Since Pokémon was released 30 years ago, there's been over 1000 different species released on countless games on many different consoles.
My aim now is to create a complete Pokédex in HOME, and try to not go bankrupt irl in the process. While 90% of pokémon are easy to obtain, the remaining 10% are a nightmare (looking at you, mythicals). This is a huge challenge that I've been wanting to attempt for a long time.
In this thread I will be documenting my progress. I expect this to last months if not years, I'll update this sparingly when I make new advances and explain how I obtain the rarer Pokémon.
First off, my ruleset. Everyone has their own, and this is what I will be satisfied with:
1. Living Dex: I need one copy of every species.
2. Form Dex: I need one copy of every form. This means I need 4 deoxys, 63 alcremies, all the regional variants (alolan, hisuian, etc), and all gender variants.
3. All pokémon in the dex need to have my Original Trainer (OT) name (Èlia), if it's possible (some mythicals were only distributed with a given OT).
4. I cannot use Pokémon Go to get any pokémon, except for Roaming form Gimmighoul (which is the only way to obtain it).
5. The pokéball in which I catch them doesn't matter, but I'll try to use regular pokéballs.
Pokémon fitting these rules will be counted as part of my Living Form Dex.
As a second step, I will also be working towards an Origin Dex. This one has a few extra rules:
1. Pokémon need to be caught in the region they were first introduced. This means that for example, Pikachu must come from Kanto (which can be either the original RBY, the remakes FR/LG, or Let's go Pikachu), Pichu must come from Johto (either GSC or HGSS), and Alolan Raichu from Alola (either SM or USUM).
2. Some regions are equivalent, like Hisui and Sinnoh, or Kalos and Lumiose. These are interchangeable and both are valid.
3. If I have to choose between my OT + wrong region and random OT + right region, I'll choose my OT.
As of today, with the Pokémon Legends Z-A DLC about to be released next week, there are 1025 species and 1431 forms. There are many different sites to keep track of my progress, but I'll be using this one because the proposed organization in boxes is the one I like the most.
Also, as a final addition, Pokémon HOME gives you various shiny Pokémon for completing the living dexes in each Switch game. I will also be aiming for that even if it means catching a bunch of duplicated pokémon.
With all the rules set, let's begin! You'll never see these boxes as empty as they are now!
I'll start with Pokémon Sword (gen 8). It was the first Pokémon game I bought as an adult, and the first time I actually completed a Pokédex.
After looking at it, a bunch of my mons didn't have my OT, essentially the Shield exclusives. I bred the ones that I could, but there are still some that I'll have to get via playing Shield. These are:
- Appletun - Dracovish: I know I can technically get it, but its fossils are much more common in Shield - Zamazenta - Eternatus: for some reason I traded mine with someone else's
There are also a few others I won't be including in the dex yet: Cofagrigus, Persian and Weavile. The first two you can't get in Sword with your OT, and the latter I had only in shiny form, and I can't be bothered to look for a razor claw when I know I have it in my sinnoh game.
I removed these from the main boxes and put them on a special box which you can see at the end of the video. I also added the two GMax pokémon I have so far (Charmander and Sandaconda), as I'll need to get the rest eventually.
Also, in this game I also have a bunch of rare Pokémon I got from events over the years. This includes Victini, the shiny dogs, and all the Pikachu Cap variants except for the World Champion. I'll be moving all these to Home since I need them as well.
All in all, after moving everything from Sword to Home, my progress is:
Origin: 92/1431 Form: 405/1431
That means, 92 pokémon with the correct origin (Galar), 405 pokémon (including forms) added to the dex, out of a total of 1431.
I'll need to revisit Galar for a bunch of things:
- Catching the Shield exclusives that can't be bred (Appletun, Dracovish, Zamazenta, Eternatus). - Getting all the GMax forms. - Playing the DLC and catching everything I'm missing from there: Galarian Slowpoke, the Galarian Bird Trio, Urshifu, the two new Regis, Zarude, and Calyrex & the horses. - Complete the two DLC dexes to get a shiny Keldeo as a reward. - Getting the remaining forms for Indeedee, Toxtricity and Polteageist - Enduring the grind and getting all SIXTY THREE Alcremie forms. I'm not looking forward to this, lol.
For now though, I'll move to other games I already have completed.
It's now turn for Brilliant Diamond, the Sinnoh remake! I also completed a living dex in this game when it was released back in 2021. However, when looking at it now I found something unexpected...
When the game was released, there was a glitch that allowed cloning. It was patched shortly after, and their solution also made cloned pokémon incompatible with Home. I understand this, but I also did clone a LOT of pokémon (I have boxes full of mews and ho-ohs and giratinas) that will now stay in cloned jail forever :(
Moreover, some of the normal pokémon in my living dex were also cloned apparently, which is annoying as I'd have to re-do part of my dex.
In any case, here is my Sinnoh Living Dex. There are some missing spots, mostly for pokémon that I had cloned and can't be bothered to breed because they're not from gen 4 so I'll get them another way eventually. Pokémon that I am actually missing are all legendaries/mythicals:
There's also a bunch more that I have with a wrong OT. I won't be counting those for my dex, but again I won't bother breeding them because they are not from Sinnoh.
For Palkia and for the three Sinnoh mythicals, I'll be getting them from Legends Arceus.
And then there is Spinda. This one is legit, but due to a bug in its spots, it can't be brought to Home from here, it has to be brought from ORAS or another 3DS game. Great job ILCA.
Finally, it looks like I also caught all the Unowns, which is pretty cool!
