#this was my first random shiny in sv

[front-facing-pokemon]

[summergirl2408]

BRO I just hatched a shiny paldean wooper from my first ever egg in sv

I was just working on completing the dex (tried to breed a regular wooper and didn't know you had to give it an everstone to do that)

I legit had to check the summary if it was ctually a shiny or not cause I couldn't believe it

[kafus]

i did some ridiculous technical BS in pokemon again

NOTE: not only is this post a very very long infodump from yours truly, it is also specifically an infodump involving a lot of pokemon glitches and exploits. even though i don't tamper with my games and everything achieved here can be done on original hardware with no hacking or what-have-you, some people still may consider this Cheating based on their own personal standards of legitimate gameplay. i ask that you please don't try to start arguments with me about pokemon legality and just take it all as an interesting technical infodump about gen 3 pokemon okay thank you <3

SO. i decided that before pokemon bank eventually shuts down one day in the probably-not-so-distant future and makes old gen transfer impossible, i need more ribbon master pokemon (AKA a pokemon with all the ribbons it can possibly receive from its gen of origin to the most recent gen it can transfer to) from gens 3 and 4. i've been meaning to ribbon master a pokemon from gen 3 based on my favorite singer, KAF (you don't need to know anything about kaf for this story whatsoever but you should check her out LMAO) and while musing over what pokemon would suit her best, it came to me.

FARIGIRAF IS JUST KAF'S FURSONA!! the monster teeth hoodie with the eyes. even has the dangly bits. like come on it's perfect. AND girafarig is obviously available in gen 3 so i could RM a kaf girafarig and then evolve her once i got to SV. Cool! Awesome! but here's the problem. I CAN'T SETTLE FOR JUST A NORMAL GIRAFARIG. I HAVE TO GO ALL OUT!!

i started brainstorming my ideal gen 3 kaf girafarig, and came to the following conclusions:

i obviously want the girafarig to be shiny. i mean come on

i want her to be a girl for obvious reasons, and gentle nature to match her personality. just because Armor Tail is better on Farigiraf i also want it to have girafarig's second ability, Early Bird. i'm not concerned with IVs because i think random IVs add flavor and that would add more tedium than i was already dealing with

i want her to be japanese language origin since kaf is a japanese singer (i can nickname her かふ that way too!)

i want the original trainer (OT) name to be PPさん (PP-san) in reference to the person who scouted out kaf's talent in the first place - he goes by Piedpiper online and my friends and i call him PP as a joke sometimes

i want the trainer ID to be 02018 because 2018 is kaf's debut year

since girafarig only spawns in gen 3 in the ruby/sapphire/emerald safari zone, i wanted to hatch a girafarig egg in firered/leafgreen for the kanto origin, which is impossible otherwise. FRLG are also really important games to me, leafgreen being the first pokemon game i ever owned or played, so that's a bonus

now you may be looking at this entire list and being like. What the fuck. how do you intend to shiny hunt girafarig with all of these hyperspecific parameters, especially in FRLG where the everstone passing nature doesn't exist and flame body doesn't even exist to hatch eggs faster. you will be doing that long after bank shuts down. and you're intending on doing this on original hardware too??? WELL. that's where ACE and RNG manipulation comes in babey. i am GOING to attempt to make this comprehensible even if you've never touched ACE or RNG manip in your life, even tangentially, but sorry if this is a bit of a mess it's pretty technical LOL. the rest of this post is going below a cut cause it Goes Places!!

ACE and RNG manipulation explained (kinda)

first off a quick overview of ACE, ACE stands for arbitrary code execution, which is the ability to run your own (arbitrary!) code within the game. this can be set up with a series of elaborate glitches, that break open the gen 3 pokemon games into letting you run your PC box names as code, enabling you to do pretty much anything you want. to be upfront, i'm not an expert on ACE - i understand it in an overarching conceptual sense and am able to follow ACE guides just fine, but i cannot write my own ACE code, which essentially requires you to know some GBA assembly. doesn't really matter for the purpose of this story though.

you can see an example of a tiny snippet of a larger ACE code with the PC box name below. it looks like gibberish but that's because every character used in the name corresponds to a specific internal value, which when all run together, is code!

i need ACE in FRLG because resetting for, or RNG manipulating (more on that in a moment), trainer ID (and secret ID, also more on that later) is pretty much impossible. ACE will allow me to change my TID to 02018 by essentially just telling the game to do so with my PC boxes. this requires me to set up ACE in emerald first since that's the only game with a viable entrypoint, and then use emerald ACE to make glitch pokemon that can activate ACE in FRLG when traded over.

as for RNG manipulation, that's a bit more straightforward, especially if you've ever watched a speedrun of... pretty much anything with random chance in it. games with random chance are not actually fully random because computers can't really be fully random, and in the older pokemon games with unencrypted and less advanced RNG (random number generator) algorithms, this is pretty easy to exploit.

this is a heavy simplification, but whenever you encounter a wild pokemon in RSE or FRLG, the amount of frames that have passed since the game was turned on are compared to a number that was generated upon boot, called the RNG seed. if you've ever played minecraft you can compare this to world seeds - the pokemon RNG seed determines all possible wild encounters in that play session in a similar fashion as minecraft determining the infinite terrain layout. this comparison determines every aspect of an encountered pokemon; its species, nature, IVs, and so on. so, if you were able to time your wild encounter (or any other type of pokemon encounter) down to the 1/60th of a second frame, you can get the game to spit out whatever pokemon you want at you! you just need a bit of typically invisible information first - the RNG seed, and if you're RNGing a shiny, your secret ID aka SID, which is like an invisible second trainer ID generated alongside your TID that is paired up with the TID and compared against any pokemon you encounter to determine if it should be shiny or not. both of these things can be figured out without hacking or tampering with games/save files.

the most common program used for all things RNG manipulation is called pokefinder and you can see an example of it spitting out what shinies are available on hoenn's first route in the first 100000 frames of the game being on with an RNG seed of 0 and my old TID/SID combo below. it's pretty damn cool to me tbh, i love RNG manipulation and i'm way more versed on it/experienced than i am with ACE

TLDR; rng manipulation is essentially a frame perfect, speedrunning-adjacent trick to get the game to roll the RNG in your favor, including for perfect IVs or shininess. for reasons that will become clear later, this is much easier to do in emerald than any other gen 3 game, so i will be using emerald for the RNG manipulation of the girafarig egg

with ALL of that context out of the way, this was the gameplan:

play through a fresh file of japanese firered (i don't own japanese leafgreen, RIP) all the way through the postgame to unlock trading with hoenn with the name PPさん, not worrying about TID for now. the guide i was following did not have a code for changing name with ACE in japanese FRLG specifically, so i figured playing the game again real quick would be a better alternative to trying to teach myself assembly in an afternoon LOL

set up ACE in my new emerald file i completed recently

use ACE in emerald to generate the glitch pokemon needed to run ACE in FRLG and trade them over. finalize the setup process over in FRLG too

look up possible gentle, ability 2, female, and shiny egg frames, and pick one that looks good to RNG manipulate in emerald, noting its PID (an encounter-specific ID number, pretty much)

figure out what SID, when combined with a TID of 02018, will cause that egg frame to be shiny - that way when the egg is traded over and hatched in firered, it will be shiny

do the RNG in emerald, trade over the to-be-shiny egg to firered, and hatch it after changing the TID/SID with ACE appropriately!! bam female, gentle, early bird, shiny, JP origin girafarig with an OT of PPさん and a visible TID of 02018. Pog!!

to execute that gameplan would take me an entire day, though...

step 1: play through firered

ok gonna be honest this is the ONE part of this entire process that i did not play on original hardware. i wanted to get to the Cool Parts of this process so i decided to play through firered on emulator. absolutely terrible picture sorry but i do actually own japanese firered, so i could dump the game legally to my computer to use speedup in mGBA with a little device called the Joey JR which connects the cart to my computer by USB like so

after that it was pretty much a relatively normal playthrough but obviously with emulator speedup. i used solely my starter blastoise to, well, blast through the rest of the game LMAO. after just a couple of hours or so i was right before the elite four, which i completed while in the car after moving the save file back to my cartridge with the same device, since i had to leave the house to go to a doctor appointment. i tried to take pictures of me beating the game but the sun was not doing the photos any favors lol. blastoise ended up being level 76 by the end. was easy with surf and an ice beam TM from the game corner (i just bought the coins)

unfortunately beating the game isn't the only requirement for trading with the hoenn games, so i also had to complete the whole sevii islands postgame quest... which required me to have 60 registered owned entries in the pokedex, which i wasn't really doing while speeding through the game initially, so i had a lot of mons to catch. i was still out of the house at this point (and playing at normal speed lol) so i wasn't really taking pictures, but i did make a stop at the power plant to look for an electabuzz despite it being an inefficient 5% since i needed a spare anyways for my leafgreen file unrelated to this story lmao. took a pic of it since it took a while to show up. anyway soon enough the dex had 60+ entries! i've played FRLG so many times that the encounter locations are memorized in my mind... i did all of this with no googling asdfkasfd

at this point i got home and was able to do the ruby/sapphire postgame quest on emulator with speedup again, so it was pretty easy. moved the save back to cart and i was done with step 1! obviously this didn't actually take me 21 hours of playtime, that was the emulator speedup's fault loool. from here on out i didn't touch any emulators again!

