• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

Simple Questions / Simple Answers (Gens 1-7)

I'm looking for some advice, since I'm between multiple different games right now and I'm kind of stuck.

Right now I have Pokemon Red, Platinum, Heart Gold, Soul Silver (the Japanese version), Y and Alpha Sapphire. I have the most time clocked in on Y, with Heart Gold next in line. I guess I'm mainly looking for a couple pieces of advice:

1) I know the motto is "Gotta catch 'em all!" but my question is, while playing through the story of each game, do you usually try to capture all the various Pokemon in a given area before moving on, or just try to capture a few then come back after you've beaten the story? Is it really worth it to complete your Pokedex per game?

2) From what I've read on the various games, most people say that you really don't need to grind to get various Pokemon up to equal levels before moving on to the next gym, that you should just go through the story and then if you need to get a particular one or two up to a level to evolve or learn a move, do that instead. Thoughts?

3) The newer games that I have (Y and Alpha Sapphire) seem to have a lot more..."easy mode" buttons in them compared to the earlier games, like XP share for the whole party, scanners for Pokemon in various areas, etc. Would that be the reason progress seems to be quicker in Y and AS? Red, Platinum and HG/SS, while fun seem to drag a lot more and do not have these options as far as I know.

4) Team building. I keep reading about STAB (Single Type Attack Bonus) and various other stats and Natures that people look for to build a team, how you should have Pokemon on the team that aren't just Electric or Flying or whatever. Its a lot of data to keep track of...what would your advice be on building a solid team at least for going through the game itself, since I don't know how much of competitive I'd be willing to do yet. It seems to be more advisable to have Pokemon that have dual types or at least have multiple types of moves that cover all the bases rather than single type moves...

5) Lastly, the Japanese Soul Silver copy I have, I recently acquired used. Much to my surprise, there's a save on there with over 350 hours clocked, all badges earned and there are multiple Legendaries stored in the boxes at the Pokecenter (see attached picture).

The things I'm wondering are this:
-While the Pokedex seems complete, the previous owner barely has any Pokemon stored, aside from about a box of random ones, then a box of eggs and the previously mentioned Legendaries. I would figure by the end of the game you would have at least one of each Pokemon, or am I off base?

-Second, the eggs stored. Is there a way to tell what they are, or why they were stored? I've never gotten far enough in any of the games to actually try breeding Pokemon.

-Are Legendaries actually any good in competitive? Considering Nintendo is giving them away each month up to and beyond the release of Sun/Moon, I was kind of wondering.


Thanks for any help or advice you can give with the above!
 
1) I have OCD (like, literally diagnosed by a psychiatrist) so I compulsively have to "catch them all," but from my understanding normal people just catch things that interest them or would help their team and if they really really want some of the rarer pokemon in an area (i.e., pokemon that have like a 1% chance of showing up) they'll come back for it much later on. Even I come back later sometimes if that elusive 1% is taking forever or I don't have that many pokeballs on me (so, midway through the game or earlier, when I'm being a total cheapskate and not buying much of anything at the PokeMart). From what I've seen at least, most people don't care that much about completing the dex unless it's in a game where you can get the Shiny Charm and they actually care about such things. Even rarer seems to be a "living dex" which is having all evolutions of something (so, like, having a Cyndaquil in your box, plus a Quilava, plus a Typhlosion, instead of just evolving one Cyndaquil through those three stages to register them in your dex) (and I only mention this because of your question in part 5) So, is it worth it? Well, for me it satisfies my OCD but again there's the Shiny Charm that is worth it to shiny hunters. Other than that probably not worth it outside of a personal sense of accomplishment.

2) When I first started out I literally tried to keep every single pokemon I caught at the same levels (so I was levelling everything in my box equally). Considering what I wrote in part 1, this was incredibly time-consuming and I quickly learned this was a stupid idea. Basically find a team you like and stick with it through the game. My team doesn't really change after like the first 2-3 gyms unless it's a special case like D/P/Plat where there are no wild fire pokemon til quite far into the game (so I eventually traded in a fire-type from another game). As to level-grinding, once the EXP share in X/Y and ORAS showed up (compared to previous versions of EXP share) I never had to level grind at all. In fact, I wasn't even trying to level ever and still ended up with Pokemon in the high 80's in X/Y and several at lv 100 in ORAS. In fact, I felt this made things a bit too easy. In the older games though I find myself having to grind a lot and it is kind of a pain in the arse. FR/LG especially, right before the Elite 4, because of the huge level jump between those guys and Giovanni's team. Generally-speaking I look up the gym leader's levels before tackling the gym and get my entire team to about 2 lvs below their highest lv pokemon. However, in my current HG game I seem to have ended up with incredibly weak pokemon who keep getting 1-hit KO'd by normal damage or even less effective damage moves by pokemon much lower in lv than they are so I find myself having to grind quite a bit with that party especially (I fear at least three of them have like super-terrible stats ^T__T^;; ) so for them I try to get them like five lvs above the gym leader's highest lv pokemon, but generally I get bored of grinding way before that and try to make it through the gym battle anyway. So I guess I answered part 3 as well.

