Hardest Monotype Run per Gen?

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

I will say Ghost for Gen I

On 3/31/2023 at 6:04 AM, SargeWolf010 said:

Gen1= Ghost

I am going to disagree here for one simple reason, that Gastly is a pokemon capable of completing Gen 1 with minimum battle solo run without even needing to evolve. There are mutliple types that lack pokemon capable of pulling that off at all, let alone a first form pokemon. The Gastly line just gets too good of coverage moves, and a typing that messes with the AI to the point that I wouldn't be in contention for worst solo run of Generation 1.

As for which type I think would think would be the worst... I am leaning towards Fire or possibly Dragon. Fire types just match up so poorly with the challenges you face in Generation 1, the type in general gets terrible coverage, with Magmar being the only Fire type capable of learning a special move that isn't Fire type (with the Psychic TM), and Fire types have to frustratingly high level even with pokemon you intentional delay evolution with have to reach to learn a fire move better than ember (we are talking 35 at the earliest with Vulpix, and if you don't count Fire Spin some don't until they are in the mid 50s...). Dragon is for a similar reason as people always seem to think Ghost would be bad, there is only one pokemon line available, and while Dragonite is great, you have you have to grind up to level 55 to get one.

 

[ping]

45 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Dragon is for a similar reason as people always seem to think Ghost would be bad, there is only one pokemon line available, and while Dragonite is great, you have you have to grind up to level 55 to get one.

T-wave+ Wrap though...

I actually wonder how tough a hypothetical Dratini(-->...) solo with it as your starter would be. Brock would suck, but you can probably Leer his defenses low enough that you have enough Wrap PP to get through him. Dratini can learn Water Gun for Rock Tunnel, and if you get past Misty and the Rival in Cerulean City (the latter of which might also put a strain on your Wrap PP), the world is kinda your oyster. Misty gives you Bubblebeam as an upgrade to Water Gun, Surge gives Thunderbolt, and once you get to Celadon, you get access to Ice Beam. Dragon Rage, too, although that might be a bit expensive/luck-based since it comes from the Game Corner.

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 minutes ago, ping said:

T-wave+ Wrap though...

There are certainly worse Pokemon to have to solo with, and that is an amusingly cheese combo, but most other types have one or two pokemon that are actually good far quicker than Dratini is. Personally I think the Fire types would be worse for a monotype challenge, but it seemed worth mentioning as a possibility.

 

26 minutes ago, ping said:

 

I actually wonder how tough a hypothetical Dratini(-->...) solo with it as your starter would be. Brock would suck, but you can probably Leer his defenses low enough that you have enough Wrap PP to get through him. Dratini can learn Water Gun for Rock Tunnel, and if you get past Misty and the Rival in Cerulean City (the latter of which might also put a strain on your Wrap PP), the world is kinda your oyster. Misty gives you Bubblebeam as an upgrade to Water Gun, Surge gives Thunderbolt, and once you get to Celadon, you get access to Ice Beam. Dragon Rage, too, although that might be a bit expensive/luck-based since it comes from the Game Corner.

There are solo runs on Youtube like that, for example

 

[ping]

49 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

There are solo runs on Youtube like that, for example

Thanks. These occasionally pop up in my recommended list, but I completely forgot about them

52 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

There are certainly worse Pokemon to have to solo with, and that is an amusingly cheese combo, but most other types have one or two pokemon that are actually good far quicker than Dratini is. Personally I think the Fire types would be worse for a monotype challenge, but it seemed worth mentioning as a possibility.

You're probably right, which is a testament that every monotype is probably fairly viable in RBY.

[Lord_Brand]

On 4/5/2023 at 5:42 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am going to disagree here for one simple reason, that Gastly is a pokemon capable of completing Gen 1 with minimum battle solo run without even needing to evolve. There are mutliple types that lack pokemon capable of pulling that off at all, let alone a first form pokemon. The Gastly line just gets too good of coverage moves, and a typing that messes with the AI to the point that I wouldn't be in contention for worst solo run of Generation 1.

As for which type I think would think would be the worst... I am leaning towards Fire or possibly Dragon. Fire types just match up so poorly with the challenges you face in Generation 1, the type in general gets terrible coverage, with Magmar being the only Fire type capable of learning a special move that isn't Fire type (with the Psychic TM), and Fire types have to frustratingly high level even with pokemon you intentional delay evolution with have to reach to learn a fire move better than ember (we are talking 35 at the earliest with Vulpix, and if you don't count Fire Spin some don't until they are in the mid 50s...). Dragon is for a similar reason as people always seem to think Ghost would be bad, there is only one pokemon line available, and while Dragonite is great, you have you have to grind up to level 55 to get one.

 

I was mostly thinking about Ghost's glitch making Psychic immune to it, but I guess the rest of the game would be fairly easy. Bug would probably have been a better choice as the weakest type of Gen I, bar none. Yes, Scyther and Pinsir are serviceable in their stats, but their move pool for the time was terrible due to a lack of strong STAB options, and being Bug hurt them if anything. The only time in the entire game being Bug actually helps is against Erika, and then the majority of her Pokemon are part Poison, which in Gen I had a mutual SE with Bug (not sure why Gen II got rid of Bug's weakness to Poison, bugs are as susceptible to poison and venom as any other animal).

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Lord_Brand said:

I was mostly thinking about Ghost's glitch making Psychic immune to it, but I guess the rest of the game would be fairly easy.

Sabrina is probably the hardest trainer of the run, but that is probably the case for most teams, and with a combination of Hypnosis, and some questionable moves on her pokemon, Gastley can manage. I will also note that the only move that deals Ghost damage is Lick, a move that is so weak that you shouldn't bother using it, so the glitch ends up having almost no impact, Psychic type being super effective against their secondary Poison typing is far more impactful in that fight. I will add a second addendum here, that fixed damage moves like Night Shade ignore the type chart entirely in Gen 1, even ignoring immunities.

 

2 minutes ago, Lord_Brand said:

Bug would probably have been a better choice as the weakest type of Gen I, bar none. Yes, Scyther and Pinsir are serviceable in their stats, but their move pool for the time was terrible due to a lack of strong STAB options, and being Bug hurt them if anything.

I thought about Bug types, but the early game bug types do surprising well against the roadblocks of Brock and Misty, and the type overall get access to very potent sleep move like Spore and Sleep Powder together with boosting moves like Swords Dance on the best bug pokemon, and wider coverage moves at better times than Fire Types get. Sure Sycther and Pinsir lack STAB moves, but boosting those good stats will let them sweep through a lot of the game regardless.

 

47 minutes ago, Lord_Brand said:

The only time in the entire game being Bug actually helps is against Erika, and then the majority of her Pokemon are part Poison, which in Gen I had a mutual SE with Bug (not sure why Gen II got rid of Bug's weakness to Poison, bugs are as susceptible to poison and venom as any other animal).

You are overlooking that Bug types have more diverse secondary typings that can aid things. Take Paras for instance, its Grass typing gives a resistance to water types, so Misty's Pokemon will only use tackle on it, and electric types, so Lt. Surge will do something similar as you return fire with 100 base power Dig from an early TM. Also secondary poison typings give them pokemon with Psychic weaknesses which trivializes far more of the Elite Four with hilariously bad AI than it should (I don't know if you remember the original Twitch Play Pokemon with the All-Terrain-Venomoth becoming the great dragon slayer...)

[henrymidfields]

Gen 2's Grass mono would be one of the worst, not only because of the bad type machups, but also considering the generally shallow movepool.

I think Gen 1's fighting monotype isn't all that great either, outside of Bug or Ghost, now that I think about it. Not only is it weak to the then super busted Psychic type, it's also not very effective against Koga's Gym, and can't do any STAB attacks against Agatha, considering I think Odor Sleuth not being a thing yet. Also, Karate Chop back then was a Normal type move.

Gen 5 and onwards, are probably not as bad compared to earlier gens, thanks to movepools being wider and Pokemon being more various. While Dragons have reigned supreme in Gen 4-5, they're probably still good in Gen 6 onwards thanks to their generally super-wide movepools easily countering Fairy, Steel, and Ice.