step 2: set up ACE in emerald

ACE time! i've actually set up ACE in an old emerald file before but i wanted to do it again fresh. i was following a guide pretty much to a T so i'm actually going to skip over the details of some of the steps since you can read about those more in depth over at the guide i was using if you want

TLDR; you have to trade for the NPC trade pokemon, DOTS the seedot and PLUSES the plusle, then EV train DOTS a specific way. these EV values cause DOTS to turn into a glitch pokemon egg 0x0611 when corrupted with the pomeg glitch (more on that in a bit), which, when hatched, runs the PC box names as code, aka ACE! why does it work? if you really want to know, there's plenty of stuff online about it, i'm not the best person to ask haha

it's worth noting that volbeat is really annoying to capture in emerald as it's literally only available as a 1% in one patch of grass, so i caught an illumise instead and bred them until a volbeat hatched lol. was much more efficient

also lol "Take good care of DOTS!" sorry i will be corrupting your son into demonspawn that lets me wield godlike control over your universe

after getting the necessary NPC trade pokemon all ready and moving them into a specific pattern in box 2 (i cloned them with the emerald tower cloning glitch) i had to perform the pomeg glitch. this involves using a pomeg berry to decrease a pokemon's health to 0 without causing a whiteout. this is achieved by getting a pokemon with at least 8 HP EVs to 1 HP and then using the pomeg berry on it, decreasing the EVs and taking off a point of health in the process (it's slightly more steps than this but whatever). i decided to use the camerupt i had during my playthrough of the game for this purpose. just took him to fiery path to get poisoned and walked until he was on 1 HP and healed him with an antidote lol

by doing the pomeg glitch and entering a wild battle, the game gets a bit confused since all the pokemon in your party are fainted and just sends out some sort of glitch decamark pokemon. in this situation, after viewing my camerupt's summary in battle and exiting back out of the summary screen, i was able to corrupt the DOTS and PLUSES sitting in my PC by scrolling up above the usual limit of the party menu, which reaches into data used by the first two PC boxes and fucks them up, ending up with, assuming that i EV trained correctly, a glitched egg that is about to hatch in a nest ball named DOTS with pokerus. this will run ACE when hatched! (if you want more info on this corruption pomeg stuff, check out the bulbapedia article for glitzer popping. yes that's what they named it)

step 3: use emerald ACE to set up firered ACE

so once again you can find a lot more detail on this process over at the guide i was using, but the TLDR of the matter was, i needed to put a bunch of codes into my PC box names to generate a few different glitch mons. specifically, i needed a egg that would hatch into a crobat (yes, fully evolved lol) with a singular glitched out move, that when used in battle in firered, would cause ACE to happen similar to how hatching the corrupted DOTS egg causes ACE to happen in emerald. i also needed a specific buggy shiny umbreon and a very strange glitchy egg.

even though this step was mostly a lot of tedious typing on the gen 3 keyboard (+ i had to redo things once because i made a typo at one point in the process LOL) it was so much fun! the game breaks in so many ways that you would just... never see during normal gameplay and it makes for some really good pictures and whatnot

first of all, when you hatch the 0x0611 egg, it hatches into a decamark of varying colors, in the case of the picture below it's almost imperceptible because the whole sprite is just a black circle, blending in with the background (sorry for the quality on this one, it's a screencap of a video clip i took).

additionally, trying to scroll over the hatched decamark in the PC or viewing its summary screen will crash the game, so to get rid of it, it has to be moved to the front of your party in the party menu, and then you go to the PC to release it through the deposit menu. since the cursor just defaults to the first position of the party and you don't have to scroll over to it, it's possible to release it from here.

oh yes and the umbreon/other glitch egg? similarly screwy - actually after generating them, their sprites are glitched out until you reset the game, so they look like this. behold their nonsense summaries:

after i had all i needed to trade to FRLG, i cloned an extra set of them with the emerald tower glitch again just in case i messed something up and got to trading! here's me receiving them on the firered side:

and last but not least, i'm a little obsessed with the way the glitch move looks in FRLG on the hatched crobat, absolute nonsense:

i finalized setting up the FRLG ACE (check out the guide i linked earlier for more info) and put everything into their proper positions, but before i could actually execute any code... i needed to know what SID i was going for!

step 4 + 5: look up potential egg frames in emerald and find an SID

soo now for looking at potential girafarig eggs. instead of using the program pokefinder which i mentioned earlier, i used a program called pokenav egg rng tool, which is exactly what it sounds like, a tool specialized for rng manipulating eggs with the pokenav in emerald. using it, i was quickly able to generate a whole list of gentle, female, ability 2 (early bird) eggs, and i picked one that was around 1300 frames in since that made for quick resetting attempts, but not so quick that i could barely make my inputs in time. the one i picked was frame 1381. with a TID of 02018, the PID D2C5EF55 would be shiny with an SID of 14962, so i noted that for later in firered. (i figured this out using an old program called RNG Reporter which is what i'm familiar with but i don't recommend using lmao. it's the "Pandora's Box" feature of that software though if you happen to look it up)

i won't make an entire guide on how to do emerald egg RNG here because it's a lot of steps, but i might at some point because the most up to date method isn't super well documented. anyways, here's a very paraphrased version of the process (this is also assuming that you aren't dealing with "redraws", which i wasn't... like i said very paraphrased):

get a pokemon with the ability lightningrod in the front of your party (i used electrike) to make pokenav calls happen more frequently, and a pokemon with flame body or magma armor (i used slugma) to make eggs hatch faster

get a male and a female of the pokemon you want to hatch, in my case girafarig. if you were RNGing IVs, the parent's IVs would be relevant, but i am not RNGing IVs so i didn't care and just caught the first girafarig i could in the safari zone

an egg is attempted to be generated every 255 steps after the parents are deposited in the daycare together, so by timing the usage of a max repel in such a way, it's easy to save the game exactly 10 steps before an egg is generated. do this

using a timer such as eontimer, soft reset and try to take that last 10th step on your target frame. this will also trigger a pokenav call (or lack thereof) and by looking for the phone call you got in the call column of the egg rng tool and whether or not an egg generated at the daycare, you can tell what frame you hit. didn't hit your target? just soft reset and try again, calibrating the timer for your own human error. this can take a while since the timing is precise to 1/60th of a second

once you hit your target frame, woohoo you did it just take the egg and hatch it! if you're RNGing IVs you would actually save before taking the egg and then RNG the IVs separately but that's a whole different thing i'm not explaining here since i wasn't RNGing IVs

i've avoided mentioning it this entire time till now, but emerald is particularly easy to do rng manipulation in because due to a programming error, the rng seed is always 0 - all encounters are predictable and you don't have to dedicate a frame perfect input to getting the right seed, making emerald rng a matter of one frame perfect input instead of two (there ARE ways to get emerald to generate a proper rng seed but that's unrelated here). additionally, its pokenav system means you can see if you got the right egg BEFORE taking it and hatching it... doing egg RNG in any other gen 3 game is basically a death sentence due to multiple untelegraphed frame perfect inputs that have to be executed in a row, plus really long wait times due to hatching eggs on a slower bike without flame body. there's a reason i was not doing this on four island in frlg.

but yeah now i knew what egg frame i was going for and was all prepared to do the RNG, so now it was onto actually executing it all:

step 6: getting kaf girafarig babey!!

before doing the RNG manipulation in emerald, i needed to change my SID and TID in firered finally! this required me to run two different codes, one for SID and one for TID. it was actually pretty painless since the code is nearly identical for both, you just swap out the values of each ID and one character changes in one box name to decide whether you're changing TID or SID. you can find the list of codes i was referencing here.

i was saving my one allotted video clip in this post for changing the TID with the glitched crobat move though because LMAO

^ shoutout to my qpp @/spikyearr for this one i fucking chokedSKFDDSFK

anyway, after doing that i went through the process of the egg rng in emerald (unfortunately no pictures because it's kind of hard to take pics mid-rng) and actually saved before taking the egg so that i'd be able to soft reset after hatching it - i just needed to check to make sure it was gentle and everything, and then i could soft reset, take the egg again, bike around to decrease the egg cycles in emerald since hatching in firered is super slow, and then trade it off before hatching it to go be hatched in firered. i knew it wouldn't be shiny in emerald, so i wasn't concerned with that. it only took 40 or so minutes of attempts before i got her!

and then AT LAST after spending my ENTIRE DAY ON THIS SHIT (like 10x the amount of time on the ACE stuff for the TID instead of the actual RNG itself LOOOL) i just had to trade the egg to firered and hatch it and i was golden!!!!! AAAGH here she is next to my kaf plushies!!!

also a picture of her summary screen after being traded to my english leafgreen!! i am assuming this will be easier to read for most of the people reading this post LOL

THAT'S IT. POST OVER THIS WAS SO LONG. IF YOU MADE IT THROUGH MY RAMBLING GOOD JOB. I HIT THE PHOTO LIMIT HELP ME

anyways yeah i'm gonna be ribbon mastering her and idk i might post about the process as i go. not immediately though i have a platinum playthrough to finish teehee. also if any of this was interesting to you i highly recommend trying out RNG manipulation, it's a really fun way to play pokemon games! gen 5, BW specifically and not their sequels, is REALLY beginner friendly for RNG manipulation as the timing is a lot less precise. check it out, there's plenty of guides online!!

