sound of silence

The only reason I bother to ask this is because I'm getting really fed up about repeatedly soft-resetting to get the Ditto from the blacksteam factory. Normally I won't give too much of a damn as long as the preferred attack stat and either HP or Speed are above 20, but since you only get the one ditto in game and it just has to be necessary for breeding any sort of pokemon Thanks in advance to whoever can answer the question.

Also, relying on X-attack and stuff to win is a poor strategy in general. You'd be better off posting your team you're using and people might be able to help you beat Samson with what you've got. IIRC, there are no X-items after you pass the agate city checkpoint anyway, so I'd get used to beating leaders without any of that sort of assistance.

Easier idea for nugget22: Lead with hairyama and camerupt. Have hariyama use fake out on masquerain, and have camerupt use lava plume. Don't worry about hariyama getting burned as its collateral damage for this fight, or better yet teach it facade if you are good enough to manipulate the voltorb flip game in the game corner. Unless the AI has become smart enough to have illumise use rain dance turn 1 now... Or alternatively, if you can find 3 red shards, there is a house in the lapis ward that will teach braixen fire pledge. go there and do that. That move will also torch the field, allowing you to bring camerupt in after you kill masquerain and sweep.

The strength glitch referred to is that if you take a certain path through the ametrine/celestinine mountain, you will come across a strength boulder that if you push it, and then save from just after where the rock was, turn the game off/on again, you can get past certain points you normally can't. In this case, by doing so you will end up on the northern side of the adventurine woods. However, this method is useless if you haven't cleared all the webs/logs on that side of the forest, and I'm not sure what happens if you try and re-enter agate city before the completion of episode 15...Do not do that except as a last resort.

Binacle. Barbaracle gets shell smash, access to nature power. It can basically sweep gyms, annihilate meteor bases and obliterate other trainers all on its own. Crawdaunt is too slow/frail and takes a lot of breeding to get what it needs, let alone the lack of knock off tutors in the game.

Honestly I would've thought skarmory would've been added by now. I get its a defensive beast, but passive walls in-game aren't that great without episode manipulation to get something like toxic or roost onto it. I think I'd expect it in episode 16 when it becomes much harder to manipulate episodes due to reborn city being renovated back to its former glory, thus creating potentially massive errors if someone tries to manipulate episodes while in the city (big headache for breeders there). I wouldn't expect talonflame's evolutionary line to be available for some time. No easy cop-outs for people looking to get easy revenge kills please. Aegislash's line is simply too good full stop. Its the sort of thing I'd expect to be an event mon buried somewhere along reborn's equivalent of victory road. Has way too good a match-up against every gym leader remaining except for Amaria.

In regards to the person stuck on Ciel Out: Hariyama In: Bronzong Setting up TR is your best hope for this match. Teach cofagrigus TR over...probably pain split for this battle, and get TR on bronzong. Contrary to other advice, I'd try and KO togekiss before setting up, as you can potentially bait archeops into using EQ (it has a choice band) on something like rhydon, then switching to levitate bronzong to set up trick room. Your biggest problem is you have absolutely nothing that can stand against paraflinch shenanigans that togekiss employs, and the AI does not hesitate to employ them if you lack something immune to thunder wave. If you had a heart scale, I'd be telling you to grind up chinchou to level 70 and use the move tutor to get thunder wave on it. Failing that, you might want to consider the long and painful process of grinding up that mareep with thunder wave for this battle, as you're going to be soft resetting for a miracle vs togekiss otherwise. I'm really concerned you have missed WAY too many event pokemon and good items along your journey. Good luck, you'll need it.

Can confirm. Just played through that section of the game then, and you do not have to wait for nightfall. ...Pity I didn't take a screenshot to back that up though...

Eh, pancham isn't that great. If you're not using makuhita, I'd recommend mankey as the combination of focus energy + karate chop will invalidate any boosts to the defense of her cradily, while it can survive a few rock type attacks. If possible, try to get one with its hidden ability of defiant as I'm finding that to be a godsend of an ability early game.

