I have been down to the nitty gritty when it comes to chasing down the Alola Pokedex in Pokemon Sun. I have been past the point of simply finding pokemon in the wild grass out in the field.
Trading has been a large part of getting the more obscure samples. Last time around I found that breeding Gabite for GTS trades wasn’t as successful as I thought it would be, so I went back to Goomy. That actually yielded me a key success in my effort.
Goomy for Vanillish
Yes, I know, a pokemon that is pretty much literally a vanilla ice cream cone. Not everybody can be Pikachu. Still better than Klefki, which is just a key chain with a few keys on it.
But Vanillish was one I didn’t have and did not know how to get, but once obtained opened filled in not just his slot on the Pokedex, but another for evolving him into Vanilluxe, an even larger vanilla ice cream cone, by simply leveling him up, and Vanillite, a baby vanilla ice cream cone, by breeding him.
And once I had him bred, I cranked out a few more for trades, which turned out very well. Vanillite seemed to be in demand and got me the remaining Eevee evolves I didn’t have and even this guy.
Vanillite pays off
I actually probably didn’t need to trade for Silvally. I had the pokemon that evolves into him already. However, it is one of those evolutions that requires the pokemon the reach some level of “happiness” and I was tired of trying to make him happy, plus I had surplus Vanillites, so I got him in trade. And then the one I had evolved about 30 minutes later, because that is the way it works, right?
That left me with a few evolves that required a link trade while holding a specific item. The Porygon evolutions require two such trades, but the game just hands you a Porygon and the items if you know where to go, so it was just a matter of my daughter cooperating with her 3DS.
More time consuming was getting Scyther to evolve into Scizor.
Scyther to Scizor
Scyther is supposed to be a somewhat rare find in a wild, but I already had him. To evolve him requires a link trade with him holding an item called the metal coat. The game doesn’t just hand you one of those. You can buy one with points earned by fighting on the battle tree, but that doesn’t thrill me. Or you can find one in the wild on Magnemites. But you can’t just defeat them, you either have to catch them and take the item or have a move that steals the item. Also, the item is rare on them, so you could be a while finding one.
I decided to Google for the optimum path on that and came up with the info that Magnemites spawn on about half of the encounters in the tall grass off to the side of the Training School on Route 1. So that meant a ready supply of targets. The other tidbit I found was that if you hunt with an Exeggutor as your lead, it has the innate ability Frisk which tells you if a pokemon is holding an item. I had one of those as well, so I had him train the skill Thief, which steals an item as part of the attack, and went hunting. It took a while, but I finally got the metal coat. I decided to get a second, then gave up after a bit because they do seem to be rare. I’ll get one another time if I need it.
That just left me with one of the island guardians, Tapu Fini, who lives on Poni Island. The only problem was that I accidentally defeated him on my first attempt, and once he faints he won’t respawn automatically.
To get him back you have to go back and defeat the Eilte Four of the newly constituted Alola Pokeleague. That wasn’t going to be too tough, since I had done it before and, with all of this running around leveling up pokemon and such, most of my original team was past level 80 while the Elite Four pokemon are all low to mid 60. In an interesting twist, once you defeat the Elite Four you don’t face the old champion, as in past Pokemon titles, but rather you are the champion… you won the spot to finish the main story line… so instead you have to face a challenger in the form of one of the NPCs you met along the way. I drew Hau, my friend/rival from the main story and defeated him.
That got Tapu Fini to spawn and, this time using a bit more care, I was able to capture him. That gave me all the island guardians.
The Tapu Family Collected
That also gave me all the pokemon for the island Pokedexes.
Gold Crowns mean Complete Across the Board
However, there was a catch. While all four island Pokedexes were complete, the total percentage sat at 97%.
Almost complete…
As it turns out, there is a post Elite Four story line that I had not done yet that involves catching several special pokemon, ultra beasts. So I have that to do still. We shall see if that gets me to 100%, finishes off the Alola Pokedex at last, and opens up the horror of the full National Pokedex.
Along the way, as I was doing this, the game did wish me a happy birthday.
Pokemon Remembers
That actually surprised me as I don’t generally use my real birthday online. I tend to put my late grandfather’s birthday (though with my year so they don’t think I am 101), but apparently in a moment of weakness I shared my real birthday with Nintendo. While I was surprised, it was a nice little surprise. It was certainly better than all these AARP ads I suddenly started getting on Facebook.
Anyway, now for the ultra beasts.
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