TheBackwardsLegsMan

That damn Arceus. On my first playthough I just had to wait for focus sash to save my blaziken. On my second run, I had to wait for my Gallade's Close Combat to crit, or for him to use dark pulse (he has Justified). I just set a macro up on my keyboard that spammed the x button 100 times a second because I was getting carpal tunnel from going through all the dialog every time.

He will almost definitely have Gyrados type covered on every pokemon. A lot of his pokemon will also have sturdy, specifically so you can't just cut through him like that. I also expect some serious grass coverage, seeing as it is also double super effective. You could always train up a second Feraligator by breeding if you wanted. Perfect EVs and some good IVs would probably make it replace your starter if you bred for them, but I understand if you don't want two of the same pokemon. My vote goes out to getting a Mudkip/Swampert. It's unlikely that many of his pokemon will have grass moves, and swampert is pretty bulky. Not to mention he'll have super effective stab moves for all of the pokemon. If you EV train it, that in conjunction with Feraligator should be able to put a nice dent in his team.

Intermediate bots will help me quite a bit really. The only role that I cannot play with at least a moderate level of proficiency is ADC, so hopefully they'll be smart enough to punish my bad positioning. The easy bots will ignore me if I'm CSing halfway in their creep wave, so it doesn't really help with positioning.

The Garbodor isn't still attached to the Pulse machine when you fight it. I don't know if it's implied that the effects are permanent or not, but that would explain why it doesn't get a PULSE form.

I don't know about the girl talking to the Meteor (I did see her, I just don't think it leads to anything this episode), but you can get a Pinsir and Heracross to fight next to the webs. If you beat the right one it will destroy the web.

If you still have to fight those as a member of a Meteor team that is going to be a huge pain. Taka's Chatot and that Pulse Tanglegrowth is a terrifying prospect. I would assume we'll get access to a decent-good type counter before these fights, although if testing proves that you we don't really need one to (reasonably) win it could just be a difficulty spike. Will they have enough of an influence to get people to change their teams? Possibly. At the very least it will get people to train up temporary member to counter them.

Obviously the Garchomp and Aceus were pretty ohshit inducing, but neither of them are particularly hard to beat once you know their moves. The worst for me was early game chatot. The only pokemon on my team it couldn't one shot was Gyrados, so it pretty much came down to praying for a burn from my Combusken and then praying that Gyrados could beat the confusion hax twice in a row. It finally happened but when I have to win through pure luck I don't feel like I deserved the win. My second playthrough went much more smoothly, although I had a Grottle that time so he could still one shot my starter.

If you want to find other moves to breed onto pokemon just go on Bulbpedia and look at that pokemon's move list. It shows moves it can learn via breeding and what to breed it with. It doesn't tell you when chain breeding is necessary though.

I like a challenge so, after my first run in which I exclusively used Speed Boost Blaziken, Moxie Gyrados and Gardevior(/Gallade later on), three of the most obviously powerful pokemon in the game, I just made a rule that I can't use anything I consider "overpowered." I did use Gallade in my second run, but I didn't evolve my Kirlia until I got the Dawn Stone, at which point I don't think he's OP anymore. If Ame wanted to up the difficulty significantly she could remove any one of those/make it available much later in the game. I can say from experience that you can get through all of the required battles up to the current episode only using three pokemon, even if you don't have one of the three (technically 4) mons I listed above. With a full team of 6 you should be able to manage any fight without having to rely on luck, even with a disadvantageous starter like Treeko (I've only played through with Torchic and Turtwig thus far, but again I only used three pokemon on my team so I think you could make up for a "bad" starter with a full team).

Blaziken with Black Belt and Gallade with Quick Claw is what I used. I got two sky uppercuts off with Blaziken (if you level it up one over the cap he gets it for that fight, just common candy him) then I just spammed Close Combat on Gallade. My Gallade did have 255 attack EVs because I raised it against Buffolants, so he was chunking half Arceus's health. You can EV train you Blaziken too if you want (you can get EV reducing berries from the dept. store if you have enough stickers) but it's not necessary.

Umm, why not use Gallade if your only criteria are good move pool and strong fighting type? With some hear scales you can teach it Leaf Blade, Close Combat, Psycho Cutter, Dark Slash, Swords Dance and/or Slash. It has the same base attack as Heracross and is only slightly slower. I mean, if you just want a Heracross/Pinsir then I understand, but if you're just after a good fighting type, you can get one as soon as you beat the poison gym.

If you have a pokemon with resistance to grass and/or really high defense, you can do this with any pokemon that can stack stat enhancers. You can buy Super Potions from a girl next to the Nurse Joy in the Gym, so once you start stacking attack you're probably set. I did it with a Grottle and curse the first time and swept after I got 6 curses set up. I imagine this would work with any pokemon bulky enough to take a hit between healings to beef up it's attack. The fact that curse raises defense is just gravy. This effectively works against all physical attackers that don't have a type advantage, even that Garchomp. You could just as easily do it with a calm mind or bulk up or something as well, depending on what you have/what you're facing.

I picked Torchic because I knew this game is harder than normal ones, so I picked an OP. On my second run I picked Turtwig because Torterra (which I nicknamed Yggdrasil) is the coolest grass type in the game, and he has nice stats/a nice move pool.

