Egg moves have been a long-standing mechanic of Pokemon, being introduced in Gen 2. For the most part, they exist to expand a Pokemon's flavor without bloating their Level-Up movepool. Since they tend to be weird amalgamations of moves, I've always thought it would be a fun challenge concept to limit Pokemon to only their egg moves. That is, until I thought about how insanely awful it would actually be in practice. Eggs hatch at Level 5 or 1 depending on the game, so Pokemon would have to be trained up from minimum Level. And if I wanted to get more egg moves on a Pokemon, I would need to hatch a new egg and then raise that up yet again from minimum level. Furthermore, prior to Gen 6, egg moves are littered with compatibility issues since only the father could pass them. All in all, it added up to a very tedious run.
Enter Sword and Shield. They brought a litany of quality of life improvements with them, like ease of access to name-changing and move modification, as well as portable boxes. One change that has comparatively gone under the radar, though, is the ability to pass egg moves in the daycare. For those unaware, if you have two Pokemon of the same species (gender does not matter) in the daycare, they will pass any egg moves they have to each other provided there are empty moveslots. This means that egg moves are actually feasible to obtain during the main story. So since this is finally a viable run concept, it's time to play Pokemon Sword with only egg moves!
The rules, formally laid out:
Picking a Starter
Let's get started. The first choice is the starter. At a glance:
Sobble is clearly pretty awful, so the choice is between Grookey and Scorbunny. While Scorbunny's fast, strong High Jump Kick and Super Fang are very nice, they're obtained late (or rather, the parents learn these moves at high levels only). Grookey, while being arguably worse at endgame, blooms much earlier with Leech Seed, a set-up move in Growth, and an okay damaging move in Strength, all obtainable roughly around the first gym. So I'll go with it. Since Ditto is not obtainable for a long time, I need to make sure my Grookey is female. Thankfully I can check this before the cutscenes afterwards by going to the nickname screen, so it doesn't take too long.
Getting an Egg Move
The first battle with Hop is standard since I can't get any egg moves yet. Afterwards, though, the run can start. While a daycare isn't available yet, the “Brilliant Aura” mechanic still lets me obtain egg moves now. Pokemon on the overworld have a small chance of having this aura around them, which guarantees them at least 2 max IVs and a random egg move. But, consider that most Pokemon don't actually have that many damaging egg moves, and a problem quickly emerges – BA Pokemon are pretty unlikely to even be able to damage Pokemon for me. Factoring that in, my ideal target is Wooloo. It's a common encounter and has a relatively high chance of having a STAB Stomp, at 1/3 odds. Though, since I don't have to commit to chaining a particular Pokemon, I'll still catch any BA Pokemon I see. After an unlucky 20 minutes of circling around Route 1, I finally encounter a BA Wooloo. My luck turns around when I realize my first BA Pokemon is the very Stomp Wooloo I wanted. It even has Fluffy, though this isn't too important. While a more versatile team would be appreciated right now, this process is frankly awful and I have no desire to do it again unless absolutely necessary.
Route 2
Before advancing, I catch future team members Skwovet and Rookidee. While I can't use them yet, there's no reason they and Grookey shouldn't still be getting EXP. I also buy a bunch of Oran Berries from the Wedgehurst berry shop. Moving on to Route 2, Stomp is better than the usual Tackle a Wooloo would have at this point, so things progress smoothly and Wooloo reaches Level 8. After some cutscenes at Magnolia's lab, I can do the first boss fight of this run.
Hop (Route 2)
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...not that it will be a very interesting one, since my options are literally: Stomp. And Stomp I do. This fight actually wouldn't be winnable with my current level if Hop had smart AI, since Sobble easily wins if it just spams Water Gun. But since he just uses random moves, Wooloo just needs to get a bit lucky. His own Wooloo and Rookidee provide almost no resistance, so the fight is basically just Sobble.
(Team: Wooloo/___/___)
(I thought these post-battle team summaries would be nice to quickly visualize how taxing a battle was, especially since team-matching can be easy to forget which shrinks my team. Text color denotes health remaining, struckthrough names fainted, and “___” are slots I could have used but didn't need.)
