There are so many quests/goals/etc you can fulfill just noodling around with whatever catches your fancy. Don't assume you need to do anything first, or right away, or even at all - it's likely you'll find everything you want in the course of playing the game. Even that stupid Buizel
I still don't get how, not really understanding how annoying that quest is at the time, I just picked a random Buizel from my box and it was big enough to pass first try.
There are so many quests/goals/etc you can fulfill just noodling around with whatever catches your fancy. Don't assume you need to do anything first, or right away, or even at all - it's likely you'll find everything you want in the course of playing the game. Even that stupid Buizel
I'm very gradually learning that - after I took the time to evolve three Starlys. Ah well.
So does the "watch a pokemon do X move" tasks carry across over species? Like, do I have to have Wurmple specifically do the poison sting, or can I use a Beautifly to poison sting, and that'll carry over to the Wurmple entry? I noticed evolution tasks carry forward, which is nice.
They don't carry over, only the evolution ones double dip.
I wouldn't concern yourself with getting perfect research, just get each one to level 10. The research with ^ next to it count for double so focusing on those is usually the way to go.
(perfect research gets you +1 roll on shiny chance for that pokémon, pretty meaningless overall)
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
They don't carry over, only the evolution ones double dip.
I wouldn't concern yourself with getting perfect research, just get each one to level 10. The research with ^ next to it count for double so focusing on those is usually the way to go.
(perfect research gets you +1 roll on shiny chance for that pokémon, pretty meaningless overall)
Ah, probably good advice to keep things manageable. Thanks!
Arceus is so much less grueling now that I know I don't have to do every single task on a Pokedex entry. Though as a bonus, the tasks I already did got me to master Pokemon up to level 65, at a time that my highest is level 22.
Next question: do I have to battle the extra big-ass Heracross in the starting area to get him, or are there regular-ass Heracross elsewhere? I don't wanna dive through all the shitty sites I've never heard of that wrangle SEO to pop up at the top of Google searches.
Arceus is so much less grueling now that I know I don't have to do every single task on a Pokedex entry. Though as a bonus, the tasks I already did got me to master Pokemon up to level 65, at a time that my highest is level 22.
Next question: do I have to battle the extra big-ass Heracross in the starting area to get him, or are there regular-ass Heracross elsewhere? I don't wanna dive through all the shitty sites I've never heard of that wrangle SEO to pop up at the top of Google searches.
Yes there definitely are (I know for a fact there are some in the forth area at the very least, can't remember if any other places.. I think they might also have a very low chance of spawning from certain shaking trees like in Diamond and Pearl but I also may just be hallucinating this :P)
I don't recall any Pokémon that only come in Alpha variants, so you should be able to find normal Heracross somewhere.
And this is kinda sorta not true (but kinda is?). A lot of final evolutions are only available as either Alphas or actually evolving yourself, but I believe anything that doesn't evolve or is the base form of an evo line is in the wild as a non-alpha (and if you include massive mass outbreaks you can actually have wild max evos that aren't alphas, but this is post game only I think? And subject to super RNG :P).
But that said, if you include alphas the vast majority of this game's pokedex, including evolutions, are actually catchable in the wild (if you include massive mass outbreaks I think it's actually all of them? I believe they can be literally anything non-legendary/mythic) which is really nice. If you explore enough you actually don't need to grind levels or hunt for evo items hardly at all to complete the pokedex (I think there's only a very very small number of exceptions, like Porygon-Z for example I'm pretty sure spawns nowhere but I assume can be in a massive mass outbreak. I think most of the brand new Hisui evolutions like Kleavor also fall into this category).
Next question: do I have to battle the extra big-ass Heracross in the starting area to get him, or are there regular-ass Heracross elsewhere?
Yes.
But you probably want to wait to get different food/balls to throw at him if you want to catch him.
I would have thought you already had at least the black pokeballs, if you can get up to lvl 65 pokes though.
And you can get regular Heracross in the second level, with a little luck.
