Minimal Team Size Challenge?

[xEchoAlertx]

Hi there,

I've gotten pretty curious about the following challenge: what is the minimum number of Pokemon used in battles to clear the current content of Reborn? Season this challenge to your own taste (as Epicnamebro says for his Dark Souls challenge rules), but I guess my personal preference would be the Minimal Team Number for the following rules: SET mode, without using bag items in battle, without acquiring any Pokemon out-of-sequence, and without using duplicates (e.g. 2 Charizards), and without consumable held items (e.g. SEEDS). To clarify: if you send out a Pokemon for even a SINGLE fight in the game, then I would count that as being a Pokemon you used. I don't consider evolutions to be "different," so in my reckoning for the sake of this challenge I would consider charmander > charmeleon > charizard as only one Pokemon used. If you would prefer to rephrase the question: "what is the minimum number of distinct evolutionary lines of Pokemon needed to battle your way through Reborn, without using duplicates?" Oh, and HM users that aren't ever sent into battle don't count toward the total; I'd also say that it's permissible to level up some unused Pokemon in the Grand Hall for the sole purpose of passing an egg move onto your "officially used" mons.

A few related questions for the Poke-combinatorialists out there: Is there a unique team of minimal size? If not, how many different teams of the minimal size exist ( / how many such teams can you come up with)? How many of those teams have no Pokemon in common? Can you have a full-game-viable monotype team of the minimal size? If you allow duplicates in battle, does that actually decrease the minimal number of Pokemon needed? (Like obviously allowing duplicates can't increase the minimal number needed, but does it truly LOWER that number, rather than keeping it the same?) What about if you just generated all your pokemon from the beginning of the game -- by how much would that decrease the number needed? Is a team of minimal size a Subjectively Cheesiest Team Possible, or is a SCTP still subjectively cheesier than a team of minimal size?

I started wondering about this partly because I was playing through the game about a month ago with a randomly generated team of 12 Pokemon, but I noticed that I only needed 8 of them to get quite far, and I'm extremely confident that I could clear all the current content with these 12. The other reason that I'm curious about this challenge is that I get pretty drained when I SR / breed for (necessary) IV's on a challenge team, so this sort of team would by definition require the least amount of such resets. I'll share the full list of 12 down below -- in spoiler text because it's kinda irrelevant to the question I'm currently asking, and I'd name the order in which I would acquire all of the Pokemon I used (and still have yet to use) and also name a few areas / gym leaders. This team was actually a lot of fun to use. I was thinking I might want to try a full-game-viable team of 9 or 10 next, but if anyone thinks they can fully clear the game with fewer then I'm open to suggestions!
 

Spoiler

 

I was able to get past Agate Circus with the first 8 of the following -- the full random list consisted of, in order of acquisition (iirc) and after allowing myself to fully evolve them:

1: Infernape,

2: Exploud (OP OP early game, but stopped getting any use even before Agate),

3: Manectric,

4: Lilligant [practically useless until Blake -- partly because I was indecisive about which grass STAB to give it and so I was hesitant to use the Sun Stone -- but became a real champ because quiver dance and sleep powder are fantastic.] 

5: Donphan (bred to have ice shard) [this is the last Pokemon I got before Shelly -- omg that fight is always so tough for me. I don't remember exactly how I beat that fight with these five, but I think it involved some sturdy + endure cheese with Donphan to encourage Shelly to hit bad targets],

 

6: Barbaracle [Shell smash is my favorite move because of this run],

7: Espeon,

8: Escavalier [got to Neo-Reborn city with these first 8.]

 

9: Feraligatr [the first post-circus]

10: Sceptile,

11: Slowbro,

12: Volcarona.

 

Yeah, I know, I got an insanely lucky roll on that random generator -- so many of these pokemon have base stats above 500, and the coverage options were quite wide. I feel a little guilty that I cheesed the battle with Charlotte by having Manectric use electric terrain and Espeon use rain dance -- that fight might have been possible without that combo, but at the time I think Manectric had JUST learned electric terrain via level-up and so I became a little power-mad. I haven't returned to this run since I got to Adrienn's gym, but I'm fairly confident that I could make it with this team to the glass factory and quiver dance my way through that challenge with Volcarona.