4) I've always done well in the games having a pure fire type (with the exception of Fennekin's evolutions of course), pure water (exception: Mudkip), pure electric, and then filling the last three slots with whatever seems good during that playthrough (I usually have a psychic or ghost type as the fourth pokemon, often have grass as fifth, and then 6th slot tends to be pretty random. Made it through Plat with a Starly-evolution line all the way from the first route to Champion battle. I've taken to liking Lucario a lot though, especially with this Mega evolution nonsense, so I've had one on my team in both games of X, my Y game, and my OR game). So yeah you can make it through normal gameplay just fine with monotypes. However, having a mix of types (if you're aware of their specific weaknesses anyway) or at least moveset types will have you better-prepared for things like Secret Base guys and, more to the point, competitive battling. So it really depends on what you want to do with your team. Anyway, with the existance of the Battle Box you can always have one battling team and one gameplay team. As for natures and IV's and whatnot I've gotten through games with pokemon that had a 0 in 1-2 stats before so as for normal gameplay it doesn't really matter (but if they're really bad, like my HG team apparently is, then expect a lot of grinding), but I've found that for competitive battling it really really does matter so keep that in mind if you decide you want to get into that later. If you do, you might want to check out the GTS section on this forum for some of the shops and whatnot, or find some friends who will breed good stats for you (or get involved in breeding them yourself if you really want a super-involved project :p )

5) Back to the subject of your used copy. First off, as previously mentioned, most people get dex entries by merely evolving their pokemon instead of having one of each evolutionary stage. Secondly, you can totally port pokemon forward to the newer games, so he probably ported everything forward and then just forgot about that box (I've done this before) or that box has hacked legendaries (there are stops put in place to prevent most hacked pokemon from being ported forward) and also you can't port eggs forward so he probably just couldn't be arsed to hatch them at that point. The only way to tell what's in those eggs is hatching them. This is more of a pain in the arse in the previous games because no hatching O-Power. I suggest going to Goldenrod City and just riding your bike endlessly up and down through the town and out the other side on both sides til you hit walls with the eggs in your inventory, while watching a movie or doing homework or something cause it will take awhile (this is also what I do when I'm trying to increase friendship for evolutions in HG/SS btw, in case you needed a good place for that, especially since the friendship-checker girl is in Goldenrod anyway). I can tell you the box name is just "Box 2" so that gives no clues as to why they were left there. ^^;;

6) (BONUS SECTION) Legendaries in competitive are mostly just for show (hey look at this giant cool thing I've got), made less show-y by the 20th anniversary giveaway. Again, stats matter a metric crapton for competitive battling so unless the legendaries have been hacked for awesome stats (or someone just got really lucky; I've never acquired a legit legendary on my own with more than 4 IVs) breeding your own competitive pokemon or having someone else do it for you is better here.
 
I'm looking for some advice, since I'm between multiple different games right now and I'm kind of stuck.

Right now I have Pokemon Red, Platinum, Heart Gold, Soul Silver (the Japanese version), Y and Alpha Sapphire. I have the most time clocked in on Y, with Heart Gold next in line. I guess I'm mainly looking for a couple pieces of advice:

1) I know the motto is "Gotta catch 'em all!" but my question is, while playing through the story of each game, do you usually try to capture all the various Pokemon in a given area before moving on, or just try to capture a few then come back after you've beaten the story? Is it really worth it to complete your Pokedex per game?

2) From what I've read on the various games, most people say that you really don't need to grind to get various Pokemon up to equal levels before moving on to the next gym, that you should just go through the story and then if you need to get a particular one or two up to a level to evolve or learn a move, do that instead. Thoughts?

