Ghost mono-type run-it's fun!

[GhostLucario]

I started a new save file in Sw (basically to farm legendaries from the Dynamax adventures and the codes) and since I have to pretty much play through the entire thing anyway I decided to do a mono-Ghost type run. I always wanted to do one of those but since most types don't have great availability in most games (except maybe Water and Normal) I never got to do one. But thanks to the big pokedex, DLC and Wild Area, I had a good selection of ghost types to choose from. And honestly I loved this playthrough, I never imagined SwSh could be so fun!!

First of all, I had only two rules:
1. I could only catch ghost types or pokémon that could evolve into a ghost type (basically just Snover, Rowlet and Nincada) and
2. I could only use ghost types in trainer battles.
This is how it went:

First two gyms and Team Yell: my worst nightmare
So I picked a Grookey as my starter and played until I reached the Wild Area. There I caught a Gastly, Drifloon, Golett and Duskull, since those were the ghosts available for the time being and then proceeded to reach Motostoke. There I discovered my worst nightmare: Team Yell. Basically, the grunts there which are a mere afterthought if you have a normal team, one-shot my entire team. I was in trouble since their pokémon resisted or were immune to all my moves (I hate you, Galarian Zigzagoon!) and OHKO'd in return.

Since I couldn't beat them I had to do something I never thought I'd have to do in this game... I had to grind !!! The thing is, if you don't do what you're supposed to do (which is, to catch a bunch of pkmn and do raids) you will be pretty underleveled with no easy way to gain exp. There's few trainer battles and most of them have only two or three pokémon at most. Trying to grind on the routes was impossible, since I was getting KO'd by things like Rookidees, Chewtle and Nickit (they all know Dark type moves). Also, at this point, overworld pokemon in the WA were too strong to beat, but random encounters were too low level to give the necessary exp., I was in trouble.

So, I went to the Isle of Armor to grind on wild Chanseys. They only know Normal-type moves so they couldn't hurt my ghost types and gave a lot of exp., but it takes forever to KO them since most ghost type in their first stage have pitiful BSTs and horrible movepools. I grinded for like an hour until my team was strong enough to defeat Team Yell and even then I only won because I used status moves like Confuse Ray and Will-o-Wisp and tons of healing items. Basically there was a lot of luck involved. Honestly, if it wasn't for the Chanseys, I don't even want to think about how long it would've taken me to level up my team if I didn't have the DLC.

After that, I went to to catch a Pumpkaboo for my team in route 4 and then went to the first gym. I thought the gym battle would be easy like other times I've played this game, but it wasn't. Did you know Gastly doesn't get ANY Poison-type moves by level-up? Well I didn't, but I sure do now! So I had to rely on Drifloon and its weak Gust to defeat the gym leader. Which wasn't easy. Also, I lost like twice before coming up with a strategy, which involved using Will-o-wisp and Hex. After I finally won, it was time for the second gym.

I went into route 5 and found Team Yell again. This time I had a strategy to deal with them, which involevd using Curse, Will-o-wisp and Leech Seed, to whittle their pokémon down slowly, as well as using as many healing items as I could, but every battle with them ended with me barely winning. After defeating Team Yell, I caught and evolved a Nincada into Shedinja and went into the second gym.

I thought having a Pumpkaboo in my team would help me since it's a Grass type. And it did, I beat every gym trainer rather easily. But when I battled Nessa, her Drednaw OHKO'd my entire team with Bite. That had never happened to me in any pokémon game, ever. After that loss i went back to the WA, the IoA and the CT to farm enough Watts to buy the move Seed Bomb. I also tried to grind on the level 60 Audinos that appear in the Crown Tundra, but they're very rare and took forever to KO so it wasn't worth it. I went back to grind on the Chanseys, I leveled up my team, evolved my Gastly into Haunter and, thanks to teaching Seed Bomb to my Pumpkaboo, I was finally able to win.

