Pokémon Pokemon Master Dex Challenge

[Holla]

I've decided to take on the Master Dex challenge so I figured I'd make a discussion about it here. Long story short in case you didn't know the Master Dex challenge is basically achieving one of every single Pokemon (like a living dex), where their status screen says that they were caught in their original region. So Bulbasaur from Kanto, Feebas from Hoenn etc.

Here's an image of the rules as of gen 7. Gen 8 rules are basically the same but obviously include Pokemon up to number 898 905 (thanks to the release of Legends Arceus).

Spoiler

I'm going a little extra hardcore by only counting Pokemon obtained in their original Generation as well so no use of remakes basically. So my Hoenn Pokemon will be missing the gen 6 pentagon and Kanto/Johto Pokemon will have the little Gameboy icon from Virtual Console.

I also plan on going for all mythicals (English versions only) which is optional in the rules but I want to go all the way with this. - Edit: I thankfully have all mythicals from their proper regions now. I am missing Hoopa in its Unbound form still but that’s an odd one anyways that I may or may not end up trying to get in the end.

I will be ignoring one rule though which is having 1 year to complete the challenge. First of all I already have a living dex from their original gens/region for gens 6-8. Secondly, I work full time so I only have time here and there to work on this, so yeah.

Feel free to comment your thoughts on me doing this or ask any questions you have. Yes, I know I'm rather crazy haha. Also I'd love to hear if anyone else has/is attempting some form of this challenge. I'll try to post in here with updates on my progress for those interested in hearing about my crazy journey.

Edit: For those that don't want to read through my posts here's a simplified summary of my progress so far:

• Kanto (Gen 1): Complete! - Nov 2021
• Johto (Gen 2): Complete! - Jan 2022
• Hoenn (Gen 3): Complete - April 2022
• Sinnoh (Gen 4): Complete - May 2022
• Unova (Gen 5): Complete - July 2022
• Kalos (Gen 6): Mostly previously complete, but had a couple to get. Completed April 2022
• Alola (Gen 7): Previously complete but officially confirmed April 2022
• Galar (Gen 8): Previously complete but officially confirmed April 2022
• Legends Arceus: Complete - July 2022

 

[Holla]

So far I officially have #1-150 caught in gen 1 after spending several hours playing Red, Blue and Yellow on virtual console.

#151 Mew is a tricky one as only a very small group of people in Japan and Europe even got the Mew event for Virtual console. For this I will need to make use of some gen 1 glitches. I won't be acquiring any other Pokemon via glitches or hacks but I don't have much of a choice if I want a gen 1 Mew unfortunately.

I won't go too in depth of the glitches other than I have to start a new game with my trainer name set to GF. Then use the missingno glitch to change my Trainer ID number to 22796 followed by using it to get Mew itself.

Basically only Mew with the Trainer name/ID number of GF and 22796 are transferable through Bank.

 

[Holla]

Got a bit of a lead on gen 5 mythicals which is good, and possibly gen 4 as well. I can tell gen 3 mythicals are going to be a pain unless I find a real generous person. Gen 6 as I mentioned before I already have all of but they were redeemed in Hoenn not Kalos so I'll need to trade for different ones. I'm sure I'll work something out... eventually XD

Thankfully I've kept up on gen 7 and 8 mythicals so I'm good there. I also have gen 1 and 2 pretty much figured out just a matter of finding the time to get them.

 

[Holla]

I am officially done gen one now that I've got a Mew from VC. Took me around 6 hours to get far enough into the game and pull off the various glitches needed.

Spoiler

I’ve also been trading around and have gotten most mythicals from their original gen and region. All that’s left of the mythicals are Hoopa and Diancie. I have them but as I said earlier they are from Hoenn and not Kalos unfortunately.

 

[Holla]

Just a small update but I've been able to make some trades thanks to Reddit. So now I have all mythicals from their original region/gen other than Diancie which I believe to have a trade for it in process. Soon I'll be able to solely focus on just playing the games as normal and catching what I can on my own.

