabrina easily. Blaine was no pushover, however. All of his pokemon were capable of chunking me pretty badly, so after a few failed tries, I decided to get a fresh levelup just to take advantage of badge boosting to outspeed his Arcanine and Rapidash, making the fight a fair bit easier. Giovanni, however, was a very easy sweep. Rival 6 also took a few attempts, mostly making sure I could get to Charizard with good health, since I didn't level up enough for Growth until right before Charizard, whose Flamethrower was pretty close to a 1 hit KO. Moving on to the Elite 4, however, Sleep + Growth trivialized Lorelei, and Bruno was easy per usual. I hit a wall on Agatha, though, thanks to my only move that could hit ghosts being Mega Drain. It did chip surprisingly well, but there was a much better solution. Like with Bellsprout and Oddish, I grabbed Mimic, making the decision to replace Body Slam. It made Agatha magnitudes easier, since I outsped Gengar 1, allowing me to safely set up sleep, mimic Dream Eater, and set up a few growths before going to town on her team, sleeping each member and eating their dreams. After getting past that hurdle, Lance was fairly easy. Set up on Gyarados, mimic Hydro Pump for later, Mega Drain it to death, do the same for both Dragonairs. I was down some health against Aerodactyl, so I continued just Mega Draining to get some health back. Dragonite went down to 2 Hydro Pumps after chunking me with a Hyper Beam. The Champion fight was simple as well. Set up against Pidgeot, mimic Psychic off of Alakazam, truck through the rest of his team. Rhydon was free health, Exeggutor was a 3-shot even with maxed Special, Gyarados was a 1-shot, and Charizard outsped me, making Fire Spin a potential threat, but it thankfully missed, allowing me to finish it off as well. Overall, while its the strongest of the grass types in the late game, its early moveset puts it below Bellsprout.

Also updated the tier list. Changed some formatting and moved some positions. Squirtle deserves a second look, might have to do that one myself. Next up is Kangaskhan, who should be a fairly easy run.

Things have slowed down considerably due to IRL bullshit, but I'm still working on this.

>Kangaskhan

For the purposes of this challenge, Kangaskhan is a really damn solid pokemon who has more positives than negatives. It has great base stats (105 HP, 95 attack, 80 defense, 90 speed, only bad one is Special at 40), great TM pool (It can learn all the best physical moves, and most of the good special moves), and a respectable Medium Fast XP curve. Only downsides are, again, its Special stat, lack of stat boosting attacks, and starting out with only Comet Punch and Rage, hardly a murderers row, but hey, at least it gets STAB on both? Either way, though, this ended up being a very easy run. Brock ended up being doable at level 13 since Comet Punch ended up chunking Geodude for a bit more before defense boosts at this point, and Rage is effectively an infinite-use attack once I ran out of Comet Punches. With Kangaskhan's massive stat pool, it was pretty easy to just brute-force him. Getting Water Gun and Comet Punch out of Mt Moon gave me both a strong power boost on Normal attacks and some much-appreciated extra coverage. I opted to deal with Misty after seeing Bill, since there was no immediate need for Bubblebeam, since Mega Punch took care of 90% of all of the mandatory trainers, and Water Gun was good enough to patch the void. The experience gained from that section effectively made Misty a cakewalk, awarding me with an upgrade for Water Gun. For the first time in this run, I decided to exploit Dig's mechanic of taking you to the last pokemon center you healed at. I healed up there, took out the Rocket that gives out the Dig TM (which, sadly, Kangaskhan can't learn), the 2 mandatory trainers before Vermilion, 2 optional S.S. Anne Trainers to give me a Rare Candy and the TM for Body Slam, Rival 3 (learning Bite around this point), and Surge, all without healing at a Pokemon Center. After teaching Kangaskhan Thunderbolt, grabbing a Spearow for Fly purposes, and getting the Bike Voucher, I went to the entrance of Diglett Cave, and dug my way all the way back to Cerulean, shaving off a good 2 or so minutes off of my time. The Cerulean Department Store gave me Ice Beam and Rock Slide, nearly finalizing Kangaskhan's Moveset at Body Slam-Ice Beam-Rock Slide-Thunderbolt. Giovanni, Rival 4, and Lavender Tower were all pushovers. I decided to break off my normal route a bit and go to Silph, despite being a few levels below Giovanni at that point. Even then, Rival 5 only took about 2 attempts, and Giovanni went down with one. Before digging out, I went and grabbed Earthquake to replace Ice Beam. I hit Fuschia next, where Earthquake made Koga cake, then Celadon (Because I completely forgot about it) which was a 1-shot sweep, then Saffron, which was similar, although I did get hit once by a Psywave, then Cinnabar, which was another easy sweep. Viridian was more of the same, although Giovanni did end up taking 2 attempts since I wasn't strong enough to just overpower his team at my level, nor was I tanky enough to eat several of his team's attacks. Rival 6 was a bit of a roadblock, but I eventually got the AI to cooperate with me enough to pull through it. At only Level 47, I made it to the Elite 4.

>>16945320

Yeah, I've posted a few of his videos ITT, and was inspired by him starting this to set out on my own. Biggest differences are:

>I plan on doing all the single-stages as well, while he only intends to do first-stage pokemon that have evolutions, not counting the Moltres and Mewtwo videos he's put out. Although I'm skipping over stuff he's already done

>I refrain from using speedup outside of Viridian Forest grinding. Between that and actually using my bike, my times are much shorter than his, which is something I factor in to tiering

>I allow myself to save between Elite 4 battles, since I consider it a perfectly viable game mechanic, although I'll still factor in "extreme luck" runs (e.g. runs dependent on high crit luck/moves that would otherwise 1-shot me always missing)

That said, I was hoping to get the last fishing trio out in one batch, but it's looking like it may be a bit more spread out.

>Horsea

Horsea has a fair bit of good going for it. 70 base Defense and Special, as well as 60 base speed is pretty good, and mostly makes up for its terrible health (30) and attack (40). It also starts with Bubble, which is a solid early-game move, since it trivalizes Brock and hits everything mandatory up to Cerulean for neutral damage or better. Beyond that, its leveling set is shaky. It gets Smokescreen at 19 (niche, but very useful in that niche), Leer at 24 (100% trash), Water Gun at 30 (Useless, between the Mount Moon TM and having Bubblebeam access by that level), Agility at 37 (Excellent), and Hydro Pump at 45 (Basically useless with Surf existing at that point). TM-wise, it's the standard water-type fare. Water, Ice, Normal, and that's about it. And it can't really do much with Normal due to its low attack, so it's basically limited to Water and Ice for the most part. While I did lose the first battle against my rival which you can lose anyway, pretty much everything up to Cerulean was, again, pretty much a breeze. By the time I got there, I had Bubble, Water Gun, and Smokescreen in my arsenal. I didn't want to try Misty yet, but I did try Rival 2, and his Pidgeotto's stats and moveset made it a nightmare to contend with. Because I didn't want to risk using Rare Candies early, I just grinded out a level or two so I could tank attacks a bit better. After a handful of more attempts (I want to say 2), he went down, in part thanks to Smokescreen spamming his Bulbasaur for safety. I tried my hand at Misty, and abused Smokescreen on both her Staryu and Starmie, earning me a pretty easy win and Bubblebeam. Rival 3 was much easier, largely thanks to it. I skipped over Surge for the time being and just breezed through Rock Tunnel, taking on the optional Hikers for a bit more experience. I decided to take a minor, but unnecessary detour in hindsight to grab Swift, which ended up being replaced with the similarly-useless Double Edge anyway. I also grabbed the much more useful Ice Beam from the Celadon Department Store. Rocket Hideout was a joke, as it tends to be with Water/Ice attacks, and Surge was much more doable with the extra levels under my belt, even though I needed 2 attempts thanks to his Raichu shitting out Thunderbolts. Rival 4 wasn't total cake, thanks to his newly-acquired Gyarados, but everything else easily fell over. After getting the Poke Flute, I beelined to the Safari Zone for Surf, and got a pretty easy win against Koga as a result, and a similarly-easy win against Erika with Ice Beam afterwards. Before dicking around with Rival 5, I went right to Cinnabar for some easy levels, since I'd likely need them. Blaine was every bit as easy as you'd imagine, then I made my way back to Silph.

>>16946241

Thanks. I'm definitely feeling a bit burnt out on this project at the moment, but I still wholly intend to finish it, even some of my remaining work was already done for me (Dratini, Legendary birds, Mewtwo). Most of what else is remaining should be comparatively fast, at least.

>>16946309

Professor lore isn't my strong suit, but given how malleable the lore is, who knows. (See: The original "You have to be 10 years old to become a trainer" schtick vs. Preschoolers becoming a trainer class in later games)

Anyhow, onto the next entry.