Also, since Barbaracle with stone edge, liquidation, and night slash (I'm pretty sure that was its last move in my playthrough) hits the same coverage as Smogon's suggested Feraligatr set, I'm PRETTY certain that this team can clear the game without ever using Feraligatr. But maybe Amaria is just too difficult that I'd need the extra water type for speed reasons. So anyway, I'm fairly certain that the game can be cleared with 12 Pokemon, and would suspect that a better trainer than me could clear all of the game with just 10 or 11 of these 12.

 

Anyway, I'd be curious to hear what sorts of routes people might come up with!

Edited August 17, 2019 by xEchoAlertx

[Azeria]

This run done by Paperblade might be relevant to your interests.

 

[Paperblade]

With the rules you're using, I think 3-4 is the range. I used 3, but I also had to use Seeds to overcome what I considered the hardest challenge for my team (Adrienn). But I also was requiring max Shade relationship points which required me to use something to defeat Solaris at Pyrous Mountain. This pretty much locked my team into Blaziken, Meowstic-M, and Honchkrow. Those pokemon are all good anyway which I think the run showed, since I had two powerful sweepers and one of the best utility mons in Reborn.

 

If you don't care about Shade points, it's possible there is a team that doesn't need seeds or other consumable held items. The thing is that you still probably need to pick up a non-starter pokemon to help clear up to Taka+ZEL. Julia, Fern, and Florinia are all rough fights to starter solo. I know Julia is doable with Charmander, but I don't think Charmeleon can handle the latter two. But if you can get past those 3 fights (plus the first Taka fight), you can get the mystery egg or Diggersby, which are the most likely things to help in a run like this.

 

And due to the low number of pokemon you're using, you really want 1-2 pokemon that can just 1v6 a team with very little help. Blaziken made for the best starter choice for this, since it gets Bulk Up by level up and has Speed Boost, which let it outrun any enemy no matter how fast and OHKO with enough setup. Honchkrow was a good backup sweeper for cases where Blaziken couldn't set up, generally due to a typing disadvantage (such as Amaria and Ciel). With Moxie and Sucker Punch it also doesn't care how fast enemies are and could snowball its sweep. Lastly, Meowstic-M is an early game pokemon which basically existed just to be an extra body to assist Combusken in the early game. It getting Psyshock at 25 and the Twisted Spoon being one of the earliest held items makes it a surprisingly potent attacker as well. But more importantly, it gets dual screens by level up and Misty Terrain, which could always be set up thanks to Prankster. Thanks to those, Blaziken frequently would get an important extra Bulk Up or two in which would let it OHKO through fights.

 

I think Honchkrow is the most replaceable. Maybe the only thing that can replace Meowstic-M is Mystery Egg Alolan Ninetales and even that might be too late.

[AyTales]

If you're willing to overlevel, I know Torterra can make it all the way through Aya solo. I've done it as part of my 'Turtle Squad' run where the second available turtle was Squirtle after Aya. That gives you a fair amount of breathing room when it comes to Pokemon choice.

[xEchoAlertx]

Wow, it's really awesome to know that 3-mon-only has been done -- congrats, Paperblade, and thanks to Azery for referring me to the link. I'm definitely not surprised that Meowstic-M and Blaziken made the list. I used Meowstic on my first Reborn and Rejuv runs and it just about single-handedly made my inefficient teams viable. I tend to have a TON of trouble with Shelly on all of my runs so far, but (contrary to my expectations) my easiest clear of that fight was on a psychic monotype, when I managed to win by getting Meowstic M to use fake-out on the would-be-rain-dancing Illumise, which allowed Delphox to use fire pledge and give me the easy win; I imagine the Blaziken + Meowstic-M clear would be similar? I just checked out some of your write-up for your choice of honchkrow, and that perish song chain is pretty ingenious. And yeah, I still haven't made any serious effort to beat Solaris on Pyrous Mountain, and probably wouldn't feel pressed to do so on this run; I DO really like to win the first El fight though.