 

[Holla]

Small update. I have all mythicals from their proper gens/regions now. Today I will finally be starting on gen 2. Breaking out my 3DS and VC copies of Gold, Silver and Crystal.

 

[Libra]

Looking forward to seeing an update soon. I love reading about this challenge !

 

[Holla]

Looking forward to seeing an update soon. I love reading about this challenge !

Thanks! I suppose this is a perfect time for a small update.

I have completed the first 20 Johto Pokemon from gen 2 so far. I traded over the other starters from Gold and Silver to Crystal (Crystal is my main save) and bred them in order to get their evolutions. I also got to headbutt some trees for Spinarak and Ledyba. I actually kinda like the headbutt mechanic. Especially since sometimes Pokemon will be asleep if it's currently the time of day they aren't normally awake (like HootHoot during the day).

I also got to breed the baby Pokemon (man breeding in gen 2 in so slow haha) but it wasn't too bad. The most tedious part so far was getting Togetic and Crobat as they are both friendship evolutions. I used a combination of leveling up and using items (namely X Speeds) to help increase their friendship faster.

I will pickup the challenge again with Mareep in likely a couple weeks. I've been busy with the holidays plus I'd like to dedicate some time to the current TBT events.

 

[Wiimfiuser]

damn, good luck

 

[Holla]

damn, good luck

Thanks!

New update. I had some time to work on gen 2 again now that Christmas is over but I still have some time off from work.

I have up to Yanma complete now. The latest batch wasn’t too difficult. I had to win the Bug contest a couple of times in order to get Sun stones for both Bellossom and Sunflora. I also used my King’s Rock for Politoed so I’ll have to figure out a way to get a second one later for Slowking.

One tripping point I did have actually was Sudowoodo as my main completed save on Crystal had defeated but not caught the only Sudowoodo you get in the whole game. Not a big deal as I needed to play through a fair bit of Silver in order to exclusives that I can’t get in Crystal anyways. So I jumped in and played a couple of hours of Silver. I somehow managed to beat Whitney in one go (which has never happened to me before) and once you beat her you are able to battle Sudowoodo. So I completed that Pokemon and got a head start on my Pokemon Silver save at the same time. I also have Gold on my secondary console in order to do the trade evolutions like for Politoed for example.

Getting close to Unown now and I plan on getting all the letters/forms so that will take a bit of time to do. For the ! And ? forms I’ll probably get those in SoulSilver as they weren’t added until gen 3 and if I get them in SoulSilver they will at least be from the Johto region on their status page.

 

[Holla]

I got in some more time to work on gen 2 before my holidays ended. Got the complete collection of Unown without too much trouble (sans ? and ! but I'll get those from SoulSilver at some point as they aren't available in gen 2). I now have up until Piloswine complete (#221 of 251). Making good progress.

Only thing of note from the latest batch was that I needed a second Metal Coat in order to get Scizor. I found out there's actually an in game trade in Crystal where the Pokemon you get (Magneton) is holding one so I opted for that instead of using thief on hundreds of Magnemite or Onix. I also already had a Scyther from catching one during the bug catching contest back when I was getting sun stones so that was a nice little bonus.

 

[Holla]

Not much of an update today other who thought it was a good idea to make Remoraid exclusive to Gold and Silver as well as needing the Super Rod to catch it!? Normally I wouldn’t mind but in gen 2 you have to beat the main game (8 Johto gyms and Pokémon league) in order to get said rod as it’s located in the Kanto postgame.

Anyways I’ve basically just been storming my way further through Silver in order to get the super rod in order to get Remoraid. I’ll get there eventually.

 

[Lancelot]

GOOD LUCK HOLLA

 

[porkpie28]

Good luck

 

[Holla]

Thanks for the luck everyone!

I made some good progress lately. Beat the league in Silver and got Remoraid. Also worked on getting several more including some baby Pokemon via breeding (ugh gen 2 breeding is so slow I’m glad I’m done with it now). I also had one last friendship evolution with Blissey.