 

[GhostLucario]

Third and fourth gyms, not so much of a nightmare

After having a rough time in the first two gyms, I decided to get more members for my team. I tried to find more ghost types in the dens, without much success. I was trying to get a Frillish for Kabu's gym but couldn't find one. So instead I focused on leveling up my team and farming Watts to buy good moves via TRs. I taught Stealth Rock to my Golett since it was the only move in my team that was SE against Fire types.

After looking for Kabu in the mines, I battled Team Yell again. By this point I was getting used to barely beating Team Yell with Curse and Will-o-wisp, only losing if WoW failed. Then I went into the third gym with fear, since that gym has always given me trouble even in runs where I used Water and Rock types. I started the gym mission and caught the Litwick that appeared there, which was good since I was in desperate need of more team members. When I got to Kabu, I was kinda nervous since I didn't have any SE moves, but it turned out that this gym was the easiest of all! I started with Golett, set up SR, then sent out my Litwick. Ninetales was unable to do any damage at all to my Litwick thanks to Flash Fire. Then I sent out Haunter against the Arcanine, I thought I'd be Nessa all over again and that Arcanine would one-shot my entire team with Bite, but Haunter put it to sleep with Hypnosis and then OHKO'd with Hex. And when Centiskorch came out, it lost half its health to SR and it only took a couple of Hexes to end the battle. So easy!

After that I went into the WA again. I wanted to catch a Galarian Corsola and Sableye but those are Shield exclusive and I was playing Sword, and I didn't want to transfer one from my other save files so instead I rushed through Hammerlock to reach route 6 and catch a Galarian Yamask. I have to say, I never thought much of this pokémon, but I caught it and evolved it right away since the only evolved pokémon on my team were Haunter and Drifblim (I didn't have the Nintendo Switch Online so I couldn't trade to evolve Haunter and Pumpkaboo). After using Runerigus, I became a huge fan of this pokémon. I taught Toxic Spikes and Zen Headbutt and when I reached the fourth gym, I had a very easy time. Even if the Fighting types there had Dark type moves, Runerigus has a huge physical defense and shrugged off any damage.

For the fight against Bea, I lead with Runerigus, set up Toxic Spikes and then used Protect and Zen Headbutt to defeat all of her team. Not even Pangoro could stop it, since I used Protect and Bulldoze to stall while the poison took it out. Machamp was a joke and went down easily. Overall, these easy wins were a nice change of pace from the first two gyms.

 

[GhostLucario]

Fifth and sixth gyms: being stuck with unevolved pokémon

After beating Bea I went into the Glimwood Tangle to catch Phantump and Sinistea. I evolved Sinistea immediately but then I ran into a big problem. Thanks to this mono-ghost type run, I realized that a lot of ghost types either a) evolve pretty late. b) require hard-to-get items to evolve (like the Dawn stone I needed to evolve my Snover, which was rotting in my PC with no way to evolve it) or c) require trade to evolve. Since trading was out of the question, I couldn't evolve my Pumpkaboo, Haunter or Phantump. My team was suddenly filled with a lot of pokémon in their first stage. I finally got a Frillish from a raid, but it was level 20 and didn't evolve until 40. Golett until level 43. Litwick until level 41. They were all still in their first stage. Meanwhile, I was battling pokémon in their second or final stages, which outsped and OHKO'd all my pokémon.

I had to buy lots of revives (which at this point of the game, are still too expensive) and potions to keep my team alive. I also didn't have any Poison or Steel type moves to deal with the fairies I was going to face in Ballonlea so I had to go back to grinding on Chanseys (which was so tiring by this point) and farming thousands of Watts to buy TRs. I managed to teach Sludge Bomb to my Haunter and since there wasn't much I could do for the time being (since none of the Honedge line could be caught at the time) I went to fight Opal next. I have to say, Runerigus basically became the MVP of my team. Thanks to the combination of Toxic Spikes, Stealth Rock and Curse, my Runerigus managed to beat all of the fairies in the gym easily, even Opal's entire team. I didn't even use any other pokémon in this gym!