 

Aegisth -- that run sounds hilarious, and I definitely wouldn't have expected the slow and steady grass starter to make it past so many type-disadvantageous gyms by itself! Did you post your notes about it on this forum? I'd want to check it out.

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking that the hardest mon to cut for a 3-mon run is Meowstic-M. It'd be fun to see if there is a viable choice of 2 other pokemon distinct from {Blaziken, Honchkrow}. I'd be tempted to try Totodile, but it gets no good STAB in Reborn until... waterfall... and wouldn't have access to Dragon Dance. Maybe some other sheer force mon could work? Anyway, I'm gonna play the game now and just see how far I can get with solo Charmander at first, and then see if any inspiration strikes -- probably I'll want to get myself a Vulpix if I were going to try to replace Meowstic.

 

[xEchoAlertx]

Well, I can confirm that Charmeleon can solo everything for the first two badges, without items. Julia gets soloed by Charmander spamming dragon rage as long as her Electrode misses one of its two attack opportunities -- so the chance that you lose that fight is at most (.9)^2 = .81 [the chance that both charge beam / sonic booms hit; I say "at most" because Oricorio is the only other mon that doesn't get OHKO'd by dragon rage, and its single attack opportunity has a chance to miss]. Conveniently enough I got the necessary miss RNG on my first attempt.

 

Fern isn't bad -- just need to level charmander up to 28 so it gets Flame Burst, evolve to Charmeleon, then common candy back to 25 -- incidentally, that was also required to beat the scraggy gang (the strat there is to Flame Burst one-shot one Scraggy each turn, then 2HKO the scrafty -- this ensures that you're only taking at most one hit per turn. There's some Swagger confuse RNG here, but not too bad.) Cain's Grimer and Cubone also get one-shot by Flame Burst, so that fight was also a joke. 70 Base Power just toooooo good early game.

Florinia required more RNG; but to be fair, the only RNG required was against her Cradily, because everything else got one-shot by Flame Burst. On the winning run, I had to use smokescreen on Cradily so that it missed a smack down. Then I killed it with dragon rage + [unnecessary blaze-boosted] crit Flame Burst. (Her Cradily seems to have 81 HP, so two dragon rages are not enough. Smokescreen is definitely the strat here.) 

 

STATS: The Charmeleon I used has 29 SpAtk IVs, 22HP IVs, 28 Def IVs, 27 Speed IVs. Against Florinia this allowed it to survive one mach punch, smack down, and nature power (iirc) from Breloom, Cradily, Cottonee, respectively, with 2 HP remaining. You could probably just grind Bidoofs outside the grand hall if HP is a problem, and just friendship berry back later. It has one of the neutral natures (serious).

I suppose that I need to make sure NOT to fight Corey on the corrosive mist field, if all my damage is coming from Flame Burst!

Current moveset: Dragon Rage, Flame Burst, Growl, Smokescreen.

I'm currently hoping that Vulpix would add some much-needed consistency, since Charmeleon kinda requires low HP or sun to actually get any setup. (But Meowstic is still probably just better, even if it doesn't have Drought.)

Edited August 18, 2019 by xEchoAlertx

[AyTales]

Quote

Aegisth -- that run sounds hilarious, and I definitely wouldn't have expected the slow and steady grass starter to make it past so many type-disadvantageous gyms by itself! Did you post your notes about it on this forum? I'd want to check it out.

Unfortunately not, no. Here's what I remember.

General:

• Curse was a very important part of the run
• Leech Seed was very useful
• You need to over-level, for sure. So there's RNG on when Torterra listens to you. Thankfully it's bulky enough to not have that much issue.
• I may have used battle items? Honestly unsure at this point. It's been a few months.

Julia

• Ground type. I evolved into Grotle for this, but I don't remember much about this fight

Scraggy Gang

• It'll become very clear, very quickly if you need to over-level here. I'm honestly unsure if I did.

Tangrowth

• Don't remember any issue here. Tangrowth wasn't doing much damage to Grotle, IIRC.