Edited April 30, 2023 by henrymidfields

[ping]

39 minutes ago, henrymidfields said:

I think Gen 1's fighting monotype isn't all that great either, outside of Bug or Ghost, now that I think about it. Not only is it weak to the then super busted Psychic type, it's also not very effective against Koga's Gym, and can't do any STAB attacks against Agatha, considering I think Odor Sleuth not being a thing yet. Also, Karate Chop back then was a Normal type move.

I will say that Fighting has two excellent options in Machamp (assuming that you can do trade evolutions, Machoke is a fair bit weaker) and Poliwrath (since Poliwhirl is catchable with a Super Rod, this is even possible with a strict "no fighting with non-Fighting type pokemon" rule).

The Mach___ line can learn Earthquake and Rock Slide (and Dig for the earlier parts), so KOing your opponent will never be the problem. It's still pretty slow, though, and giving Sabrina or Agatha a turn can certainly be scary, so I'm not trying to suggest that Machamp is going to just tear Kanto asunder.

Poliwrath has pretty good options, too, with Surf, Ice Beam, Psychic, and Hypnosis. Amnesia would be amazing, but that would require running around with Poliwhirl for a while, so Poliwrath's SPECIAL is a bit lackluster, but it's still not a bad Pokemon in general.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

Gen 2's Grass mono would be one of the worst, not only because of the bad type machups, but also considering the generally shallow movepool.

I definitely agree with the matchup comment, and the idea that Grass would be one of Gen 2's hardest monotype runs, but I do partially disagree with the movepool coment. The thing about the movepools of grass types is while their attacking type movepool tends to be shallow, they tend to have some of the deepest utility movepools, which can lead to some interesting starts.

 

2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

 

I think Gen 1's fighting monotype isn't all that great either, outside of Bug or Ghost, now that I think about it. Not only is it weak to the then super busted Psychic type, it's also not very effective against Koga's Gym, and can't do any STAB attacks against Agatha, considering I think Odor Sleuth not being a thing yet. Also, Karate Chop back then was a Normal type move.

I wouldn't anticipate Agatha and Koga being big problems thanks to Earthquake and Dig (both 100 pow super-effective moves in this game), as this is before Levitate exists. Also, while Karate Chop isn't STAB it is a high crit move, which in generation 1 means it will effectively always crit (as long as you have a high enough base speed, which most fully evolve pokemon have, and there is a 1/256 glitch associated of not critting just like with accuracy, so it is slightly below 100% crit rate...), which makes it much better than it seems, unless you are buffing your pokemon (as cirts in gen 1 ignore buffs).

Also I think @ping covered a lot of other solid points about how powerful Poliwrath and Machamp are. I will also highlight Hitmonlee as being of note as the Fighting type that actually gets good STAB moves, especially with Hi Jump Kick crash damage set to 1 in Gen 1.

 

 

Also I did a Gen 1 monotype run with Fire types in the Tee Hee Tread, so I will quote my main updates in the Spoiler box below for anyone curious. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I will be doing a Bug run soon as well.

Spoiler

 

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Alright, time for my own little Gen 1 monolock, starting with Fire

Which is in some ways easy, as one of the base starters is Fire type, and I get past the first battle with my childishly named rival just fine

And even went out of my way to do the optional second battle with him on Route 22, although I did wait til after beating all the trainers in Viridian Forest

And fairly easily beat Brock starting at level 14...although I did go out of my way to beat all the trainers, and wild pokemon I run into along the way.

Now after seeing how well that went, it got me thinking, maybe I judged poor Charmander too harshly, so I did a save state, and restarted getting to Brock at minimum battles, and went level by level to see when Charmander could really get past Brock here, and my findings is around level 13 is about right, so I wan't that far off, but I continued with the first save, as I am expecting to need that bit of extra exp for Misty. Speaking of which, I did continue on with that first save (with plenty of speedup)

I get out of Mt. Moon in low 20s by beating all trainers, and some of the wilds I run into along the way along the way (I stop due to PP concerns, and end up needing to use an Ether before the last fight), and with Mega Punch, I can get past all of Misty's Gym Trainers just fine, but with Misty is still too tough for me, so I in a surprise to end up beating

The Cerulean Rival fight first. Mega Punch made it very east. I have a plan for getting past Misty, with all the levels I get on the path to Bill, plus

The Dig TM, that is easily enough to get past

Misty. The levels were enough to outspeed both her pokemon, and Dig is 100* accuracy and 100 power is enough to one shot the Staryu, and power through the Starmie, with a tiny bit of luck avoiding crits of course.

I also run into Looker on the S.S. Anne. I did go through the effort of beating all trainers on the S.S. Anne, simply because they go away after completing it, as Charmleon probably doesn't need that much help anymore

And we are almost a Charizard after beating the S.S. Anne rival

And Dig is easily enough to trivialize Lt. Surge, and he even gets the evolution together with the badge.

Also fun fact, you can dig out of the fan club where you get the Bike Voucher from.

Honestly this was easier than expected, as beating all trainers has been enough to make it through just fine. Then again, I am anticipating the Elite Four (most notably Lorelei, and Lance) to be particularly difficult, so maybe I shouldn't be calling it so far.

 

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Back with my Fire Monotype run, I finally hit a point where I stop beating all trainers when I reach Rock Tunnel. I don't have Flash, so instead I use the classic Speed Run map of Rock Tunnel to get through it blind, and even skip all the trainers between the exit to Rock Tunnel, and Lavender Town...at first, as

We finally get the second teammate, but Vulpix has a lot of grinding before it will even resemble useful, so I go back and switch train her on all the trainers I skipped between Rock Tunnel and Lavender Town, and even take out a few I skipped in the last room in Rock Tunnel (I didn't go back far enough to go through a ladder though), I even take down

The Pokemon Tower Rival before I start working on Route 8 as well, with Vulpix managing to take out the Rival's Eggexcute all on her own, and by about the mid way point of route 8

She is almost able to take out a trainer all on her own. Although after Route 8 we even get our third team member, thanks to buyable Fire Stones with

Flareon, and with the use of that Body Slam TM I have been holding onto, he can use that massive attack of his. I do buy a second Fire Stone for the future, but I do want to wait for Flamethrower first, which will frustratingly be a long while off. At least Flareon starts at a higher level than the Vulpux did. Well I decide to take on the grass Gym first, and I try to avoid resorting to Charizard while clearing out the trainers there, which Firefox struggles with despite having the only fire move available at this point, and Hell Hound shone at thanks to the much higher power of Body Slam despite not having a Fire move at all

And the Erika fight emphasized this so much, with Firefox doing piddly damage with Ember, getting Paralyzed, and then wrapped to death, but she did do enough that Hell Hound could finish the Victreebell, and despite it being quite a few hits to power through the rest of Erika's team, he managed to out damage her with that powerful Body SLam. Admittedly Smaug's Dig would have made short work of her, but I managed without. I also take down all the trainers in the Rocket Hideout, and there was an interesting reversal of roles in the Giovanni fight, as Vulpix's Ember being a special move did far better against his high defense Rock types, but in the end

Hell Hound has to come in to finish his Kangaskhan, and almost fall anyway thanks to an untimely crit. Now I have managed to let the newbies hold there own for a while there, but the nature of Pokemon Tower would force Charizard back into the forefront, as

Hell Hound is literally unable to hit Ghost types until after I defeat the Ghost Marowak, but even if I had Ember earlier in the tower, I suspect he would have the same issue Firefox had, that the Ghastly line has good special, and Ember being garbage making it difficult to kill, and with both Confuse Ray, and Lick's paralysis chance, there are a lot of ways for things to go horribly wrong. Meanwhile Smaug's Dig trivializes all of them.

After getting the Pokeflute from Fuji, I go straight for Koga and surf, skipping all the trainers on cycling road on the way.

After a trip to the Safari Zone for my HMs, grabbing the Rod next door to the Warden's Strength TM, and catching a Water type to use that HM in the pool in their back yard, its time to take on Koga's Gym, and again I wipe out all the trainers in there. My two trainees do a fine job powering through the Koga fight itself, but

I do make a small mistake in not switching so I can get some Exp from his ace Weezing blowing up with Explosion, now its time to fl-

Right, that was added in Yellow version. Alright I catch a random Doduo to fly back home to Pallet Town, as it is time to go after the next pair of encounters on Cinnabar Island.

I will note that the rules I am using for HMs is that I can only use HM pokemon like this if none of the Pokemon I currently have can use the HM, so SURF over there will be around for a while, but eventually FLY will be replaced with Moltres. I try to skip all the water trainers along the way, but I accidentally run into one thanks to me using speed up, and not paying enough attention.