The Wild Area
With that out of the way, this run can really start as I access the Wild Area. For whatever reason, there's a fully functional daycare here, even though the one on Route 5 is clearly what they intend for you to use for breeding. So now I can start getting a team going. While my options are still a bit limited, expanding my team past a Stomp Wooloo is much appreciated.
I have a pretty large catch list of Pokemon for now and in the future. The first thing I check out is a fixed Hoothoot raid that seems to always be there on the first day you start the game. I'm very disappointed to find that mine is a female, though, since I needed this to father a move for my Rookidee. While I can still find Hoothoots in the Wild Area, the raid catch is Level 20 which would put it only one level away from evolving into Noctowl. Oh well. I catch a normal Hoothoot at Level 15 instead. It's worth noting that Sword and Shield have an annoying mechanic where trying to catch a Pokemon higher-leveled than your lead drastically lowers the catch rate. This is unavoidable for catches in the Wild Area right now (all are at least Level 11), so catching this Hoothoot is quite annoying, especially since only Wooloo can weaken it. For future catches here, I send out Hoothoot after Wooloo has weakened them to throw balls. While not technically a violation of my rules as I've phrased them, I do consider this against the spirit of the run. But after how annoying this first of many catches was, I decide to keep my sanity instead. After Hoothoot, I also catch a Roselia, Oddish, Electrike, and Nuzleaf.
Now to start breeding. I use the unlimited move relearner to get a couple moves for this purpose: Defense Curl on Wooloo, and Rollout on Nuzleaf. I also delete all but one move on Grookey and Skwovet. I start my breeding with Roselia and Grookey, who will pass Worry Seed and Leech Seed to the offspring. If I was smart, I would have also relearned Growth on Roselia to pass that too, though it's not relevant right now. Hatching eggs isn't a terribly fast process right now, unfortunately, since I lack both a Bike and Flame Body. I mitigate the time it takes by double-tasking: exploring the Wild Area as I wait for eggs to hatch. I collect a Fire Stone, a Thunder Stone, Leftovers, and various sellables as I do this. Eventually my Grookey egg hatches, and I put it in the daycare with my trained Grookey to transfer moves over. After this, I use Wooloo and Nuzleaf to get two Skwovet eggs with Defense Curl and Rollout respectively, and have those offspring transfer their moves to my main Skwovet. Now that I've described it in full, I'll truncate this process a bit when describing it in the future (i.e. Wooloo passes Defense Curl to Skwovet > Wooloo passes Defense Curl to a Skwovet offspring, who then passes it to my main Skwovet).
With that done, I now have a Worry Seed/Leech Grookey and Defense Curl/Rollout Skwovet to add to my Stomp Wooloo. Rookidee will get moves eventually... I move on for now, but I keep Hoothoot and Oddish in my last two slots since they need to be trained up for moves. The Team Yell Grunts in Motostoke aren't any trouble, and so I go to another Hop battle.
Hop (Motostoke)
Hop doesn't update his team at all, really, but I've got several new toys to play with. Grookey leads and Leech Seeds his Wooloo, and then I swap to Skwovet. With Leech Seed and the Defense Curl I start with, it's almost invincible right now, so I get Rollout going. Wooloo is annoying as possible with Growls, using a whopping four of them, but Rollout gets so crazy that it still muscles through. Sobble is more threatening since it's special and I'm at -4 attack now, but Oran Berry with Cheek Pouch lets Skwovet tank it. I do have to start a second Rollout chain, though. Last is Rookidee, which is just as terrible as last time and goes down easily.
(Team: Grookey/Skwovet/___)
Route 3
Onto Route 3, where I can find my next Pokemon, Gossifleur! Wooloo can easily scout out Cotton Down with Stomp, which I want to avoid in favor of Regenerator. I catch a few and settle on the best one. Gossifleur's support movepool is amazing from egg moves, but it has one issue: it learns absolutely no attacking moves at all. Still, its incredible array of support moves is too good to ignore. Like Grookey, it gets Worry Seed and Leech Seed from Roselia, and it can also get Poison Powder and Stun Spore from Oddish.