Same place as your Eevee evos.
Don't know if there's set spawns of Heracross somewhere else though.
yeah, don't go insane grinding down every last piece of research and catching every last boi before moving on.
everyone has a playstyle, but that's gonna wear you down really fast. everything gets easier and faster when you let the game move forward.
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
Rami on
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
With Scarlet and Violet Crystal raids using the same basic skeleton of Dynamax raids/dens i wonder if we'll still be able to seed manipulate shiny dens.
I don't present this as a serious proposal, more just externalizing something that passed through my head:
Pokemon wears multiple hats; it's simultaneously a fairly deep multiplayer game and also has its single-player, story-driven mode as a first-class member. Being a monster-collection game, that means the single-player game needs to give you continuous incentive to replace members of your team; since any Pokemon can grow to level 100 (unlike in, say, Shin Megami Tensei, where their exp-to-next-level grows exponentially beyond the level you first obtain them), they generally create that incentive by offering "better" Pokemon (higher BST mostly, but also in terms of viable movesets or better Abilities or typings) later in the game. Essentially, early Pokemon are to your Trainer like the Bronze Sword is to a classic JRPG protagonist: they get replaced when the Iron Sword becomes available. That replacement incentive works against the notion of competitive balancing on the competitive side: you wind up with a small pool of Pokemon, the "best" ones, seeing a lot of use, while the majority serve niche roles or get ignored entirely.
Not that the current situation is untenable (because there are so many Pokemon that even a small subset of them creates a huge pool of available choices), but could we improve the situation?
CCGs like Magic the Gathering or, to some extent, even the Pokemon TCG address the notion of individually powerful monsters with the idea of "casting cost". Larger monsters take more mana to cast, or bigger Pokemon cards have abilities that require more attached Energy to use. My proposal amounts to something similar for competitive Pokemon: assign a weight class to every Pokemon. Provisionally, let's say that it operates on a scale of 1 to 4 points, with legendaries or other "restricted" Pokemon being 4 points, high-BST non-legendaries (let's say something like 525 BST or above) being 3 points, 450 to 525 being 2 points, and anything below that being 1 point. (Don't fixate on the exact ranges; they'd have to be determined by experimentation and then fine-tuned in light of intangibles like Ability, moveset, and typing.) Then, in any given battle, instead of choosing exactly a certain number of Pokemon from your team of six (three for singles or four for doubles), you can pick any number of Pokemon (up to all six), so long as their total weight doesn't exceed a specific limit (my initial reflex is 7 for singles, slightly more for doubles). Likely we'd need a clause about having only one restricted Pokemon on your team so you can't play "lol which of my three legendaries am I bringing this time".
Ultimately I don't know if this would actually improve the number of viable Pokemon, especially since some meta-defining Pokemon like Whimsicott rank a 2 in my proposed scale, but I like the idea of putting some kind of pressure against just bringing the biggest (or most meta) Pokemon available because they won't all fit in your team.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Well, on a different note, pokemon evolution provides an answer to the whole early/late game power thing as well. If your bronze sword becomes an iron sword and later some magic whatever late in the game, it works out. The game doesn't really need to incentivize replacing team members because collecting has intrinsic appeal, imo.
I don't present this as a serious proposal, more just externalizing something that passed through my head:
Pokemon wears multiple hats; it's simultaneously a fairly deep multiplayer game and also has its single-player, story-driven mode as a first-class member. Being a monster-collection game, that means the single-player game needs to give you continuous incentive to replace members of your team; since any Pokemon can grow to level 100 (unlike in, say, Shin Megami Tensei, where their exp-to-next-level grows exponentially beyond the level you first obtain them), they generally create that incentive by offering "better" Pokemon (higher BST mostly, but also in terms of viable movesets or better Abilities or typings) later in the game. Essentially, early Pokemon are to your Trainer like the Bronze Sword is to a classic JRPG protagonist: they get replaced when the Iron Sword becomes available. That replacement incentive works against the notion of competitive balancing on the competitive side: you wind up with a small pool of Pokemon, the "best" ones, seeing a lot of use, while the majority serve niche roles or get ignored entirely.