3) The newer games that I have (Y and Alpha Sapphire) seem to have a lot more..."easy mode" buttons in them compared to the earlier games, like XP share for the whole party, scanners for Pokemon in various areas, etc. Would that be the reason progress seems to be quicker in Y and AS? Red, Platinum and HG/SS, while fun seem to drag a lot more and do not have these options as far as I know.

4) Team building. I keep reading about STAB (Single Type Attack Bonus) and various other stats and Natures that people look for to build a team, how you should have Pokemon on the team that aren't just Electric or Flying or whatever. Its a lot of data to keep track of...what would your advice be on building a solid team at least for going through the game itself, since I don't know how much of competitive I'd be willing to do yet. It seems to be more advisable to have Pokemon that have dual types or at least have multiple types of moves that cover all the bases rather than single type moves...

5) Lastly, the Japanese Soul Silver copy I have, I recently acquired used. Much to my surprise, there's a save on there with over 350 hours clocked, all badges earned and there are multiple Legendaries stored in the boxes at the Pokecenter (see attached picture).

The things I'm wondering are this:
-While the Pokedex seems complete, the previous owner barely has any Pokemon stored, aside from about a box of random ones, then a box of eggs and the previously mentioned Legendaries. I would figure by the end of the game you would have at least one of each Pokemon, or am I off base?

-Second, the eggs stored. Is there a way to tell what they are, or why they were stored? I've never gotten far enough in any of the games to actually try breeding Pokemon.

-Are Legendaries actually any good in competitive? Considering Nintendo is giving them away each month up to and beyond the release of Sun/Moon, I was kind of wondering.


Thanks for any help or advice you can give with the above!

1. Cacthing Pokemon is not necessary at all. Outside of getting a team of 6 obviously.

2. Try to have all 6 at the same level.

3. Then turn off the exp share. Yes, that's possible.

4. Try and have all different types avoiding two of the same and having only one move of each type (not counting status moves) for each Pokemon. So don't have Water Gun, Surf, Waterfall and Bubblebeam on one guy. ...what would be the point in that?

5. Probably migrated into a higher generation game. Meaning, taken from the gen 4 cartridge into a gen 5 one.
 
Is the Dream Radar the only way to get the Nature Trio normally in Black2/White2?

And is there anyway to soft reset for them? Not that it matters now but ...
 
Is the Dream Radar the only way to get the Nature Trio normally in Black2/White2?

And is there anyway to soft reset for them? Not that it matters now but ...
You are right, they are only catchable in Black (Tornadus) and White (Thundurus) ( and Landorus if you have both in a same game.

And unfortunately nope, they are send directly to your pc when you pick them up. If you want another shot, you should reset both your game and the Dream Radar from what I remember.
 
I need breeding advice for BW2!

I am aiming for a team of competitive 5iv Pokemon to challenge both the Battle Subway and PWT, and I don't know if it will be too difficult without the Gen VI additions I am used to.

Especially for EV Training spots... How can I get perfect spreads without Gen VI Hordes? Is there a good method in BW2?

Any tips?
 
I need breeding advice for BW2!

I am aiming for a team of competitive 5iv Pokemon to challenge both the Battle Subway and PWT, and I don't know if it will be too difficult without the Gen VI additions I am used to.

Especially for EV Training spots... How can I get perfect spreads without Gen VI Hordes? Is there a good method in BW2?

Any tips?
Regarding ev training
There's a huge diference since you'll have to hunt for individual pokémon. The only option is putting the pokémon you want to train first; attach the item that increase ev gain ( they are the same as in gen 6, even better if you have pokérus), hunt for the pokémon that gives the desired evs in the place they appear and switch to a stronger pokémon.
As for taking care of the evs you will have to take note of them :/
I found this guide online of places to train but I can't guarantee the places are good.
Using vitamins and wings can help too.
 
Regarding ev training
There's a huge diference since you'll have to hunt for individual pokémon. The only option is putting the pokémon you want to train first; attach the item that increase ev gain ( they are the same as in gen 6, even better if you have pokérus), hunt for the pokémon that gives the desired evs in the place they appear and switch to a stronger pokémon.
As for taking care of the evs you will have to take note of them :/
I found this guide online of places to train but I can't guarantee the places are good.
Using vitamins and wings can help too.
Thanks Crow!

Counting the EVs myself sucks, tbh...
 