After adding all of them to Home, here's the current progress:
Origin: 195/1431 Form: 740/1431
I'm halfway done with the form dex already! That's so cool to see
There were a bunch of cool rare pokémon that I was able to add here:
- Mew: Gift for having Let's Go Pikachu save data - Jirachi: Gift for having Sword/Shield save data - Phione/Manaphy: I got the distribution they offered shortly after game release - All legendaries from gens 1-4: They were obtainable late game in Ramanas Park, though they required a lot of grinding
Here is everything I'm missing from Sinnoh:
- Palkia, Shaymin, Darkrai and Arceus. This includes two variants for Shaymin - All 31 gender variants (they really went wild with this one) - Two Burmy/Wormadam forms - The blue Shellos/Gastrodon forms - All 5 Rotom forms
I'll revisit these games at some point to finish all that, but for now, let's say goodbye to Sinnoh!
Moving on to the third and last game where I already had a completed Living Dex: Pokémon Scarlet!
Similarly to Sword, I don't own the DLC for this one, but I caught the 400 pokémon of the base game dex, plus Walking Wake and Iron Leaves, which were distributed a couple years ago.
I have all of them with my OT except for the ones that can't be bred: Miraidon and the seven future paradox pokémon. Also, I traded my Koraidon to a friend but I'll recover it shortly.
I caught a bunch of shinies as well, it was pretty easy in this game with the outbreak mechanic. I was also lucky enough to get codes for the recent distribution for shiny Miraidon/Koraidon! (Fun fact: this distribution made me start using Home, which led me to want to start doing this challenge!). That event was a huge mess with codes running out on the first day but I had no issue at the two stores I went.
I've added all of that to the tracker and I'm sitting at:
Origin: 294/1431 Form: 886/1431
Pretty good! I will need to revisit Paldea for a bunch of things:
- Play the DLC and get the new pokémon - Play Violet and catch the future paradox and miraidon - Catch all the alt forms: Female Oinkologne, 3-Maushold, all four Squawkabilly, all three Tatsugiri, 3-segment Dudunsparce, and Water Tauros
Let's jump back to the past now: we are going back to the pre-Switch era!
There are certain Pokémon that can't yet be obtained in the switch, and of course if I want an Origin dex, many regions are only present in the old games.
Fortunately, I have an amazing gf with a pirated 2DS which can play any game from gens 1-7 for free, just by downloading the ROM! It can even trigger events that are long gone, and it has the Pokémon Bank and Poketransporter that allow to send everything to Home.
This console is the primary reason why I considered starting this challenge at all, as I don't think even a living dex would be possible for many years otherwise. So, let's start playing some of the older games! Thank you @kitten you're the best
Sapphire was my very first Pokémon game back in 2003, so it holds a very special place in my heart. I'd been wanting to play the remakes for a while, and this has given me the perfect excuse to do so!
After about a week or so, I've beaten the game and caught pretty much every Hoenn pokémon I can, including gender variants. I'm only missing the following:
- Ruby exclusives: the Shiftry line, Mawile, Minun, Illumise, Zangoose, Solrock, Latios and Groudon - Starter pre-evolutions: I didn't get those as it will be easier to reset when starting Ruby - Jirachi: it's unavailable without an event in ORAS, but I have a plan to get it 100% legal. Stay tuned (literally)!
The most annoying part was actually waiting for Ditto. It only appears in the mirage islands which rotate every day. After a few days I installed a tool which told me when it would spawn, and good thing I did because I'd have had to wait over a month! So after changing the date I was able to get it and breed everything.
Also I need to talk about the tragedy of the egg hatching path. In Emerald there was an incredibly long line you could bike on, right in front of the daycare. It went from Verdanturf to the river east of Mauville. Since the remakes have changed the design of Mauvile, that line is cut in half and hatching eggs is much more annoying. All because 3d effects were all the rage back in 2015
Here's the video with all the mons in the 2DS game! If you look at it, you'll see many unevolved pokémon. I've transfered them like that because it's way easier to level up pokémon on the switch, with exp candies. So after evolving all of them, I am only missing a few:
- Milotic: I didn't want to farm pokéblocks as that requires waiting for berries. I'll evolve it in the Switch which requires trading it with an item - Huntail/Gorebyss: These also require trading to evolve. Their held items are really annoying to get as they appear in Mirage islands and they're not even guaranteed. So I did the same trick for Ditto to get the items, but now I realized I can't transfer items to Home, so I'll have to get the items again in the Switch. Oopsie!
After moving them to Home and evolving them, here's the number update:
Origin: 426/1431 Form: 906/1431
There's a few cool pokémon that I've added in this playthrough:
- Four Deoxys! Technically, this requires playing the entire story four times. I really didn't want to do this, so I used the Checkpoint app to create a save state right before fighting Deoxys and then caught it four times. A bit cheaty, but I'll allow it. Maybe in the future I play gen 3 and get it through an event there
- Spinda: This pokémon can only be moved to Home via Bank, and this is the newest Hoenn game where it appears.
Quick update! I'm with a friend who lent me her switch, so I was able to evolve Feebas (twice, as Milotic has a gender difference) and Clamperl (also twice). So this puts me at:
There is one Pokémon that is much harder to get than any other. In fact, it's the only one I can't get at all - unless I hack my switch by soldering a chip, which I will not do.
This pokémon is Zarude. It has two forms - normal and Dada - and it was introduced in Sword and Shield. The only way to get it from the Galar region were a few events, all from 2020-21:
a) By subscribing to GF's newsletter at a given time. However it looks like there was a bug and most people didn't even get it b) By entering a code distributed in physical stores (like GAME) which didn't even come to Spain c) By going to the cinema to watch a Pokémon film
Of course, these are all impossible to do for me now, so my only chance is to have someone trade it to me. Oh, and in all cases, the OT is "Jungle", so it's not possible to get this pokémon with your own OT.
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