Not that the current situation is untenable (because there are so many Pokemon that even a small subset of them creates a huge pool of available choices), but could we improve the situation?
CCGs like Magic the Gathering or, to some extent, even the Pokemon TCG address the notion of individually powerful monsters with the idea of "casting cost". Larger monsters take more mana to cast, or bigger Pokemon cards have abilities that require more attached Energy to use. My proposal amounts to something similar for competitive Pokemon: assign a weight class to every Pokemon. Provisionally, let's say that it operates on a scale of 1 to 4 points, with legendaries or other "restricted" Pokemon being 4 points, high-BST non-legendaries (let's say something like 525 BST or above) being 3 points, 450 to 525 being 2 points, and anything below that being 1 point. (Don't fixate on the exact ranges; they'd have to be determined by experimentation and then fine-tuned in light of intangibles like Ability, moveset, and typing.) Then, in any given battle, instead of choosing exactly a certain number of Pokemon from your team of six (three for singles or four for doubles), you can pick any number of Pokemon (up to all six), so long as their total weight doesn't exceed a specific limit (my initial reflex is 7 for singles, slightly more for doubles). Likely we'd need a clause about having only one restricted Pokemon on your team so you can't play "lol which of my three legendaries am I bringing this time".
Ultimately I don't know if this would actually improve the number of viable Pokemon, especially since some meta-defining Pokemon like Whimsicott rank a 2 in my proposed scale, but I like the idea of putting some kind of pressure against just bringing the biggest (or most meta) Pokemon available because they won't all fit in your team.
This is really interesting but what stuck out most to me is the bit at the end - you're basically describing what the Battletech tt game refers to as Battle Value. It's a little bit arcane, but it basically ascribes a point value to each 'mech in the game and you can play a battle where both sides agree to a BV limit and it usually improves game balance over, say, straight weight limits.
e: as an aside, the biggest problem with "BV only" battles is that there's no inherent limit on number of units, so you can do the equivalent of bringing like 2 dozen Charmanders against a Mega Abomosnow
I don't present this as a serious proposal, more just externalizing something that passed through my head:
Pokemon wears multiple hats; it's simultaneously a fairly deep multiplayer game and also has its single-player, story-driven mode as a first-class member. Being a monster-collection game, that means the single-player game needs to give you continuous incentive to replace members of your team; since any Pokemon can grow to level 100 (unlike in, say, Shin Megami Tensei, where their exp-to-next-level grows exponentially beyond the level you first obtain them), they generally create that incentive by offering "better" Pokemon (higher BST mostly, but also in terms of viable movesets or better Abilities or typings) later in the game. Essentially, early Pokemon are to your Trainer like the Bronze Sword is to a classic JRPG protagonist: they get replaced when the Iron Sword becomes available. That replacement incentive works against the notion of competitive balancing on the competitive side: you wind up with a small pool of Pokemon, the "best" ones, seeing a lot of use, while the majority serve niche roles or get ignored entirely.
Not that the current situation is untenable (because there are so many Pokemon that even a small subset of them creates a huge pool of available choices), but could we improve the situation?
CCGs like Magic the Gathering or, to some extent, even the Pokemon TCG address the notion of individually powerful monsters with the idea of "casting cost". Larger monsters take more mana to cast, or bigger Pokemon cards have abilities that require more attached Energy to use. My proposal amounts to something similar for competitive Pokemon: assign a weight class to every Pokemon. Provisionally, let's say that it operates on a scale of 1 to 4 points, with legendaries or other "restricted" Pokemon being 4 points, high-BST non-legendaries (let's say something like 525 BST or above) being 3 points, 450 to 525 being 2 points, and anything below that being 1 point. (Don't fixate on the exact ranges; they'd have to be determined by experimentation and then fine-tuned in light of intangibles like Ability, moveset, and typing.) Then, in any given battle, instead of choosing exactly a certain number of Pokemon from your team of six (three for singles or four for doubles), you can pick any number of Pokemon (up to all six), so long as their total weight doesn't exceed a specific limit (my initial reflex is 7 for singles, slightly more for doubles). Likely we'd need a clause about having only one restricted Pokemon on your team so you can't play "lol which of my three legendaries am I bringing this time".