Currently I just have the 5 legendaries and the Larvitar line left. I have already caught 3 Larvitar so it’s just a grind to get them evolved. Yay for level 55 for Tyranitar oof.

The end is in sight for gen 2.

 

[Holla]

Just a small update but I’m down to just Entei and Ho-Oh left for gen 2.

I got lucky with Raikou as I happened to stumble upon it while trying to catch Pokemon from earlier in this challenge so I was able to use the Pokédex to track it. To save a lot of trouble I used my Master Ball on it.

Lugia and Suicune were fairly straightforward. Suicune I just got it to low health and put it to sleep and eventually caught it in a Ultra Ball. Lugia was a bit annoying as it loved to spam recover. I ended up poisoning it so it’s health would continuously drop between recovers so I was free to just spam Ultra Balls.

Entei is proving the most troublesome as I have no idea where it is so I’ve been running around with a Pokemon under level 40 as my lead while using repels hoping I run into it sooner than later. I did trade my Master Ball from my Silver save over to use on it so it’ll be easy to get once I find it. Ho-Oh will be tackled last as the beast trio is required in order to battle it.

Once I complete gen 2 the plan is to do a play through of Emerald as I don’t have a completed save on it at the moment. I will likely catch a lot of things as I play to ease what I need to backtrack for later.

 

[Holla]

Ok overdue for an update so bare with me haha.

I officially finished gen 2 a few days ago. As a bonus I decided to take on Red in my Crystal save since my main team were decent levels after all the grinding I did to raise Pokemon to evolve for this challenge. In the spoiler below you will find pictures of me doing this along with my final team.

Spoiler

I’ve since moved on to gen 3. It’s a real treat for me as Emerald was my first Pokemon game and I’m loving it again. I even replaced the dead battery in my cart so I could grow berries and get different tides for Shoal Cave. I’ve been playing it a ton and am already at 6 badges. I’ve caught a few Pokemon here and there but only really one of note and that’s Feebas. I ended up fishing roughly 300 times on route 119 before I found one. As it can only appear on 6 random water tiles on that route and there’s easily 400+ water tiles on said route so not too shabby really. I also grew lots of blue berries over the weekend to make enough good Pokeblocks to max out its beauty as that’s the only way to evolve it in gen 3. The berry blending game was very nostalgic for me so I throughly enjoyed it. You will find pictures in the spoiler below of me finding a Feebas and it’s location.

Spoiler

For now I’ll continue on playing through Emerald and won’t officially start on my gen 3 Master Dex until I complete the game.

 

[Holla]

Time for another update!

I have now finished Emerald and have started on my Hoenn Master Dex. I’m sure how transferring from gen 3 to Home is going is probably a question you might have. Especially the limited transferring for gen 3 to 4. As you can only transfer a max of 6 Pokemon once every 24 hours to a gen 4 game. This would have been a bit of a problem, but thankfully I currently have 3 gen 4 games that have the Pal Park unlocked. So I can transfer up to 18 Pokemon a day. Which I have done one full 18 transfer so far. I will probably keep my Hoenn Pokemon in gen 4 until I have them all to move up to gen 5 as the gen 4 to 5 transfer isn’t limited to a once per day thing. Not looking forward to playing that mini game tons of times but alas. After that it’ll be a straight forward transfer from gen 5 to Bank and then finally to Home.

 

[Holla]

I haven't made an update on this challenge in a while. So here's a quick one for you.

I've currently put this challenge on hold since Legends Arceus had released and I also went on vacation for 2 weeks. I am now back and once I finish Arceus I will continue working on gen 3 of this challenge.

 

[Holla]

I have finally finished Legends Arceus. In order to cover both forms of Enamorus I'll have to play it again at some point, but for now I've otherwise gotten all the new Pokemon and new Pokemon forms.

I'll take a look at where I left off in Emerald today and continue on with working on generation 3.