[adobe-outdesign]

i know you covered the points in the shelmet post but i would love to hear the full anti trade evolution rant tbh

Alright first off, it goes against the point of the entire series. "Form strong bonds with your Pokemon!" and then once you do you have to take an action to get rid of them in order to evolve them. what the hell

Kind of tying into the above, but it's also counter-productive. If you want to keep your 'mon, then you have to undo the action you just did in order to get it back. what the hell kind of logic is that

There is literally nothing in place to prevent your Pokemon from getting stolen. really loved that Pokemon? tough shit, turns out the other person isn't gonna trade them back. finding people to trade with online helps with this but only a little

and god help you if you find a shiny

since trading is now online, it requires an NSO online subscription, effectively paywalling those Pokemon and potentially completing the Pokedex. trading through HOME normally is a way to get around this but whoopsie doopsie, Pokemon don't evolve when traded in HOME

(You can trade locally, but that requires you to have friends that own Switches with that specific game)

It also screwed people over when it was link cables as well, because you had to know a person IRL, softlocking most trade evos unless you were lucky

GameFreak's solution to the online thing seems to be to make trade evos available in-game in some fashion (such as through raids in SV), which at least fixes the 'dex issue but ignores the bond thing once again. I don't want to replace my beloved Haunter with a random Gengar, I want to evolve my Haunter

This is a minor quibble but the lore around it has never been explained and most Pokemon seem to outright ignore it. For example, Slowpoke canonically evolves into Slowking when bitten on the head by a Shellder, yet for some reason you have to trade it with a random (non-Shellder) Pokemon while holding a King's Rock

I think the Karrablast/Shelmet line is the only line to have a "reason" that they evolve via trade, with the 'dex acknowledging they evolve when both Pokemon are bathed with electric energy. still nothing about that requires trade however

The Pokemon that evolve via trade, Karrablast/Shelmet line not withstanding, are completely random. why does Machoke need to be traded to evolve? because shut up

(I guess you could argue the same thing with most item evos, but at least there's a rationale behind the items if not the Pokemon themselves, and item evos aren't even half as problematic to being with)

And what's frustrating is that PLA has a linking cord item that evolves trade evo because it's meant to be a single-player game (you can still evolve via trade as well if you prefer that). it's literally THAT easy of a problem to fix

Another option would be to have an NPC that will basically trade your trade-evo Pokemon back to you. Maybe you have to bring them a certain item or something for each trade so it's not overly easily

I also think GameFreak hasn't made a trade evo since like Gen 5, implying that they know it's an issue but are too cowardly to fix it

I feel like Palafin is sort of a "modern-day" trade. it's still an issue because you still need to either pay for NSO or know someone to evolve it with, but at least you only need the person to enter your game via multiplayer to evolve it instead of needing to trade it off, which is slightly better

thanks for coming to my TED talk

[shinysamurott9]

2024 Games: Pokemon Scarlet

This is certainly a weird game for me to look at. This wasn't a game I went into with much of any negative bias, unlike Sword, where I skipped it due to the negativity surrounding the game at the time, I did actually buy Scarlet on day 1. But I didn't get too far into it before falling off because of other stuff. So I ended up sitting on it for over a year until now as I needed to complete the game to get the ribbons and marks needed to complete my Ribbon Master Quest. And what I got from it was one of the strangest games I've played yet one I've enjoyed a lot. This is gonna be another really long read so keep that in mind.

So when I initially picked up the game I didn't so that much in terms of Game progression. What I did do however, beyond the basic intro stuff leading up to the school, was at the very start of the game when I saw a Riolu at the edge of a cliff and was like "hey I wanna catch that" but I couldn't get over because I didn't have Korraidon yet. But my experience with Legends Arceus kicked in and came the thought of trying to throw a ball to initiate a battle from the other side of the cliff. Turns out this idea got me way more than I bargained for because doing this warped me to the other side of the gap, letting me break out of the area I was supposed to be and explore the whole region before ever entering the school. I shit you not by the time I was done I had almost half the pokedex and a lvl 40 Skeledirge. It was incredibly funny ngl.

But after that when I eventually got back on track I basically just did the remaining intro stuff until you were set free to explore. At which point I wasn't really feeling it, so I put the game down. DLC flew by, stuff happened and it all led up to a couple weeks ago when I had to pick it up again to complete my Ribbon Masters. I initially didn't really vibe with the game. My first day back playing it was basically just me wandering aimlessly, avoiding the main objectives because I wanted to put together a more substantial team beyond Skeledirge and Tinkatuff and I also just wasn't really feeling any of the mons I had in the box. I also do tend to make a conscious effort to use team members I haven’t used before, but a lot of more interesting stuff available in Paldea were mons I had used before. I think it's a combination of this, almost the entire dex being available to you from the outset if you really want it and me being slightly overwhelmed by that that led to this feeling.

This train of thought hilariously led me to awakening and actually catching Chien fucking Pao with no badges, though I never actually ended up using it due to not beating all the gyms first so it was disobedient til near the end of the game.

This first session ultimately ended when I went to take on Great Tusk and subsequently capturing it. I opted to do the Teal Mask DLC from here, this is where the game started to pick up for me. It was a whole new area to explore, tons of new mons to find and use and a nice little side story to get invested in. By the time I was done I was way happier with the team I was using, including a random full odds shiny, so that was awesome.

The Teal Mask was also where the story really started to click with me I think. SV story is very much a character focused one, with the plots mainly being centered around how the player character helps and interacts with the other characters around them. And to complement that, SV probably has one of the best main casts of human characters in the series. Teal Mask brings in Carmine and Kieran who I both really like. Kieran needs Indigo Disk to be fully discussed but most of Carmine's character is here.

I really like her, she has a really good character design and her character arc, while short, is compelling. She goes from someone who is, almost xenophobic for lack of a better term to someone who grows far more accepting as she helps you recover the masks from the Lousy Three. She's hard on Kieran, in a way that I feel like she regrets as they drifted apart on Indigo Disk, but she does care about him. She does also have a bit of smug bastard energy that I do enjoy when it's done right.

Teal Mask also has... H e r

I'm gonna be real here, I think Ogerpon is genuinely the best legendary we've gotten in general, which is saying a lot in a generation that knocks it out of the park in that regard. Her design is simple but adorable, she has one of my favourite stories of any legendary, not just her backstory but also how she bonds with you and how that plays into Kieran's arc, and her gimmick with the masks is incredibly fun to use in a playthrough. Especially so if you play like me with a rotating team of more than 6, Ogerpon can slot in anywhere with how you can change her type to fill any holes you might have in terms of types.

I think Kitakami was really what I needed to get myself in gear and get back into the game. When I got back to the main game, the path I was inclined to follow most was the Titan path with Arven. This was partially for practical reasons as that's how you upgrade Koraidon, but also because of Arven.

I think Arven's story is amazing. He starts out as kind of a dick, pawning Koraidon off on you and wanting nothing to do with it. But you come to learn this is more from frustration towards his mom, feeling like she cared more about it and her research in Area Zero than him growing up. And also because she's given him basically no help with his current goal, healing his partner Mabosstiff. In a series that focuses on all these grand adventures, which this game definitely still has mind you, Arven is incredibly down to earth. At the end of the day he's just a guy who wants to help his sick dog, which is incredibly relatable.

To get a little personal here, I've basically spent my whole life around dogs. We've had plenty across my family growing up. Of course, most of them passed away as I grew up. They were treated well, it's just how it goes. But it does suck, seeing them grow old as their health deteriorates. So I completely understand Arven going so far to help Mabosstiff doing literally everything he can to help save him. And at the very end, when you get the last Herba Mystica, Arven takes a breather. He seems almost resigned, with motions that feel like he's saying he's done all he can do, and now he can only wait and let whatever happens happen.

There are very few things in anything that make me very emotional, but seeing Mabosstiff get up and bring his pokeball to Arven, and Arven being so overjoyed seeing him healthy again, genuinely gets me a little teary eyed. It's genuinely one of the sweetest scenes in all of pokemon. I think the titans path is also helped overall by having the most ties to the final story, it leading into the reason we go down to Area Zero to begin with, thereby giving it an edge in importance over the other two paths.

Speaking of the other two paths, I think they're also pretty solid.