I feel your pain. It took me literally an hour of nonstop resetting to get a skull fossil, then it died because I though exiting onto the balcony would count as me leaving. In my infinite wisdom I didn't save first, so I had to find another rock, and even then it died twice without me talking to the guy again (I saved this time, thank god). Now I just have to get it to lv 59 for that Head Smash Aggron...

I'm inclined to agree with the general consensus here - it depends on how hard you want your playthrough to be. Speed Boost Blaziken + Gyrados can seriously two man the early game up to the fighting gym, at which point you can beat the rest of the game with only three pokemon with ease (relative to how hard it is without those two anyway). I'm doing a playthrough with Turtwig as my starter right now, and I like the difficultly curve more. The first two gyms aren't a huge issue because once you get Grottle set up with a few curses neither of them can scratch you, but he doesn't remain OP into the late game. Still very useful of course, but I'm not sweeping gym leaders with him alone like I did with Blaziken.

I don't believe you can get Zubat before Kiki's gym anymore. I also had a Blaziken and Gyrados on my team, but my third pokemon was Gardevior, which has already been recommended twice. She gets psychic at lv 40, and at 45 outspeeds all of kiki's pokemon. You can one-shot everything on her team with her and Blaziken. If you teach it shadow ball you can even OHKO Medicham.

He was there at night when I checked, and I also have beaten Luna. I guess the fact that I was misspelling her name might be why I couldn't get any results when I searched this, lol.

I know how to beat her, but I'm doing a challenge run. I beat the game up to it's current point following a certain set of rules, one of which is not allowing more than three "combat" pokemon on my team. I'm trying to do that again because I feel like Blaziken and Gyrados made it too easy the first time, so I'm not using them this time. Another rule is I'm not allowed to sub in situation pokemon unless I'm planning on keeping it for a long time, so toxic spike Trubbish is off the table too. Unfortunately, there is no way I can beat her with just a Lv. 25 Grottle and Kirlia. I was under the assumption that I could get a Crobat for this part. I might just have to start over with a different starter.

I have the game complete up to the current point. I went to the Beryl graveyard to get an Aipom for pickup, when I saw a Team Meteor grunt by a headstone. It was the one from the raid on the mountain base who said his love died. He ends up quitting team meteor and moves to his house in Peridot, and if you talk to him there he mentions how broken up he is that he doesn't know her last name. He makes a pretty big deal about this, and he also says several times that whatever's left of her is at the bottom of the lake (in front of Charlotte's house, I forgot the name). That got me thinking, maybe you can find some type of identification around there, so I swept the area with an item finder and fished with both rods for a while. I even caught a couple pokemon to see if they were holding something (super wishful thinking, I know). The fact that you see this guy in multiple places and can apparently progress some type of story with him makes me really believe that there's more to it. So I guess I'm just wondering if that content exists yet, if anyone knows what to do, or if I'm just looking too far into it and it's nothing important. EDIT: Well, I can't spell. It's Tara, not Terra. My bad.

Well, that basically means my only remaining option is over leveling and save scumming until I get lucky. Thanks anyway.

I feel like I already know the answer to this one, but is it still possible to get Zubat before Florina? I can beat her without it, but I'm not using Gyrados or a fire/fighting starter on this run.

I get a fossil maybe once every 30 resets if I'm lucky. It's probably just coincidence, but I get claw and root fossils the most. I was trying to get a skull fossil so I could breed an Aggron with head smash, and it seriously took me over 100 soft resets to get one. Then I found out that the museum can kill your fossils, so I didn't save before I gave it to him. Naturally, it died. 50+ resets later and I got another one. Then it died 4 times in a row, and I finally got my Cranidos on the 5th try. During that entire time, I was looking for a Helix fossil as well, and I didn't see one. I honestly think she made the Helix fossil much rarer because of it's specific use. I also have 3 Psychic plates and 4 pixie plates, and none other. I honestly though those were the only two.

You pretty much have to cheese it. Either us the quick claw + curse/poison method mentioned, or spam powerful fighting moves at it until it dies.

I always limit myself to three actual combat pokemon. The other three are HM slaves and only serve to sub in while I revive the other three. It's a restriction that I always place on myself when playing pokemon games, along with a few others (I don't like Nuzlocke so I have my own set of rules). This game definitely made it extremely hard to do this, but my team of Blaziken, Gallade and Gyrados got me through every fight in the game (that I know of), sans that Solaris battle... I did have to beat Radomus through sheer luck though (night slash crits for days. Took about 15 tries), so I'll probably have to add more eventually. Honestly I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that I'll be able to beat the Elite Four + Champion (I swear to God if it's Fern I'm going to do it out of spite) like this, but we'll see. The only reason this worked is because Torchic was my starter with speed boost, so on my next playthrough I'm not using Gyrados or a Fire/Fighting starter (even without speed boost, that type combo + move set made A LOT of gyms and trainer battles far easier than they should have been). I honestly don't know if it's even possible, but I did it the first time completely blind. With a bit of theory crafting I think I can do it without the (what I consider to be) unfair advantages.