>Goldeen

Since Horsea was the last one, it's pretty much going to be my basis of comparison. Compared to Horsea, Goldeen has more base HP (45 v 30), Attack (67 v 40), and slightly more Speed (63 v 60), but has less defense (60 vs 70) and Special (50 vs 70). Move-wise, Goldeen is much more diverse as far as leveling movepool goes, but is very similar TM-wise. Goldeen starts with Peck and Tail Whip, which is a deceptively decent pair of moves. It doesn't get anything new until level 19, where it gets Supersonic, and from there, it gets moves that are at least usable, which is more than can be said for most pokemon. Because of starting with Peck, Brock started out as a bit of a wall. I thought I would end up needing Supersonic to beat him, but after leveling to 17 or so, I was able to get through him with a surprising amount of health remaining by dropping the defense of his pokemon several stages before pecking them to death. Mount Moon gave me Water Gun, and by extension a much needed coverage move, so I waltzed into Cerulean. I decided to deal with Misty, since her pokemon were only able to tackle me, so a combination of defense drops, confusion, and peck spam did her in with no real problems. Bubblebeam gave me a new best move which made Rival 2 much easier, and getting Horn Attack by levelup on the way to Bill was a solid upgrade to Peck in most situations. Rival 3 was similar to Rival 2, nothing really fancy there. I skipped Surge for obvious reasons and beelined to Celadon, where I snagged Ice Beam and Double Edge and chugged through the rest of Rocket Hideout with zero issue. I went back to Vermilion to deal with Surge, who was an easy sweep with my extra levels. Rival 4 was pretty easy at this point, as was the tower. Around this time, I got Waterfall, which was an upgrade to Bubblebeam, and, oddly enough, is a signature move in Gen 1, a fact I didn't know until this run. It was no Surf, but it was a nice little stop gap. Speaking of, my next destination was the Safari Zone, where I grabbed, you guessed it, Surf. Koga was an easy roll, and I beelined to Cinnabar to get some levels and Blaine out of the way, grabbing Horn Drill and an unused Blizzard on the way. I swept through Erika afterward, then dealt with the lone progression trainer remaining in Rival 5. Pidgeot was a pretty easy kill via Ice Beam, while Gyarados chunked me between his damage and my recoil. Growlithe was a simple 1-shot, and Alakazam chunked me for a bit more before getting one-shot. At this point, I had barely any health left, and a Venusaur who would surely finish me off if I didn't one-shot him. So I went for broke and used Horn Drill, which managed to connect, securing me a win on terribly thin margins. Giovanni 2 was a comparative joke, and Sabrina was fairly easy thanks to decent attack paired with Double Edge (and Surf for Venomoth, to save on recoil). Giovanni 3 was obviously piss easy given my typing, and I got Agility on the way through. Rival 6 allowed me to finally take advantage of badge boosting, downing Pidgeot, setting up against Rhyhorn, and running through the rest of his team (albeit after more than one attempt). The Elite 4 awaited, but before I messed with that, I grabbed the TM for Mimic, opting to replace Double Edge. A rare candy dump and some Elite 4 grinding later, and I was on my way. Lorelei was as much an issue as she tends to be with Water types. It was more of a PP race than anything else. Same strat as usual applied: Use boosts, Surf for Dewgong and Cloyster, Mimic Amnesia and boost against Slowbro, Surf the rest of her team. Bruno was a simple sweep, as he tends to be. Agatha was a bit stickier. Mimicing Hypnosis was the play to make, and abusing Sleep while boosting and whittling her team down. Lance was pretty much boosting then abusing Ice Beam. The Champion fight was pretty much a repeat of Horsea. Boost a bit and get rid of Pidgeot quickly, mimic Recover and whittle down Alakazam, abuse Rhydon's defense drop spam for more boosting, sweep the rest of his team. Goldeen unsurprisingly fell behind Horsea, partially due to starting with Peck, and partially because of a noticeably lower Special on something that doesn't really have much to properly utilize its much higher attack stat in endgame.

Staryu's up next, and I feel like it will be a bit harder to really compare, but I'll get to that whenever I can be bothered doing the run.

>>16946708

I vaguely recall that run being completed, or maybe it was another Gen 1 ditto run. Might have to look that up again.

That said, finally got an update for this.

>Staryu

On paper, Staryu seems like an excellent pokemon. It has a great stat line, boasting 70 Special (tied with Horsea and higher than Goldeen's 50) and a great 85 speed (compared to Horsea's 60 and Goldeen's 63), allowing it to outspeed most threats and give it a solid crit ratio. On top of this, it has a great movepool, learning Harden and Recover by levelup, and having access to both Thunderbolt and Psychic by TM, giving it coverage most pure water-types lack. Unfortunately, the devil's in the details. It has a mediocre base HP of 30 (on par with Horsea, but lower than Goldeen's 45), and a ho-hum 45 base Attack (better than Horsea's 40, but lower than Goldeen's 67) and 55 base Defense (lower than both Horsea's 70 and Goldeen's 60). On top of this, it starts with only Tackle, only learning its next move, Water Gun, at level 17. By now, you should know how awful this is. Staryu's physical stats means it had no chance in Hell of beating Brock until having Water Gun, since even at level 16, the only pokemon in Viridian Forest I could consistently one-shot were level 3s. So from the word go, Staryu faced a massive hurdle. On the flip side, Water Gun turned Brock into a one-shot sweep, and getting through Mount Moon was easy. I got there at level 21, and opted for Rival 2. It took a few attempts, since his physical attacks could still chunk my pretty decently. In hindsight, I could have made it a bit more consistent if I leveled up one more time on the gym trainers to get Harden, but hindsight is 20/20. Thankfully with Harden in my back pocket, Misty became a breeze, thanks to her AI making her only ever use Tackle, on top of the Badge Boost glitch boosting attack. Rival 3 was much easier, thanks to having Bubblebeam instead of Water Gun. The next big hurdle was the Viridian Gym. Normally it's a gym I would skip over in this sort of situation, but I decided that Thunderbolt was just too good to pass up on. Unfortunately for me, while Voltorb and Pikachu were free, Raichu was not. Bubblebeam was a 3-shot, and his Thunderbolt could nearly 1-shot me from full health. So I decided to take out the trainers east of the city as well as a few Digletts before returning with more durability and strength. Raichu became a 2-shot, but I still needed a bit of luck to get past Surge. I immediately replaced the Recover I learned from levelup with Thunderbolt. At this point, I had pretty good coverage, so the rest of the run would be easy, right…? WRONG. I completely forgot about the mandatory trainer with 2 Oddishes and 2 Bellsprouts, who would consistently whittle me down. So once again, I found myself effectively forced to level up a bit on more Digletts, this time to 32 for Swift to make her beatable. Had I kept Recover, I probably could have shaved a good several minutes off my final time. Thankfully, getting past that made the next leg a lot easier. The bad news was that I was well behind both Horsea and Goldeen at this point, who both had better toolkits for early game. So at this point, I was off to the races to try to make up time. Rock Tunnel was mostly easy, save a mandatory trainer with an Oddish who used Sleep Powder on me and whittled me down once. After that, I grabbed Psychic to replace Swift, finally giving me solid coverage, as well as the TM for Ice Beam, which I didn't use immediately. Beyond that, I went to, in order: Giovanni 1 (easy), Rival 4 and the Lavender Tower (easy), the Safari Zone, Koga (easy), Erika (Only survived on 5 health because it turns out that I still couldn't 1-shot anything on her team, even with a sizable level advantage), Blaine (with some extra trainers for more XP) (Easy), Rival 5 (Easy thanks to Badge Boosting), Giovanni 2 (Easy), Sabrina (Got a bit dicey due to being so reliant on special attacks and my badge boost setup resetting before Alakazam), then Giovanni 3 (Easy). Rival 6 took 2 attempts due to bad luck, but Staryu's movepool remained excellent. Finally it was Elite 4 time.

>>16947923

Unfortunately, my in-game time was already past what it was for both Goldeen and Horsea, but the good news was that I was still a noticeably lower level by this point in time. I did have to pump a few Rare Candies to get to a more appropriate level, but after doing so, I went off. Lorelei was much easier than with Horsea or Goldeen, thanks to access to Thunderbolt. Hardening for badge boosts made it a joke fight. Bruno was free, even if my level was similar to his team, since I packed supereffective attacks against his entire team. Agatha was a bit trickier, and what had walled me without the earlier candy usage to begin with. Staryu's low HP means that it's extra-vulnerable to Night Shade, making it pretty much a 2-shot on average. But after fidgeting with the fight for a bit, I was able to get some relatively cooperative AI, allowing me to move on to Lance. At this point, I determined it was pretty much impossible to win with the moveset I was running. I had no supereffective attacks for any of his dragons, so I bit the bullet and replaced Psychic with Ice Beam, since it had zero benefit in the next two battles. It made the fight much easier, although it wasn't completely free: I still needed to set up Hardens a bit, and I leveled up right before Aerodactyl, who outsped me without any badge boosts. Things could go wrong if I was unlucky, but I wasn't. Finally, I was on to the Champion fight. I Rare Candied to give myself a fresh level, and went forward. Pidgeot was simple setup fodder, with the only real threat being Sky Attack, which I could just one-shot to interrupt. Alakazam was pretty bad, but thanks to setting up, would end up being a 2-shot with Surf. Rhydon, Gyarados, and Arcanine were all easy one-shots. Unfortunately, with the level I was at, I'd level up before getting to Venusaur, making him a 3-shot, and thus basically ending my run. So I had to Rare Candy up a bit more to level 59 to prevent that premature levelup from happening. I used the same strategy, except that my badge-boosted stats made Venusaur practically free, and giving me the extra level after beating him.

Overall, Staryu didn't perform up to expectations. While his final level was about what I was expecting, the in-game time was pretty bad. Factoring in my personal errors throughout this run, I'd say it's overall better than Goldeen, but below Horsea by a decent margin. I thought it would easily be the best of the three, but Brock single-handedly stopped that from happening.