You are right, they are only catchable in Black (Tornadus) and White (Thundurus) ( and Landorus if you have both in a same game.

And unfortunately nope, they are send directly to your pc when you pick them up. If you want another shot, you should reset both your game and the Dream Radar from what I remember.

Well, yeah. resetting isn't going to happen. Now that all wire-less functionality has been removed from their service, resetting a previous generation would be a form of masochism that I wouldn't wish upon anyone.
I'm currently in the (ultimately futile) venture of finishing off my Pokedex in my W2, but because of current limitations, this will never be completed in the foreseeable future as I have absolutely no means by which to obtain a few certain Pokemon.

But I've put it before me as a Challenge to do the utmost that I can within the bounds I am confined to.
It's a Pride thing. And doing so helps me finish off my Dex in X as well.
 
1) I have OCD (like, literally diagnosed by a psychiatrist) so I compulsively have to "catch them all," but from my understanding normal people just catch things that interest them or would help their team and if they really really want some of the rarer pokemon in an area (i.e., pokemon that have like a 1% chance of showing up) they'll come back for it much later on. Even I come back later sometimes if that elusive 1% is taking forever or I don't have that many pokeballs on me (so, midway through the game or earlier, when I'm being a total cheapskate and not buying much of anything at the PokeMart). From what I've seen at least, most people don't care that much about completing the dex unless it's in a game where you can get the Shiny Charm and they actually care about such things. Even rarer seems to be a "living dex" which is having all evolutions of something (so, like, having a Cyndaquil in your box, plus a Quilava, plus a Typhlosion, instead of just evolving one Cyndaquil through those three stages to register them in your dex) (and I only mention this because of your question in part 5) So, is it worth it? Well, for me it satisfies my OCD but again there's the Shiny Charm that is worth it to shiny hunters. Other than that probably not worth it outside of a personal sense of accomplishment.

2) When I first started out I literally tried to keep every single pokemon I caught at the same levels (so I was levelling everything in my box equally). Considering what I wrote in part 1, this was incredibly time-consuming and I quickly learned this was a stupid idea. Basically find a team you like and stick with it through the game. My team doesn't really change after like the first 2-3 gyms unless it's a special case like D/P/Plat where there are no wild fire pokemon til quite far into the game (so I eventually traded in a fire-type from another game). As to level-grinding, once the EXP share in X/Y and ORAS showed up (compared to previous versions of EXP share) I never had to level grind at all. In fact, I wasn't even trying to level ever and still ended up with Pokemon in the high 80's in X/Y and several at lv 100 in ORAS. In fact, I felt this made things a bit too easy. In the older games though I find myself having to grind a lot and it is kind of a pain in the arse. FR/LG especially, right before the Elite 4, because of the huge level jump between those guys and Giovanni's team. Generally-speaking I look up the gym leader's levels before tackling the gym and get my entire team to about 2 lvs below their highest lv pokemon. However, in my current HG game I seem to have ended up with incredibly weak pokemon who keep getting 1-hit KO'd by normal damage or even less effective damage moves by pokemon much lower in lv than they are so I find myself having to grind quite a bit with that party especially (I fear at least three of them have like super-terrible stats ^T__T^;; ) so for them I try to get them like five lvs above the gym leader's highest lv pokemon, but generally I get bored of grinding way before that and try to make it through the gym battle anyway. So I guess I answered part 3 as well.

4) I've always done well in the games having a pure fire type (with the exception of Fennekin's evolutions of course), pure water (exception: Mudkip), pure electric, and then filling the last three slots with whatever seems good during that playthrough (I usually have a psychic or ghost type as the fourth pokemon, often have grass as fifth, and then 6th slot tends to be pretty random. Made it through Plat with a Starly-evolution line all the way from the first route to Champion battle. I've taken to liking Lucario a lot though, especially with this Mega evolution nonsense, so I've had one on my team in both games of X, my Y game, and my OR game). So yeah you can make it through normal gameplay just fine with monotypes. However, having a mix of types (if you're aware of their specific weaknesses anyway) or at least moveset types will have you better-prepared for things like Secret Base guys and, more to the point, competitive battling. So it really depends on what you want to do with your team. Anyway, with the existance of the Battle Box you can always have one battling team and one gameplay team. As for natures and IV's and whatnot I've gotten through games with pokemon that had a 0 in 1-2 stats before so as for normal gameplay it doesn't really matter (but if they're really bad, like my HG team apparently is, then expect a lot of grinding), but I've found that for competitive battling it really really does matter so keep that in mind if you decide you want to get into that later. If you do, you might want to check out the GTS section on this forum for some of the shops and whatnot, or find some friends who will breed good stats for you (or get involved in breeding them yourself if you really want a super-involved project :p )