Ultimately I don't know if this would actually improve the number of viable Pokemon, especially since some meta-defining Pokemon like Whimsicott rank a 2 in my proposed scale, but I like the idea of putting some kind of pressure against just bringing the biggest (or most meta) Pokemon available because they won't all fit in your team.
This is really interesting but what stuck out most to me is the bit at the end - you're basically describing what the Battletech tt game refers to as Battle Value. It's a little bit arcane, but it basically ascribes a point value to each 'mech in the game and you can play a battle where both sides agree to a BV limit and it usually improves game balance over, say, straight weight limits.
e: as an aside, the biggest problem with "BV only" battles is that there's no inherent limit on number of units, so you can do the equivalent of bringing like 2 dozen Charmanders against a Mega Abomosnow
I think a system of ‘max 6 Pokémon, their combined stats can’t exceed ____’ would be a fun.
I have an idea, but it’d be too much of a shake up:
So you’ve got your subpar Pokémon with low stats right? That’s fine, for the reasons stated. It’s a progression thing.
But how about in post-game you can take your fav beedrill into a mysterious location, do some busy work, and then! Your beedrills stats advance to whatever is worked out to be the average base to be viable for competition. Call it Awakening or something, make it the next game’s thing. It still wouldn’t put a beedrill on par with something that has better typing, a better ability, a better move pool or even a more specialist spread of the same value, but at least it could be part of your team.
I recall reading about Gen 1 and 2 competitive being a bit like that. As I understood, competitions allowed a single level 55 Pokemon and two level 50 Pokemon for a 3v3 match. This banned Mewtwo outright, since it was only obtainable at level 70 in RGBY. It also meant that if you wanted to use Dragonite or Tyranitar, it had to take up your level 55 slot, and likewise if you wanted to use the legendary birds at level 50 then they couldn't be trained at all. And since training was a lot more beneficial in those games, even a significant difference in base stats could be negated by an extra 10-20 levels spent training.
In the end it comes down to what feels like an irreconcilable dichotomy inherent to the games versus the franchise itself. The game offers huge mechanical incentive to swapping Pokemon out as you progress through the story, even temporarily (such as bringing in a ground type against an Electric gym) as an encouragement to collect, trade, and explore the game world. But from a perspective where the Pokemon themselves are also characters, like a television show, carelessly adding and dropping Pokemon makes it difficult to establish emotional stakes.
The simplest solution I can see is to make the benefit of EVs much more significant and simultaneously more laborious to develop in the story. But EVs seem to be pretty well balanced in the competitive space already, so fiddling with the back end like that seems very risky. Perhaps a segregation of story and competitive EVs? Make the competitive EVs easy to swap around via Tutor but limited in power to existing standards. Or perhaps tie in permanent stat boosts to Pokemon affection levels that don't carry over to competitive, similar to how Pokemon will occasionally recover from status effects so the trainer doesn't "feel sad."
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I recall reading about Gen 1 and 2 competitive being a bit like that. As I understood, competitions allowed a single level 55 Pokemon and two level 50 Pokemon for a 3v3 match. This banned Mewtwo outright, since it was only obtainable at level 70 in RGBY. It also meant that if you wanted to use Dragonite or Tyranitar, it had to take up your level 55 slot, and likewise if you wanted to use the legendary birds at level 50 then they couldn't be trained at all. And since training was a lot more beneficial in those games, even a significant difference in base stats could be negated by an extra 10-20 levels spent training.