Next up is Mr. Mime, although I have no idea when I'll be able to get that run completed, even though it should be a very easy one. It will probably be either within the next week or so, or a month or more out the road. May as well throw in an updated tier list as well. I did some minor tier-shifting since the last run, and threw in Jrose's Legendary runs.

Ended up going the "Within a week" route.

>Mr. Mime

Mr. Mime is pretty much a perfect storm of attributes for a solo run. It has pretty solid stats, most notably a solid 100 Special and 90 Speed. Defense is an "okay" 65, while HP and Attack are both fairly underwhelming at 40 and 45, respectively. Its moveset is solid as well, starting with Barrier and Confusion, the former of which helps bolster its middling defense, and latter being a top-tier starting move. Notable leveling moves include Light Screen at 23 and Meditate at 39. Its TM pool is better-than-average for psychic types, getting the usual Psychic, Thunderbolt for an excellent coverage option, while Solarbeam and Body Slam are neat possibilities in the wings. It also doesn't get harmed by its experience group (Medium Fast). Given all of this information, I decided to take a whack at a minimum-battle run, to see if I could succeed where Slowpoke failed. After very easy wins against Rival 1 and the Viridian Bug Catcher, Brock was the first real test. And as it turns out, it was a very easy test to pass, only requiring 1 attempt, due to the sheer gap in Special stat between Mr. Mime and his team. I still ended up only winning with 11 health left due to a critical tackle from his Geodude and living due to his Onix's Bide lasting 3 turns instead of two, so it very easily could have gone south. The batch of mandatory trainers leading up to Cerulean were simple enough, although I did grab Mega Punch on the way through so I had something besides Confusion attack-wise. Rival 2 was a bit of a wall, taking a few attempts due to how tanky his Pidgeotto was. But after getting past that, I could set up a few Barriers against Abra before sweeping the rest of his team with relatively little issue. (My winning attempt saw no Accuracy drops, which helped). Getting to Bill was simple enough, and after I tried hitting up Misty. Unfortunately I simply lacked the firepower to get past her, since her Special attacks would make fairly quick work of me. So I instead went to fight Rival 3. Unfortunately, since the TM for Body Slam is guarded by a trainer, I had to take a pass on it for the sake of the challenge. Rival 3, though, was much easier, since I had a good few extra levels from the Bill trip. I did manage to learn Light Screen during the fight, giving me a much-needed move for Misty, who was my only battle option left. Lo and behold, Light Screen was a lifesaver, allowing me to eat significantly more damage, so I set up against Staryu, then used Confusion against him and badge-boosted Mega Punches against Starmie for the win. I returned to Vermilion to take out Surge, who was a very easy win, netting me the much-appreciated Thunderbolt, which I immediately learned, knowing that I had an answer to the mandatory Oddish/Bellsprout trainer that walled me with Staryu. Rock Tunnel was cake, and more importantly, the game opened wide. I steamrolled Rocket Hideout, then grabbed Psychic in Saffron, which I didn't grab earlier in order to have a move with more PP. I then hit up Rival 4, which was similarly cake. After grabbing the Pokeflute, I went to the Celadon Gym to roll Erika, then Fuschia to do the same to Koga. While I had to do things in a very specific order with Slowpoke, this seemed much more open-ended. Regardless, I then went to Silph to take care of Rival 5, which took a few tries, then rolled through Giovanni 2, which took only one. Around this point I hit level 39, giving me the chance to learn Meditate. While the extra badge boosting would have been nice, Barrier was a much less risky option, boosting a more relevant stat for what I was working with, so I opted to keep my set the way it was (Psychic-Barrier-Thunderbolt-Mega Punch, if you were lost). Sabrina was next up. I punched through her Kadabra, then set up against Mr. Mime, who only ever used Doubleslap, thanks to Gen 1 AI. Venomoth was an easy 1-shot, then Alakazam was up last. At this point, I was at about half-health, but, once again, thanks to Gen 1 AI, Alakazam only ever used Recover. So it turned into a stallfest. The only way I had any shot at winning was to spam Psychic until I ran out of PP, and hope for some Special drops, then finish with Thunderbolt. That's exactly what I did, and Alakazam would eventually fall. Cinnabar was next, and Blaine was a joke, using even more Super Potions than he normally did. I still got hit a few times, but nothing terribly dangerous. Giovanni 3 was terribly simple due to how easy setting up against his first Rhyhorn is. The rest was a free sweep. Rival 6 was another fight that took a few attempts (seems to be a theme in this run).

>Scyther

Okay, so this wasn't as bad as I made it sound in my last post. Mostly. Still magnitudes worse than Mr. Mime, but it's still in the higher percentile of everything tested so far. Stat-wise, Scyther can only be described as excellent. 110 Base Attack and 115 Base Speed are both great, base 80 Defense and Base 70 HP are both good, and base 55 Special is… Okay. Not bad, though. Where things get complicated is Scyther's move pool. Here is a complete list of damaging move types Scyther can learn by TM, not counting Mimicked attacks: Normal. That's it. It doesn't learn any Bug moves, and it doesn't learn any Flying moves. Not Fly, not even Wing Attack (at least until Yellow). That said, what little he DOES get is nothing to sneeze at: While Quick Attack is an underwhelming starting move, it does get Slash at a reasonable level 29, and Swords Dance at a similarly reasonable 35. Of course, since crits ignore attack boosts, and Slash always crits on Scyther in this gen, the two attacks have counter-synergy, so I have to find workarounds. As one may expect, Brock is a wall at the start, with Quick Attack being Scyther's lone attack until level 17. Although getting to that level and learning Leer would have trivialized the fight, Scyther's high base stats allowed it to brute force it a level earlier fairly easily. The next two levelup moves were Focus Energy and Double Team. Due to a glitch in Gen 1, Focus Energy has the opposite of its intended effect, making crits nigh-impossible to get upon use. While this would have repaired the synergy between Swords Dance and Slash, it felt like a stupid gimmick, so I opted out of it. I didn't touch Double Team, due to my no-evasion-boost clause, even if it's a levelup move. That said, Rival 2 was fairly easy this time around, since Scyther's surprisingly good physical bulk allowed it to tank Pidgeotto with relatively little issue, and the rest of the team fell soon after. By this point, Quick Attack was starting to overstay its welcome. Opposing shitmons that were upwards of 10 levels below me took multiple hits to down. Unfortunately, it would be my best (read: only) damaging attack for a good while. Misty was a surprising one shot, thanks to her deciding that mostly using Tackle on her Starmie was the optimal strategy. I really lucked out on it. Rival 3 was a bit easier than Rival 2, due to a wider level gap. Still only having Quick Attack, I decided to skip Surge for now, since Raichu would most likely fuck me over. On the first trainer in Rock Tunnel, I finally leveled up to 29 to grab Slash, and not a moment too soon: He opened with Cubone and spammed Growl, since he had no moves that could damage me. Had I not learned Slash then and there, his Slowpoke would have been a slog at best, and a losing battle at worst. The Hikers were a tad spicy, since I had no real way of badly chunking them, but I was able to still pass them. Upon hitting Lavender Town, I took a quick detour south to grab Swift to finally give myself a better move to use with Swords Dance. Giovanni 1 took two attempts, since the first attempt saw me get hit with a critical Rock Throw, which took out well over my total health in damage. Attempt 2 saw multiple Rock Throw whiffs and a pointless Guard Spec, allowing me to nab an eventual win. I then hit up Surge, which was an easy sweep with Slash. I hit up Erika afterward, wrecking her team with Slash as well, and Rival 4 saw a similar fate, grabbing Swords Dance during that fight to Quick Attack. At this point, I was at a wall. Remember how Scyther can only learn Normal-type damaging moves? Well, there's 3 channelers in the way. There's only one way I could even hit ghost-types, and that requires me to use Bide. Thankfully I had the TM on hand for this specific situation, so I replaced the useless Focus Energy with it. Unfortunately, even with a healthy >10 level gap on the Gastlies, it took multiple attempts per channeler to win against each. Most people have a rough idea of how Bide works: Do nothing for 2-3 turns, then deal double the damage you took to your opponent. Unfortunately Gastly makes this a total shitshow. At their level, Gastly knows 3 moves: Night Shade, Lick, and Confuse Ray. One Night Shade does enough damage to make Bide a 1-shot, but too many Night Shades KOs Scyther. Lick gives Bide a bit of damage, but not enough. More importantly, it has a pretty high chance of paralyzing, and getting fully paralyzed resets Bide. Finally, hitting one's self in Confusion also resets bide. So in order to defeat a Gastly, I have to simultaneously have a certain range of Night Shades go off, and barely, if ever, have Paralysis or Confusion proc. Did I mention that the first Channeler has two of them? Because she has two of them. Needless to say, I probably took about 10 attempts on her, and the other two took about 3-4 attempts each. It was by far the hardest and most frustrating part of this run.

Well, I finally got shit sorted out a bit, so I could finally get around to

>Jynx

Jynx is a pretty mixed bag. Stat-wise, it leans much more towards the Special side, with a base Special of 95, but with an underwhelming 50 base attack and pitiful 35 base defense. It can still somewhat tank hits though, thanks to a decent base 65 HP. Its speed also definitely helps it quite a bit, boasting a solid base 95 there as well. Move-wise, it's blessed with both Ice and Psychic STAB, giving it one of the most lethal move combos in the game, as well as access to Lovely Kiss, one of the best Sleep moves in the game. The bad news is that the best of it doesn't come for a good while. Leveling-wise, it starts with Lovely Kiss (Good) and Pound (Meh), and doesn't get anything new until level 18 (Lick). It doesn't even get access to an ice-type move until level 31 (Ice Punch) or the Ice Beam TM from Celadon, and it doesn't learn any Psychic moves by levelup, making Psychic from Saffron the first in its set. That all said…

Brock, as one may imagine, was a total wall. Jynx has an awful stat set for this point in the game, due to having no way of taking advantage of its solid Special attack, offensively or defensively. On top of this, Brock having 5 Full Heals for each of his pokemon means that Lovely Kiss's 10 PP won't be able to cheese the fight with Sleep, and even if that was possible, Pound doesn't have enough power to last the whole fight. So leveling up to 18 was an inevitability for Lick. After learning that, the fight became trivial. While Lick's damage was on par with Pound, its good Paralyze chance gave me the edge I needed. I blew most of my Lovely Kisses against Geodude, who didn't even hit me until it was nearly dead, and used the last of them against Onix before just spamming Lick. I had unusually good Paralysis luck, forcing Brock to waste a few turns using Full Heals on Onix, just to get paralyzed again, so I was able to end up downing it with a comfortable amount of health left. After that, I breezed through Mount Moon to Cerulean, picking up the Water Gun and Mega Punch TMs on the way. I decided to try Misty, who was much easier than Brock. I just punched Staryu, then put Starmie to Sleep and punched it till it died. No Full Heals completely changed the difficulty of the fight. I immediately replaced Water Gun with Bubblebeam. Rival 2 was another easy fight, since he didn't really have any answers to Bubblebeam spam since he didn't try using Sand Attack (with one punch for Abra thrown in for good measure). The S.S. Anne rival battle was more of the same, even with me opting not to teach Body Slam for no good reason. Same strategy, same results. Surge was pretty easy to muscle through, since his team really couldn't hurt me, even after getting paralyzed by his barely-alive Pikachu. Raichu's Thunderbolt did maybe a quarter of my health to me. Since I didn't even need to visit the Vermilion Pokemon center, I just used Dig to go back to the Cerulean center to save time. While I was in Rock Tunnel, I learned Ice Punch, allowing me to replace Mega Punch. After grabbing Psychic to replace Lick, and the Ice Beam TM (which I never ended up actually needing), I went through Rocket Hideout, which was a simple blowout, although Giovanni's Kangaskhan barely survived a Psychic, but didn't really hurt me in retaliation. Erika's team was a one-shot sweep, thanks to Psychic for Victrebell and Vileplume, and Ice Punch for Tangela. Rival 4 was also quite simple. Even Gyarados's normally-awful Hydro Pump didn't really do much damage to me, thanks to a decent level gap + high Special. One Flute later, and I went to Fuschia. Koga's trainers were much more annoying than he was. One of the Drowzees managed to put me to sleep and spam Headbutts for a few turns, which did a decent chunk, but I was never in real danger. Koga himself was a one-shot on Koffing 1, a 2-shot on Muk who used his turn to set up Minimize which didn't help him out, another one-shot for the second Koffing, and a 2-shot on Weezing, where his one turn was wasted on an X Attack. I quickly grabbed Surf and Strength, then made my way to Silph, where Rival 5 was starting to put up a slight challenge.

Well, this took quicker than expected.

>Electabuzz

Within the context of this challenge, Electabuzz is a top-3 Electric-type on paper, even if you were to bring in fully-evolved pokemon, sitting behind Zapdos and likely Jolteon. Electabuzz's stat line is solid. While it doesn't necessarily have insane stats in any category, it still boasts a solid 105 base Speed, 85 base Special, and 83 base Attack, with a passable 65 base HP and 57 base Defense. Unlike most Electric types, it gets a decent variety of solid attacks via TM, including the obvious Thunderbolt, Body Slam, and Psychic, making it the only Electric type in the game able to learn that attacking type. However, its leveling movepool leaves a lot to be desired. It starts with Quick Attack and Leer. Thankfully there's a bit of synergy between those two moves for early game. It doesn't learn any new attacks by levelup until 34, and at that point, it learns Thundershock. Not Thunderbolt, ThunderSHOCK. That attack that Pikachu starts with. It doesn't get much better from there, learning attacks that either are past the point of being useful (Thunderpunch, Thunder, Screech), or are niche at best (Light Screen). So let's just hop right into this.

Brock was, unsurprisingly, an obstacle here. Electabuzz simply lacks the bulk to take terribly many attacks, and it can't really dish out much damage without setting up some defense drops, which Geodude can instantly cancel out. Level 10 wasn't anywhere near enough to pull it off, so I tried a bit again at 12. I was taking less damage from Tackles, but was still quite far off from where I needed to be. Ditto for level 13. Finally, at 14, I eventually got a lucky break. Geodude was having AWFUL Tackle luck, whiffing not one, not two, but THREE of them, allowing me to down it with a bit over half health remaining. Onix was next up, opening with Bide, allowing me to safely set up defense drops on it. It hit two Screeches next, then followed up with two Tackles, getting me down to almost no health. He was low as well, and decided Bide was a good move to use. Thankfully it didn't end early, allowing me just enough time to get the kill. The path to Cerulean was pretty easy, and allowed me to snag a much-needed new move in Mega Punch. Misty was next, and took a few tries. Once again, I got a bit lucky on a run, but due to crit luck this time around. Staryu still took 2 Mega Punches, but Starmie was much tougher. I was able to cobble together 2 crits in a row on Mega Punches, getting hit fairly hard in return. A Quick Attack finished off the fight, at least. Rival 2 was pretty simple, due to Pidgeotto going down in 2 punches, and never dropping my accuracy. The rest of the team was quickly finished with punches. Pushing down to the S.S. Anne, I grabbed Body Slam before Rival 3, who was basically Rival 2, but with Body Slam replacing Mega Punch. Surge was cake, simply brute forcing him with Body Slams, grabbing me a much-needed Thunderbolt TM, replacing Quick Attack, which had become basically redundant with my speed. The mandatory 3-exploder Hiker in Rock Tunnel was a bit of an issue, due to my best attack for him being Body Slam. But with some luck with not getting boomed on, I was able to pass within a few attempts. Getting past Rock Tunnel gave the obligatory opening up of the game, giving me access to Psychic to deal with those pesky rock-types. This made Erika a faceroll, as it did Giovanni 1 and Rival 4, whose entire team I could hit for solid damage now. Koga was a full 1-shot sweep, thanks to critical Psychics on both Muk and Weezing. Rival 5 was pretty easy as well, even with the power spike. Again, Electabuzz matches up really well with his team. Pidgeot was a Thunderbolt 1-shot, as was Gyarados. Growlithe was a 2-shot with Thunderbolt, hitting me with a pretty bad Take Down in the process. Alakazam was next, and took 2 Body Slams to kill, but wasted his turn. Venusaur was up last. going down in 2 Psychics, but poisoning me in the process. Giovanni 2 was about as easy as Giovanni 1, with everything dying in 1 or 2 hits without really hurting me back. Sabrina went smoothly. Kadabra was a Body Slam 1-shot, Mr. Mime was a 2-shot with it, wasting his turn on using the wrong screen, Venomoth was a 2-shot with Psychic, and Alakazam was a 1-shot thanks to a critical Body Slam.

Was hoping to knock out two by now, but no such luck. Partway through the run after this at the moment.

>Magmar

Statwise, Magmar is very much like Electabuzz. The only difference is that it sacrifices some speed (base 93 vs base 105) for some attack (base 95 vs 83). Movewise, it isn't super far off, most notable difference being having Fire moves instead of Electric moves, still having that much-appreciated Psychic coverage. Leveling move-wise, it does get some actually-useful attacks. It starts with Ember, giving it a great move for early game out of the gate. It takes a long time to learn anything new by levelup, though, not learning anything until 36, and nothing potentially useful for another 3 levels (Confuse Ray). Thanks to Brock's team having low Special, Magmar was able to make quick work of him even with them resisting fire attacks. No real extra grinding needed. I grabbed Mega Punch in Mount Moon, then just went to deal with Rival 2, who was similarly easy to deal with. I opted to grab Seismic Toss en route to Bill, giving myself a much-appreciated coverage move, which allowed me to deal with Misty with relatively little issue. I grabbed Body Slam on the S.S. Anne, making an easy Rival 3 even easier, and Surge falling similarly easily. Rock Tunnel was, unsurprisingly, a bit rough. The 3-boomer Hiker was once again an obstacle, since I couldn't really tank multiple booms, but a few attempts were enough to get past him. I promptly grabbed Psychic from Saffron so I had an actual good special attack, since I wasn't gonna get a better fire move for a good while. It made Giovanni 1 an absolute cakewalk, and made Erika easy as well. At this point, I had solid coverage, even if Ember was really falling behind compared to Body Slam and Psychic. Still, it's useful in niches, such as in dealing with Rival 4's Exeggcute, while the other 2 moves did the rest of the heavy lifting. Koga was, surprise surprise, a sweep with Psychic. I could have went to Cinnabar next, but I was intent on dealing with Rival 5 first, the only other roadblock at this point in the run. Unfortunately, Ember's weakness was really starting to catch up to me. Exeggcute, of all things, was probably the biggest thorn in my side. I had no way of 1-shotting it, and it would gladly set up disrupting moves, such as Leech Seed or Stun Spore, effectively crippling me beyond repair for the rest of the battle. I knew what I needed to do. I needed more levels. So I took out some of the higher-value trainers until I hit level 43, learning Fire Punch and finally being able to upgrade Ember. This made Exeggcute a 1-shot, and the rest of the term became noticeably easier, including Alakazam, who was a 1-shot with Body Slam now, taking out another sizable hazard on the team. Giovanni 2 was basically free in comparison, and Sabrina was free this time around, with Body Slam dealing with her Psychic types and Fire Punch wrecking Venomoth. Cinnabar was next, and was unsurprisingly easy, thanks to Blaine's AI only ever using Normal attacks. I took out a few trainers in the Viridian Gym for more experience, since I knew Rival 6 was gonna be sticky. Giovanni, however, was pretty easy, due to having fairly decent coverage for his team at this point. Rival 6, however, was a fair bit harder. Most of his team wasn't bad. Pidgeot didn't have any truly threatening moves, nor did Rhyhorn, or Growlithe. Exeggcute was a 1-shot, so he was a nonissue. Alakazam wasn't a 1-shot, so he could chunk my pretty decently. The true threat was Blastoise, who I couldn't 1-shot, and packed Hydro Pump. After a few attempts, I was fortunate enough to get to Blastoise who missed a Hydro Pump, allowing me to get past.

