Pokémon XI: The Virtually Indestructible Thread

[Mando Knight]

Pokémon XI: The Virtually Indestructible Thread


We've been waiting for you, trainer! We knew that you, with your skills, would eventually reach us here.

Pokémon Threads are hard to catch and train, but their powers are superior. There's no being clever with them. Read on, and maybe one day, You'll be one of the very best.

These are friend codes (Partially out of date: If they are, post your new codes now and I'll fix them). For your friends. If you're not on here? It means you're not friendly. Also that for whatever reason they didn't get put here. If you're not here, just mention it whenever you can.
FRIEND CODES:

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{table=head]Name|Diamond|Pearl|Platinum|HeartGold|SoulSilver|B lack|White
Legoshrimp|2923-1445-3340|X|X|X|1849-3954-2553|X|X
Kobold Bard|X|X|X|4168-8792-1683|X|X|X
Freako|X|X|1333-4517-6347|X|2966-0800-3851|X|X
Jimp|X|X|X|X|2407-7659-7056|X|X
tgva8889|X|X|3438-0598-0009|X|3052-0635-4414|X|3353-3706-1386
Mattarias, King.|X|X|X|3524-4231-3529|X|X|4770-6741-0740
Linkavitch|X|X|X|5027-8564-5267|X|X|X
SparkMandriller|2277-4598-3685|X|X|X|X|X|X
B-Man|X|X|X|X|5371-4488-1062|X|X
goldfly|X|X|X|0174-5615-7997|X|3782-8897-6594|3009-8301-5885
Deth Muncher|X|X|1162-2087-3138|X|X|X|X
Terry576:|0174-5674-2515|X|X|X|X|X|X
AtlanteanTroll|X|X|1505-6983-3009|X|1291-5054-9504|X|3911-6794-1526
master256|X|X|2450-2269-2301|4770-4806-9656|X|X|X
The-Mage-King|5369-7209-0920|X|X|X|X|X|4169-5014-1806
bue52|X|X|0088-3371-2579|0689-7808-4229|X|X|X
Geno9999|X|5328-7909-7435|X|X|1892-8459-0727|Owned|X
oxybe|X|X|X|4684-4678-9165|X|X|1162-9092-9501
Drascin|X|X|X|X|X|3525-1309-6530|X
Ryzouken|X|X|3782-2115-8275|X|X|4512-9802-0628|X
Deuxhero|X|X|X|X|3481-6327-5325|X|4727-7229-9821
FantasyFoxMan|X|X|X|1677-9053-6018|X|X|1377-6516-2321
CoffeeIncluded|X|X|X|X|X|X|0389-8063-2889
ShinyRocks|X|X|X|X|X|2064-8383-8632|X
Turalisj|X|X|X|X|X|4684-8033-0061|X
OracleofWuffing|X|X|X|X|X|4684-8355-8999|X
Crimson Angel|X|X|X|X|X|2494-4300-9144|X
Mando Knight|Owned|Owned|X|1806-4645-4773|X|X|1850-1765-8454
breakdownjason|X|X|X|X|X|1291-9831-7735|X
Thormag|X|X|X|X|X|1764-5885-4832|X[/table]

Related to the friend codes is the IRC. Use this channel when you want to trade with other people.

irc.quakenet.org/#pkmtrade


Also, the following members posses TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY LEGAL (cough) ways of getting you TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY LEGAL (cough) hacked Pokeymans.
Kobold-Bard
ryzouken
Hunter Noventa
master256
OracleofWuffing

The Last Thread: The Premier Thread

Helpful Links/Hints For Adventuring Ten Year Olds

Bulbapedia
Smogon
Metalkid's Damage Calculator
Metalkid's IV Calculator
Serebii
Pokémon Online (for battles over the internets when you don't want to bother training things by hand)

Breeding For Dummies:

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So, you're tired of navigating a Pokemon thread where everyone uses fancy words and stuff? Well no worries! Here's a guide on... BREEDING FOR DUMMIES!