In the end it comes down to what feels like an irreconcilable dichotomy inherent to the games versus the franchise itself. The game offers huge mechanical incentive to swapping Pokemon out as you progress through the story, even temporarily (such as bringing in a ground type against an Electric gym) as an encouragement to collect, trade, and explore the game world. But from a perspective where the Pokemon themselves are also characters, like a television show, carelessly adding and dropping Pokemon makes it difficult to establish emotional stakes.
The simplest solution I can see is to make the benefit of EVs much more significant and simultaneously more laborious to develop in the story. But EVs seem to be pretty well balanced in the competitive space already, so fiddling with the back end like that seems very risky. Perhaps a segregation of story and competitive EVs? Make the competitive EVs easy to swap around via Tutor but limited in power to existing standards. Or perhaps tie in permanent stat boosts to Pokemon affection levels that don't carry over to competitive, similar to how Pokemon will occasionally recover from status effects so the trainer doesn't "feel sad."
Honestly I liked Legends Arceus's approach to EVs. I feel like they're always one of those confusing "only for the hardcore competitive types" stats but Arceus was able to present them in a very casual-friendly way.
But I dunno. I think everything sorta just hinges on how you choose to play. Whether you actually bond with your team or they are just 1s and 0s to swap out when needed is kinda up to the player. Things like naming them or rolling with unconventional choices are things I've been doing more recently in this regard. I find the games more fun this way. But I don't know that Pokemon Company necessarily needs to force this. Like, I kinda think taking a very non personal approach to them is a valid thing too. I don't think I would want them to say "screw those people" to anyone who wants to play it that way. But that's just me :P
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
It's Petilil.. there's a ton of them in the big flower grove where Togepi spawns (which may require a long route around Lake Valor if you're doing it early enough and/or hardcore parkour to get over the river :P).
If there was a game called Pokémon Wilds, which was a fan game, I reckon it’d be pretty good. But since I can’t recall the rules on discussing such things, vague end of sentence.
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
It's Petilil.. there's a ton of them in the big flower grove where Togepi spawns (which may require a long route around Lake Valor if you're doing it early enough and/or hardcore parkour to get over the river :P).
Yeah, I completely forgot about the Pokemon in question.
Doesn't help that the profile pics chop off the leaves, and that I went straight back to Jubilife this time playing.
And yeah, parkour is the way to go.
I'm pretty sure I've been everywhere in the Crimson Mirelands already.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited September 2022
Yup. It didn't help that at the time I had never even played that gen so I've barely seen that one at all to remember what it looked like :P I saw the quest and was like, "Oh, that's gotta be Oddish" :P But nope, Oddish not in the game
And yeah, I was totally breaking where the game expected me to explore with fancy jumps and like, Skyrim climbing up cliffs
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
It's Petilil.. there's a ton of them in the big flower grove where Togepi spawns (which may require a long route around Lake Valor if you're doing it early enough and/or hardcore parkour to get over the river :P).
I thought it was Turtwig
Though I'm pretty sure I made that real mistake in my own game and didn't realise for an embarrassingly long time
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
It's Petilil.. there's a ton of them in the big flower grove where Togepi spawns (which may require a long route around Lake Valor if you're doing it early enough and/or hardcore parkour to get over the river :P).
I thought it was Turtwig
Though I'm pretty sure I made that real mistake in my own game and didn't realise for an embarrassingly long time
Well, I just went up four ranks.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
It's Petilil.. there's a ton of them in the big flower grove where Togepi spawns (which may require a long route around Lake Valor if you're doing it early enough and/or hardcore parkour to get over the river :P).
I thought it was Turtwig
Though I'm pretty sure I made that real mistake in my own game and didn't realise for an embarrassingly long time
Finally got to the point in Arceus I felt confident enough taking on and capturing my first non-story alpha. I then used that alpha to get another alpha, which lead to a cascade of conquering every single alpha I could reach in the first area (well, not Alakazam. Yet.).