5) Back to the subject of your used copy. First off, as previously mentioned, most people get dex entries by merely evolving their pokemon instead of having one of each evolutionary stage. Secondly, you can totally port pokemon forward to the newer games, so he probably ported everything forward and then just forgot about that box (I've done this before) or that box has hacked legendaries (there are stops put in place to prevent most hacked pokemon from being ported forward) and also you can't port eggs forward so he probably just couldn't be arsed to hatch them at that point. The only way to tell what's in those eggs is hatching them. This is more of a pain in the arse in the previous games because no hatching O-Power. I suggest going to Goldenrod City and just riding your bike endlessly up and down through the town and out the other side on both sides til you hit walls with the eggs in your inventory, while watching a movie or doing homework or something cause it will take awhile (this is also what I do when I'm trying to increase friendship for evolutions in HG/SS btw, in case you needed a good place for that, especially since the friendship-checker girl is in Goldenrod anyway). I can tell you the box name is just "Box 2" so that gives no clues as to why they were left there. ^^;;

6) (BONUS SECTION) Legendaries in competitive are mostly just for show (hey look at this giant cool thing I've got), made less show-y by the 20th anniversary giveaway. Again, stats matter a metric crapton for competitive battling so unless the legendaries have been hacked for awesome stats (or someone just got really lucky; I've never acquired a legit legendary on my own with more than 4 IVs) breeding your own competitive pokemon or having someone else do it for you is better here.
Thanks for all the advice! I've been putting in time on Pokemon Y since I'm the farthest along in it, just captured Yveltal! Now I just need to figure out a good moveset for it. I have some questions on my current team, but it looks like there's a thread for that so I'll post that there. Thanks again!
 
Hey, I am trying to check if my White 2 is original. It is a UK version.

The informatio on the box is:

TWL P IRDO
TSA-TWL-IRDO-UKV

MODEL NO. : NTR-031

The info on the front of the cart itself is:
TWL-IRDO -EUR

The information on the back of the cart itself is:

NTR-031.
IRDONOJ11

Could someone with a UK version of White 2 confirm?

Also, the game takes quite a while to save. Is this normal?
 
Last edited:
I can't speak for the information, but I recall Gens 4 and 5 taking a while to save, especially compared to Gen 6.
 
So the VC Gen I games have been out for a while now. Does anyone know if they have all the glitches of the original Gen I games, or did they get cleaned up when Nintendo/Game Freak ported them to the 3DS?
 
So the VC Gen I games have been out for a while now. Does anyone know if they have all the glitches of the original Gen I games, or did they get cleaned up when Nintendo/Game Freak ported them to the 3DS?

They are all present and accounted for!
 
I can't speak for the information, but I recall Gens 4 and 5 taking a while to save, especially compared to Gen 6.

From what I remember, if you used a PC - you would get the longer loading time saying "saving a lot of data", otherwise it was pretty quick.
 
If my Pokémon takes Disable from both of foe's Pokémon in a double battle, does it disable only the last move, or both when the first one was used?

I'm assuming it is the last move used, for the next four turns... Unless the turn went like:

-Pokemon A used disable, Your Pokemon Z's move M is disabled.
-Your Pokemon Z used Move N.
-Pokemon B used disable. Your Pokemon Z's move N is disabled.

I think this is the only way that they would be able to disable two moves in one turn.
 
Right now I was playing Pokemon Blue on Virtual Console on Nintendo 3DS and I was looking for some Spearows on route 22. Bulbapedia says that the chance of me finding Spearow is 10% and finding Nidoran M is only 5% but I already found 3 Nidorans (in a row) and i didn't find any Spearows.. Am i just unlucky, Bulbapedia is being wrong (again) or they changed something in Virtual Console?
 
How do I find missing no in yellow I've tried looking for this every where but I only get results on how to do it in red or blue
Well.. According to Bulbapedia, you can perform a Mew glitch with some Special stats (sorry that I didn't wrote it here, copypasting on my phone is frustrating). It's on MissingNo. page.
 
Please note: The thread is from 1 year ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom