Pokemon

Making a Living Dex: Part 6 - Odds and Ends

Part 6 takes us on the side quest that was Pokémon GO, Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu and grabbing some non-required forms for the Living Dex.

Oct 11, 2021 • 9 min read

In this episode, we'll look at the bits and bobs that didn't properly fit into the previous posts such as Pokémon GO, Pokémon Let's Go, various forms and any other minutia long the way.

Pokémon GO

A great way to get some mythicals but man, that G.

A Baltoy from Pokemon GO viewed in Pokémon Home - with the ugly G pointed out.

Pokémon from Generation Six onward have an Origin Mark which is a little symbol denoting the origin game. Pokémon from Pokémon GO get a "G" but also this "G" shows up against the Pokémon and the Pokémon's box in Pokémon Home - which I find is an ugly mark. Let me explain with pictures.

Pokémon GO origin mark visible in Pokémon Home.

Looking at the first image, Baltoy in the box called "HOME 91" and it's little picture has the "G" against it. Then in the second image when we zoom out and look at the collection of boxes the "G" still shows as there is at least one Pokémon in the box from Pokemon GO. No other origin marks are shown this way.

I want to have a tidy and consistent look across my whole collection without having a "G" appear over a Pokémon or box. Also the "G" looks nothing like any of the other origin marks - it's just plain ugly. This mark has stopped me from using Pokémon GO for any of the project - except for two which only come from Pokémon GO: Meltan and Melmetal.

Meltan and Melmetal

this is probably my new favorite gif from pokemon

This is somewhat how it felt catching all those Meltan.

Let me explain first how to get Meltan to spawn in Pokémon GO:

Transfer any Pokémon from Pokémon GO to Pokémon Let's Go. This gives you a Mystery Box in Pokémon GO.
Open the Mystery Box in Pokemon GO. This causes Meltan to spawn for an hour (previously 30 minutes). One Meltan will spawn perhaps every minute or so.
Once the hour is up, you need to wait 3 more days. At the end of the 3 days, you must transfer a Pokémon from GO to either Let's Go or Home to open the Mystery Box again.

For Melmetal you need to evolve Meltan. To evolve a Pokémon in GO you need that specific Pokemon's candy. Originally main ways to get candy were:

Catch the Pokémon
Transfer the Pokémon (removes Pokémon in return for one candy)

But since launch this has expanded, and you can read about the numerous other ways to get candy here.

For Meltan to evolve, it needs 400 candy. Let's look at the ideal situation. Let's say it's 3 candy per Meltan caught and 1 for the transfer. I then need 100 Meltan. 60 Meltan per hour meaning I need to open the box twice. As the box takes 3 days to open another time, I just need to open the box, catch, wait 3 days, catch. Doesn't sound too bad.

While the conditions have favourably changed since Meltans official launch, such as more Mystery Box time, this took a longer than planned and here's why:

The Meltan didn't always spawn once per minute
Some Meltan were high CP and, as such, difficult to catch. I was very rusty on the ball spinning catches and some took a couple of minutes to catch
I ran out of Pokéballs. Hundreds of failed flings ran me dry of balls and berries. I spent $16.99NZD to get 1,200 PokéCoins to buy some balls as it would've taken me a long time to run through enough PokéStops to restock
I forgot to reopen at the 3 day mark, which dragged it out

All in all it took me about a week and a half to get enough candy for a Melmetal:

Were I playing when Meltan launched in late 2018, I could've taken advantage of the special research events to get more candy too.

Pokémon GO trainer card (username removed).

On another note, after moving Melmetal from GO to Let's Go Pikachu, I realised it's kinda... Big:

Melmetal and Meltan in GO Park in Let's Go Pikachu.

"Washing" Pokémon GO Pokémon

Moving Pokémon GO Pokémon through Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee prevents the big "G" from staining Pokémon Home. Though the Pokémon will still have the "G" displayed when looking at their stats. We'll see what that means using Meltan imported via Let's Go Pikachu as example:

Viewing Meltan at different heights in Pokémon Home.

The first image shows Meltan's summary, and we're expecting the "G". The second image shows the view of the box Meltan is in, and we can already see there is no "G" against the icon. The third image shows the box Meltan is in, and there is no "G" here either.

Talking about Let's Go Pikachu, it's a Gen 7 game but was skipped over in the Gen 7 post. Let's Go and see what my playthrough there was about.