>>16953078

I aim to please.

>Pinsir

In comparison to Scyther, the other powerful bug-type in this game, Pinsir has a lot of good going for it. It packs a whopping 125 base Attack (compared to 110), a solid 100 base Defense (compared to Scyther's base 80), while losing some Speed (Base 85 vs base 105) and a bit of HP (Base 65 vs base 80). In terms of moves, it actually gets an attacking type that isn't Normal in Seismic Toss, as well as Submission (which is still trash). It gets that at 25, which starting with a solid attacking move in Vice Grip, a good badge boost move in Harden at 43, and access to Swords Dance. TM-wise, it gets access to Body Slam, something Scyther lacked. However, Pinsir has one very notable Achilles Heel: It's stuck in the Slow experience group, in comparison to Scyther's Medium Fast experience group. This means that Pinsir needs 25% more experience to level.

Having access to Vice Grip and only Vice Grip until level 25 meant Brock would be a bit of a wall. I was extra-vulnerable to Bide, but thankfully, Pinsir's excellent physical stats gave it some much-needed bulk. So with that, around level 14 was when I was able to brute force Brock accordingly. I took the time to take out some of the optional trainers en route to Cerulean to compensate for the sizable level deficiency I faced. Rival 2 was fairly easy, thanks to Pinsir's sheer stats and Vice Grip being pretty beefy. Once again, I opted to take out some optional trainers in order to try to get Pinsir to 25. I came really close, but couldn't quite get over the hump, and I locked myself out of getting the Seismic Toss TM pre-Cut. So I just dealt with Misty as best I could. It took her using weaker attacks to pull it off, but once I had a bit of luck there, Vice Grip made it pretty easy. I picked up Body Slam on the S.S. Anne, making Rival 3 and Surge both absolute cakewalks, especially since in the case of the latter Surge decided to just use X Speeds on the things that would have outsped me otherwise. The 3-boom Hiker in Rock Tunnel was a bit of an issue. While I could 2-shot most of his team, 3 booms would have done me in. Thankfully, I only took 2, getting by with fairly low health. Giovanni 1 was next, which was cake between Body Slam and Seismic Toss for his rock types. Erika went down easily as well, due to brute force. Rival 4 was easy for identical reasons, and unlike the Scyther run, climbing the tower was a breeze due to Seismic Toss working against ghosts for some reason. At this point, I should have detoured and grabbed Swords Dance from Silph Co., but it skipped my mind, so I opted for Fuschia instead. Koga was a bit sticky, thanks to his team having decent physical bulk and supereffective attacks. Still, I somehow managed to squeak by on attempt 1, in large part thanks to X Attack spam on Weezing. Next was Silph Co., where I finally got around to grabbing the Swords Dance TM. Unsurprisingly, it made Rival 5 not only doable, but a pretty easy 2-shot thanks to some bad luck on try 1. Giovanni 2 was easy, since fully-boosted Body Slam was competitive with Seismic Toss, even against his Rhyhorn. Sabrina was a joke, but still harder than she needed to be, thanks to getting taken to low health by her Kadabra using Psychic because I couldn't wait to use a Swords Dance to sweep the rest of her team. Doing it against Mr. Mime would have made it more consistent, but alas. Blaine was actually pretty difficult. Between levels catching up to me quickly and his AI being programmed to almost exclusively spam Fire moves, it took me quite a few attempts to down him. All I could really do is set up as many Swords Dances as I safely could, and pray for RNG to not fuck me over (with burns, crits on either side, etc.). Thankfully, Giovanni was an order of magnitudes easier, thanks to Rhyhorn being much safer to set up on. Maxed Body Slams made the fight a cakewalk. Rival 6 was basically a lost cause, and badge boosting was basically necessary to clear past him. So I went to the dojo quickly to get myself to near-level up, so I'd level up against Pidgeot. Needless to say, the strategy worked well, as I Swords Danced twice to one-shot it, then maxed Hardens and SD'd one more time for optimal badge boosts, then swept the rest of his team with Body Slam.

>>16953268

The leveling curve was doing me no favors, only being level 46 at the start of the Elite Four. Obviously nowhere near enough, especially considering that I'd have to rely on Seismic Toss for Agatha. I could have dumped Rare Candies, but I was just strong enough to get past Lorelei with some luck, so I ground out a few levels between her and Bruno when I could get to him. A couple of levels later, and Agatha was still a wall. There was just too many things that could go wrong in the fight, and Seismic Toss was a 3-shot. So I opted to Rare Candy to level 65 before attempting her. Seismic Toss still wasn't a 2-shot on either of her Gengars, but I had just enough bulk where I could barely eak out a win with less than 10 HP remaining and Toxic on me with middling luck. So I accepted that and moved along. I used another Rare Candy before Lance for a fresh level, set up 2 Swords Dances against Gyarados and a Harden against Dragonair #1. Beyond that, it was a sweep with Body Slam, even against Aerodactyl. An unlucky crit, however, would have fucked me over. But it never happened, so to the Champion fight I went. I set up a Swords Dance against Pidgeot, while it charged Sky Attack. I wasn't quite strong enough to take it out, so I lost more than half of my health out of the gate. Alakazam was an easy one-shot with Body Slam. Rhydon I spammed Harden to set up against, while it dropped my defense constantly, allowing for an insane amount of badge boosting. I eventually worked on KOing it, getting 2 unlucky crits before downing him, but not before taking a few Fury Attacks, including a crit. Exeggutor was another unlucky crit target, while it whittled me down to a smidge of health with Barrage. Gyarados and Charizard, however, I thankfully outsped and 1-shot, netting me the win.

Honestly, I was surprised at the outcome of this. Not only did it take longer, but I needed a higher level. If I decided to force luck on Agatha and used my Rare Candies a bit earlier, I probably could have shaved off a few of both, but all in all, it's pretty much on par with Scyther. Of course, I could say it has a slight edge due to Lavender Tower being a nonissue, but I'm going strictly by game time + level, so for consistency's sake, I'm ranking it right below Scyther.

Next up is a staple of competitive RBY in Tauros, but how will he do in this format? I have a suspicion of the answer to that, but only way to find out.

>>16953824

Yep, just not committing as much time as I did early on. But I still intend on seeing this through to the end.

>Tauros

As hinted at in my previous post, Tauros is an all-around solid pokemon. Statwise, its lowest base stat is Special, at 70. HP is 75, Defense is 95, Attack is 100, and Speed is at 110, so overall, its excellent in the stats department, even if it doesn't necessarily excel in any particular category. Move-wise, it's also excellent. Leveling-wise, it isn't anything special, starting with only Tackle, getting its next move, Stomp, at level 21, and learning nothing of note by levelup afterwards. TM-wise, though, it's absolutely incredible. It gets access to moves ranging from STAB Body Slam to Thunderbolt, to Ice Beam/Blizzard, to Fire Blast, to Earthquake, basically pretty much every solid late game coverage move except for Psychic. Unfortunately, Tauros has two major downsides, aside from a fairly bad early-game move pool: It learns nothing that can take advantage of badge boosting, and it's stuck in the Slow leveling group, making levels take that much longer to get.