I made my way into Circhester next. The Rock type gym was kinda easy thanks to Golett, Pumpkaboo, Phantump and Frillish, but even with SE moves at my disposal, the Rock types I faced there more often that not survived SE hits and then KO'd my pokémon in one or two hits. By this time, those first stage pokémon were not cutting it anymore. Runerigus was once again the MVP since I taught it Bulldoze before taking on this gym, so I could beat Gordie easily.

But then, my biggest enemy was just around the corner. I knew Team Yell grunts, Marnie and Piers were going to be my biggest roadblock yet. Some of my pokémon had Fighting and Fairy type moves and my Shedinja had X-Scissor, but they were too slow and frail to beat all of those fast Dark types (I still had trouble beating Thievul and Liepard which are weak compared to the Dark types I would find at the gym). So this time I went to the Crown Tundra to prepare for the Dark type gym. Since I couldn't catch Sableye or Spiritomb without internet connection, I only had one option...

 

[GhostLucario]

Seventh and Eight gyms vs. Mimikyu, the Rising Star

I went to the Crown Tundra to finally try to gain exp from defeating Audinos. They give as much exp. as Chansey (I think?) but since they are level 60 (as opposed to the level 10-16 Chansey on the IoA) they were much better to grind on. I'm not going to lie; it wasn't easy since Audino is so rare and so tanky. But thanks to them Audinos I managed to get enough exp to finally evolve Golett into Golurk, Frillish into Jellicent, Litwick into Lampent (and immediately into Chandelure since I already had a Dusk stone) and Duskull into Dusclops. Also, thanks to the water bike, I managed to find a Dawn Stone to use on my Snover (and welcomed my new team member, Froslass) and to catch a Rotom in the IoA though I would have to wait until Wyndon to change its form and be able to use it.

But the main reason why I went to the Crown Tundra was to find a Mimikyu in the raid dens. I don't know if they appear in the base WA or the IoA but I knew for sure they appeared in the dens in the CT. My search for a Mimikyu was very successful, not only did I catch one for my team (at level 40, so no more grinding on Audinos to level it up) but I also caught a Trevenant there so I could finally retire Phantump from the team. I also went back to the IoA to catch Palossand and a Gourgeist from the WA to retire Pumpkaboo. Finally, my team didn't suck!!! And I had enough members to rotate them to get good coverage.

So, I went to route 9 (and caught a Dhelmise there, for a new member and some Steel type coverage), arrived to Spikemuth and then trashed Marnie, all of team Yell and Piers with my new MVP, my darling Mimikyu (I still had to farm watts to teach him Play Rough, since he now learns it al level 54, which was still too far away). Honestly it felt soo good to one-shot all those Dark types, especially since Team Yell and Marnie gave me so much trouble in the beginning. I mean, I know I could've transferred a Mimikyu from HOME since the beginning, but where's the fun in that?

After beating them in such a satisfying way, I decided to add new members to the team to prepare for the final gym. I used the GTS in the HOME mobile application to find a Sableye and Galarian Corsola to breed new ones for my team. I also went back to the IoA to find Digletts to get an Alolan Marowak. I wanted to have a good diversity of secondary typings to have a wide coverage. I also taught Steel, Rock and Poison type moves to my Dhelmise, Golurk, Runerigus and Jellicent. After improving my team, I went back to Hammerlock and made my way to the gym. At this point I had many ghost types with good match-ups thanks to their secondary typings, so I basically mixed and matched the members of the team to better suit whatever I would face. For example, against Raihan I used Mimikyu, Golurk, Runerigus, Jellicent, Trevenant and Froslass. With this team, I defeated him easily.