That does also add another nice niche to Magmar in that he can use Strength in place of our Charizard, whom is already burdened with Cut. After catching these two I clear out the Pokemon Mansion of trainers, and work through all the trainers in Blaine's Gym, and part way through

Firefox finally learns Flamethrower and can evolve to have stats closer to those of the rest of the team. Well I guess our Ponyta is in a similar boat as Firefox was before, as she evolves at level 40, but she has kinda revealed a secret niche of hers that has proven surprisingly useful so far, as she has a high base speed, and the 30% flinch chance of Stomp to work with.

And little Sleipnir here struts her stuff with that by finishing off Blaine's Arcanine, the only Pokemon of his that gave me any issue as his moronic AI had him doing silly things like using status moves, and healing at full health with the rest of his Pokemon, but the Arcanine going for repeated Take Downs actually brought me down to just Sleipnir, and Smaug in the back. At this point, none of my pokemon were bad enough to need switch training, so

Its time to change styles to Set mode for the rest of the run. Next I take on Silph Co., and I again take out all the trainers there, for three reasons, first they all go away, second there are some major items I want that I am too lazy to look up the location of (most notably the Sword Dance TM for Smaug, a Rare Candy, and some free Stat Boosters), and lastly my Magmar (Muspelheim) is the most behind in levels and their Psychic makes short work of the common poison type pokemon of the Rockets.

And things went so well against the Silph Co rival and Giovanni fight that I have made another decision here that I am done with optional trainers, so that just leaves

Sabrina, which Hell Hound easily crushes with his high attack powered Body Slams, next is a pair of Gym trainers before facing Giovanni one last time, and while I start with Muspelheim for his Ryhorn, the Dugtrio afterwards goes for Dig, so I take the free switch to Smaug, and then it does for another

So I can boost up for free on the goof, which makes it real easy to sweep the rest of him with Super Effective Dig.

Sadly enough, I think the other versions of this fight might be harder, with Blastoise replaced with Gyrados, but said Blastoise did manage to one shot one of my Pokemon with Hydropump. Continuing onto Victory Road, I do end up fighting one of the trainers there for some random loot, and we get our last member

With the classic Master Ball play, and I am stopping before the Elite Four, so I might as well show the team

Firefox, whose main claim to fame is being the only Pokemon with Flamethrower, which makes her one of the better Special Attackers of the team.

Little Sleipnir here just barely reached evolution, and now that she is fully evolved, I think I sold her a little short in my analysis before, as that high speed, and both the trapping move Fire Spin, and the 30% flinch chance Stomp makes her a nice little disruptive Pokemon.

Smaug is still the highest leveled of my trained Pokemon, and he has barely leveled since Rock Tunnel. Swords Dance and 100 pow Dig are a potent combo, although Ember still being the only Special move available to him, and having only Cut to hit flying mons physically are a limitation on the guy, but he has a lot going for him than most despite that.

Hell Hound is a beast, that 130 Attack is the highest stat of any of my trained Pokemon, and it makes for a potent Body Slam. Poor guy has nothing to it Ghosts, but the hard hitting Body Slam have done well against the otherwise dangerous Psychic types so far, so not too many complaint.

Muspelheim's claim to fame is their exclusive access to a non-Fire type Special move with Psychic, and even Strength has some uses in making a bit of a mixed attacker for when I need that.

Last but not least, the freshly caught Pheonix (which I only now realized I mispelled...opps), who has the advatage of started roughly 10 levels above everyone else, and the stats of a legendary, but is also stuck with a fairly garbage movepool at best.

I am stopping here as I am anticipating the Elite Four and Champion to be a bit of a stumbling block for me, and I have a few TM decisions to make. The big ones are Mimic, which is a surprising good TM for the late game in Generation 1 (probably should have made that decision before the Victory Road Rival fight), the classic stall move of Toxic, possibly adding Submission to someone for coverage (as it is some of the only coverage many of the Pokemon get, and is even buyable), and possibly adding Reflect to some of these Pokemon (oddly enough all of them but Muspelheim have access to Reflect, but none of them can get its special counterpart Light Screen). I do also still have 10 Rare Candies stored up to make any grinding breaks easier, and while I missed out on the trainers in Sabrina and Giovanni's Gyms, there are plenty of routes I haven't touched for trainer grinding if need be, but I want to give them a few tries at the current levels first to see how they do. Who knows, maybe Lorelei and Lance wont be the brick walls I expect them to be for this team.

 

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It is time for me to finish my monotype run. Before I start my first attempt on the Elite Four, I give my Magmar Mimic, give Ninetales Toxic, and use my Rare Canides to get everyone other than Moltres to 43, which is also gets Magmar Fire Punch from levelup. Now onto the Lorelei fight, and it doesn't go great. I loss a pokemon taking down each of hers, losing Charizard taking down Dewgong, and Magmar taking down her Cloyster, until

I manage to Fire Spin my way past Slowbro...only for Lorelei to make a reversal against Jynx, with Sleipnir missing, and being finished off

And then a super-effective critical hit Ice punch kills my Pheonix without him getting a hit, and thing aren't looking great against the tanky Lapras

But I go for the lucky play with Firefox going for Confuse Ray, Toxic, and even manage another hit before I am left with

Just Hell Hound, but Firefox got lucky enough

That Hell Hound could limp us past the Lorelei fight with Quick Attack.

Muspelheim sweeps past Bruno thanks to having Psychic.

I manage to get past the Agatha fight with just Smaug, but I do play the fight poorly. I did learn one important thing that will make the fight easier in the future, that with a Swords Dance Smaug one shots all of her Pokemon with Dig...except Golbat, whom can both confuse him (which is particularly dangerous after a Swords Dance), or remove his stat buffs with Haze.

That gets us to the real stumbling block of the run

And it starts with a Gyardos, who will spam Hydro Pump, which One Shots all my Pokes, except Pheonix, who doesn't exactly take the hit well, and is roughly three shotting here, but he manages to get two Flys off, which is enough that

we can finish the beast off

Smaug can Swords Dance and Dig past the two Dragonair, and even manages to reach the level where he learns Flamethrower, but

Aerodactyl is a real brick wall for us. He is fast, hits hard, is immune to Dig, resists Fire and normal type moves, so Muspelheim is literally the only one with a move that hits him normally effectively. I suppose I could teach Smaug Submission for a normally effective move, but I don't know what I would replace for it...

Alright I reset (as I used some Ether, which can not be replaced, and Rare Candies work better when used as late as possible), so I clear out a couple of routes of trainers that I skipped before, and try again after having everyone start at level 45.

Now I must admit, in the last attempt I messed up on Lorelei fight. I was hoping that Muspelheim would get past Closyter, and be in position to

Mimic Slowbro's Amnesia, so that the rest of the fight is more reliable. Now I did lose a few Pokemon getting here, but that is a lot more reliable than being dropped to the last 'mon.

Bruno fight goes about the same, and while I play the Agatha fight better, the Golbat is still a real issue at this level. I still clear it with just Smaug, but cut and Ember aren't exactly great options.

But then Gyarados gets a crit to one shot Pheonix, and we don't see a Hydropump miss, so we wipe to the Gyrados this time.

I decide to grind up again (if a few more Pokemon outsped the Gyrados we might have gotten past it anyway...), and I clear out all the trainers on land routes, and start out with all of them at level 47, and even grabbed an extra Rare Candy on Cycling Road, so I let Phoenix start at level 51 as well. At this level, some of the earlier fights are made even easier, as we manage to get past Lorelei with only one loss thanks to better stats, and at that level Smaug has Flamethrower, which can two shot Agatha's Golbat, making that fight much more reliable as well

And we even get lucky enough that Gyrados has a Hydropump miss against Pheonix, and he even hits the ranges to kill that beast all on his own, and with Smaug Swords Dance and Digging past the Dragoniars, that means I get to Aerodactyl with all my Pokemon alive, so I have enough warm bodies to brute force my way

Past the Lance fight. Now for my first attempt at the Rival fight. I open with Fire Fox getting me past the Pigeot, and after losing her to the Alakazam

I get a very lucky break with Hell Hound getting the Body Slam Paralysis on the first hit, so I only lose one pokemon to Alakazam, and Muspelheim is able to finish off the Rhydon after Hell Hound falls, and I use the Arcanine as an opportunity to have Smaug buff up with Swords Dance, and Dig past the rest of his Pokemon

And I am fairly certain the three Special Badge Boost Glitches helped Smaug live a super effective Blizzard to get us the win.