Unsurprisingly, Brock is once again the big hurdle of this run. Took quite a bit of time to grind in Viridian Forest, but at level 15, I was able to deal with him, thanks to some pretty decent luck, most notably 2 consecutive crits to knock out his Onix while it was biding. Past that, things went by much quicker. I took out a few optional trainers on Mount Moon for some extra experience before getting to Cerulean, where I opted to try the gym first. Misty took 2 attempts to get right, mostly due to needing Starmie to use weaker moves in order to win. But I was able to squeak out a fairly narrow win nonetheless. Rival 2 was up next, and was much easier, in part due to learning Stomp mid-fight, something that would have made Misty a cakewalk, in hindsight. Thanks to having both a stronger move and more PP to play with, I blew through everything leading up to Bill, allowing me to get to the S.S. Anne, pick up Body Slam, and roll through Rival 3 and Surge, grabbing Thunderbolt. Rock Tunnel was a bit sticky thanks to the mandatory 3-boom Hiker, who I had no proper answers to, relying on brute forcing him with Body Slam. The fact that at one point I forgot to save for like 15 minutes before my emulator froze, forcing me to do the fight again didn't help either. That annoyance aside, getting to Celadon gave me a shiny new toy in Ice Beam, which oddly enough wouldn't be my best move in the Celadon Gym, where I just brute forced with Body Slam to victory after 2 tries (thanks to an unlucky Sleep in attempt 1), but it did help with Giovanni 1, 1-shotting Rhyhorn and Onix, allowing me to easily finish Kangaskhan. Thanks to my pretty solid Coverage, I basically had answers for Rival 4's entire team, and immunity to Lick made the climb up Lavender Tower pretty safe. I tried the Fuschia Gym next, but at the level I was at, I needed a decent bit of luck to deal with Koga, so I opted to come back later. Silph Co was next, and I made sure to grab the Earthquake TM for yet more coverage. At this point, I basically had answers to Rival 5's entire team: Thunderbolt for Pidgeot/Gyarados, Earthquake for Growlithe, and Body Slam for Alakazam/Venusaur (who took more damage from it than Ice Beam). Ice Beam, however, got some utility against Giovanni 2 and the grunt leading up to him, while Earthquake and Body Slam did the rest. I decided to take out Sabrina while I was in town, which took 2 attempts thanks to Venomoth using Stun Spore on attempt 1, allowing Alakazam to finish me off. But aside from that, it was a Body Slam brute-force. I returned to Koga, whose team I still couldn't fully 1-shot, but Earthquake was strong enough to make the fight easy anyway. Blaine, however, was a first-attempt win, thanks to Earthquake spam. Giovanni 3 was a simple Ice Beam + Earthquake to victory. Rival 6 was up next, and ended up being a 2-shot. Pidgeot was a 2-shot with Thunderbolt, Rhyhorn was a 1-shot with Ice Beam, Gyarados was a 1-shot thanks to a cheeky crit (My special wasn't good enough to 1-shot it otherwise), Growlithe was a 1-shot with Earthquake, Alakazam was a 2-shot with Body Slam (again, level didn't help), and Venusaur was a 3-shot with Body Slam. The Elite 4 was within reach, and I was so low-level that I encountered a wild Onix in Victory Road even with a repel up. Thankfully, I had Rare Candies hoarded, and after some failed scouting attempts, I used all of them to get to level 55.

>>16953867

>Lapras

Lapras, to put it bluntly, is absolutely excellent on paper for this format. Statwise, it's an absolute tank, with a whopping base 130 HP, one of the highest in the game, and has solid base attack (85), Defense (80), and Special (95), with its biggest weakness being that it's a bit sluggish, at an okay base 60 Speed. Movewise, it's absolutely solid as well, starting with Water Gun and Growl, giving it one of the strongest attacking types for early game out of the gate. As a bonus, it gets some pretty solid attacks by levelup reasonably early, notably Sing at 16, Body Slam at 25, and Ice Beam at 38. Its TM pool is excellent as well, getting great non-STAB coverage moves like Thunderbolt and Psychic. The only notable downsides are lack of stat-raising moves to take advantage of badge boosting, and being in the Slow leveling group. But with a Sleep move, good stats, and a good movepool, I decided to try this run in minimum battles.

Brock was an absolute cakewalk, with both his Geodude and Onix going down in 2 shots, only using Defense Curl and Bide, respectively, doing zero damage to me. Cerulean was tougher. By the time I cleared out the lone mandatory Gym trainer, I was only level 14. Even being limited to Tackle, Misty's team was too strong to take out, even with Bide strats, and Rival 2's team was similarly too much to bear. While I don't like using Rare Candies this early on, I had exactly enough of them to get to level 16, netting me Sing, which changed the game completely. Rival 2 went from effectively impossible to very doable. After a busted attempt due to getting Sand Attacked turn 1, I was able to get an attempt where I put Pidgeotto to sleep and whittle it down with Water Gun, down Abra, 2-shot Rattata with Water Gun, and put Bulbasaur to sleep and whittle it down with Water Gun. By the time I reached the mandatory Oddish trainer en route to Bill, I was strong enough where Water Gun 2-shot both Oddishes. Misty was much easier with the few extra levels. I still had to largely rely on Bide, but my insane health pool meant I could outlast both of her pokemon fairly easily, netting Bubblebeam to replace Growl. This made Rival 3 much easier, allowing me to brute force Pidgeotto, Kadabra, and Raticate, while still putting Ivysaur to sleep to safely whittle him down. Surge's whole team outsped Lapras, making him take multiple attempts, but I could still 1-shot Voltorb and Pikachu, while putting Raichu to sleep before downing him. I didn't hesitate to replace Water Gun with Thunderbolt. En route to Rock Tunnel, I needed multiple attempts to defeat the Lass with 2 Oddishes and 2 Bellsprouts, due to having nothing that they didn't resist, on top of needing decent Sleep luck in general. The tunnel itself was a joke, however, and I learned Body Slam en route to Celadon, replacing Bide. I got the TMs for Ice Beam and Psychic, both of which I held off from immediately using, as Body Slam and Bubblebeam still had some use to me. Rocket Hideout was next, which provided zero issue, with Giovanni 1's Rhyhorn and Onix being safe 1-shots, and his Kangaskhan being a safe 2-shot. Rival 4 was next, and due to my movepool, I had good counters for everything except for Ivysaur, who I could just brute force with Body Slam anyway. I was only a few levels away from learning Ice Beam by levelup at this point, so I decided to take full advantage of this fact, taking out the mandatory Fuschia gym trainers, replacing Bubblebeam with Psychic, taking out Erika in 1 easy attempt, the mandatory Rocket grunt to pick up the Card Key, and approaching Rival 5. Pidgeot was a 2-shot with Thunderbolt, Gyarados was surprisingly a 2-shot with Thunderbolt, Growlithe was a 2-shot with Body Slam, Alakazam took a few Body Slams, opting to spam Recover while I kept hitting him for over half health, making it a losing battle for him, and Venusaur I put to sleep for safety and downed with Psychic. A bit of luck was needed to make things work, so it took a handful of attempts. Giovanni 2 was unsurprisingly a joke with my movepool. Around this time, I had the chance to learn Ice Beam by levelup, and declined, since Body Slam still had more usage. I took a few shots at Sabrina, who constantly fucked me over with Venomoth's Stun Spore, before opting to just return to Fuschia to roll Koga. While I did grab Surf on this trip, I didn't end up actually teaching it to Lapras, due to Water not being a great attacking type late game. I went back to Sabrina, and after about 2 more attempts, I was able to get a run where I 2-shot Kadabra with Body Slam, 2-shot Mr. Mime with Body Slam while it tried to spam Light Screen, 2-shot Venomoth with Psychic while it failed to hit with Stun Spore twice in a row, and 3-shot Alakazam with Body Slam after he got a Reflect off.

Been occupied with other shit. Real occupied. Still not done here, though.

>Porygon

This is an interesting one, at least early on. Stat-wise, Porygon is the definition of "Okay", when you factor in other single-stage pokemon, while it still is generally better than first-stage pokemon. Most of its stats are middle-of-the-road (65 HP, 60 Attack, 70 Defense, 75 Special), while its speed is a fairly low base 40. Its moves, though, is where things get interesting. It starts with 3 moves, which is very rare. It starts with Tackle (Meh), and 2 signature moves. The first is Sharpen, which boosts Attack by 1 stage. By this point, I don't think I need to explain why this is absolutely excellent in this gen. The second is Conversion, which is one of the most interesting gimmick moves in the game. While it's changed mechanically over the gens, in this particular game, it will turn your type into the type of your opponent. For example, if you were to use it against a Weedle, it would turn you into a Bug/Poison type, and give you all the weaknesses, resistances, and other perks from that. I had a hypothesis about the finer details of this move that I tested as the run went on. Leveling-wise, all of its moves are potentially useful, with Psybeam at 23, Recover at 28, Agility at 35, and Tri Attack at 42. By TM, it sadly doesn't learn Body Slam, but does get access to Tri Attack that way, as well as a sizable variety of attacking types, including Ice Beam/Blizzard, Thunderbolt, and Psychic.