Which is really throwing my usual Pokemon workflow for a loop. Usually I capture every Pokemon I can reach, level all of them simultaneously, then weed out the ones that have evolved all the way that aren't that great. Here, I'm capturing alphas that are much higher level/more evolved than the vanilla version I had been working on, so I'm releasing the vanillas. Now it seems like 2/3rds of my active Pokemon are alphas, and I'm beating every encounter by lightly sneezing on them. It's possible I'll eat my words soon, but it feels like I'm breaking the game?
At least you can use your alphas?
I just stealth catch mine, and for the longest time I was sending pokes back to the paddocks that I couldn't control.
Which I thought was hilarious.
Residents of Jubilife might not have though.
I'm not sure you can really break the game.
It is what it is, and if that means you're wrecking people's level 10 lifelong siblings with level 30s or something, it just makes me feel more like a cryptid.
But the game's also pretty harsh playing at level too.
So I'm not sure it expects you to.
Arceus continues to be hilarious.
Teaching someone how to use their Pokemon, with "Step 1: Get an alpha".
And a whole spiel on how we should call on the strength of others and not rely on only ourselves, after I finished pacifying the second enraged poke by pelting it repeatedly with beanbags.
I'm also taking it as canon, that the reason everyone is so cool with sending 10 year olds out to catch Pokemon, is that one time Arceus sent some weird 10 yo back in time and they were all too scarily capable.
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I still don't get how, not really understanding how annoying that quest is at the time, I just picked a random Buizel from my box and it was big enough to pass first try.
I'm very gradually learning that - after I took the time to evolve three Starlys. Ah well.
So does the "watch a pokemon do X move" tasks carry across over species? Like, do I have to have Wurmple specifically do the poison sting, or can I use a Beautifly to poison sting, and that'll carry over to the Wurmple entry? I noticed evolution tasks carry forward, which is nice.
I wouldn't concern yourself with getting perfect research, just get each one to level 10. The research with ^ next to it count for double so focusing on those is usually the way to go.
(perfect research gets you +1 roll on shiny chance for that pokémon, pretty meaningless overall)
As for Eevees, wait for time distortions. Or mass thingies that I've never seen I guess.
And for chonky research, look for Pokemon that are physically bigger than the other spawns.
If they don't look big, don't engage them.
Ah, probably good advice to keep things manageable. Thanks!
Next question: do I have to battle the extra big-ass Heracross in the starting area to get him, or are there regular-ass Heracross elsewhere? I don't wanna dive through all the shitty sites I've never heard of that wrangle SEO to pop up at the top of Google searches.
Yes there definitely are (I know for a fact there are some in the forth area at the very least, can't remember if any other places.. I think they might also have a very low chance of spawning from certain shaking trees like in Diamond and Pearl but I also may just be hallucinating this :P)
And this is kinda sorta not true (but kinda is?). A lot of final evolutions are only available as either Alphas or actually evolving yourself, but I believe anything that doesn't evolve or is the base form of an evo line is in the wild as a non-alpha (and if you include massive mass outbreaks you can actually have wild max evos that aren't alphas, but this is post game only I think? And subject to super RNG :P).
But that said, if you include alphas the vast majority of this game's pokedex, including evolutions, are actually catchable in the wild (if you include massive mass outbreaks I think it's actually all of them? I believe they can be literally anything non-legendary/mythic) which is really nice. If you explore enough you actually don't need to grind levels or hunt for evo items hardly at all to complete the pokedex (I think there's only a very very small number of exceptions, like Porygon-Z for example I'm pretty sure spawns nowhere but I assume can be in a massive mass outbreak. I think most of the brand new Hisui evolutions like Kleavor also fall into this category).
Yes.
But you probably want to wait to get different food/balls to throw at him if you want to catch him.
I would have thought you already had at least the black pokeballs, if you can get up to lvl 65 pokes though.
And you can get regular Heracross in the second level, with a little luck.
Same place as your Eevee evos.
Don't know if there's set spawns of Heracross somewhere else though.
everyone has a playstyle, but that's gonna wear you down really fast. everything gets easier and faster when you let the game move forward.