Credit it where it is due, I didn't have to face all the trainers in the game, and the only wild Pokemon I took down were incidental encounters before I got access to repels.

I am tempted to try the Bug run next, and see how they compare...

Also, figured I would show how the team looked in the end:

 

 

 

[Eltosian Kadath]

So I did finally get around to that Bug monotype run, and it was a very different experience. Bug types get so much better moves than Fire types that they have more options for getting past stumbling blocks in ways other than grinding, but their stats are so much worse that the times I would clear out a place of trainers for what grinding they needed exhausted the bugs so much more than the Fire types. In every major battle the Bug types got past them at lower levels thanks to the extreme power of sleep, and far more diverse move pools, but on the other hand, the bugs also had some random wipes early on, and even when the bugs did well they burnt through far more HP, PP and thought to do it.

Again, I am quoting my updates on the run from the TeeHee thread

Spoiler

 

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Alright, I have put off the monotype bug run for a little while, and it is time to start it up.

And it makes sense to pick Bulbasaur as the starter, as it imitates the way the rival's ace is supposed to be supper effective on our main bug types. Now I do also have to talk about the choice of version here. I was rather tempted to do this as a Yellow run, as it is the only Gen 1 game with all 6 bug type lines are available in it, but Yellow is different enough that I decide to stick with Blue/Red, and there are two major differences between them, first that Pinsir is exclusive to Blue, and Scyther exclusive to Red, but what really made my decision here is that Caterpie can be found at higher level in Blue, while Weedle can be found at higher levels in Red. The choice between Pinsir and Scyther is one I find surprisingly balance, probably slightly leaning towards Pinsir anyway. They have similar enough stats Pinsir a bit higher attack, Scyther a bit higher speed, the addition of flying type is a slight boon to Scyther, but it is small, the big thing is movepool, as Pinsir gets a much better TM movepool, but Scyther levelup moveset is a bit more reasonable, which gives Pinsir a much better moveset overall, but you can get away with saving your better TMs for other pokemon.

I went with Blue because a higher level Caterpie will make it easier to bet past Brock.

The NPCs are even trying to explain the difference between my two main bug type encounters for this early game, speaking of which

I do specifically wait for the highest level Caterpie I can possibly catch, and while I could catch a higher level Kakuna/Metapod instead, having the starting moves of Caterpie and Weedle will make this early part of this game even possible,

And this very early section is a little difficult, as the first trainer has my same team but with both of them level 6, and while I can get past that with the two working together, but we do run into a little issue with the second trainer, and with training in this early game in general, as Poison type moves are super-effective against Bug types, and as a part Poison type Weedle is also immune to the chance of poisoning, so despite Weedle being lower level I tend to need to switch to him to train up my Caterpie, which is vital for this early game. So The trainer with two far more dangerous level 7 Weedles actually wipes me due to bad luck with poison, and still being a lot lower level overall, but with the experience I got wiping his first two Pokemon, and better luck with poison is enough to get past him just fine.

And I need enough training that I go back for the optional rival for more experience, and even then, its still not enough training to get past

The lightyears trainer on the first attempt, but it was enough that on attempt two

It was enough that my now Butterfree reached level 12 before the Sandshrew, which give Long-Range-Trainer (as a joke I am nicknaming all of my Pokemon after famous Gen 1 glitches, although I used the more accurate, but less common name of the Mew Glitch here), to get her to level 12, where she learns Confusion, which is enough to get past Brock easily as well.

And I do kinda regret not naming Gen-1-Miss over here after the bug he is showing off here instead, that quad resisted moves are able of dealing 0 damage, which the game displays as a miss. As is also apparent by his level, I have been focusing most of my experience on Long-Range-Trainer instead, but I want to transition towards feeding experience into Gen-1-Miss as well, as I am anticipating him doing better against Misty.

But that is a trivial battle despite switch training while doing it. There is a funny comparison between this and the Fire run here, as Butterfree can get past Brock at a lower level, but it was more difficult to get there, and some of that experience ended up getting spread onto another Pokemon as well. With an extra Pokemon to train, and before long

A third to train, but I did make a clear mistake here, I shouldn't have grabbed the first Paras I ran into, I should have went down to the bottom floor to catch a level 12 one instead, as I Paras becomes a new focus of my experience gain, as I am anticipating them being the best Pokemon I have against Misty. But again, I don't get either of Gen-1-miss, or my newly caught Paras to a high enough level to really be capable of having them trivialize Misty, in large part due to Long-Range-Trainer being needed to switch train a lot of the time due to her having the only Special move on the team that is also super-effective against poison types (which the rest of my team has real issues with, especially the Zubats...), so neither of them got their level 20 move, which would make them really good against the Misty fight, but I almost beat Misty on the first try anyway thanks to Long-Range-Trainer having Sleep Powder, so

I do defeat my childishly named rival first, and the experience from that fight is enough

To defeat Misty, despite none of my Pokemon having reaced level 20 yet. I opened with my Paras MissingNo here, to get past the Staryu, as their typing means both of Misty's Pokemon will only use Tackle. Against the Starmie I have Long-Range-Trainer use Sleep Powder, switch to Gen-1-Miss to deal as much damage as I can with him, and after he goes down I Sleep Powder again to have MissingNo finish it off. In many ways the Bug run is doing better than the Fire run already.

It is doing so well I make the switch over to Set mode already, but that does make very apparent that a big part of that is that there are a lot more pronounced differences between Bug Pokemon, with them having some things they do really well, and other things they do really bad, which leads to needing to switch a lot more, which leads to them getting more whittled down in the trainer heavy routes after this switch to Set mode.

It is also important to note that MissingNo is the only one able to learn DIg, which will give them a fair bit of long term potential, but that will be a bit stifled by the decision to go with Blue/Pinsir, as that means I can't give them the Swords Dance TM as well. Onto the SS Anne, and while taking out all the trainers, I end up having to use the Vermillion City Pokecenter, so I can't do the old Dig back to Cerulean trick after beating Lt Surge like I did in the Fire run, but before that I have another Rival fight, and

I do end up having a funny little issue here that Kadabra's use of disable actually disabled the Dig I wanted to use on the Charmeleon...but as it would turn out MissingNo didn't have the speed to pull off the move before being embered and one-shot anyway, so once again I had to use Sleep Powder to save the day instead.

And funnily enough, despite having Dig, MissingNo ends up falling to Raichu with bad Paralysis luck, so Gen-1-Miss has to finish things up. I end up stopping just before Rock Tunnel this time, but the Bugs are doing alright so far.

 

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Back to my little Bug run, again I use the classic Speed Runner Map through Rock Tunnel, and skip all the trainers I can on the way to Celadon, as that is where I can get my next Pokemon

By purchasing my new Pinsir, Badge-Boost Glitch. Now I did have to spend a little while on item management via the PC to sell enough stuff to get him without gambling, but I had enough useless (for this run at least) TMs that I could sell off.

And with the added power of Body Slam, I use the underleveled Pinsir to clear out Erika's Gym easily

Erika included. Now I start thinking about skipping trainers in the Rocket Game Corner hideout, but I end up in enough optional battle with speedup mistakes that I decide to clear it out anyway, although against Giovanni,

my Butterfree, Long-Range-Trainer uses her access to special damage to power past his defensive Rock types, and finish off the Kangaskhan with Badge-Boost.

The Pokemon Tower Rival did prove a bit more dangerous than he usually is, Badge-Boost powered through a lot of his pokemon, but was finished off by his Charmeleon, who also killed Long-Range-Trainer (even with some Sleep Powder use on my part), and with Parasect (MissingNo), almost certainly dead to a quad super effective move, it was down to the wire with my Beedrill, Gen-1-Miss here finishing things off.