Early on, I tested out Conversion on the Bug Catchers in Viridian Forest. Getting Weedle's Poison typing prevented me from getting poisoned, but in exchange, I lost the STAB bonus for Tackle, essentially a tradeoff of sorts. Conversion would be particularly useful for Brock, who I could use it against to resist all of his attacks. Unfortunately, even with 6 Sharpens up, Geodude could counter with Defense boosts, making my attacks eventually only hit for 1 damage a pop. I simply didn't have the bulk to get through the fight, so I grinded up to 14, which gave me enough oomph to do 2 damage per Tackle, with both parties having maxed out stats. This was enough to get me to Onix, who I needed a bit of luck with, since I didn't outspeed, making Bide a threat. On the winning attempt, a Bide ended up getting me down to 1 health, while he was also down to a sliver. He went for Screech next, throwing the match and netting me a win. I took out some extra trainers on the way to Cerulean for more XP, taking advantage of Conversion where it was appropriate. Misty was up next, and with it, it was time to test my next Conversion hypothesis. On turn 1, I used Conversion to change my type to Water. Since Misty has the "Good" AI, converting made her read my type as Water, locking her team into spamming Tackle, giving me ample time to set up. Even then, Porygon's bulk was a tad suspect, and I squeaked out a winning attempt with 1 HP. Again. So moral of the story, Conversion does, in fact, alter how opponents attack you. Rival 2 was next, and Pidgeotto was the only real threat. Once I got past it with decent health, I could just max out my Attack against Abra and sweep the rest of his team easily. Rival 3 was a bit easier, thanks to having Psybeam in tow, plus having a better level advantage. Only downside was having no safe pokemon to set up on. Surge took a surprising number of tries. Conversion was still the play here, as it allowed me to both resist Electric attacks and make me immune to Paralysis. No Badge Boosting, however, meant that I had no way of outspeeding his team, so I was effectively at the mercy of his attack selection. After a few failed attempts of not being able to outbulk his team, I was fortunate enough to get decent attacks against me, surviving on barely any health, but at least a bit more than 1 this time. I decided to hang on to the Thunderbolt TM for the time being. The path to Celadon was simple enough, and I grabbed Recover on the way, replacing Conversion, as it had effectively done its job, and getting there allowed me to grab Ice Beam (which I also held on to), Psychic (ditto for PP purposes) as well as my best STAB move in Tri Attack, which helped trivialize Rocket Hideout. Giovanni 1 was a simple matter of Psybeaming his rock types, and Tri Attacking his Kangaskhan. Rival 4 was similarly simple, with Growlithe being setup fodder for a Tri Attack sweep. The climb up the tower was simple enough, so I went to Fuschia afterwards and tried the gym. Even with trying to replace Psybeam with Psychic, I simply didn't have the firepower to deal with Koga.

>>16955373

A quick search indicates that EmuBox/NDS Emulator may or may not work. Beyond that, fuck if I know.

Needless to say, I had an itch I needed to scratch.

>Omanyte

The first of the Mt Moon Fossil duo, Omanyte, brings some pretty nice tools to the table. Statwise, it's a mixed bag. While it has a solid 100 base Defense and 90 base Special, it falters in its other stats, with only 35 base HP, 40 base Attack, and 35 base Speed. Its base stat total surpasses a lot of other first-stage Pokemon, but underwhelms compared to single-stage pokemon. Move-wise, it's… A water type. Leveling-wise, it gets Water Gun and Withdraw, an excellent set to start with, but unfortunately, gets nothing of note while leveling, not even getting anything until level 34 (Horn Attack). TM-wise, it's generic. It gets your standard fare of Water and Ice moves, with a bonus Body Slam for some decent physical coverage.

As you can imagine, Brock was an easy one-shot sweep, although on the way to him, I took out every trainer that wasn't completely out of the way, since I'd need the levels down the road. I did similar en route to Cerulean, even taking out the Raticate grunt, since my rock typing meant I could take hits from it fairly easily. Rival 2 wasn't bad, although I needed a bit of luck to get past him. I both needed Pidgeotto to not use Sand-Attack (his other attacks, for a change, barely did anything to me), and Bulbasaur to minimally use Vine Whip, which would be a 2-shot otherwise. On the winning attempt, he used Leech Seed (which missed), Growl twice (which I don't care about), and Vine Whip once, which nailed me. Normally, getting to Bill is a nonissue, but this run turned that upside-down. Right before him, there's a mandatory battle with 2 level 13 Oddishes who only know Absorb. I tried this battle, lost horrible, and took out the other trainers on the route, another rarity for me. Getting up to level 25, I still didn't quite have enough bulk to get past the trainer. For shits and giggles, I tried to see how Misty would go, beating both of the trainers in her gym. Her AI meant she was locked to using Water moves and X Defend, so I could only barely get rid of Staryu, and only chip Starmie before getting wrecked. Long story short, I wasn't getting past her anytime soon. I couldn't take the road to Vermilion either without visiting Bill, so I was pretty fucked. I had to grind up to level 26, and use 2 Rare Candies to get up to level 28, eating a decent chunk of time. But after hitting 28, I was barely able to muscle through the Oddish trainer, allowing me to continue the run. Misty was still a "Nope", though, so I went to the S.S. Anne, picked up Body Slam, and dealt with Rival 3. Having another coverage move made the fight easier than 2, as I had a better way to hit Ivysaur and Kadabra. I grabbed Cut and the Bike Voucher and headed back to Cerulean, not even bothering to try Surge until later. Misty was an order of magnitudes easier now thanks to having a non-Water move, her Staryu getting 1-shot by a crit and her Starmie going down in 4 hits after she used an X Defend the first turn, netting me Bubblebeam. Surprisingly, the 4-grass type trainer was a nonissue, thanks to Body Slam 1-shotting her Bellsprouts and 2-shotting her Oddishes. In fact, the remaining mandatory grass trainers en route to Celadon were pretty easy period. Getting there, however, allowed me to grab Ice Beam to replace Water Gun, and open up a direct route to Vermilion, allowing me to deal with Surge, 1-shotting his first 2 pokemon with Bubblebeam, and 2-shotting Raichu with it, taking a pretty nasty Thunderbolt in the process. The Celadon gym was an obvious "Nope", so I dealt with the Rocket Hideout, having a very easy Giovanni fight with 2 1-shots and a 2-shot against a Kangaskhan who couldn't do shit to me, then Lavender Tower, where Rival 4 was as easy as 3, in large part due to having Ice Beam to down Ivysaur before it could do anything. I went to Fuschia next, promptly going to the Safari Zone to grab Surf, finalizing my moveset very early in the game. It made Koga very easy, between 1 or 2-shotting his team, and none of his team having any way to hit Omanyte for good damage. Due to not having to go out of my way to have a Surf user, I went to Cinnabar next to deal with Blaine's gym. I took out his extra trainers for more XP, and swept his team with Surf. I finally took out Erika next, sweeping her team with Ice Beam, not even giving them a chance to hit me. Rival 5 was next up, and was harder than the past few main battles.

>>16955687

The damage control that's been going on resulting from this getting leaked has been pretty damned absurd. Real shame.

Anyhow.

>Kabuto

Kabuto is very much a tradeoff in comparison to Omanyte, getting the short end of the stick more often than not. Statwise, the most glaring difference is that Kabuto sacrifices a good chunk of base Special (45 vs 90) for a good chunk of base Attack (80 vs 40). Its other stats are different as well, but less drastic. It has less base HP (30 vs 35) and base Defense (90 vs 100), but higher base speed (55 vs 35). In terms of levelup moves, Kabuto draws the short stick, getting Scratch instead of Water Gun as an attacking move, but getting a solid levelup move in Slash, which is arguably better than Body Slam in some situations within the context of these runs. Aside from that, its levelup moves are pretty much worthless for how late it gets them. TM-wise, it gets literally the exact same pool as Omanyte. Brock is, unsurprisingly, an obstacle. Even though Kabuto can easily tank his team, Scratch runs out of PP eventually, so beating him at a low level is pretty much a forgone conclusion. I had to level up to 16 to get enough attack to actually be in a position to brute force the fight. I lucked out against Geodude, getting a normal hit then 2 crits, sawing off almost half of his health in 3 turns. From there, it was just spamming Scratch until I won. Onix was up next, and I speed tied with him, which both worked for and against me. It allowed me to cheese Bide sometimes, or make it slightly worse other times. But all in all, I ended up winning with about half of my health remaining, but almost running out of Scratches. In Mount Moon, I made sure to pick up Water Gun, giving some sorely-needed coverage, giving it a slight leg up against Omanyte for a bit. As a precaution, even though I was a bit ahead levelwise compared to Omanyte at this point in the run, I still took out a couple of extra trainers for experience. Rival 2 was proof that the extra experience was much needed. Simply put, it was pretty much a shitshow, thanks to Pidgeotto's Sand Attack shenanigans, and to a lesser extent, Bulbasaur's Vine Whip. The former is pretty much always a pain in the ass in these runs, and Vine Whip was a 1-shot, so I just had to luck out and not have him use it. After a few attempts, I was fortunate enough to only get 1 accuracy drop, which didn't really affect the rest of the battle. The Oddish trainer en route to Bill was much less of an issue on Kabuto, thanks to having Scratch. However, she still wasn't a freebie, as both Oddishes were a range for a 2-shot, and their absorbs hit Kabuto a fair bit harder than Omanyte. But I did it with a few less levels, and no Rare Candy consumption, so I'll chalk that up as a win. I tried Misty for shits and giggles, and unsurprisingly, Scratch simply wasn't up to snuff. So I went to the S.S. Anne, grabbed Body Slam, and rolled Rival 3, going back up to Misty afterwards. This time it was much easier, as Kabuto's higher attack meant that it could dispatch her team pretty quickly, even if it was much worse at tanking her attacks. Rock Tunnel was uneventful, and Celadon allowed me to get more coverage via Ice Beam. I decided to take out Surge now that I had more levels, which took 2 attempts due to back luck on attempt 1. It was a simple brute force with Body Slam. Funny enough, while I was trying to do the Rocket Hideout, I forgot to grab the Lift Key, so I reset, putting me back to my last save point, which was right before Surge. So I beat him again, this time on attempt 1. After CORRECTLY grabbing said key, the hideout was a complete roll, and Giovanni was a joke. Rival 4 was a 1-shot, but could have taken more, had he opted for Vine Whip on Ivysaur instead of just wasting a turn on Leech Seed, since his Gyarados chunked me pretty badly with Hydro Pump, on top of Vine Whip probably being a 1-shot as-is. After climbing the tower, I beelined to Fuschia, grabbed Surf, replacing Body Slam with Slash, perhaps against my better judgment, and fought Koga, who was a 1-shot, in no small part due to questionable move choices on his Koffings and his Weezing just booming out of the gate, which I could easily tank. Similar to Omanyte, I went to Cinnabar next and took out all the trainers in Blaine's gym before wrecking him with no real resistance. Next I tried for the Celadon Gym, which took a few attempts, to a point where I was tempted to just throw in the towel and try again later. Victrebell was a range, and Vileplume wasn't a 1-shot, so both had the potential to quickly end me. But I got to a point where I was fortunate enough where both tried and failed to go for powder moves, netting me a win.