I actually ended up liking Team Star a bit more than I expected. I like that ultimately they just boil diwn to friend group who found solidarity in each other. But they went too far and were too stubborn to back down, because they don't feel like the school did anything to fix their issues. So Penny has to have you step in to dismantle the whole thing so they don't seriously harm their futures. It's a neat story honestly. Not sure how I feel about their postgame side story. It's neat helping them get back on track with things, I think my main issue is that some of them are hard to recognise. Like Mela and especially Eri look like completely different people. One thing I do really like about Team Star though is all their music is canon and composed by Giacomo. It's genuinely really cool. Especially imagining him just going off when he made Penny's one.

The gym path was probably my least favourite of the three paths. It's not bad by any means, it's just the typical song and dance we've come to expect from pokemon at this point. I do enjoy most of the gym leaders, they're fun with plenty of personality. Iono and Larry were personal highlights for me. My issue is that I think the gym path highlights a notable issue with how the game doesn’t really lean into it's open world structure very well. Despite a major selling point being you can do the badges in any order, there still is a set order to do them with the levels they're at. While I think it's a good idea for the start of the game, with some badges being objectively easier than others, I feel like this structure would benefit a lot by having weaker gyms scale up to match where you are if you beat a later badge first. Say you beat Larry first. You could then have Katy, Brassius, Iono, and Kofu scale up in levels to match whoever would be fighting next, so you don't just steamroll everything below the gym you beat.

The real highlightof the gym path is unquestionably Nemona. I think she's a really interesting take on the typical rival in pokemon. Instead of going on the same journey as you, she's already become a champion. She is a savant in terms of battling and she worked hard to get to that point, it's like a hyperfixation for her. But she's reached a point where she's far beyond any of her peers and it leaves her almost alienated from them cause no one else is as into battling as her. It's an interesting way to take the phrase "It's lonely at the top".

That's of course where you come in. She follows you on your journey, starting fresh with a new team, even intentionally picking the starter weak to yours for an extra challenge, I love how they actually have a reason for it this time. All the while along the way she helps you to get stronger offering advice in the gyms and helping you keep sharp in battles. All so that you can become a worthy challenge for her. And when you do beat her at the end when she's not holding back, she's ecstatic because she finally has a true equal, or potentially even a new level of strength for her to work towards. It's a genuinely really cool way to handle the rival here. My one gripe is that I don't think we ever see what Nemona's original team was. Maybe she used Orthworm and Dudunsparce as she only uses them in her final fight when she isn't holding back, but everything else is from the team she trained along the way.

Then there's the final story, and the true ending of the game. Where as the other stories were focused on your friends, The Way Home is Koraidon's story. It's in the name, as the story has you delving into Area Zero, the place Koraidon came from in the first place.

Area Zero is easily a standout location in the game. It has an absolutely perfect vibe. It has this pure, untouched feel, not just as if no one has been there in a long time, it feels like somewhere people are outright not supposed to be. And the music conveys this feeling absolutely perfectly. It's especially great because it's motif is heard in other places like Tera Raid dens, and later it's subtle part of the Terrarium themes in Blueberry Academy and the Crystal Pool in Kitakami.

The vibe of the track, especially the vocal parts, give it a similar feel to stuff from the Xeno series. It's so perfect.

I think it's really interesting to me how Sada, basically the closest thing to a main antagonist this game has, is already dead when you arrive, and has been for some time. But you need to fight through to her machine to shut it down and prevent more Paradox pokemon from coming to the present. It's a pretty simple plot held up by how the characters experience Area Zero itself. All of this culminates in the final fight against Sada's AI. It's a really neat fight that is genuinely difficult. In no small part because she uses exclusively Paradoxes, many of which you could literally have never encountered at this point, giving you an unknown element to contend with. The battle concludes with you taking down her Koraidon with the pokemon you've bonded with throughout the entire game, the one pokemon not affected by Sada's pokeball lock due to technically being owned by her, your own Koraidon, who got you this far to begin with. It's a genuinely great moment as Koraidon overcomes it's fear and takes down it's counterpart who drove it from Area Zero to begin with.

This concludes the main plot, with an Ed Sheeran Jumpscare for some reason, but the story does continue in the Indigo Disk where you become a transfer student for Blueberry Academy. Blueberry is an absolutely fantastic location. The Terrarium is really cool area to mess around in, with tons of new pokemon to find and use, the blueberry Quests are a great addition too. On paper they seem like busy work, but they're so easy to passively complete with solid rewards that they make for a good thing to do in between objectives in the Terrarium. Which really helps for the other main draw of Indigo Disk, the League Club.

I think the League Club is a super underrated part of the DLC. There's a bunch of stuff to do with it by customising the room itself, developing the Item Printer, a great addition in itself, and upgrading the biomes in the Terrarium, letting you get all the starters from Gen 1 - 8, genuinely really cool. The best part of the League Club though is all the character interactions. Initially you'll only meet the BB League E4 in there. But as you play through you'll get the ability to invite basically every notable character in the game there and eventually Carmine and Kieran will appear there too. It's great for fleshing out their characters, and also facilitates special interactions between characters who wouldn't get the chance to meet otherwise.

I love all the little Easter Eggs and references in this DLC too. There's the League Club rooms, specifically monochrome and futuristic, being massive call backs to Unova, each of the biomes being references to old locations like The cliff biome referencing the Nature Preserve, The Savannah Biome references the Kanto Safari Zone, and the Coastal Biome explicitly references Alola. Idk if the Polar Biome references anything, maybe Mt Lanakila? And the Meloetta event? Which requires you to open the camera app with the sepia filter? An amazing call back to the guy from Castelia who remembered Meloetta's Relic Song in Sepia Colored Memories.

And now I get to the story of Indigo Disk. Just as the main game did with Nemona, the DLC went a really interesting direction with the rival trope. You first meet Kieran in Kitakami and while things start out well, your encounter with Ogerpon puts a rift between you and him. He always had an affinity with the Ogre and wanted to meet it for so long, and when he finally meets her, Ogerpon doesn't trust him, despite hearing about her story and admiring it his whole life, she favors you. All the while everyone around him seeks to exclude him by hiding the truth about Ogerpon's story. Even when he goes the extra mile and reveals the true story to the village, leading them to finally accept her after decades, potentially centuries of them rejecting her and her former partner, she still favors you, leading you to fight him for who gets Ogerpon, which you do eventually win.

This kind of breaks Kieran, feeling like you took his place in his story. And in the time between then and Indigo Disk, he kind of goes off the wall a little. dedicating everything to becoming stronger all just to beat you, even becoming Champion of the BB League in the process. But in turn he starts lording over the other members, kicking out anyone he deems too weak despite how arbitrary that might be. This man is literally going insane, twitching about and smiling like a maniac. Part of it is just an act but it's hard to say how in his own head he is.

And when you do eventually fight him, he has an absolutely busted team even including competitive monsters like Incineroar and Grimmsnarl. Yet despite that it's a team that fits him so perfectly. I love when they delve into characters with the details behind their teams, like N using new pokemon from the surrounding area each time you fight him or Ghetsis Hydreigon knowing Frustration and actively hurting itself with every attack. Kieran's team is absolutely perfect in this regard. Every one of his pokemon says something about him all the while putting up one hell of a fight. That's another thing, I genuinely love that that this DLC actually puts up a challenge. BB Academy is called this elite battle school and the trainers sell that idea very well. Every trainer actually uses held items and have actual strats for the most part. The bosses actually have full teams of 6 which is shockingly rare when you're not looking at Champions for some reason.

Once you take down Kieran he and Carmine accompany you to the deepest depths of Area Zero to help Briar search for Terapagos. The under depths are also a fantastic location atmosphere wise and probably the best visual treat the game has to offer. Kieran's encounter with Terapagos is genuinely great, how it's just this tiny little guy that goes up to you because it's the first thing it sees. But Kieran's in such a bad headspace as it is, and after what happened with Ogerpon the very notion that he'd lose another legendary to you causes him to freak out so hard that he immediately Master Ball's Terapagos, which was genuinely fantastically foreshadowed by a Master Ball being the prize for champions in the BB League.

The Terapagos fight is neat enough, very funny that it can outright cheat to kill Carmine's Sinistcha and Kieran finally jumping in to help is great. Terapagos as a legendary is interesting in it's inspiration. It's possibly based on Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise of the galapagos islands. Much like George, Terapagos is seemingly the last of it's kind and despite internally having a 50/50 gender ratio, the Terapagos in the underdepths is always male. Honestly it's wild that a pokemon that can just casually manipulate time and become the source of terastalization used to be a regular species of pokemon.

That being said it's also very vague about what it and the terastal phenonmenon are supposed to be. It can time travel to some extent which is definitively shown with the secret scene at the crystal pool, but also there's all the weirdness with the paradox mons. Some seem to be genuine ancestors to present mons like Roaring Moon but also stuff like Brute Bonnet which just make no sense to have existed millions of years ago. I also find it strange this same phenomenon allows for pokemon to channel different types which is a kind of random pair of traits for terastalization tbh.