And I go through the tower skipping as many trainers as I can, as once I have the Pokeflute I can get my last encounter of the run. After defeating a Snorlax, and taking cycling road (skipping all the trainers along the way), I can catch

A little Venonat I name Glitch City, and while a bit premature

I teach my new member my main Special attack TMs, as once evolved it will be my pokemon with the highest based Special. Now I think its best to use the SilphCo to both get my next major TM I want to use, and get Glitch-City to evolution so I fl-

...sigh, why would I assume Flying types (or one my two Bug-Poison types with wings) pokemon would be able to learn fly. Time to grab another Doduo to get back to SilphCo, and Venonat's current form is bad enough that I consider going back to switch mode to make switch-training easier on him, but before I am done clearing it out

He finally becomes a functional pokemon after evolution, MissingNo learns their signature Spore move, and I use the Swords Dance TM I find on Badge-Boost the Pinsir. Once I reach the SilphCo rival, I save before him, and it does take three attempt to get past him. To be fair the first time, I played the fight poorly by leading with Badge-Boost against the super effective Pidgeot, and not being able to buff him up enough to clear the way to Charizard, so by the time I get to that threat my team is way too weak to deal with him. Second attempt I handled it better, but  Charizard managed to get three Ember Crits in a row to finish off my team (no crit needed for MissingNo, and injured Badge-Boost), but attempt number three I open with MissingNo using Spore on the Pidgeot, to give me more time to Swords Dance with Badge-Boost, and while it wakes up in time to do some damage, and I get an unluck crit to miss a kill and take more, he manages to sweep the way to Charizard

with a little lucky against Alakazam with its move choice, and while I thought it was going to be a repeat of attempt 2 against Charizard

It turns out one of those crit one-shots was a range to begin with, and after using Sleep Powder, and spamming Psybeam

Charizard awakens with low enough HP that the Confusion it picked up while asleep is enough to kill itself after Long-Range-Trainer falls. To be fair, I probably should have dug out, and cleared out the generally easier Koga Gym first, as that did take a fair bit of luck. Speaking of which

Koga ends up even more trivial than normal thanks to all of my pokemon but Badge-Boost having their best moves being super effective against all his Pokemon. Admittedly, once again, I forget to immediately switch against his Weezing immediately, so lose out on the experience from it immediately exploding. As for the next Gym, I decide to go for Sabrina's gym beffore Blaine due to the generally better type match up, and while I might regret skipping the trainers, I end up

Using Spore to give Badge-Boost all the time he needs to Swords Dance up, which makes it an easy sweep, although

Her last two pokemon do outspeed Badge-Boost, after he gets a levelups and loses out on the boost to speed he is named after. The Venomoth wastes its turn poisoning him, and the Alakazam did a full health use of Recover, so its a no damage sweep in the end. I do Surf my way over to Cinnabar (skipping all trainers again), but I think I will end things off for there for now.

 

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Continuing my bug run, we are at Cinnabar, and run into an odd problem in the mansion

My team is low enough level that I can't Repel away all the fire types in there, and some (like Ponyta here) are fast enough to make running unreliable, and can hurt our buggy band, so I do end up in the odd position of killing wild pokemon in this late stage.

Needless to say I skip all the Fire Trainers with the Jeopardy questions, which gets me to Blaine, who did take two attempts

My main strat is to Spore the Growlithe, and have our Pinsir Badge-Boost Swords Dance up to sweep through his team, but that ends up not working as

Badge-Boost, losses the Badge Boost Glitch bonus to speed by leveling up after defeating the Ponyta, so he gets out sped by the Rapidash, and gets wiped by bad Fire Spin luck, but

I had better Fire Spin luck with MissingNo the Parasect, so we reach Arcanine

And if I had a little better luck with his move choice against my sleepers, I might have won anyway. Now I end up regretting this a little, but I let the whiteout stand, as after dying immediately after leveling up, Badge-Boost is at the perfect experience level to not levelup

So despite worse Sleep luck, Badge-Boost outspeeds and one-shots the Rapidash

And almost takes down the Arcanine too, and with one Fire Blast miss, we manage our win on the second attempt.

Before the next gym I give Long-Range-Trainer the Butterfree the Solar Beam TM I found in the Pokemon Mansion, and I end up taking out all the trainers in GIovanni's Gym, as we could use some levelups at this point, and have good enough matchup that the trainers in here are easy to take out.

And Giovanni is rather easy. I open with Long-Range-Trainer using Sleep Powder to let her get away with using the two-turn move Solar Beam to wipe out everything but his Nidoqueen, who I put to sleep to take down with the lower power Psybeam, but she has enough sleep powder misses that she falls to Nidoking here, but that just lets me use the better special attacker Glitch-City the Venomoth, whom easily finishes things off with Psychic and Mage Drain. Now before the before Victory Road Rival fight I use a lot of TMs to manage my moves a bit better

I should have given Gen-1-Miss the Beedrill the Doubel-Edge TM way earlier, as it is a far more functional Normal move than Fury Attack, the choice of who to give Mimic to was tough, and mostly planning for far latter battles with it, while the choice to buy a Submission TM was mostly to give Badge-Boost coverage against the handful of Rock types left. Now onto the rival fight, which did take a few attempts

First attempt I went with the old Spore and Swords Dance to try and sweep his team

And the choice of adding Submission shows its worth already, but this strategy isn't going to work, as while I was careful with Badge-Boost's experience points while grinding on Giovanni's Gym Trainers, he is simply too low of level to avoid leveling up on the battle, leveling on the Gyrados kill, so we lose our Badge Boosts and fall against the Alakazam

And while we can get past the Alakazam just fine, the Charizard out speeds and one-shots all of my pokemon with Flamethrower, but I have a plan for a different strat that might work, so onto attempt 2

Which was to lead with Glitch-City, and I started by using Mimic to boost up with Agility, and I did get kinda luck to get past Pidgeot in that way, but he does far better with quad super effective move of Mega Drain against Ryhorn, and Leech Life on Exeggcute, and I intentionally let him fall to the Gyrados so I can

Use the old Spore and Swords Dance combo to sweep our way to Charizard, where we run into a big problem

He doesn't one shot.

And after two levelups from grinding, he is till missing the kill here, but I have another plan, although it does require money, so I end up resetting my white outs on the Rival (which send me to before any trainer grinding, and I really regret letting the white out on Blaine stand)

But I am hoping some extra attack stat boosters will make the difference, and this time I do my first section of grinding specifically against the Fighter Dojo for similar reasons, and...

I end up winning for entirely different reasons. Although I should talk a little about the other part of the battle before I move on, as I did refine that a little in the other two attempts by starting with Long-Range-Trainer against the Pidgeot, so it is safer to get an Agility or two up on Glitch-City, and there is still some luck to that, in fact on the winning run here the rival had a critical hit wing attack, while I had a Sleep Powder miss, and Glitch-City gets defeated by the Pidgeot, but he manage to do enough that

Gen-1-Miss manage to finish off the first half of his team, although it was a rather close call. In Victory Road I fight a few of the optional trainers thanks to speed up mistakes, but I am at the Elite Four with my team, although I will probably need to grind to be able to beat the Rival, as that Charizard is a bit of a brick wall for the team. Although his final Charizard having low accuracy Fire moves (Fire Blast, and Fire Spin), unlike the 100* accuracy Flamethrower might be enough to let my whole team get past him anyway thanks to how powerful sleep is (not to mention the brick wall being at the back of his team gives me options for planning for an opening gambit...). Speaking of which, its time to look at the team at the moment

 

Quote

 

With my rare candies, I level everyone up to 39, saving a four intentionally so I can use them between fights on battles I feel I might need the Badge Boost Glitch to complete, although in retrospect, I saved far too many for this level

With Lorelei my opening gambit is to bait Dewgong into spaming rest with Gen-1-Miss, thanks to his Psychic type weakness, which I can use to give Badge-Boost a free switch and Swords Dance before the Dewgong wakes up, and with super effective Submission that is enough to one shot the Dewgong, and misses two shotting the Cloyster by a bad range, but with Submission recoil Badge-Boost isn't the finisher here

That is Glitch-City by Mimicing Amnesia from the Slowbro, and safely boosting up on it, as Glitch-City is also weak to Amnesia

Which leads to what seems like an easy clear on Lorelei

And with both Psychic, and Mega Drain, Glitch-City easily sweeps Bruno

But Agatha is just too luck based for me to get past her at this level. Fun little fact, on my first attempt I got stuck with Badge-Boost as my last pokemon left, and he can't actually damage her ghost types (in fact the only move a Pinsir can learn which can damage a Ghost type is Seismic Toss...), so I can only use Badge-Boost against the Golbat, and Arbok.