Apparently, still missed some poke in the second area, and they want me to go back too.
... Or I'm just incapable of finding a poke with three leaves on its head in my paddocks.
The pokémon for that sidequest is found in the mirelands yeah, but only one will spawn. For such a rare sight you'd probably need to search the far corners of the world.
(also confirmation that the Vivillon line is returning
Edit:
Pokemon wears multiple hats; it's simultaneously a fairly deep multiplayer game and also has its single-player, story-driven mode as a first-class member. Being a monster-collection game, that means the single-player game needs to give you continuous incentive to replace members of your team; since any Pokemon can grow to level 100 (unlike in, say, Shin Megami Tensei, where their exp-to-next-level grows exponentially beyond the level you first obtain them), they generally create that incentive by offering "better" Pokemon (higher BST mostly, but also in terms of viable movesets or better Abilities or typings) later in the game. Essentially, early Pokemon are to your Trainer like the Bronze Sword is to a classic JRPG protagonist: they get replaced when the Iron Sword becomes available. That replacement incentive works against the notion of competitive balancing on the competitive side: you wind up with a small pool of Pokemon, the "best" ones, seeing a lot of use, while the majority serve niche roles or get ignored entirely.
Not that the current situation is untenable (because there are so many Pokemon that even a small subset of them creates a huge pool of available choices), but could we improve the situation?
CCGs like Magic the Gathering or, to some extent, even the Pokemon TCG address the notion of individually powerful monsters with the idea of "casting cost". Larger monsters take more mana to cast, or bigger Pokemon cards have abilities that require more attached Energy to use. My proposal amounts to something similar for competitive Pokemon: assign a weight class to every Pokemon. Provisionally, let's say that it operates on a scale of 1 to 4 points, with legendaries or other "restricted" Pokemon being 4 points, high-BST non-legendaries (let's say something like 525 BST or above) being 3 points, 450 to 525 being 2 points, and anything below that being 1 point. (Don't fixate on the exact ranges; they'd have to be determined by experimentation and then fine-tuned in light of intangibles like Ability, moveset, and typing.) Then, in any given battle, instead of choosing exactly a certain number of Pokemon from your team of six (three for singles or four for doubles), you can pick any number of Pokemon (up to all six), so long as their total weight doesn't exceed a specific limit (my initial reflex is 7 for singles, slightly more for doubles). Likely we'd need a clause about having only one restricted Pokemon on your team so you can't play "lol which of my three legendaries am I bringing this time".
Ultimately I don't know if this would actually improve the number of viable Pokemon, especially since some meta-defining Pokemon like Whimsicott rank a 2 in my proposed scale, but I like the idea of putting some kind of pressure against just bringing the biggest (or most meta) Pokemon available because they won't all fit in your team.
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This is really interesting but what stuck out most to me is the bit at the end - you're basically describing what the Battletech tt game refers to as Battle Value. It's a little bit arcane, but it basically ascribes a point value to each 'mech in the game and you can play a battle where both sides agree to a BV limit and it usually improves game balance over, say, straight weight limits.
e: as an aside, the biggest problem with "BV only" battles is that there's no inherent limit on number of units, so you can do the equivalent of bringing like 2 dozen Charmanders against a Mega Abomosnow
I think a system of ‘max 6 Pokémon, their combined stats can’t exceed ____’ would be a fun.
I have an idea, but it’d be too much of a shake up:
So you’ve got your subpar Pokémon with low stats right? That’s fine, for the reasons stated. It’s a progression thing.
But how about in post-game you can take your fav beedrill into a mysterious location, do some busy work, and then! Your beedrills stats advance to whatever is worked out to be the average base to be viable for competition. Call it Awakening or something, make it the next game’s thing. It still wouldn’t put a beedrill on par with something that has better typing, a better ability, a better move pool or even a more specialist spread of the same value, but at least it could be part of your team.