One of the first things to remember in breeding is that there are natures that help and ones that hinder. For instance, a Special Attacker such as Mewtwo would be hindered by an Adamant nature, but helped in his stat growth by a Modest nature. To improve your chances for getting a particular Nature in a child Pokémon, use at least one parent with the Nature you want, and give it the Everstone.

Brilliant Spreadsheet for Growth.

Some IVs are randomly inherited from the parents. You can lock in a maximum of one IV by giving a parent the corresponding Power training item (Power Bracer for Attack, Power Lens for Special Attack, and so forth). Use Flat Battles to determine the IVs of a hatched Pokémon, or if you only care about the highest IV and the sum of all of its IVs, you can take it to a guy who's in the lobby of either the Battle Tower or the Battle Subway, depending on your game. You're looking for them to judge it Relatively Superior overall and Can't Be Better in its best stat.

The third main thing with breeding is Egg Moves. Egg moves are moves the parent has, and passes down to a child. For instance, in my breeding of Chimchar, the egg moves are Grass Knot and Swords Dance, which are passed down to the child who gets said moves from the start. In order to pass on most Egg Moves, the father must know the move (Genderless Pokémon never learn Egg Moves). These include all of the moves that are listed as the child Pokémon's Egg Moves in a move list chart, as well as any compatible TMs or HMs. You can also pass on moves that the child would learn by level-up that aren't in those two lists--for these, both parents must know the move.

Dr. Strangemon or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Min-Max

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Don't feel the need to bother with this stuff unless you're playing against humans or at the Battle Frontier. You shouldn't need it for most of the game, and it can be kind of a pain.

Individual Values
Every Pokémon species has its own base stats, as you probably know. Aerodactyl are very fast but have weak defenses, Blissey have huge amounts of HP, Luvdisc are terrible at everything but speed, and so on. But, in addition to the normal stat allocation, every Pokemon gets a bonus of 0-31 points applied to each stat. So a level 100 Tyranitar could have an attack stat of 273, or it could have a attack of 304. That bonus is the IV.
A Pokémon has its IVs generated the moment you meet it, or accept its egg, and there's no way to change them. You're stuck with what you've got. However, you can influence them a little, if you're willing to breed. Bred Pokémon don't randomly generate all their IVs, they inherit up to 3 from their parents. Still doesn't help that much, especially if the parents have bad IVs, but what can you do? Typically you just end up hatching like a billion eggs until you get a good one.

Effort Values
Every time you win a fight, your Pokémon get experience, but that's not all they get. Every Pokémon also gives out effort points. For every 4 effort points in a particular stat, your Pokémon gains 1 point in it. So if that Tyranitar from earlier with 304 attack had 4 attack EVs, his actual attack would be 305. If he had 252 attack EVs, it'd be 367. Sounds handy, but there are limits. You can't have more than 255 points in a single stat, and you can't have more than 510 EVs in total.

You'll see a lot of Pokémon with 252 attack/special attack EVs, 252 speed, and 4 HP, but there are a lot of ways to configure them. Defensive Pokémon will obviously focus on different things, Pokémon which use both physical and special attacks will need to split EVs between them or possibly sacrifice speed, and so on.

It's a tremendous pain to work out what EVs your Pokémon has, so you'll likely want to start with a Pokémon that you freshly hatched and work from there, though you don't have to. There are 6 berries that reduce EVs in a single stat each, so you can use those to reset your Pokémon and start from scratch. After that, just keep a careful record of what you fight, and only take down Pokémon that you know give you the EVs you want.

EV training takes a while, but there are a few ways you can speed it up. The first is an astonishingly rare status condition called Pokérus. Any Pokémon with Pokérus gets double EVs from fights, and will spread the Pokérus to any Pokémon in your party for the first 72 hours after it catches it. After those 72 hours it stops being contagious, but still gets double EVs. Pokérus has something like 1/20000 chance to appear on wild Pokemon, but with the magic of the internet I'm sure you can obtain it.

The second way to speed up EV training is through Power Items. If a Pokémon is holding the right item, they get bonus EVs from every fight. For example, a Pokémon holding a Power Lens will get 4 special attack EVs. A Pokémon holding a Power Anklet will get 4 speed EVs. A Pokémon holding a Macho Brace will just get double the EVs of whatever they're fighting. These bonuses are doubled if you have Pokérus.