Florinia

• Biggest first hurdle, if I remember right
• Used the Elemental Seed for the extra defense
• May have even over-leveled to Torterra at this point and to get Synthesis

Shelly

• You need to take in a second Pokemon into this fight because the game bugs out if you do not. I brought in a level 1 Pokemon that didn't do anything first turn but eat an attack.

 

I unfortunately don't remember past that. Shade took a handful of tries but I was able to OHKO most of his mons, but I may have needed to EV train to outspeed his Gengar and OHKO. This is really only possible in vanilla Reborn because of the soft level cap.

[xEchoAlertx]

Well, I've done some testing, and I'm fairly convinced that Charizard can solo the Taka + Zel fight. BUT it requires more setup than I'm currently willing to invest: if I level Charmeleon to 43 it will get Flamethrower; then I could evolve it and common candy it back to 35 and use Flamethrower + substitute to deal with all of the Eeveelutions while Exeggcute hopelessly tries to leech seed me. Since the Grand Hall trainers are locked at about lvl 21 or so, I'm not too keen to do this! I tested the damage with Flame Burst and Substitute (hey, I like a good half hour of the Voltorb game every once in a while...!), and Glaceon's icy wind doesn't break the sub. I can always one-shot the Glaceon and inconsistently leave the Espeon with a sliver of HP. As it stands, I HAVE been able to knock out the Espeon before it could break the substitute by using smokescreen, but Flame Burst requires three hits to beat Umbreon, by which time the Exeggcute can leech seed and use two poison powders (I have a pecha berry to deal with the first), and the Umbreon uses confuse ray. If I had flamethrower, I could OHKO Espeon and 2HKO Umbreon, which would give me enough HP to win.

I guess another thing to try for Taka+Zel would be to reset the overworld weather until it's a sunny day -- does that weather condition extend to the Beryl Ward? -- that would definitely let Charizard OHKO the espeon and 2HKO the umbreon, and give it enough damage to solo the fight without Flamethrower. The weather in my game seems to be bugged at the moment, and anyhow I don't think I'm in the mood to get that cheesy just yet. A +SpAtk / -Atk nature with the IV's I've got would also probably give the required damage, without sunlight or flamethrower. So there are definitely several ways of doing this with a Charizard at lvl 35.

Anyway, I might mess around with some other starters, just to see if there are any other good possibilities. I wonder how far Feraligatr's evolutionary line + Meowstic could go in this game (I say its evolutionary line because we can't get Dragon Dance on the starter Totodile). Totodile learns ice fang at 20, and that with sheer force MIGHT be able to do reasonably well against Julia? ... but probably not.

I'll definitely leave this Charmeleon file backed up at multiple spots though. It could be fun to eventually do other things with the file, like see how few pokemon I would need to beat the game with a Charizard-started Fire monotype. (My guess would be Ninetales, Charizard (heat wave and solar beam), and Talonflame [you'd probably need to give Fletchling that lvl 45 Tailwind] could get you reasonably far, and then you'd have to decide what else to pick up.



And wow, that Torterra run sounds brutal, but really satisfying once you put in the work. Was the rest of the run so difficult once you got Squirtle? Oh and also, can't you get a Turtonator after Shade? (I'm not familiar with any of the versions other than E18, so I wouldn't actually know if this is a new feature.) ... What even is the full turtle team? Carracosta, Turtonator, Torkoal, Squirtle, Torterra; anything else?

 

[AyTales]

 Oh, yeah. So I suppose the Torterra-solo stopped at Kiki, thinking about it, since Turtonator was available. The run ended up being fairly easy after getting all six mons and I stopped after Radomus. Turtle team is:

• Turtwig
• Squirtle
• Shuckle
• Turtonator
• Tirtouga
• Lapras
• Torkoal

 

Also, if you don't want to grind Charmeleon that whole way, you can use the daycare. It doesn't take very long nor much mental focus to run up and down in Peridot ward's train tracks and you can get it to that level fairly quickly that way to learn Flamethrower.