And I do for a few attempt here to test how lucky this fight really is, and if I can get past Agatha at this level with reasonable luck. This is where I realize that I can even lose the Lorelei battle with some bad luck, in two notable ways. The first is that due to typing, Leech Life ends up as the best move to use against the Jynx (it deals only slightly less damage than Psychic, but heals Glitch-City about as much heal as Jynx deals in return), so Jynx has the opportunity to

double crit (or get a crit just before death, and Lapras gets a crit), or the Lapras can confuse him, and bad confusion luck can end things. Both of those are facilitated by Gltich-City's stats being bad enough that the defensive aspect of Amnesia being a key part of the victory. Although another big thing that makes that a lose state is that Lapras out-speeds and one-shots both my sleepers with super-effective Blizzard.

I do also have a very close call with Bruno as well, which would inspire a very small change in strategy in the future. Admittedly I think a Gen 1 miss was involved, but why even risk defeat on a Gen 1 miss

So I start having Glitch-City mimic Harden, use a few relying on Mega Draining healing him back to full.

I do make a fair number of attempts against Agatha, as I don't see how a few levels will make that battle less luck, but eventually I go clear out cycling road, and after using my Rare Candies, my next attempt has everyone start at level 41, with me saving two rare candies for the Lance and Champion fights, and I was proven very wrong about that

As now Glitch-City learns Sleep Powder by leveling up on the two fights before Agetha, and with a third Pokemon that can put her Pokemon to sleep that have super-effective moves

Especially when I can steal the healing powers of super effective Dream Eater when I do so is enough to make the fight remarkably consistent...although I only realized this strat due to throwing my first attempt at this level against Agatha, as I forgot to recover the power points of Glitch-City before this fight, and the use of Mimic here was just to have more PP to use as attacks against her.

The extra levels even manage to make the Lorelei fight much more consistent as well, as now Long-Range-Trainer can outspeed the Lapras, so losing Glitch-City to RNG doesn't necessarily lead to a loss on that fight anymore.

Now before the Lance fight, the plan is to Mimic Agility with Glitch-City, to get past the Aerodactyl, but I do end up losing the first attempt due to some terrible luck

I end up losing everyone but Glitch-City against the Gyrados, and I thought Glitch-City's PP would be able to deal with two battles, but after Lance uses a Hyper Potion on every single one of his pokemon at the perfect time, that proves insufficient.

Next time our levels are slightly different thanks to the Agatha lottery, and I don't utterly bungle the Gyrados half of the fight

As the plan is the normal Spore-Swords Dance to clear the Gyrados, and I even wipe out one of the Dragonairs while I am at it before letting

Glitch-City clear the rest of the fight with relative ease, but thing go poorly against the Champion...kinda. I luck into a victory on the third attempt, but I was unsatisfied with just how much luck was involved, so I do end up retrying, but I will get to that in a second

So the plan is to sleep the Pidgeot so Badge-Boost can Swords Dance up, and as you can see, Glitch-City (and Long-Range-Trainer, who I will switch to using on attempt 2 onward) can take a Wing Attack, and with the other two moves he will use (as they are all super effective flying-type moves) being a two-turn move in Sky Attack, and Mirror Move, so without a crit we always have a chance of getting past this part of the fight, but bad sleep luck

can really screw us. But lets jump to the lucky win to talk about how lucky it is

Even with 3 Badge Boost Glitches Badge-Boost can't outspeed the Alakazam, but at least he can take a hit from full health

But that is low enough health that I can't use Submission on the Rhydon without sacrificing Badge-Boost, so I have to do it the slow way, hoping Rydon doesn't use an attack. Admittedly only one of his 4 attacks deal damage, and its Fury Attack, which has a 15% chance of missing on top of that, but four hit KOing with a not very effective move makes that around 1/3 chance of making it past the Rhydon (ignoring crits)

And he doesn't even one shot the Exeggutor after that, but thanks to even more luck he makes it past that, but

That ends the Speed Badge Boosts he was getting, so he dies immediately to the Gyrados.

And now its time to show off the strat that would win it all, using Sleep moves on sleeping Pokemon so they can't act despite out-speeding me.

As Both the moves Charizard might use have a miss chance (85% accuracy on Fire Blast, and 70% accuracy with Fire Spin), and Glitch-City and Long-Range-Trainer can both take a single hit of Fire Spin well enough that I can switch in to sack Gen-1-Miss to get a fourth attempt, and even survive a minimum two-use Fire Spin if they start this stage of the fight with high enough health, and despite missing Sleep Powder on the first use

Glitch-City lucks into the win anyway, even after a Hyper Potion use from the Rival. Now I was unsatisfied with how lucky this all is, and would try again at first one higher level with the party, but its only at two higher levels (from the start) that we see much change.

That is enough that Badge-Boost no longer levels after beating Exeggutor, so Badge-Boost one shot Gyrados as well, which gives me another roll to take down Charizard, but getting to that point is still rather lucky, but it is a bit better, as he Three Shots Rhydon now, and one-shot the Exeggutor. Also I learn

That even with the Mimic Hydro Pump strat, it is better to start with sleep.

In the end things end up very similar to the first winning attempt. Badge-Boost doesn't even make it to Gyrados, and after losing Glitch-City and Gen-1-Miss trying to luck into the dodge and sleep on the Charizard

MissingNo lucks into it, and after going for 3 Slashes, I start spamming Spore to secure

the victory.

In quite a few way I am still a bit unsatisfied, but I think it is a testament to how powerful sleep is that bug types can do this at either of these levels, and while it requires a fair bit of luck, I was rolling a fair number of dice to look for that one lucky roll. I might as well show off the team.

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

I was rather tempted to do this as a Yellow run, as it is the only Gen 1 game with all 6 bug type lines are available in it,

I don't believe Weedle, or any of its evolutions, can be acquired in Yellow.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

And almost takes down the Arcanine too, and with one Fire Blast miss, we manage our win on the second attempt.

Beating Blaine as a Fire-weak type, with no super-effective attacks (except Dig), from roughly ten levels below... that's impressive right there.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

sigh, why would I assume Flying types (or one my two Bug-Poison types with wings) pokemon would be able to learn fly. Time to grab another Doduo to get back to SilphCo, and Venonat's current form is bad enough that I consider going back to switch mode to make switch-training easier on him, but before I am done clearing it out

It took GameFreak so long to give us any Bugs that could learn Fly. And when they did, it was... Genesect and Volcarona. Neither of which are Flying-types. C'mon now.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

Her last two pokemon do outspeed Badge-Boost, after he gets a levelups and loses out on the boost to speed he is named after.

Ironic. He could lead others to the Badge Boosts, but could not appreciate them himself. Anyway, definitely a fan of the "Spore then Swords Dance" strategy here!

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

I do defeat my childishly named rival first, and the experience from that fight is enough

I thought it was clever! He is quite the pest, after all.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

(as a joke I am nicknaming all of my Pokemon after famous Gen 1 glitches, although I used the more accurate, but less common name of the Mew Glitch here)

...And I just realized that you're doing it because they're glitches.

Which is to say.

Bugs.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

And funnily enough, despite having Dig, MissingNo ends up falling to Raichu with bad Paralysis luck, so Gen-1-Miss has to finish things up. I end up stopping just before Rock Tunnel this time, but the Bugs are doing alright so far.

Incidentally, if you made a "beeline" for the available Bug-types, you could have all of them before facing Lt. Surge and Erika. Not that it would've made for a better run, it's just a technical possibility.

On 5/6/2023 at 9:28 PM, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

Nice-looking team, and congratulations on the run! Perhaps I have underestimated the Bugs of Gen I. I did a mono-Grass in Crystal a long time ago, but never completed it. I'm looking more into Solo runs now, but these "mono-type" runs are still a great diversion in their own right.

[Eltosian Kadath]

13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I don't believe Weedle, or any of its evolutions, can be acquired in Yellow.

True, I was simply too focused on the Scyther/Pinsir dichotomy to notice.

 

13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Beating Blaine as a Fire-weak type, with no super-effective attacks (except Dig), from roughly ten levels below... that's impressive right there.

It does help that Blaine's AI is hilariously bad, with him randomly using healing items at full health, and him not having Flamethrower, so all those super effective fire moves are either super weak, or have obvious accuracy issues.