Speaking of, the Stellar Type. It's weird. Defensively you basically don't change at all bar gaining a weakness to Stellar Type moves, all three of them. Offensively however, you gain a power boost for every move type, 2x for the users' regular types and 1.2x for everything else, but unless the user is in a Tera Raid or is Terapagos, it only gets that boost once per type per battle. It's kind of underwhelming for something that is supposed to be using every type at once, and feels weirdly outclassed by normal terastalization in most situations.

Once you beat Terapagos, there are two major things available to do afterward. The first is the aforementioned Crystal Pool event, which has Terapagos bring Sada back in time.As a result of her conversation with you, you become inadvertently responsible for Koraidon's name, giving her the white book that led her to the underdepths in the first place and with the right dialogue options, you give her the idea for the AI, effectively making the entire game one giant bootstrap paradox. I think it is actually a pretty neat idea honestly. And it fits pretty well with all the paradoxes in the game already.

Then of course there's the secret third dlc chapter, Mochi Mayhem.

Mochi Mayem is pretty interesting though I have mixed feelings on it. It's a special third DLC focusing on Pecharunt who is the Mythical Pokemon for Gen 9. What I like is that it seems to be a return to form for mythical pokemon in game. After three whole generations of mythicals just being handed to you by a pokemon center guy, Pecharunt actually has a proper event in game that has you catch it yourself. Mochi Madness is also far more elaborate than any of the previous mythical events having a whole extra story that nicely ties up the main game, Ogerpon and Kieran storylines. It's a fun little story that gives us some great interactions between the characters. On that front it's especially nice to see Kieran and to a lesser extent Carmine interact with the main game trio after the two groups being cleanly seperate for the game before now. While I do enjoy all of this, I do have two notable issues with it.

1: Pecharunt

Now I like Pecharunt. It's essentially the trio master for the loyal three, their equivalent of Arceus or Regigigas for comparison. I think it has a neat design and story but here's the issue with that. None of it's story was in the game. Instead Pecharunt's backstory was revealed in a short animation uploaded to pokemon's YouTube. This video revealed Pecharunt was under the care of an old couple who loved it dearly, but, wanting more of their affection, it fed them it's binding Mochi to secure that for itself. But in turn, Pecharunt's possessive nature turned the couple into the worst versions of themselves, making them greedy and seemingly only having Pecharunt around because it would bring them what they wanted. Turning what seemed like genuine care into something far more superficial. This is what sent Pecharunt to Kitakami to take Ogerpon's masks, and we know how that turned out.

It's not that this is a bad story, quite the opposite honestly it's a pretty good one that explores how despite Pecharunt having a lot going for it, with a loving family and comfortable home, it's own toxic traits ended up leaving all that a shadow of what it was. But it all comes back to that one issue that it isn't in the game itself. Now look, I'm a Mega Man fan, I'm more than familiar with important or beneficial information or stories being tucked away in external sources, many of which are far more obscure and inaccessible than a YouTube video. But I do wish they included at least part of this somewhere in the game itself. As it is Pecharunt basically has no story presence beyond being the present threat for the story at hand and being the master of the Loyal Three, a logical assumption with its music and use of the toxic chains.

The other issue however is not actually to do with the the story itself but rather how it's accessed.

2: Mystery Gift

The most common and understandable criticism of mythical pokemon is that they are limited by design. In the past they have always been available exclusively through limited time events available through Mystery Gift. On the surface Pecharunt actually seems to be an improvement in this area. It's distributed the same way but at this point in time, there is no definitive end date for the distribution and that is good. But I'm not sure how long that is going to last, while that isn't an issue right now, eventually the servers it uses will almost definitely go offline. Maybe that's just because that's something I'm thinking about more with the recent closure of 3ds and Wii U online servers, but idk, that eventual but pretty realistic possibility rubs me the wrong way. In this case I think it's especially egregious due to the fact that unlike other mythical events, there is more content than just the mythical event locked behind the Mythical Pecha Berry. Once you beat Mochi Mayhem, Carmine and Kieran will start appearing in the League Club and you gain the ability to invite Arven, Penny and Nemona as special instructors. So without access to the berry, you lose access to all of their interactions in the club room, their true final rematches and their special trade mons, something you definitely want to be aware of if you want a Paldean Tauros, Sinistcha or anything from the Skwovet, Eevee or Applin families with the partner ribbon. To be fair, this logic could well be applied to the DLC as a whole but that at least could still be accessed via cartridges that have it built in.

Before going into the final conclusions on the game as a whole here's some miscellaneous stuff I couldn't really mention before now.

The Partner Ribbon: A massive part of the League Club that I glossed over was that it is the gateway to postgame rematches with every character that can be in the room. That alone is fantastic but if you interact with a charater in the clubroom enough times They'll trade you a pokemon with the newly added partner ribbon, which when it's assigned as the mon's title, they'll be sent out as "Drayton's Duraludon", "Kieran's Applin", "Nemona's Tauros" etc. It's really neat for ribbon collectors honestly. I hope this becomes a staple for future titles, it'd be really cool for stuff like N's pokemon if we ever get BW2 Remakes that properly reimplement them.

I appreciate the new evolutions in this game. Some are kind of odd and arguably unnecessary, like Kingambit or Archaludon, but I still like them. A lot were definitely well deserved like Dudunsparce and Farigiraf.

Continuing Gen 8's train of thought, it is incredibly easy to properly optimize a pokemon for competitive play, it's certainly worked, I'm more interested in competitive than ever. The changes to Ability Patches letting you change between normal and Hidden Abilities freely, Hyper Training now only requiring a pokemon to be level 50, and the easy availability of however many bottle caps and vitamins you need letting you train a pokemon however you want in the span of like 10 minutes tops all help with this. The mirror herb in particular is a fantastic addition here too, letting you essentially copy egg moves from one pokemon onto another meaning you can even get otherwise unavailable moves onto a pokemon. I've already made extensive use of it to get stuff like Sacred Sword on my Samurott or Fake Out on my shiny Incineroar from Wonder Trade (Thanks Evil Cal Zone). Effectively any pokemon can be made optimal for competitive use at this point, and relatively quickly too. Really the only thing you don't have control over is getting lower IVs, which realistically you'd only want for speed if you plan to run a Trick Room team, which to be fair is a somewhat valid critique as I can say from experiencing it on both sides that Trick Room is a very powerful strategy. Everything else though? You're good. If a pokemon you're attached to from your playthrough is good for the team you want to run, you are completely able to build it almost however you want and that is fantastic.

Union Circle is one of the single best multiplayer mechanics ever implemented in a pokemon game. It's already a lot of fun to mess around with your friends in the world itself, but it is also fantastic on a functional level as with the exception of the Box Legends and the DLC Paradoxes, a Scarlet player can naturally catch every violet version exclusive and vice versa. It reminds me a lot of BW2's key system that let players access select version exclusive content like the Regis or White Forest/Black City. For better or worse, version exclusives probably aren't going away any time soon, so if they are to stick around, Union Circle is a fantastic way to handle it.

There are also some miscellaneous negatives as well unfortunately.

The technical issues. It cannot be denied when discussing SV that on a technical level, it is a trainwreck. To be fair to it, it is nowhere near as bad as it was at launch, I never encountered anything too crazy, but it's still not great. Graphical bugs are everywhere, it is very common for pokemon to go into their low detail models and low frame rate animations despite being very close, there's a lot of pop in and the game lags a lot in areas where it really shouldn't, like menus. I distinctly remember going to the Peachy's shop in Kitakami and the game just straight up freezing for a solid minute as it tried to load the menu. A lot of people attribute this to the game being rushed as a result of the strict dev schedules pokemon games are subject to, and that is part of it no question. One thing I will always be firm on is that there was absolutely no need for this game to come out the same year as Legends Arceus. That game could have easily carried pokemon's holiday release with SV coming out the November after. Both games definitely would have benefitted from the extra time. That being said I think attributing these issues just to the tight schedule is oversimplifying it somewhat. I feel like these issues are a result of a perfect storm of variables in tandem with this. To Gamefreak's credit this was a pretty ambitious game for what they've typically done and something they've clearly been building to with SwSh and LA, but that also means that they are likely inexperienced with this kind of game. Combine that with the fact that this game would have started development in 2020, smack in the middle of a major pandemic, which undeniably affected the output of almost all game development studios? It does make sense that it turned out this way when all of these variables are considered. I'll be clear that I have no idea on the specifics that go on internally with Gamefreak during development, I'm only making the best assumptions I can with what I already know and very surface level research. I do hope that with future releases something like this can be avoided. Pokemon Z seems like it could be a step in the right direction being slated for 2025 and I do recall an article discussing how even the CE of the Pokemon Company acknowledged they may be going way too fast with their output and that changes could be considered. Granted being the head of a massive company like that, his word should rightfully be taken with a grain of salt. But still, it I think there is room for a little optimism at this point.