In the end it comes down to what feels like an irreconcilable dichotomy inherent to the games versus the franchise itself. The game offers huge mechanical incentive to swapping Pokemon out as you progress through the story, even temporarily (such as bringing in a ground type against an Electric gym) as an encouragement to collect, trade, and explore the game world. But from a perspective where the Pokemon themselves are also characters, like a television show, carelessly adding and dropping Pokemon makes it difficult to establish emotional stakes.
The simplest solution I can see is to make the benefit of EVs much more significant and simultaneously more laborious to develop in the story. But EVs seem to be pretty well balanced in the competitive space already, so fiddling with the back end like that seems very risky. Perhaps a segregation of story and competitive EVs? Make the competitive EVs easy to swap around via Tutor but limited in power to existing standards. Or perhaps tie in permanent stat boosts to Pokemon affection levels that don't carry over to competitive, similar to how Pokemon will occasionally recover from status effects so the trainer doesn't "feel sad."
Honestly I liked Legends Arceus's approach to EVs. I feel like they're always one of those confusing "only for the hardcore competitive types" stats but Arceus was able to present them in a very casual-friendly way.
But I dunno. I think everything sorta just hinges on how you choose to play. Whether you actually bond with your team or they are just 1s and 0s to swap out when needed is kinda up to the player. Things like naming them or rolling with unconventional choices are things I've been doing more recently in this regard. I find the games more fun this way. But I don't know that Pokemon Company necessarily needs to force this. Like, I kinda think taking a very non personal approach to them is a valid thing too. I don't think I would want them to say "screw those people" to anyone who wants to play it that way. But that's just me :P
See that's what I thought originally.
But no, that has two leaves.
I'm not sure what Rami is saying - it's actually really common, though mostly only found in one place and I wanna say only during the day (I think they spawn in a few other places but only like 1-2 of them, so maybe that's what Rami is thinking of). I'm guessing, like me, you are thinking of the completely wrong pokemon :P (honestly no way in a million years would I have thought of this one if I didn't accidentally stumble on it and notice the leaves)
Yeah, I completely forgot about the Pokemon in question.
Doesn't help that the profile pics chop off the leaves, and that I went straight back to Jubilife this time playing.
And yeah, parkour is the way to go.
I'm pretty sure I've been everywhere in the Crimson Mirelands already.
And yeah, I was totally breaking where the game expected me to explore with fancy jumps and like, Skyrim climbing up cliffs
I thought it was Turtwig
Though I'm pretty sure I made that real mistake in my own game and didn't realise for an embarrassingly long time
Ahhh yes
Samesies
….wait a minute.
Which is really throwing my usual Pokemon workflow for a loop. Usually I capture every Pokemon I can reach, level all of them simultaneously, then weed out the ones that have evolved all the way that aren't that great. Here, I'm capturing alphas that are much higher level/more evolved than the vanilla version I had been working on, so I'm releasing the vanillas. Now it seems like 2/3rds of my active Pokemon are alphas, and I'm beating every encounter by lightly sneezing on them. It's possible I'll eat my words soon, but it feels like I'm breaking the game?
I just stealth catch mine, and for the longest time I was sending pokes back to the paddocks that I couldn't control.
Which I thought was hilarious.
Residents of Jubilife might not have though.
I'm not sure you can really break the game.
It is what it is, and if that means you're wrecking people's level 10 lifelong siblings with level 30s or something, it just makes me feel more like a cryptid.
But the game's also pretty harsh playing at level too.
So I'm not sure it expects you to.
use the stealth on self thing, then throw smoke, then throw food, the use super heavy or super wing ball.
I want everything to do with it.
Its so damn adorable!
Teaching someone how to use their Pokemon, with "Step 1: Get an alpha".
And a whole spiel on how we should call on the strength of others and not rely on only ourselves, after I finished pacifying the second enraged poke by pelting it repeatedly with beanbags.
I'm also taking it as canon, that the reason everyone is so cool with sending 10 year olds out to catch Pokemon, is that one time Arceus sent some weird 10 yo back in time and they were all too scarily capable.