 

13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Incidentally, if you made a "beeline" for the available Bug-types, you could have all of them before facing Lt. Surge and Erika. Not that it would've made for a better run, it's just a technical possibility.

True enough, but dealing with Lt. Surge early has the minor advantage of meaning I can Fly as soon as I get the HM, and I usually wait for a new member to face Erika.

 

Edit: I will also note that I will probably be doing an Electric Gen 1 Monotype run sometime soon...

Edited May 8, 2023 by Eltosian Kadath

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

It does help that Blaine's AI is hilariously bad, with him randomly using healing items at full health, and him not having Flamethrower, so all those super effective fire moves are either super weak, or have obvious accuracy issues.

Yeah, Blaine is such a puzzle. I also always associate him with having a Magmar, even though he just... doesn't... in the Gen I games. The first two gens are the worst offenders when it comes to giving Gym leaders multiple Mons from the same evolutionary line.

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Edit: I will also note that I will probably be doing an Electric Gen 1 Monotype run sometime soon...

Ooh, will that be in Red, or in Yellow? Red is the only game with Electabuzz, and it lets you get Raichu. But Yellow has you start with a Pikachu, and gives said Pikachu a much better moveset (plus an easier Brock battle).

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I also always associate him with having a Magmar, even though he just... doesn't... in the Gen I games. The first two gens are the worst offenders when it comes to giving Gym leaders multiple Mons from the same evolutionary line.

To be fair, he has a Magmar as his ace in the anime, has one in Pokemon Stadium, and in his Generation 2 appearance as well, so there is plenty of reason to associate Magmar with Blaine.

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Ooh, will that be in Red, or in Yellow? Red is the only game with Electabuzz, and it lets you get Raichu. But Yellow has you start with a Pikachu, and gives said Pikachu a much better moveset (plus an easier Brock battle).

I am thinking Red to be consistent, as Yellow is rather different from Red and Blue with the enemy teams, enemy movepools, and a bit higher levels on enemies in the end.

[HendrikMoaG]

I’ve only tried it twice, once in Pokemon Black 2 and the other in Heart Gold (bug type for both) so I don’t really have much reference. As for the latter, I had a hard time. Bug monotype is amazing in Black 2 but the options are underwhelming in Heart Gold.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Now for that Electric type Gen 1 monotype run I did in the TeeHee thread again. Once again, a very different experience, as getting past Brock was a real experience, requiring the most training in the grass any of the runs so far have seen, but by about midgame, the Electric type team was just zooming through the game, and even first tried the Elite Four.

 

Spoiler

 

Quote

Alright, time for a little Electric type monotype run of Pokemon Red. I am anticipating a very difficult early game, and a much easier end game.

Squirtle made the most sense for starter type as Bulbasaur will be resistant against Electric type moves, whereas Electric will be super effective against the Squirtle line, and the endgame Charizard. Now there is the argument to be made that having Blastoise instead of Gyrados would make that easier, but it isn't until the fourth fight til he even has a Gyrados, and we would have an easy super effective moves before that.

Now it took a little bit to find my first encounter, but when I do, I luck into the higher level Pikachu option, a small blessing as we have a long grind ahead of us, as

Even after taking out all the Viridian Forest trainers, the random encounters along the way, and the optional fight against my childishly named Rival, I still don't have a move that can even hit the ground types of Brock's Gym trainers

Unless I burn through all of my PP against wild Pokemon in the forest (thank goodness for Kakuna/Metapod), and have Struggle available at the start, and even then

Its still not enough to beat the Gym trainer at this level, let alone Brock where his Pokemon resist the Normal type Struggle in this game. I keep the wipe (I spent most of my money already anyway), and do the same burn all PP training in the forest again before

I finally reach level 16 where I finally learn Quick Attack, and attack that can damage Ground Pokemon

Which is enough to get past the Light Years trainer, but I am still Light Years away from beating Brock as the goof says.

As I don't even have enough damage potential to defeat both of his Pokemon with the PP Quick Attack has. Now I was crafty enough to go into this battle with all of my Quick Attack PP, and 10 PP worth of Growl (I would use 4 Growls on the Geodude as soon as it uses Defense Curl, and use the other 6 on Onix during its Bide turns), and admittedly, if I were using items in battle (I haven't been for any of these runs), I would have been able to make it past him here

As I simply don't have the health to finish him off with Struggle. Needless to say I needed to go back into the grass to levelup and burn through PP again, and the next major attempt, starting at level 19, but leveling to 20 on the Geodude

It is clear with just a little more luck I can make it past this at this level, so I reset, and after two more failed attempts

Our little Cell Phone has finally made it past Brock. That took more grinding in the grass than any of the other runs have had total, but I do minimum battle my way from there to Cerulean (barring one accidental optional trainer thanks to a speedup mishap),

And I add a far better normal move to our little Cell Phone along the way.

Much to my suprise Misty was tougher than I expected, and took a second attempt, as on the first she got a critical Bubblebeam hit. We do have better than even odds to win, as I one shot the Staryu, can Thunder Wave the Starmie to outspeed it, and it need to basically use Bubblebeams every turn with no Paralysis turns lost, or a lucky Bubblebeam crit like in the first attempt (and to be fair, I didn't know I would be outsped the first time, so I didn't go for the Thunderwave until turn two)

The Cerulean Rival fight is also easy, in part thanks to Mega Punch powering through the otherwise resistant Bulbasaur

It also makes the Hikes much less of a stumbling block, and I even decide to take on an optional one to get at

a TM move early that does even better against Rock types than Mega Punch does. Also learning Swift made the replacement even easier. Now when I do get to the SS Anne I stop skipping trainers, as I want to clear the place out for items anyway, and the trainers are rather easy

Even the rival fight goes alright.

In retrospect, I should have caught a Paras in Mt. Moon for a Pokemon that can use Cut and Dig (as tragically none of the Electric types can learn Dig, and it does have some nice out of battle utility), but I get Cut to deal with Lt. Surge's Gym, and after a bad time with the slightly bugged Gym Puzzle, I end up fighting all the Gym trainers, and

Its easy to span Swift to clear away Lt. Surge's Pokemon, for the TM to the best Electric move in the game, but I am saving that for a Pokemon that can't learn an Electric type move from levelup at all

Which happens to be our second encounter of the run, Voltorb, who will eventually evolve into the Pokemon with the highest crit chance. We get Voltorb on the route immediately before Rock Tunnel, and after getting this newbie, I go back to face all the trainer I skipped between Rock Tunnel and Cerulean City to train them up. Now I do get to Lavendar before we stop, but there is a trainer I need to talk a little about before we get there, who hasn't been as large of an issue thanks to Dig and Sleep on the other runs so far

The mandatory trainer with two Geodudes, and a Graveler which can all explode and one shot our Pokemons. Thank goodness for Siesmic Toss on Cell Phone, and Sonic Boom on our Voltorb, as it makes it much easier to get past this little luck gauntlet. Now my plan was to stop at Lavendar town, but I couldn't help myself, I make the short walk to Cerulean to grab our third encounter before signing off

 

 

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Alright time to continue my little Electric type Monotype run, and with a brand new unit to train, I clear out the trainers I skipped past to end last update with getting my Jolteon

And then clearing out Erika's Gym as well, but the Erika battle did take two attempt, as I both squandered my Voltorb on the first attempt, I was trying to train up my Voltorb and Jolteon in this Gym to get them to catch up, and I needed to focus on winning, also I needed less awful Sleep luck, as I had to suffer through her using Sleep Powder on me in both attempts. Cell Phone the Pikachu and his Seismic Toss ended up being the MVP, but my Jolteon did most of the work against the Victreebel before succumbing to sleep, and the Voltorb needed to self-destruct against the Vileplume for chip (especially with me having to wait for Cell Phone to wake up to get the victory). I probably should have cleared out the Game Corner first, as

That is where I got Computer the Jolteon a more functional movepool with the Double-Edge TM, and by hitting level 31 for STAB Thundershock. Also, Lighting the Voltorb evolved into Electrode

With Cell Phone using Seismic Toss on the rock types, and Electrode crushing everything else with Thunderbolts, Giovanni is surprisingly easy. Onto Pokemon Tower

Lighting clears most of my childishly named rival with Thunderbolt, with Computer finishing off the resistant Ivysaur with Double-Edge.