The third way to speed up EVs is through vitamins. Each vitamin given to a Pokémon gives them +10 EVs in a certain stat, up to a limit of 100. 1 protein gives 10 attack EVs, 10 give 100. These unfortunately aren't doubled by Pokérus or items, so you'll have to pay for the full amount. Luckily money is easy to come by in these games.

Just as an example, I'll show how I EV'd my Gengar.
First, I gave him 10 calcium, and 10 carbos, so 100 special attack and 100 speed already.
After that, I gave him Pokérus and a lucky egg, got him to meet a Floatzel (2 speed EVs, doubled to 4 because of Pokérus), and then sent out my Weezing to explode on it so Gengar could get all the experience, for a higher level and 100 special attack, 104 speed.
After that, I gave him a Power Lens, flew over to the Old Chateau, and killed 15 Gastly (1 special attack from Gastly, 4 from the lens, doubled to 10 from Pokérus) for 150 special attack EVs, bringing my total to 250 special attack, 104 speed.
After that I equipped a power anklet and killed one more Gastly (1 special attack from Gastly, 4 speed from the anklet, doubled to 2 and 8 from Pokérus), meaning Gengar had 252 attack, and 112 speed.
Leaving the anklet equipped, I flew to Route 201, and killed 14 Starly (1 speed from Starly, 4 from the anklet, meaning 10 speed per starly thanks to Pokérus), for a total of 252 attack, 252 speed.
All that was left after that was to kill a Bidoof with a Power Weight (1 HP from Bidoof, 4 from the Weight, 10 thanks to Pokerus, although I only gained 6 points because I hit the EV cap), leaving my Gengar with 252 special attack EVs, 252 Speed, and 4 HP, just how I wanted him.
Roughly an hour's work, and one Pokemon down.

tl;dr: The simplified version of EVs/IVs - EVs are gained by fighting other Pokémon. They vary by the Pokémon defeated. They increase your stats for every 4 gained. IVs are inherent to a Pokémon. They increase stats for every point possessed, and range from 0 to 31. EVs have to be manually tracked or else removed entirely with certain berries. IVs can be checked by knowing the EVs of a Pokémon and then plugging its stats into an IV calculator. The higher the Pokémon's level, the more accurate; level 100 wifi battles provide maximum accuracy.

Now, you might ask, "Mando Knight, you sexy-handsome rogue you, how do you get those accented e's?" The answer is simple. Dragons. On a PC, change your keyboard layout to US-International, and press 'e. For some versions of Windows, if you don't want the US-International keyboard on all the time, you can also have it switch between different registered keyboards with a press of Ctrl+Shift. (Alt+Shift lets you switch languages, in case you need to type a bunch of characters like these: ασδφγηξκλ)

[CoffeeIncluded]

Hey, uh, what EV spread would you recommend for a Chandelure and a Hydreigon, both modest-natured? Am I correct in thinking a 4 HP/252 SpA/252 Spe spread?

[The Dark Fiddler]

Huh, nice to see these threads still living on, even though I've since stopped paying attention. And I caught this one before there was way too much to catch up on, maybe I'll be able to follow them again!

All I really have to say about Pokémon is that I, when I was in Europe, managed to pick up a Spanish copy of Pokémon Red (when I was in Austria ). I'm currently Nuzlocking it and practicing my Spanish; it's a win-win!

[d13]

*Throws Poké Ball at new thread*

Yay, new thread!

I'll post my FCs when I get home~

[Deth Muncher]

That first post makes all of my first posts weep manly tears.

[arguskos]

This thread wins at everything forever, yes sir it does. Well played, Mando, well played.

[OracleofWuffing]

Uh, might as well add me to the list of people that can get you PERFECTLY LEGITAMTE pokemon nowadays. I think we all know about my Battle Subway teams.

Hey, uh, what EV spread would you recommend for a Chandelure and a Hydreigon, both modest-natured? Am I correct in thinking a 4 HP/252 SpA/252 Spe spread?