Unfortunately Sp. Def is one area that is really difficult to train, due to the lack of encounters with pokemon who offer that stat. Your best bet is using the good rod around the piers/azurine island/apophyll beach and fight grimer (1HP value) and Skrelp (1Sp. Def Value). Ignore any muk you catch as they add attack EV's. Sadly skrelp are rare, but they are your best bet for frequent Sp. Def EV's.

Yeah, spikes would be best. I jumped to SR as something to break the sash of lucario, while the pokemon who'd set it would be useful for charlotte later.

Hmm, forgot about that. In that case, something that may help is to use a pokemon with sturdy that can set stealth rock to start the match, and then sack it, weaken hariyama, and then use a flying gem on sceptile to trigger unburden should it have that ability. That will allow it to outpace everything samson has while getting around lucario's focus sash. You won't get past conkeldurr unfortunately, but it will help for the vast majority that way. Alternatively, have mamoswine lead turn 1, reteach it mist with a heart scale, and sacrifice it to set up mist changing the field to the mist field. That will weaken samson badly doing that for a few turns. I'd also consider catching a boldore from route 2 and make sure it has stealth rock and nature power taught to it. A nice trick to deal with samson's conkeldurr I've found is to have gigalith go up against it. Conkeldurr will outspeed and bring it down to sturdy, you then use nature power to hit it with acrobatics. Drain punch will recover stuff all health in this way, while weakening it enough for a team-mate to KO (It is unbelievably difficult to one shot that poke). Gigalith is also a godsend against the gym leader after samson, so its well worth grinding despite being rather annoying to use.

With sceptile, teach it nature power. That move becomes acrobatics on the high striker field, and will always get double damage regardless of whether you hold an item or not due to the field. That should make some of samson's team easier to beat, if it has lots of speed investment like it should.

EQ does trigger the high striker though. Perhaps this person has been unlucky with multiple unfavourable high striker bonuses to the AI.

I agree Charlotte is still hardest as you do need to invest considerably in strategy or hope the AI decides not to use certain coverage moves against you. It doesn't help that there are no flash fire pokemon other than ninetales once you pass agate city checkpoint, and ninetales can only be obtained if you caught stunfisk earlier in the game. She is still quite beatable though, and it helps a bit that darmanitan no longer has a choice scarf. I'm thinking though Serra is possibly the worst now as while she can be taken advantage of, the whole evasion manipulation tactic isn't the sort of thing you can counter that easily without pokemon that have access to flash cannon/mirror shot (or nature power). Even if you break her field you have to deal with the fact that due to brightpowder and snow cloak + Aurorous, you aren't guaranteed to land the hits on her that you need to, which makes setting up any smart play a major pain. Still waiting for the day the AI can get its head around doubles, and watching everyone cry their eyeballs out against Shelly though Also looking at Samson, if the AI could properly abuse Blaziken and its speed boost ability, that would also be great.

The only major issue I have with EV training is that its really hard to find anywhere to train for Sp. Def, since most pokemon that give effort values for this stat are unobtainable, rarely encountered or are event pokemon. Hopefully tentacool becomes something we can catch with a rod in episode 16.

Eevee can only be found on a windy day. You first need to head to chrysolia forest. There should be a secret pathway that wasn't there previously that you take to a cave. Once you enter the cave you will see 4 entrances. Always pick the one which DOES NOT have any train tracks headed towards it. Keep doing this until you get to a room with a book, a few crates, and a pokeball. The pokeball will contain eevee.

I agree on the difficulty thing. Gen 6 was a walk in the park. I didn't bother finishing ORAS because I trained up a gyarados and wondered what was the point of continuing? I hate losing, but at the same time, I would like some sadistic challenge on occasion.

After you beat Fern, go as far to the east as you can, using the tauros to ride through the route where you cannot pass by walking. There should be a T-intersection where you must go south before ending up in a hedgemaze. Get through that and you'll be at the 8th gym.

True. I forgot I actually did that in episode 15, but I recommend the spare earlier episode since I never tried to figure out if you could cut back through agate checkpoint after doing all of that. I was too worried about breaking the game at that stage.