Let's Go Pikachu

The Nintendo Switch in my household is the special edition Let's Go Pikachu Switch from launch. A cute edition which comes with the Powerball controller containing a Mew. (This Mew though isn't mine, it belongs to my better half).

While I didn't need any Pokémon from it, I still wanted to do a run as:

The story is slightly tweaked from the regular Generation One games
I own this and I might as well tick off this Pokémon game too
Meltan and Melmetal could be washed once I got to Go Park in Fuchsia City

It wasn't the game for me. Perhaps it's because it's stored on the Switch it came with, but man it was slow. Slow to load, slow to battle, it just felt sluggish. Future edit: Hello reader, a while after this project I bought a fast microSD card for my Switch and moved the game on there. The game was snappy and responsive as expected. Either the on board Switch storage is really slow, or my Switch has a dud.

The nostalgia trip was fun and the graphics are clean but man, it was slow. On the other hand, I did enjoy:

Pikachu's signature moves such as Zippy Zap, Splishy Splash or, Pika Papow.
HMs, while existing, were taken care of outside of move pools via special Pikachu field actions. Very cute throwbacks too for Fly and Surf as in the original intro video for Pokémon Yellow, Pikachu is floating with a balloon and surfing on a surfboard, which is roughly how they work in this game.
Jessie and James from Team Rocket as they were in Yellow.
Getting Pokéballs from trainers. You got 2 Great Balls

All in all, I'm glad I went through it, but I wouldn't do it again anytime soon.

Pokémon Crystal

Let's move up a generation, from Kanto to Johto. I bought on Virtual Console Crystal on a Friday (16/07/2021) and finished it the next day. Generation 2 remains my favourite nostalgic generation. The incredible innovations built upon what existed and have persisted through to modern Pokémon (unlike other features...), making this a joyful romp with the added bonus of the Crystal content I missed out on as a kid.

Crystal wasn't just for fun, it was for the mythical Pokémon Celebi. The Virtual Console version gave the previously event only GS Ball to players who have beaten the Pokémon League, allowing me to pay $17NZD, and a playthrough, for a mythical.

Celebi battle and the entry afterwards in Pokémon Home.

I also love the little Game Boy Origin Mark that comes with the Virtual Console titles.

Oh, I also brought in everyone's first shiny: the red Gyarados from the Lake of Rage.

Forms

The programming term "first class citizen" can apply for the approach I took with regional Pokémon forms. I had the same dedication to grabbing the regional forms as I did regular forms. This is why, in my head, I felt I had finished the Living Dex project (again, minus 16 mythicals) once I had my Galarian Ponyta and Rapidash, not the Regidrago I had captured minutes prior.

I've said it before but I initially didn't enjoy forms. Due to where I was in life, Pokémon was only in my periphery and I saw it as another gimmick - perhaps even as another one that will be forgotten by the next game. Though, over time and during this project, I've come to really like regional forms as they flesh out the Pokémon world building through ecological means. Whether it's through new typing, new evolutions, or just the new looks I feel they bring a fun depth to lore and battles. I also find them easier to remember, perhaps because I already have an anchor based on the original form.

Forms have existed long before Generation 7. Skim through the Serebii page and you'll see there are a lot. We have all sorts of ways forms can occur some examples include:

Learning a specific move. E.g. Keldeo
Being caught in different places in the same game. E.g. Gastrodon
Being different genders. E.g. Pikachu
Holding different items. E.g. Arceus
Getting different haircuts. E.g. Furfrou

But there are many more. The ones I'm most interested in are those that can be stored in Pokémon Home. For instance, Wishiwashi changes form only in battle and as such only its original form can exist outside of battle, including in Pokémon Home. I felt getting all these tangible forms is too much, so I decided to cherry pick which I want. Perhaps over time I'll think of adding more, but for now, I've got the following non-regional forms.

Unown

An early (Generation 2) entry in the forms list. Originally found in the Ruins of Alph, Unown represents the 26 Latin alphabet (or in other words, the English alphabet). There's minorly interesting lore around them and they're pretty weak, so really they're only here for the interesting forms - which in generation 3 picked up two new forms for ! and ?. I actually used my Platinum game to grab them, since I already had most of them hanging around in a box.

Gigantamax

While I said I wasn't interested in forms you couldn't keep in Pokemon Home, I feel Gigantamax is close enough. Only a few Pokémon can Gigantamax and they get a special little X symbol against them for it. I'm unsure whether they'll be able to use this in later games, but for now I'm happy to keep them in the Living Dex project.