Only thing I can think of is that you might want to run less speed for ever so slightly more HP, but I'm not the kind of person that knows speed tiers off the top of my head, so even then, I'd go with 252 speed.

In the GB2 Grand Rocket vein from last thread, I'm finally on the post game. Deck restrictions need to die. Seriously. There are no good Dark pokemon to run in a Rain Dance deck, and there's only two good legendary cards, one of which is only good in a Fire deck. By the way, these guys love Mewtwo.

[EifieFlare]

I'd like to be added to the TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY LEGAL list too, please. Won't be open for trades until I get back home though, so I'm going to be unfriendly for a bit longer.

[Starwulf]

Well, I got my first(and maybe last for a while) taste of Battle Tower in the battle frontier in Soulsilver last night. Did fine all the way up till the "Brain" challenged me >< I still nearly won, but he did beat me, which sucks. I think I'm going to put pokemon up for a while and start in on Disgaea for my PSP for a bit though, been wanting to give that a shot. I'll still be following here in the thread though! :)

[tgva8889]

Yeah, your set for Modest Chandelure is right, though you probably wanna Choice that one. Otherwise, you could run a bit more HP, or I think some run more Special Defense, not sure. Don't know about Hydreigon, haven't done any research on that one.

[Mc. Lovin']

Can we get this mentioned in the OP? It's a good way for people who feel daunted about the whole "breeding and eving before you can even battle" part of pokemon to be able to join in! Appart from having THE worst community I've ever seen in a game, it's really fun! Does anyone have an account on it?

[tgva8889]

I loved using simulators. I wouldn't be opposed to running a Pokemon Online tournament on these boards sometime.

[Mando Knight]

Yeah, your set for Modest Chandelure is right, though you probably wanna Choice that one. Otherwise, you could run a bit more HP, or I think some run more Special Defense, not sure. Don't know about Hydreigon, haven't done any research on that one.

Hydreigon is similar to Chandelure stat-wise, just better with Attack, Speed, and defenses in exchange for dropping its SpAtk 20 points.

Can we get this mentioned in the OP? It's a good way for people who feel daunted about the whole "breeding and eving before you can even battle" part of pokemon to be able to join in! Appart from having THE worst community I've ever seen in a game, it's really fun! Does anyone have an account on it?

Yeah, I'll add it to the OP.

[tgva8889]

Well, most people run Mix Hydreigon as far as I knew. I mean, Dragons are good at mixed.

[Qwertystop]

I didn't have any problems with IR-GTS sending, but then I've only used it for one batch of mons, and that was a while ago. What exactly is the error, though? More specifics help.

Well, it occasionally connects and sends the pokemon just fine, but most of the time my DS goes straight to what I think is the normal GTS, based on the fact that the computer doesn't say "Connection Established". Either way the settings are exactly the same.

I've noticed that the IP the program tells me to set my DNS to is not the same as the computer's IP (according to whatismyip.com), but when I set it to that, it never works.

[Mc. Lovin']

I loved using simulators. I wouldn't be opposed to running a Pokemon Online tournament on these boards sometime.

Please do! I'd love to be able to compete against you guys!!

It would be nice to play against people who don't quit ALL THE TIME (unless they're winning). I had a guy quit on me turn one because my Gyarados got the taunt off on him. TURN ONE

[breakdownjason]

Hey, quick question... Would anyone here be willing to set up a trade for a mudkip and possibly a DW vulpix? I've been thinking of setting up a sun team, but alas DW is not something that I've had much luck with.

[tgva8889]

Is Vulpix even released on DW yet? Is Poliwag even released on DW yet?

If we get enough interest, I'd be willing to set up a tournament. I have some experience running tournaments, so we could definitely pull it off. Also if anyone wants to provide prize support (the best I could offer is some decent 'mons as a result of my breeding exploits) that'd be cool too, but that's totally not necessary.

[OracleofWuffing]

Is Vulpix even released on DW yet? Is Poliwag even released on DW yet?

As far as I know, Global Dreamworld had Vulpix and Poliwag when it launched. They're both in Windswept Forest, and require 10,000 Dream Points.