I tried to switch up my team to keep things balanced, without overleveling or underleveling any pokémon. To travel through route 10 I used Chandelure, Gourgeist, Drifblim, Dhelmise, A-Marowak and Dusclops.

Endgame and final thoughts

Once I arrived to Wyndon, I changed the team to beat Marnie (Mimikyu was the MVP again, with some help from Golurk against the Toxicroak), Hop (Runerigus was again the star here, beating Dubwool and Snorlax easily), Bede (Dhelmise and Haunter won this easily), Nessa (I used Trevenant, Gourgeist and my new Rotom to beat her), Bea (none of her pokemon could withstand Stored Power Polteageist) and Raihan again (I used Golurk, Froslass and Runerigus to beat him). After struggling so much in the beginning, I was very surprised with how easy the champion's cup was. Now all I had to do was beat Oleana and her minions, Rose, Eternatus and the champion.

Oleana, her staff and Rose were very easy to beat thanks to my Chandelure OHKO'ing their entire teams (except for the Milotic in Oleana's team, but Gourgeist took care of it). Eternatus was a bit of a problem but I still managed to beat it easily with my Polteageist, Chandelure and Golurk (Golurk was such a valuable team member, I won almost every major battle thanks to it. I used to like it but I love it now). The only thing I had to do now was beat Leon and I would finally complete a pokémon game using only ghost types. So I went into the Wyndon Stadium and.... I lost.
No seriously, my pokémon were all in the high 50's but Leon's Pokémon were all above level 60??? Why? Such a weird curve level. Also Aegislash and Dragapult decimated all of my team. I mean, maybe I could've won if his pokémon weren't all 5-10 levels higher than mine. Well, back to the Audinos!!! Except, since I had gathered so many Rare candies by this point, I just used them to level up my team to level 60 and save some time. I also knew I needed the strongest Ghost types this game had to offer, so I went back to the WA to catch a Dusknoir, Gengar and Aegislash, and then to the CT to get a Dragapult of my own.

The team I used in the final battle consisted of: Chandelure (for the Aegislash), my own Dragapult (which I used to beat Leon's Dragapult. So poetic), Jellicent and Golurk (to deal with Charizard and Cinderace), Mimikyu (to deal with Haxorus and Dragapult, in case mine was KO'd) and finally, my man Runerigus, with Stealth Rock and Stone Edge, (equipped with Wide Lens because we don't want Stone Edge to miss in the worst of times, right?) to beat Charizard. The strategy worked perfectly, I OHKO'd every mon except Charizard, which lost half its health to Stealth Rock, then used a Max Overgrowth to leave my Runerigus with 2 HP, and then was defeated by a Max Rockfall from Runerigus. And that's how I beat the game using only Ghost types.

Honestly this playthrough was very fun (except in the beginning, when it wasn't). I know a lot of people on the internet criticize SwSH and while the games do have their flaws, the QoL improvements, the huuuge selection of pokémon and the WA make this type of run possible. I mean I used pokémon I always wanted to use but never got to use since there wasn't enough space on my team to use them, and it was so hard to level up a weak pokémon to be on par with the rest of the team. Thanks to the Exp Share for all I managed to have not only a team of 6, but over 20 team members in constant rotation without any of them falling behind or getting overleveled. I was having so much fun using so many different pokémon instead of the same 6 throughout the entire game.

It also reinforced my love for the ghost type (it's always been my favorite but I love it even more now). Ghost has been paired with almost every type as of this game, except for Normal and Rock, and there's such a good diversity of ghost types, I really enjoyed using almost all of them. There's the tanky ones like Golurk, Dusknoir and Jellicent, the glass cannons like Gengar, the utility mons like Runerigus (I love this pokémon now)...

I plan to do another mono-type run, this time in Shield. IDK what type I'll choose, but I want to use a type I don't normally use like Rock or Bug, maybe Fairy, that'll be interesting. But that's all for now. If you got to this point, thanks for reading all of that!