I think Shiny Pokemon were handled pretty poorly this go around. Shiny Hunting is one of my favourite things to do in pokemon so this aspect is particularly important for me. For the third time now shinies appear in the overworld which I have no problem with. But unlike previous instances like Let's Go or LA, shinies are not accompanied by any special particle effect or sound effect on spawn, instead they are just there and it is up to you to notice. On paper this honestly does not sound that bad but as many hunters know there are a disgusting amount of shinies that have barely any change or the changes are very subtle. This is awful for hunting in this game and requires you to be very aware of everything that spawns if the shiny you're looking for doesn't change much.

On the note of subtle shinies, it is an especially big issue for Gen 9. There are so many shinies that barely change for no good reason and it feels like there are far more than any game before now. For example:

Tatsugiri on paper is ok, but the Yellow form's shiny is orange which creates confusion between it and the normal orange form.

All of the future Paradoxes have a chrome color palette which is a mixed bag. It would be a fine color on paper, if not a little boring because they're all the same, but several future paradoxes already have chrome in their color palette leading to the shiny not changing much. Iron Treads is the worst offender but others like Iron Moth or Iron Boulder are pretty bad for this too.

There are of course the several shinies who just barely change for no good reason, making them incredibly difficult to notice in game, either from the lighting or just because the pokemon is so small to begin with. But none of that compares to:

Like come on what the fuck is this? I don't even know what to say about this like, someone saw Gholdengo, changed the color of it's grooves and just called it a day? I really don't like using this word in regard to game development or design but this is just lazy. It's less than that really because this honestly feels like they went out of their way to make a bad shiny. Like you could have just made it like silver or copper or literally any noticeable change to the gold and that would have been way better. But no, just the barely visible grooves. What is even the point of giving it a shiny at that stage?

Though honestly you could argue Gholdengo's doesn't matter that much because:

Shiny Locks! They are arguably the worst they've ever been. I have and always will, despise this mechanic. There is almost never a good reason for preventing a pokemon from being shiny if it is catchable. Recent games have been very bad for shiny locks. This list includes the starters, which is a god awful decision, arguably the worst mons to shiny lock, the various titans, all wild Gimmighoul for some reason, all gift pokemon except for Salvatore's Meowth, and all legendaries, including the ones brought back in the DLC. That last one in particular is awful as a large batch of returning legendaries has become standard implementation mid generation since ORAS, and we've always been allowed to hunt them, so seeing that changed is a really bad precedent for future games. The Pokemon Company know full well that a significant portion of their playerbase enjoy shiny hunting. It's a side of the fandom that is more acknowledged than ever with the official Twitter even recently putting out a very comprehensive guide on all the ways to boost shiny odds. So I really don't understand what they have to lose by not letting us hunt this stuff, it's not like they're doing anything with those unavailable shinies anyway. Literally none of the Gen 9 legendaries have received shiny distributions yet, hell we're still waiting for most of the Gen 8 ones. Imagine how cool it would be to hunt a shiny Koraidon and ride it during your playthrough, or hunting the gift Sinnoh egg and getting a random shiny Sinnoh Starter or even hunting the Meloetta event. So many cool hunts that we just aren't allowed to do because GameFreak said no. This is absolutely not a dealbreaker but it is a really annoying practice that I wish they would just stop doing.

All that being said, I think that about covers my thoughts on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet by extension. There may be more to say, such as how one could criticize how important the DLC could be to having a fully experience with how the game is lacking in some areas, namely post game content without it, effectively making an already expensive €60 game into an over €90 game, the lack of a battle facilty or the general quality of the pokemon roster this time around but I think I've said my piece.

I think overall this game gets a bad rep. One that isn't entirely undeserved. It has many issues which exist for a number of reasons, be they technical, structural or narrative, and those should be critiqued. But that also means a lot of the good parts of this game get overlooked or underappreciated. It's strong enough that I honestly think that if you just fixed even just the technical issues, this would be one of the best pokemon games. But even as it is I can't say I hate this game. I still enjoyed it quite a lot actually. I think given the way recent releases have been experimenting with open area type gameplay, this style of pokemon is likely going to be the new norm. If so I hope they do take a proper look at what SV did both right and wrong to properly refine it. We can only wait and see on that front, with how much cynicism has taken root in the pokemon community, I hope I can be right on that front.

As for where this game ranks on my ongoing tier list of games, I think smack in the middle of B is a good place to put it with how much I enjoyed the game.

[shinypokemonshowdown]

i think i had remembered seeing something about how shinies were easier to get in gen 9 but i didn’t realize it until i started playing this summer and now i have 4 random shiny encounters without hunting (litleo, makuhita, espathra, dratini) and considering they’re my first main game shinies i went insane seeing them

The easier shinies definitely started with the switch to open encounters in pla. SV only made them easier with just how many mons are loading in at once so there's more mons for the shiny check to go off with.

I've also found a lot of random encounter shinies even before I got the shiny charm in sv ^^

I love that pla/sv makes shiny hunting a lot more accessible (tho I wish sv had the overworld shiny noise)

[llatimeria]

Choosing my favorite pokemon is so hard because I have so many different categories of favorite

Favorite because it resembles my favorite animal: Relicanth

Favorite because it was my first starter, ever: Bulbasaur

Favorite starter overall: Popplio

Favorite because it carried me through a game: Magnezone (moon, scarlet), Chandelure (sword), Kingler (PokeGo), Dragonite (also PokeGo), Skorupi/Drapion (SP) and right now I'm doing a co-op playthrough of Let's Go Pikachu that is making me inordinately fond of the Oddish line

Favorite because of some other role it played for me in a game: Magby (my main Flame Body mon for egg hatching in Moon), Gallade (my main catching build in Scarlet and Sword), Krookodile (the infinite money build for SV lmao), Larvesta/Volcarona (more flame body)

Favorite because of The Vibes: Hisuian Typhlosion, Sneasel/Weavile, Corviknight, Misdreavus/Mismagius, Sableye, Mawile

Favorite because I randomly encountered them in a newer game and was delighted, despite not caring much for them in older games: Bergmite, Girafarig, Machop, Darumaka, Foongus, Frillish

Favorite because duh, everyone loves them for a reason: Eevee(+lutions), Zorua/Zoroark, Rockruff/Lycanrock, Riolu/Lucario, Wooloo/Dubwool, Applin/Appletun, Snom, Spheal

Favorite because it's just extremely fucking funny: Spinda, Milcery, Falinks, Rellor, Tandemaus/Maushold, Tinkaton, Orthworm (gen 9 is RIPE with extremely good funnyguys, tbh. As much as I appreciate a cool pokemon design the funny ones are just so much more instantly charming)

Favorite because nobody else likes them: Dhelmise, Stonjourner

Favorite becauss Gamefreak forgot about them: Blitzle/Zebstrika

Favorite because I have random fond memories of them from childhood: Venonat, Electrike (my first full-odds shinies from when I was growing up 🥺), Bayleef (I had a cool figure), Skitty (had a plush), Absol (my first Favorite Pokemon™️), Buizel/Floatzel, Shellos (more top-tier childhood fav), Bonsly (played XD), Munchlax (my mom LOVED munchlax whenever it appeared in the show/movie I was watching)

Favorite because it's related to one of the other guys that are my favorites: Magnemite, Oddish, Cyndaquil, Litwick, Dratini

Favorites that I don't even have a good category for I just get really excited when I see them: Lapras, Wishiwashi, Drampa, Slugma, Torkoal, Skarmory, Houndour/Houndoom, Lotad, Seedot, Surskit/Masquerain, Shroomish/Breloom, Makuhita, Numel/Camerupt, Trapinch/Vibrava/Flygon, Baltoy/Claydol, Snorunt, Driftloon/Driftlimb, Venipede/Scolipede, Cottonee/Whimsicott, Petilil/Liligant

Favorite Gens Overall: Gen 3 and Gen 4 (I'm not even gonna pretend this is about anything but nostalgia)

[socialistexan]

You have a lot of shinies now, so what's your top 5 fave shinies, top 5 better coloring than original, and top 5 worst looking ones ?

Sorry I took so long to answer this, I actually had to think about this for a couple days to really have a good answer. I hope y'all don't mind a long post because I want to explain my picks a little. I'll include links to the shiny in the list under the cut

5 favorite shinies:

Growlithe/Arcanine: This has been my favorite shiny since Gen 3 made their shiny not awful, and I finally got one in 19 eggs in SV! It's also one of my favorite pokemon.

Mimikyu: This might be unpopular and maybe (second) favorite pokemon bias, but adore the grey-scale of this shiny. I feel like it emulates the feel of the Gen 1 sprites, and it would make sense that Mimikyu, which wanted to be loved like Pikachu, would model itself after the original way it looked.

Umbreon: This might shock some people, because Sylveon is my favorite pokemon, but this is my favorite shiny Eeveelution. It just looks so cool! The blue stripes replacing the yellow is just so good. It just communicates cool Moon-inspired pokemon to me.

Rockruff: Another of my favorite pokemon that has an amazing shiny. It's a blue puppy! What's not to love? The shade of blue is also fantastic, just super cute. (can you tell I like blue shinies)

Gourgeist: We love a goth queen, tbh.

Honorable mentions: Mareep, Kantonian Ninetails, Galarian Zigzagoon-line (trans rights), Toucannon (bi rights), Sylveon (I only slightly prefer the original, still amazing), Sandygeist, Unovan Zorua, the Tapus

5 better than the original:

Wooloo: the reversed black and white just looks so good, I can't do it justice. Just a home run of a shiny.

Crobat: Bias because Zubat was my first shiny ever in Gen 2 (including the red Gyarados, I think). Also I just think it looks cool as hell. I got one in Sun and named her Babs because she looks like Batgirl with the pink and green scheme.

Camerupt: Talk about a major improvement! It's original design is... fine, like volcano camel, got it. The shiny just out shines (no pun intended) it in every way. The black and yellow work so well together, and while it doesn't scream "fire camel" it just looks so good.

Beautifly: Huge upgrade, imo. Looks super artistic, like a stained glass mosaic. Absolutely gorgeous, and it really pops compared to the original. Also, trans rights

Charizard: Wee-woo Genwunner alert! I might be biased, because Charmander was my original starter almost 25 years ago and remains one of my favorite Pokemon to this day. I still remember my original Charizard (MZ, no idea why I named it that I was 7), and when I saw it's shiny (in gen 3 when they fixed it) I knew I had to have one because it is just so dang cool.

5 Worse than the original: (excluding the obvious ones that are barely different than the originals)

Absol: I don't hate this shiny or anything, I just think the original Absol is a near perfect design. It does a great job of looking foreboding and kinda ominous, but the shiny doesn't quite do that.

Volcarona: It just feels like the colors on this shiny were picked randomly and both don't go together and look bad on this design. Serious downgrade all around, more negative points because I really like Volcarona

Primarina: This is one of my 5 favorite pokemon of all time, but this shiny makes me almost want to cry. I understand changing the "hair" from blue to blonde to try to like imitate the look of a traditional mermaid, but the change to the rest of the accents to that like pale yellow(?) is just bad. Primarina was a near perfect design, but the shiny is bad.

Snubbull: You would think I would like this because of the blue dominance on a dog pokemon, but it's just ugly to me. The Pink and blue-spot combo works for me on the original, but the reverse hurts my eyes. ALSO WHY ARE THE FEET ORANGE?!

Bruxish: One of my least favorite pokemon and just a terrible shiny. Colors feel totally random.

[doubleddenden]

I usually don't care about the anime, but considering this is about Ash retiring and new protagonists taking the reigns, I figure I may as well pay attention

So first off

They're doing something specifically for the I Choose You! AU. It's not connected to the usual series because look at Ash's eyes and clothes. The clothes are the same as the movie, but most importantly Ash's eyes aren't huge and orange, which conflicts with the artstyle we usually see.

2

Riko (girl) and Roy (boy). There's a few things to look at here

First off, Rio has a hair clip that looks just like the green thing on Ash's og hat

Second, she has a jewel around her neck that looks like either some sort of Thunder Stone (which would be significant if she's at all related to Ash, and I personally think she looks like Serena? But that's probably an art style thing) or some kind of Terra crystal shard. I think it's most likely the Terra crystal shard given it's cut and the relevance to the current game.

Next, Roy. Pokémon has this thing where they make characters that look alike but have nothing to do with each other sometimes, so I'm probably just seeing things. however comma I see a resemblance to Kiawe with the skin tones, black and red hair, red eyes, and overall black and red outfit motif. Could be related, probably won't be.

Couple extra things

Okay so it'd be simple to say that these two would just be SV protagonists, right?

Well, wrong

First off, Riko has a school uniform that is completely different from Uva or Naranja Academy

Second, look at these babies. Beautiful, right?

Only two of these are in the DATA for SV. Not even the pokedex. This tells me that these two might literally have a huge pick of the litter for their first Pokémon.

Lastly, not only is Rayquaza not in the pokedex in SV, it's not related at all to the games, AND it's shiny, which in the series we've only seen in the Hoopa movie and in Alain's mega Hoenn thing back in gen 6

Why does this matter? Simply put

Ash saw a legendary Pokemon in the FIRST episode of the series that had NOTHING to do with him until maybe gen 2, let alone an actual encounter with it until the I Choose You movie.

I think Shiny Rayquaza will serve a similar role here: a one in a billion encounter to send them on a huge journey. We know there's multiple legendaries of the same kind, but even in the anime, they're still pretty rare, especially shiny pokemon, and double especially SHINY legends.

BUT I think that journey is probably going to be somewhere completely random. Could be like Journeys where it's around the world, could be some place completely different. Could be Kanto, I kinda hope not, but that Is on the table. It could be Paldea and they're freestyling it like Houndour and Typhlosion in Hoenn pre Emerald, but I don't think that's the case given the lack of uniforms. My personal bet is another Journeys type anime.

Anyway, that's all.

[dont-call-me-algernon]

For the Pokemon ask do Exp. Share, Master Ball, and then whichever gen is your favorite and whichever type is your favorite!

Exp. Share: Your first Pokémon game & when you played it

Ruby version for the gba (actually played on my DS lite tho). I did some math and iirc I was like 12/13 at the time. There's actually a funny anecdote about how I got into pokemon in the first place – I was at summer camp and there was this kid one or two years older than me who had brought his gameboy and spent every lunch break playing pokemon Ruby. He was kind of the “cool kid” so everyone naturally gravitated around him. One day me and a couple others went up to him and asked him if he could show us what he was playing. Fast forward two days later and I was pestering my parents for a pokemon game. One of the best decisions I've ever made, honestly asdfghjk

Hoenn still has a very special place in my heart for that very reason and some of my all-time favourite 'mons are from gen III!

Master ball: favourite legendary

Ho-oh, Latias and Latios

I don't have much to say about Ho-oh, other than I've always really liked how it it looked and, since I was too young to play Gold when it came out, when I finally got my hands on HG I literally rushed it until I could finally get my hands on it.

Latias and Latios, on the other hand, I like both the design, their unique typing, and the lore around them (they're twins, how cute is that??). I think that, despite blue being my favourite colour, I like Latias a little bit more? But they're so similar that picking just one didn't feel right, so yeah.

Favourite pokemon of my favorite gen (gen III)

Flygon

My boy. My son. Absolute peak design. Jokes aside, this is very much a case of "I don't know why I like this specific 'mon so much, but I do". I guess I just find its design very unique for a dragon type and very pleasant to look at, not to mention the fact that I've grown even more attached to it ever since having it on my main team last time I re-played B2W2, a couple years ago. It looks friendly and I want to be its friend :)

Favourite pokemon of my favourite type (flying)

You know, up until a few months ago I would have said fire was my favourite type without a doubt. But lately I just sort of realised that in terms of sheer numbers there are actually more flying type 'mons I like using than fire types, so flying it is! I narrowed it down to these three:

Talonflame, Altaria, Wattrel

Using talonflame a lot is legit one of the few memories I have retained of my pokemon X playthrough (the other is a random shiny Sylveon I got from wonder trade that basically became my ace). The design is simple, but imo it works well for what it's trying to represent. Then again, I might be biased because I've always liked 'mons that are basically "what if this real-life animal had a cool elemental power?" 😂

Altaria is one of those nostalgic faves that bring me back to my early days as a pokemon fan. I vividly remember seeing the Altaria in Winona's team and being like "WHAT IS THAT I WANT THAT". Except it was my very first pokemon game, kid me had no concept of how evolution worked just yet and also had very limited access to the internet. I don't know how it dawned on me that I had to catch a Swablu and train it in order to get one, but I do know that I was ecstatic when I finally did!

Another new entry from SV, I was so excited to see this little guy leaked. I've seen a lot of people online complain that Wattrel is just some bird, which I guess it's true, but I happen to like just some bird. Plus, flying-electric is a very cool type combination that makes it and its evolution a lot of fun to battle with too. I went with Wattrel instead of Kilowattrel simply because, visually, I like the small guy a little bit more.

Thank you for the ask, this was lots of fun!

[npc-tess]

Well, I did not expect my first SV Shiny to be an eeveelution, especially not as a random encounter in the Great Crater

But-

here's my boy! Called him Vin (it's romanian & means wine)

I'm more of a Shiny breeder than hunter, to say this was a surprise would be a massive understatement. I adore him though (⁠*⁠´⁠ω⁠｀⁠*⁠)

[front-facing-pokemon]

I keep thinking that I don’t want to shiny hunt any more but then I somehow find something to shiny hunt. I have hunted so many things and my luck is absolutely insane for some reason??? Like I hunted every scarlet paradox and most of them I got in the first sandwich. A couple were second sandwich, roaring moon took 4. Then in my most recent hunt I got three shiny hoppip and a shiny yungoos in a single sandwich when I was hunting the entire hoppip line. Like legit HOW????

honestly, back when i did shiny hunts, i didn't even use sandwiches and i was still getting them relatively quickly. the longest hunt i did was the trapinch hunt, and that was probably because i never got any outbreaks and i was hunting it in an area where trapinch were like a 20% spawn while simultaneously using the masuda method. i don't think i had the shiny charm at that point, either—all things considered, before my jangmo-o hunt, all of my hunts were super inefficient by typical shiny hunting standards, and i still got all the ones i wanted. i think shiny hunting in sv is waaaaayyy easier than in all the other games just because of outbreaks raising the chances so much, sparkling power sandwiches, the picnic method to unspawn all the pokémon still working, and being able to see shinies in the overworld. that last point means i've just gotten an absurd amount of just random shinies of pokémon i did Not even want. so. i think it's something about the game giving Everyone absurd luck. which i support! it encouraged me to shiny hunt At All. i never would've shiny hunted on any game before this one if it wasn't so easy—and varied enough to make it fun, as opposed to just spinning around in circles and waiting like 30 seconds per encounter so that i could get into the fight and then run and everything. i think sv really streamlined the shiny hunting process and made it really nice. no point in keeping it difficult, tedious, and inaccessible forever, right?

fucking thing indeed. hell yes

[kafus]

oh my god FINALLY after 1543 eggs on a shiny charm masuda hunt (1/512 odds) i GOT this motherfucker. i was just about to go to bed and i wasn’t even looking at the screen and i heard the sound and audibly gasped LMAO. and he even happened to pass down the 0 attack IV too bless!! just gotta bottle cap the speed and this could be a sick asf competitive eeveelution. for context i am not usually a shiny hunter, it’s just not my thing but i like the feel of hatching eggs in SV more than i ever have before so i figured i’d try it out, and i must have been possessed to have the willpower to sit thru this. my girlfriend does full odds shiny hunting and i have no idea how she sits thru grinds even longer than this. glad this is over. i’ll figure out a name for him later

also shoutout to the shinies i got ON ACCIDENT before i hatched this eevee over the course of the past month or so... i’ll keep em under a read more because long

first, red lobster jumpscare, i was just trying to breed a competitive one for my friend and i literally only hatched like 20 eggs and a shiny hatched. i lost my fucking mind. it’s dive ball, modest, has a 0 in attack, pretty neat all things considered but also i’m spiteful

second, this random ass overworld jumpluff that i almost biked past before realizing my mistake and turning around. i have been hatching all my eevee eggs in area zero for the cool met location and every time i bike into a clearing with no pokemon spawns to safely run in circles without interruption and this just APPEARED on the way there

and third this random ass honchkrow!! named after what it made me feel!! u have no idea what a nightmare this thing was to catch. also come on HONCHKROW instead of MURKROW which i could have actually used in VGC with prankster? RIP (i’m mostly being angry as a joke because i find it exceedingly hilarious that i got shinies i did not hunt for while hunting for this eevee. comedic effect)

anyways if i ever do a masuda hunt again i pray it’s not like this LOL

[akirameta84]

found a shiny completely randomly, which i knew was bound to happen eventually in SV without hunting because of how many pokemom you're constantly seeing

anyways my first random full odds shiny ever (i have tried full odds hunts but in sword i have the shiny charm already so my odds are ~1/1.1k instead of full at ~1/4k, so i cant full odds hunt in that game unless i make a new save) is...

stantler

...yay

as mildly annoyed that i am that its just. a bland pokemon i dont like. i still caught it cause its still a fucking shiny lmfao

but damn. full odds completely random shiny. and hey this ends my horrid shiny drought!! ive been hunting zygarde and archen interchangably in sword for months with no luck. maybe i can get lucky and score a full odds tatsugiri or cyclizar. i havent unlocked 5 star raids get and getting herba mystica sounds like a pain so i prolly wont be using that boost either. full odds hunting can be fun and i havent done it in ages so

i wont be completing the dex for the shiny charm until spring 2023 cause thats when pokemon home support arrives lol. and i can transfer mons from my violet to scarlet, which is my main game, since i have both games but only one switch (i might trade but i hate trading so prolly will wait)

anyways ramble over i caught the puke green stantler even if it really didn't want to be caught. it was less than half my teams level and paralyzed and still not even shaking on ultra balls. mons like this one are why i taught my paralyzer (in this case my jolteon) false swipes as well if i need to make it even easier to catch

[anderswelten]

How to farm special Pokeballs

The main focus of my collection lies within Event Pokémon. But from time to time, I‘m also collecting Aprimons. Aprimons are Pokémon which are caught in special Pokeballs. You may came in contact with them already. Since all special Pokeballs are not easy buyable, they are valued relatively high in comparison to other items. Especially, if you are collection shiny trophies, you‘ll come to the point that you want your trophy in a matching Pokeball sooner or later. Let‘s see which ways we have to get multiple of those special Pokeballs.

First things first, let‘s declare what can be considered as a special Pokeball:

All Apriballs, which are Fast Ball, Friend Ball, Heavy Ball, Level Ball, Love Ball, Lure Ball and Moon Ball

Dream Ball

Beast Ball

Safari Ball

Sport Ball

Actually, there are more than one possibilities to get most of them in SV. Only Sport Ball is limited to one option. And obviously, we‘re speaking about not-genned items by a random bot…

1. At the marketplace of Porto Marinada you‘ll get: Fast, Friend, Heavy, Level, Love, Lure, Moon, Dream and Beast - BUT those auctions are pretty rare and expensive. You‘ll need to farm money as well…

2. With the help of the item printer, you have a chance to get all - BUT the Pokeball lottery is random and if you’re very unlucky you’ll get nothing. Additionally, the item printer is DLC exclusive and you need to farm the new currency BP (blueberry points) which are way easier to farm if you do it with a group. However, the item printer is the only way to get Sport Balls in SV now.

3. PokeDex rewards include several of those special Pokeballs. If you own the DLC, you’ll get each except Sport Ball. If you do not have the DLC, you’ll get „only“ Fast, Friendly, Heavy, Level, Lure, Moon, Dream and Beast - BUT you have to fill your Pokedex completely and once you’ve collected the reward, you cannot get it a second time.

4. You can trade for them like I do it sometimes - BUT you do not know the origin of those items.

All those options have their own advantages and disadvantages. The most popular option by the player community might be the item printer. However, not everybody owns the DLC or a Nintendo Online Subscription and farming BPs on your own is very painful to get a useful amount of them in the end.

From my point of view, the PokeDex rewards are the most underrated possibility to get those items. Especially if you don‘t want to depend on others. Let me explain you why you should consider to farm special Pokeballs with this option.

If you have not yet, you should really work on a Living Pokedex. You can use random traded Pokemon or your own, whatever you prefer. You will have several advantages if you do it - just to name a few: immediate access to Pokedex rewards, the shiny charm, spotting a specific Pokemon if you have not seen it yet, etc. I own a Living Pokedex since Generation 6 (XY) and it helped me in many cases - but tbf, Pokemon HOME access is not always available with the release of a new game, however, it is available for SV

If you are preparing your Living Pokedex in HOME, you can easily swap the needed Pokemon from one save to another. Btw., it is not necessary to leave HOME and open your SV save so that the Pokedex entries are registered. Just save the changes in HOME and open HOME again to place the next batch into your boxes.

Except for a very small group of Pokemon, you‘ll get all with Let‘s GO Pikachu/Eevee, Sword/Shield, Brilliant Diamond/Shining Perl and Scarlet/Violet.

Some people are doing extra challenges - which are extra fun - like that all Pokemon are self-caught, collecting all different forms (regional and gender) or caught in a Poke Ball. Some even have the rule to catch each Pokémon in their original generation („Origin Dex“). Whatever you‘ll choose, it can be a big challenge with much fun.

Ok, last but not least, we need to clarify how you get all the special Balls to your main save. Unfortunately, this is the most boring part of it. You need to trade them from one save to another one by using a second Nintendo Switch. Fortunately, you can send over your HOME save to your second Nintendo Switch like all other game saves - I have done it here. Therefore, you do not need to subscribe for Pokémon HOME a second time and complete a second Living Dex as well.

And last-last but not least, I want to tell you a little secret. Well, it is not that much of a secret, but maybe not that obvious: Always, when I‘m preparing a save for redeems or Tera Raids, I‘m also completing the PokeDex with the help of my Living Dex. On the same time, I trade a few farmed Events for special Balls (my standard ratio is 1 Generation 9 WIFI Event : 30 special Balls). When I farm herba mysticas in various 5-7 Star Tera Raids, I always combine this with completing my Aprimon collection. And sometimes, I even use my farmed special Balls to just exchange them with Aprimons (my standard ratio is 1 special Ball : 5 Aprimons).

Sometimes, I‘m thinking about to ask straight for 150 Aprimons in exchange for 1 Event I‘ve farmed. But I think it is not reasonable to ask anyone to take that amount of time for breeding…