Was hoping to finish this out before year's end, but apparently not.

>Aerodactyl

Statwise, Aerodactyl absolutely towers over the other two fossils, even having a slightly higher base stat total post-evolution. Its pretty solid base HP (80), Attack (105), and blistering speed (130) are easily the highest of the fossils in this format, while it's the weakest in Defense (A still-decent 65) and middling in Special (60). Movewise, it starts out with Wing Attack, which is effectively identical to Peck, but at least has STAB on it, and Agility, which has some potential for badge-boosting, but is otherwise useless thanks to its already-insane speed. The only levelup move of note is Hyper Beam, although if I wanted a more luck-based run, Supersonic is a move that it also learns by level. TM-wise, it's… Pretty poor. The only TMs it can even learn before Celadon are Bide (as basically everything can) and Whirlwind, which is absolutely useless in this game. It can't learn Body Slam, making its best easily-accessible Normal TM Double Edge, can't learn ANY rock-type moves, but at least it ends up getting STAB Fly and Fire Blast for some bizarre reason. Another big flaw of Aerodactyl is that it levels slower than the other two fossils, being stuck in the Slow group instead of the Medium Fast group. Brock ended up being much easier than I thought. I grinded a bit as a precaution in Viridian Forest, but it ended up being potentially unnecessary. Even at level 12, it was easily able to cut through his team, thanks to resisting their attacks, outspeeding Onix making his bide effectively useless, and being able to constantly crit, having a ~25% crit rate thanks to its speed, bypassing any Defense Curls Geodude used. Suppose it's worth pointing out here that Flying attacks are objectively better than Normal ones are, since the only thing Flying doesn't do well against that Normal doesn't also have issues with is Electric, and Surge is the only mandatory Electric type trainer in the entire run. Meanwhile, it's super effective against Bug, Grass, and Fighting, all of which are fairly plentiful. This is relevant here because the extra damage on some trainers makes the fights go faster, thus saving time. Anyhow, Rival 2 took a few tries, thanks to Sand Attack being awful, per usual. But once that didn't fuck me over, it was very easy, since my base stats are pretty much carrying me at the moment. After visiting Bill, I decided to try Misty for shits and giggles at level 21, not expecting to be able to do it. I was quickly proven wrong, as I was able to win first try. While Starmie is normally able to outspeed whatever I'm using at the time, Aerodactyl was a rare exception, which allowed it to pretty much brute force her team with relatively little resistance. Rival 3 was pretty much similar to Rival 2, since my move set was literally identical, but I had more levels on him, allowing me a bit more leeway on taking care of his team. I skipped Surge for now for obvious reasons, and went through Rock Tunnel. The mandatory 3-boom Hiker was somewhat of note, as I did end up falling back on Bide strats to get past him, since Wing Attack couldn't really brute force it, nor could I easily tank 3 Selfdestructs. Getting to Celadon, I quickly grabbed Fly from the house north of Cycling Road, and Double Edge from Rocket Hideout, giving me both a stronger STAB and a way to deal with Normal Types (as well as speed up battles a bit due to taking one less turn to use). With it, I could go back to Surge, who was a pretty easy sweep. I flew back to Celadon to take on Erika, sweeping through her whole team with ease. Rocket Hideout was next, and Giovanni 1 was pretty easy, even if he took a bit of time to take out thanks to two of his pokemon resisting my attacks, but it's not like he could really do damage to me either. Rival 4 was cake, since I could brute force his team even harder at this point, and giving him Squirtle as a starter meant no Gyarados to harass me here. Koga was up next, and even though I resisted all of his attacks, poison could still doom me, so it took multiple attempts, winning on low health thanks to being up in the air when his Weezing selfdestructed, as I was hoping for. Rival 5 was annoying, thanks to, surprise surprise, Accuracy drops. But once again, getting past that all but ensured a win, since I could easily badge boost a bit against Growlithe. Giovanni 2 was basically a repeat of Giovanni 1, in that he couldn't really hurt me, but it took a while to hurt him, although with only 1 rock-type, it wasn't quite as bad. Sabrina was a punchline, since Fly was supereffective against her Venomoth, my physical moves could tear through her Psychic types, and I was fast enough where I didn't really even have to worry about being outsped. Blaine couldn't do anything against me, so he was pretty much free, and getting Fire Blast was nice, even if it would prove to be very niche.

>Snorlax

Given everything I've learned from these runs, this should be pretty cut and dry. Snorlax has basically all the tools a good solo runner should have. Its stats are great, with a monstrous base HP of 160, a great 110 base attack, and okay 65 Defense and Special, only really lacking in Speed, which is base 30. Movewise, it starts with Amnesia, Headbutt, and Rest. Headbutt effectively has a base power of 105 thanks to STAB, Amnesia is the best boosting move in the game bar none, and Rest has situational use until better moves become available. Its leveling moves aren't bad either (Body Slam, Harden, Double Edge, and Hyper Beam, in that order), but they come rather late. TM-wise, it gets an absurd amount of coverage, getting almost every good TM, including, but not limited to: Ice Beam/Blizzard, Psychic, Thunderbolt, Earthquake, Body Slam, and Rock Slide. Unfortunately it gets held back a bit by being in the Slow leveling group similar to Aerodactyl, but pretty much everything else is lined up.

Brock was still a bit of a roadblock, since Headbutt only has so much PP, and without doing some extra grinding, Geodude and Onix can still hit fairly hard. At level 12, I was able to get a win in. Geodude took a bit of time to start setting up Defense Curls, so Headbutt was able to chunk him pretty hard early on, giving me a decent number of them for Onix. Unfortunately, the ones I had left weren't quite strong enough to take it out, plus Bide was still doing decent damage to me since I didn't outspeed. But the Headbutts I did have left were enough to get it to about a third of its health, so I opted to just use up my Amnesias and Rests to go into Struggle mode. Thankfully, the AI was nice enough to not actually attack me on my last Rest, so I started Struggling with full health, and Onix didn't really try to do much attack-wise, even with my Defense fully dropped, so I was able to win fairly comfortably. Beyond that laid a decent number of rolls. I picked up Water Gun in Mount Moon for more coverage/PP, as well as Mega Punch, which I never ended up using. Rival 2 was an easy sweep with Headbutt, as was Misty, netting me Bubblebeam. I grabbed Body Slam from the S.S. Anne and swept Rival 3 and Surge with it, neither of which presented any challenge, even with the latter paralyzing me. I had zero issue getting to Celadon, where I grabbed Ice Beam, as well as Psychic from Saffron (which never ended up being used either). Giovanni went down easily between Bubblebeam and Body Slam, as did Rival 4. I then replaced Rest with Rock Slide to make getting up Lavender Tower a bit faster, then went to Fuschia to deal with Koga. I ended up putting in more attempts than I'd like to admit, in large part due to being too stubborn to detour to grab Earthquake from Silph Co. But it ended up not being needed, I just needed a bit of luck in what moves Koga used, and ended up 2-shotting his Koffings, 4-shotting his Muk, and having his Weezing boom on me, leaving me with a sliver of health. Rival 5 was much easier, though. I used Rock Slide against Pidgeot and Gyarados, set up Amnesias against Growlithe before downing it with Bubblebeam, then Body Slamming his Alakazam and Venusaur. Giovanni 2 I just set up Amnesias, then Bubblebeamed his team to death. Sabrina was a simple sweep with Body Slam and Rock Slide, and Blaine took 2 attempts since I got hit with a critical Fire Blast on attempt 1. That was just a matter of setting up Amnesias and sweeping with Bubblebeam. So far, so simple. I went to Viridian, only to realize I completely forgot about Erika, so I went to sweep her with Body Slam, before going to Giovanni to sweep him with Amnesia-boosted Bubblebeams. Rival 6 was another 2-shot, using Amnesias on Pidgeot and just sweeping the rest of the team. By this point, I had no need to use a lot of my good TMs, still hanging on to Body Slam-Amnesia-Rock Slide-Bubblebeam, but that was about to change, and quickly.

>>16958479

>>16958480

I had ended up abandoning ship for that very reason, yes. Unfortunately, the details of my final runs are ultimately lost to time, but I do have the final tier list on hand, as well as the caps of the results of two redos I had mentioned at the end of my Snorlax post.

>Spearow

As the nickname indicates, it was just a slightly better Pidgey overall. Given my pokedex, it goes without saying I needed to down plenty of extra trainers to get past Lorelei's Ice bullshittery.

>Squirtle

This one was begging for a redo, given how powerful the Badge Boost glitch is. Withdraw allowed Squirtle to soar from middle-of-the-pack to absolutely excellent.

So over a year later technically under, I believe I finished these runs out mid-January, I can finally call this series a wrap.

OP out.