We actually have enough usable moves that aren't Electric that Ground pokemon like the Marowak aren't as much of an issue as they were.

And with the Pokeflute acquired, its time to rush down to Fuchsia city to get access to surf, and our last round of encount-

Oh, whoops, I forgot to convert my Bike Voucher into a Bike when I returned to Ceruleon

So I grab a Doduo early to fly back and grab it, then skip all the trainers on Cycling Road, and I clear out Koga's Gym. That is a bit of a rude awakening that while Ground types aren't the roadblocks they were before, they aren't trivial either, as both random trainers with Sandslash did force me to rely on Cell Phone, after the pokemon I was focusing on training fell to it.

That being said, Koga fell fairly easily to Thunderbolt spam. With the badge, a quick visit to the Safari Zone for HMs, and grabbing Surf the Squirtle from the box

We can now go to a location I have yet to visit in any of these monotype runs to grab the rest of our encounters ...kinda. I am going to wait til I get the Master Ball before grabbing Zapdos, but otherwise

I can get an Electabuzz

And while I could grab a Magnemite, I wait to catch a fully evolved Magneton instead, that way I don't have to spend as much time training. In fact both these newbies arrived almost at the same level of the rest of my party (Cell Phone is still a tiny bit ahead of the rest from when he had to solo for us). I do also grab all the items in here, and kill the trap Voltorb/Electrode for a little more training, but an extra Rare Candy, and the TMs in here are ones I want to grab, and I am too lazy to look up which are items, and which are traps. After this little detour, I go clear out Silphco for fairly expected reason (trainers go away, I want to grab all the useful items etc.)

And the Electric type team is really coming into its own. Electrode's Thunderbolt does a really good job against a lot of Pokemon, and we have enough Normal, and fixed damage moves (from Sonic Boom and Seismic Toss) to deal with the Pokemon Thunderbolt doesn't obliterate with ease.

And I probably should have switched thing over to set mode earlier.

And like that we have our last encounter. Don't worry, I wont lean on the actually good Legendary Bird too much. After grabbing that, I decide to go through all my TMs now and setup our movepools

I give Thunder to Speakers the Magneton. Theoretically all the other pokemon will learn Thunder eventually, but I doubt all of them will get there (in fact the main reason I haven't evolved Pikachu is I think he will reach the level for it at the end.

I probably should have done this way earlier, but with Computer the Jolteon having Double-Edge, and Television the Electabuzz having Strength, Pikachu could use to boost his Normal type move (which was Swift before)

I also buy Television a move Super Effective against Rock types while I am at it

I give Speakers the Magneton Toxic as it synergies well with their access to a Confusion move for some stall tactics if need be.

Although this here was a bit of a mistake. While Television can make good use of the move, anyone can use Mimic, and I already basically have 4 moves with him

As he is the only one able to learn Psychic. I actually have him go without a STAB move for a little while.

Now after all that TM management, I decide to tackle Sabrina first, as I think

Television can do well in this fight, using Strength on her team. I even use Mimic to make him more resistant to her Psychic type moves, but it does reveal a bit of a weakness to my plan, as it gives the Mr.Mime time to boost his defense with Barrier, and Television isn't that great of a Physica attacker, which is made even more apparent when the Alakazam use Reflect, which means he deals less damage than the Alakazam can heal with Recover. I spam Strength until he falls anyway, which is enough that after he falls

As Cell Phone can finish things with Seismic Toss. That didn't go as well as I hoped, but a win is a win, and onto Cinnabar

And we are skipping all the trainers in the Gym (I did take on most of the ones in the Mansion though)

And I think it is a testament to my luck (I missed half of them...), and how bad Blaine is as a trainer that Speaker managed to use all his Thunder PP before the battle ends. Alas Speaker isn't able to finish the battle all on his own, so

Little Cell Phone has to finish things for Speakers.

That just leaves Viridian Gym, where I face as few trainers as I can before taking on Giovanni

Where I start by having Television flex those Submission to crush his Rhyhorn, but when the Dugtrio comes out, outspeeds, and Digs

It just made sense to switch to the Pokemon that is immune to the move. After that easy kill, I switch back to Television

To Psychic past the two Nidos

But that does get him to the level where he learns Thunder Punch, and I decide to drop the buyable TM from his movepool.

Although that still leaves the Rhydon, but it will only spam Fissure, which can't effect out team thanks to how slow Rhydon is, so

I let Cell Phone finish things, as he is close to the level for Thunder.

Now for the Rival, and it starts out easy, we have plenty of ways to deal with the Pidgeot, and Gyrados; the Rhyhorn doesn't has less means of dealing with us than we do against it, the Growlithe is easy to switch into in preparation for the Alakazam, but after it opens with Reflect just like Sabrina's

I cave and let Power Plant the Zapdos deal with the Alakazam.

Getting past the Venasaur (without Zapdos) does take a bit of work, but we have enough Pokes left to power through the Venasaur.

In Victory Road I do end up stumbling into a few trainers, as I am looking for a TM I don't usually bother with

As Lighting will definitely not reach the level to learn it themself. I have used Self Destruct once or twice, so it might come in handy at the end of things. That gets me to the Elite Four, and I might as well show off the team for now. Note Cell Phone will definitely evolve before we start, I just want him to learn Thunder first (which he will be rare candied up to)

 

 

Spoiler

Time to Finish this little Electric type Monotype run. With my Rare Candies, I can get 3 of my team to level 44 (My Electrode, Electabuzz, and Pikachu), the rest (other than Zapdos) to 43, and I finally evolve Pikachu before starting my first attempt at the Elite Four

And seeing a super effective Thunderbolt not one shot the Cloyster is a really bad sign. Admittedly thing go just fine, I beat the Cloyster easily, switch to

Television to do the classic Mimic Amnesia strat, but I do get rather unlucky while doing so, not only does the Slowbro time its move rights to get an Amnesia boosted Water Gun off before I start boosting, but then I crit the Jynx twice in a row to give it an extra attack against me. Although we make it out just fine.

Psychic makes Bruno easy, especially with Television's crit rate being so high, making one of the Onix a one shot, and getting past Machamp faster as well.

...Seeing that damage was really worrying, but I do get past it only losing Lightning themselves. Lightning does have a lot of things going for them here, outspeeding, a very high crit rate, and a chance to Paralyze

Plus super effective Psychic does a bit better damage, and Television still has a high crit rate.

That fight was a bit lucky, but we did have a lot going for us.

...sigh.

Now the Lance fight was a close call, we don't have anything particularly good against the Dragonairs, and the Aerodactyl even outspeeds Television, but we have enough Pokemon to power through both of them. When the Dragonite comes out, its time for Speakers the Magneton's set to shine, using Toxic and Supersonic to setup a stall strat on it

And we make it through the Lance fight just fine thanks to that little edge

Although it was the closest battle we had in the Elite Four so far...but as is apparant I still have Power Plant the Zapdos in the back, who has yet to act in any of these fights.

Now onto the Champion fight, Lighting easily gets past the Pidgeot, but I make a massive mistake against the Alakazam that makes me worry I might need to reset. I go for Light Screen instead of a full health Explosion, and I get punished by a crit that ignores the Light Screen, and one shots

But it doesn't go for Reflect until it is too late, which even lets Television finish the Alakazam on his own.

I was hoping Psychic would deal better here...

So I switch to little Cell Phone to Seismic Toss it down instead. Cell Pone manages to Thunder past the Gyrados just fine, but the Arcanine manages to take Cell Phone down, with a Take Down, that even takes it out with recoil

Which puts me into a position to immediately Thunder Wave the Venusaur

But Double-Edge doesn't do the best at dealing with the Venusaur

And thanks to both Paralysis, and it deciding to go with Solar Beam, Television manages to Psychic our way to the victory

And like that, we have a first try victory, and without using Zapdos at all. The bug's did it at a slightly lower level, but I mostly put that down to getting two of these guys at level 35-36, where as highest level I caught a bug type at was 25, as the Electric team faced less optional trainers overall...I guess the grind for Brock may have impacted things a tiny bit as well, but Pikachu wasn't as overleveled as Charmander was in the Fire run as I started skipping trainers with him far sooner. Oh I guess the slaughter of the Power Plant Voltorb/Electrode might have had an impact as well. The Electric team did really, really well in the latter half of the game, but getting past Brock was a real hurdle. Alright, time to show off the final team