I mean, I have the Dream Points, but I stopped playing it a long time ago because... Well... Effort.

And also I now have a deep-rooted hatred for ice cream, I mean really, never in my wildest dreams did I even imagine that would be possible.

[tgva8889]

Yeah, getting good at the games is so totally not worth my time and effort, despite having already done it. I do appreciate that I've gotten a ton of nice Pokemon though. God, 10,000 Points required... I don't think I have that many yet. Might be a while before I get all the Pokemon I want in the Dream World...

[ScionoftheVoid]

Thanks for the link to the pokemon online thing, I might participate in things now. Even if I am that weird guy with the interesting, but usually less effective, ideas which catch everyone by surprise even though he's shown them ahead of time.

[tgva8889]

Hey, playing the Rogue strategy is hilarious.

[Qwertystop]

Hey, playing the Rogue strategy is hilarious.

What strategy is that?

[Mando Knight]

And also I now have a deep-rooted hatred for ice cream, I mean really, never in my wildest dreams did I even imagine that would be possible.

You can just ignore requests to scoop ice cream, though.

[OracleofWuffing]

You can just ignore requests to scoop ice cream, though.

I don't know what the system is, but it seemed to me that when I did this, I would frequently fall short of my 500+ daily goal. Like refusing a minigame depleted from the amount of minigames you could play in total, but then again that's just feel with no actual studying about it. Doesn't help when you're aiming for pokemon that exclusively Ice Cream Scoop, though.

---

"Oh excuse me good sir, would you please donate a berry and scoop some ice cream for me? Pretty please? I'm oh so lonely."
"Why sure! Here we go!"
"Okay, well, it would be nice if you could use all three of those flavors, and also- um... I think that scoop is awful big, don't you?"
"Nope! Gonna make it bigger!"
"Well, um, I guess that's okay, if you want, but I really would like smaller scoops than that one..."
"Wow, really, cool!"
"Er, yes, I mean, um, that's- that's enough right now."
"Naw, you need more ice cream!"
"Well, don't you think you could, uh, switch to another flavor right now? They all have varying degrees of stickiness and scoopiness..."
"Nope, I'm good with just this one."
"But but but it'd be... It'd be lots of fun if you-"
"Just a second, this one's at max size!" PLOP!
"Oh. Um... Okay, if you could just-"
"Now to make myself a sandwich or something for the rest of the minute and a half!"
"Um... Well... I guess it's... okay."

YOU BEFRIENDED A POKEMON!

[tgva8889]

What strategy is that?

"Rogue" strategies generally refer to unexpected or underutilized strategies. Rather than playing with all the stock Pokemon sets or setups, changing them up can give you surprise advantage when your opponent expects you to have moves you don't have or doesn't expect your Hidden Power to be whatever type it is. It's taking advantage of your opponent's unpreparedness, like a Rogue uses Sneak Attack to take advantage of Flat-Footed opponents.

[Ryuho Tsugu]

Well, it occasionally connects and sends the pokemon just fine, but most of the time my DS goes straight to what I think is the normal GTS, based on the fact that the computer doesn't say "Connection Established". Either way the settings are exactly the same.

Have you tried other people's public spoofed GTS servers, like that Pokemon Selector or whatever it was? If you can get consistant results from something like that, then your problem's likely with your computer environment. I'm guessing something's interfering with the middleman attack GTS spoofers make, but I wouldn't know what.

I've noticed that the IP the program tells me to set my DNS to is not the same as the computer's IP (according to whatismyip.com), but when I set it to that, it never works.

If you're running IR-GTS just on your local network, the address you need to use for your DNS is your IP on the LAN, not the public WAN address sites like whatismyip give you.

[The-Mage-King]

Don't mind this, just the standard new thread post.

[tgva8889]

Question: What Pokemon should I use for my semi-quick Pokemon Black run? So far I have only Sawk. Any other Pokemon suggested will be used, so long as it is easily obtainable before fighting the Elite 4.

[Mando Knight]

Haxorus. It is an axe-headed dragon of destruction.