One issue is that I don't have a free slot to put Gossifleur in. For now, I get rid of Rookidee, who's just along for the exp. It has the same Medium Slow exp curve the starters have, so it levels up quickly at these levels anyways and can afford a bit of a break. Now to progress. I always try to lead with Gossifleur, then swap to Skwovet after I've set up Leech Seed and maybe statused the opponent. With Leftovers, Leech Seed recovery, and Regenerator, Gossifleur rarely actually has lost health after a battle. Skwovet is also fairly low maintenance, since I just make sure it always has an Oran Berry for Cheek Pouch as they cost virtually nothing. While Wooloo is still on the team, I'm avoiding using it when possible since it has no long-term future.
This set-up goes off without too many hitches. One trainer's Pancham is an ass since I miss my initial Leech Seed and it then takes my team on a rollercoaster with Circle Throw, and I can't switch in safely with my zero Fighting resists and two Fighting weaknesses. Another fight, I end up in a bit of an embarassing predicament. When I set up Leech Seed with Gossifleur, I get Wrapped by a Sizzlipede and can't switch out. I have to slowly whittle it down with Leech Seed and Poison Powder. Amazingly, despite it having Ember as well, Gossifleur is victorious.
Near the end of Route 3, Grookey gets to Level 16 where it would evolve, but I hold it back. Remember that egg moves can only be passed among members of the same species – being part of the same evolutionary line does not count. So once it evolves into Thwackey, any new egg move offspring will need to be trained to Level 16 before I can pass the move onto my Thwackey. One other perk of holding Grookey back is that Pokemon get a 20% exp boost once they're past their evo level.
Galar Mine 1
Galar Mine 1 has a lot of Fighting types which Skwovet is awful at dealing with, so I generally use Wooloo for those with Gossifleur's help. Not that it's great for this either, but it's better than being outsped with a resisted Rollout! Soon into the mine Oddish gets to Level 18 and learns Sleep Powder, so I swap it out for Rookidee to get exp again. After a bit, I run into Bede.
Bede (Galar Mine 1)
I was a bit worried for this fight with my zero Psychic-resists, but Bede's team is too fragile for it to matter that much. With the Silk Scarf, Wooloo can 2HKO his entire team, but it only has enough health to survive Solosis's and Gothita's attacks. Hatenna finishes off Wooloo, and Skwovet gets back at it with three Rollouts.
(Team:Wooloo/Skwovet/___)
Catching on Route 4
While there's not a lot of new Pokemon available in Route 4, almost everything that is there is very important. First off is the adorable Yamper, who will be my next Pokemon. It was available back in Route 2, but without moves the only point in catching it there would be exp, which is unnecessary since it's at a fine level here. I also catch a Pikachu and Meowth, who are simple enough to find.
And then there's Eevee.
Eevee is a 1% overworld encounter on Route 4. Pretty bad, but fortunately it's overwhelmingly likely to be male for egg move passing. Eevee says damn the odds, though, and the first one I find after 15 minutes is a female. I consider catching it since I can breed a male with it, but since eggs are pretty slow to hatch without a bike, I decide it's probably quicker to just find another one. Oh, how wrong I was...after forty minutes I finally find another, and the worst part?
It's another female!
This time I learned from my mistake and just catch it. Hatching an egg might not be quick, but it's better than this shit.
Supercharging My Team
I have one more substantially easier Pokemon to find. When I go in the mine from the back, I can intercept the roaming Carkol, which I catch because it's the first Pokemon that can have Flame Body, an obvious winner with all the breeding I do! Before I do that, though, I prepare the Pokemon I caught. First, I trade the Meowth for a Kantonian Meowth in Turffield. In-game trades in this game often come with egg moves, and this Meowth has something very nice – Last Resort. I then use my Thunder Stone to evolve my Pikachu. This game also made it so that no Pokemon has a move locked to a prevo, as they simply get added to the next stage's relearn list. This is kind of stupid with Stone evos though, since every move from their initial stage, including those learned even up into the 50s, are available the instant they evolve. In this case, it lets me teach Raichu Discharge immediately. I also use a Leaf Stone on my Nuzleaf and evolve it into Shiftry, letting me easily get Nature Power. I would do a similar thing with Eevee right now if I had a male, but that will have to wait a little bit...
Flying back to the daycare, I first use the Kantonian Meowth to pass Last Resort onto Skwovet, and delete Rollout on it. I then have Raichu pass Discharge onto Yamper, and the Electrike from earlier passes Howl onto it. I also breed the female Eevee and hatch a male on the first egg. I get into a battle to level it up to 5 to learn Sand Attack, then use the Fire Stone to evolve it into Flareon. This lets me relearn Eevee's would-be Level 50 Double-Edge. I take it back to the daycare and have it pass Sand Attack and Double Edge onto Yamper. I also have my Shiftry pass Growth, Fake Out, and Nature Power to Grookey, forgetting Worry Seed. Lastly, Gossifleur forgets Stun Spore and gets Sleep Powder from Oddish. While keeping Worry Seed over Stun Spore might seem weird, I think Stun Spore is redundant with two other status moves. Sleep is obviously the best, and poison can help Gossifleur whittle Pokemon down. Worry Seed can at least be ability suppression that can stack with poison.
To say the least, my team has undergone a massive improvement. Yamper is rocking endgame moves, Skwovet has an unwieldy but still feasible 140 BP move to use, and Gossifleur has the always amazing Sleep Powder. Wooloo is pretty out of place now, so I ditch it, making my team Grookey/Skwovet/Gossifleur/Yamper/Rookidee/Hoothoot. Route 4 is simple enough to deal with, though Yamper's stats being pretty terrible do offset how incredibly good its set is right now. Last Resort from Skwovet is also incredibly strong, but the 5 PP already proves to be an issue – I've never disliked seeing Growl so much...
Turffield Gym
The gym trainers are easy enough and after the very last one Hoothoot evolves into Noctowl. Noctowl can learn Sky Attack from the move relearner which it can then pass to Rookidee. While the forced charge makes it much worse than its 140 BP suggests, it still basically works as an awkward 70 BP Flying move that should make this gym easy. Initially, since I didn't want to leave the gym, I wanted to see if I could beat Milo without Sky Attack while keeping all restrictions intact. Besides Rookidee, almost everything on my team is pretty bad versus Grass types. Gossifleur is useless, Grookey is mediocre, Yamper's Discharge is resisted, and only Skwovet is all that useful. This all adds up to not being able to beat Milo without extreme luck, and I would have to lift the team matching restriction to feasibly do it. If you're interested, the gist of the no team matching strategy is that Grookey beats his Gossifleur, then it and my Gossifleur stall out his Eldegoss's Dynamax turns while Skwovet and Yamper finish it off. Regardless, I do decide to leave the gym and have Rookidee learn Sky Attack. Surprisingly, even that is not enough to do it with team matching, since Rookidee's stats don't even hold a candle to Eldegoss's. So I use the Exp Candy from Motostoke to get it to Level 19 and evolve. I wanted to hold off on its evolution since it's getting new moves right after this gym, but oh well. I need to actually beat the gym to get that far!
Milo
Corvisquire leads off and OHKOs Gossifleur with Sky Attack, while Gossifleur retaliates with Rapid Spin on the charging turn. I give it Leftovers to keep its health high, since it always needs to spend 2 turns to attack. Eldegoss is out, and I swap to Grookey. Dynamax Eldegoss deals way too much damage for Corvisquire to deal with, especially since Max Strike will make it slower. With Sitrus Berry, Grookey almost always survives two attacks. Here, it lives with 1 HP as Eldegoss uses Max Overgrowth into another one. The final Dynamax turn is wasted as Grookey faints. While it could technically peck at Eldegoss's HP with Nature Power (Tri Attack normally, Energy Ball in Grassy Terrain), it does such little damage that the Grassy Terrain heals it back up. So I save time with failed Leech Seeds. Corvisquire comes back in and 2HKOs with Sky Attack. I get very lucky with a flinch and seeing Leafage (why does it know this?), but with the Leftovers Corvisquire has ample HP to survive whatever it sees.
(Team: Corvisquire/Grookey)
With that, I finally obtain my first badge! Sorry for this being so long. Between the road to the first gym being really long and all the breeding to keep track of, it's very dense. But I really didn't want to end the first post without even getting to the first gym. With my team much more composed and the pacing of the game getting a bit better, updates should be a more reasonable length in the future.
Team Status:
Grookey Level 21
Leech Seed/Fake Out/Nature Power/Growth
Skwovet Level 20 @ Oran Berry
Defense Curl/Last Resort
Gossifleur Level 19 @ Leftovers
Leech Seed/Sleep Powder/Worry Seed/Poison Powder
Corvisquire Level 20 @ Sharp Beak
Sky Attack
Yamper Level 20 @ Silk Scarf
Discharge/Sand Attack/Double-Edge/Howl
Enter Sword and Shield. They brought a litany of quality of life improvements with them, like ease of access to name-changing and move modification, as well as portable boxes. One change that has comparatively gone under the radar, though, is the ability to pass egg moves in the daycare. For those unaware, if you have two Pokemon of the same species (gender does not matter) in the daycare, they will pass any egg moves they have to each other provided there are empty moveslots. This means that egg moves are actually feasible to obtain during the main story. So since this is finally a viable run concept, it's time to play Pokemon Sword with only egg moves!
The rules, formally laid out:
- Egg moves only. In battle, I can only attack with egg moves. I am free to have whatever else in my party gaining exp.
- Galar Pokemon only. This one might seem a little strange, so let me explain. While it's still largely true that egg moves are flavor supplements, GameFreak also often uses them to add useful moves to Pokemon when doing generational updates. While this doesn't mean Pokemon have completely functional movesets from their egg moves, it does, as a whole, make Pokemon much more functional than I'd like for this kind of run. So to remove the fine polish of generational updates, I'm sticking with only the new Pokemon.
- Team size matching. This means that I only use up to as many Pokemon as my opponent uses. Since there's very little downside to having a large team with Exp Share (and my team will fill up quick), I thought this would be a good, immersive restriction to keep things more interesting. I will point out that I don't really care about this restriction for normal trainers, mainly for dumb scenarios where a trainer only has 1 Pokemon and I have a bad lead for it. Not that anyone would be able to verify this anyways since I'm not recording normal fights, but still, full disclosure.
- No Dynamaxing. This is an extremely powerful mechanic that the player takes far more advantage of than the AI (mainly since they use it at fixed points only), so it's an unfair advantage for me. At least as far as the main story goes, I've hard far more fun treating Dynamax as an AI-only mechanic to give them a much-needed edge.
- No in-battle items & Set mode. Standard stuff.
Picking a Starter
Let's get started. The first choice is the starter. At a glance:
Sobble is clearly pretty awful, so the choice is between Grookey and Scorbunny. While Scorbunny's fast, strong High Jump Kick and Super Fang are very nice, they're obtained late (or rather, the parents learn these moves at high levels only). Grookey, while being arguably worse at endgame, blooms much earlier with Leech Seed, a set-up move in Growth, and an okay damaging move in Strength, all obtainable roughly around the first gym. So I'll go with it. Since Ditto is not obtainable for a long time, I need to make sure my Grookey is female. Thankfully I can check this before the cutscenes afterwards by going to the nickname screen, so it doesn't take too long.
Getting an Egg Move
The first battle with Hop is standard since I can't get any egg moves yet. Afterwards, though, the run can start. While a daycare isn't available yet, the “Brilliant Aura” mechanic still lets me obtain egg moves now. Pokemon on the overworld have a small chance of having this aura around them, which guarantees them at least 2 max IVs and a random egg move. But, consider that most Pokemon don't actually have that many damaging egg moves, and a problem quickly emerges – BA Pokemon are pretty unlikely to even be able to damage Pokemon for me. Factoring that in, my ideal target is Wooloo. It's a common encounter and has a relatively high chance of having a STAB Stomp, at 1/3 odds. Though, since I don't have to commit to chaining a particular Pokemon, I'll still catch any BA Pokemon I see. After an unlucky 20 minutes of circling around Route 1, I finally encounter a BA Wooloo. My luck turns around when I realize my first BA Pokemon is the very Stomp Wooloo I wanted. It even has Fluffy, though this isn't too important. While a more versatile team would be appreciated right now, this process is frankly awful and I have no desire to do it again unless absolutely necessary.
Route 2
Before advancing, I catch future team members Skwovet and Rookidee. While I can't use them yet, there's no reason they and Grookey shouldn't still be getting EXP. I also buy a bunch of Oran Berries from the Wedgehurst berry shop. Moving on to Route 2, Stomp is better than the usual Tackle a Wooloo would have at this point, so things progress smoothly and Wooloo reaches Level 8. After some cutscenes at Magnolia's lab, I can do the first boss fight of this run.
Hop (Route 2)
...not that it will be a very interesting one, since my options are literally: Stomp. And Stomp I do. This fight actually wouldn't be winnable with my current level if Hop had smart AI, since Sobble easily wins if it just spams Water Gun. But since he just uses random moves, Wooloo just needs to get a bit lucky. His own Wooloo and Rookidee provide almost no resistance, so the fight is basically just Sobble.
(Team: Wooloo/___/___)
(I thought these post-battle team summaries would be nice to quickly visualize how taxing a battle was, especially since team-matching can be easy to forget which shrinks my team. Text color denotes health remaining, struckthrough names fainted, and “___” are slots I could have used but didn't need.)
The Wild Area
With that out of the way, this run can really start as I access the Wild Area. For whatever reason, there's a fully functional daycare here, even though the one on Route 5 is clearly what they intend for you to use for breeding. So now I can start getting a team going. While my options are still a bit limited, expanding my team past a Stomp Wooloo is much appreciated.
I have a pretty large catch list of Pokemon for now and in the future. The first thing I check out is a fixed Hoothoot raid that seems to always be there on the first day you start the game. I'm very disappointed to find that mine is a female, though, since I needed this to father a move for my Rookidee. While I can still find Hoothoots in the Wild Area, the raid catch is Level 20 which would put it only one level away from evolving into Noctowl. Oh well. I catch a normal Hoothoot at Level 15 instead. It's worth noting that Sword and Shield have an annoying mechanic where trying to catch a Pokemon higher-leveled than your lead drastically lowers the catch rate. This is unavoidable for catches in the Wild Area right now (all are at least Level 11), so catching this Hoothoot is quite annoying, especially since only Wooloo can weaken it. For future catches here, I send out Hoothoot after Wooloo has weakened them to throw balls. While not technically a violation of my rules as I've phrased them, I do consider this against the spirit of the run. But after how annoying this first of many catches was, I decide to keep my sanity instead. After Hoothoot, I also catch a Roselia, Oddish, Electrike, and Nuzleaf.
Now to start breeding. I use the unlimited move relearner to get a couple moves for this purpose: Defense Curl on Wooloo, and Rollout on Nuzleaf. I also delete all but one move on Grookey and Skwovet. I start my breeding with Roselia and Grookey, who will pass Worry Seed and Leech Seed to the offspring. If I was smart, I would have also relearned Growth on Roselia to pass that too, though it's not relevant right now. Hatching eggs isn't a terribly fast process right now, unfortunately, since I lack both a Bike and Flame Body. I mitigate the time it takes by double-tasking: exploring the Wild Area as I wait for eggs to hatch. I collect a Fire Stone, a Thunder Stone, Leftovers, and various sellables as I do this. Eventually my Grookey egg hatches, and I put it in the daycare with my trained Grookey to transfer moves over. After this, I use Wooloo and Nuzleaf to get two Skwovet eggs with Defense Curl and Rollout respectively, and have those offspring transfer their moves to my main Skwovet. Now that I've described it in full, I'll truncate this process a bit when describing it in the future (i.e. Wooloo passes Defense Curl to Skwovet > Wooloo passes Defense Curl to a Skwovet offspring, who then passes it to my main Skwovet).
With that done, I now have a Worry Seed/Leech Grookey and Defense Curl/Rollout Skwovet to add to my Stomp Wooloo. Rookidee will get moves eventually... I move on for now, but I keep Hoothoot and Oddish in my last two slots since they need to be trained up for moves. The Team Yell Grunts in Motostoke aren't any trouble, and so I go to another Hop battle.
Hop (Motostoke)
Hop doesn't update his team at all, really, but I've got several new toys to play with. Grookey leads and Leech Seeds his Wooloo, and then I swap to Skwovet. With Leech Seed and the Defense Curl I start with, it's almost invincible right now, so I get Rollout going. Wooloo is annoying as possible with Growls, using a whopping four of them, but Rollout gets so crazy that it still muscles through. Sobble is more threatening since it's special and I'm at -4 attack now, but Oran Berry with Cheek Pouch lets Skwovet tank it. I do have to start a second Rollout chain, though. Last is Rookidee, which is just as terrible as last time and goes down easily.
(Team: Grookey/Skwovet/___)
Route 3
Onto Route 3, where I can find my next Pokemon, Gossifleur! Wooloo can easily scout out Cotton Down with Stomp, which I want to avoid in favor of Regenerator. I catch a few and settle on the best one. Gossifleur's support movepool is amazing from egg moves, but it has one issue: it learns absolutely no attacking moves at all. Still, its incredible array of support moves is too good to ignore. Like Grookey, it gets Worry Seed and Leech Seed from Roselia, and it can also get Poison Powder and Stun Spore from Oddish.
One issue is that I don't have a free slot to put Gossifleur in. For now, I get rid of Rookidee, who's just along for the exp. It has the same Medium Slow exp curve the starters have, so it levels up quickly at these levels anyways and can afford a bit of a break. Now to progress. I always try to lead with Gossifleur, then swap to Skwovet after I've set up Leech Seed and maybe statused the opponent. With Leftovers, Leech Seed recovery, and Regenerator, Gossifleur rarely actually has lost health after a battle. Skwovet is also fairly low maintenance, since I just make sure it always has an Oran Berry for Cheek Pouch as they cost virtually nothing. While Wooloo is still on the team, I'm avoiding using it when possible since it has no long-term future.
This set-up goes off without too many hitches. One trainer's Pancham is an ass since I miss my initial Leech Seed and it then takes my team on a rollercoaster with Circle Throw, and I can't switch in safely with my zero Fighting resists and two Fighting weaknesses. Another fight, I end up in a bit of an embarassing predicament. When I set up Leech Seed with Gossifleur, I get Wrapped by a Sizzlipede and can't switch out. I have to slowly whittle it down with Leech Seed and Poison Powder. Amazingly, despite it having Ember as well, Gossifleur is victorious.
Near the end of Route 3, Grookey gets to Level 16 where it would evolve, but I hold it back. Remember that egg moves can only be passed among members of the same species – being part of the same evolutionary line does not count. So once it evolves into Thwackey, any new egg move offspring will need to be trained to Level 16 before I can pass the move onto my Thwackey. One other perk of holding Grookey back is that Pokemon get a 20% exp boost once they're past their evo level.
Galar Mine 1
Galar Mine 1 has a lot of Fighting types which Skwovet is awful at dealing with, so I generally use Wooloo for those with Gossifleur's help. Not that it's great for this either, but it's better than being outsped with a resisted Rollout! Soon into the mine Oddish gets to Level 18 and learns Sleep Powder, so I swap it out for Rookidee to get exp again. After a bit, I run into Bede.
Bede (Galar Mine 1)
I was a bit worried for this fight with my zero Psychic-resists, but Bede's team is too fragile for it to matter that much. With the Silk Scarf, Wooloo can 2HKO his entire team, but it only has enough health to survive Solosis's and Gothita's attacks. Hatenna finishes off Wooloo, and Skwovet gets back at it with three Rollouts.
(Team:
Catching on Route 4
While there's not a lot of new Pokemon available in Route 4, almost everything that is there is very important. First off is the adorable Yamper, who will be my next Pokemon. It was available back in Route 2, but without moves the only point in catching it there would be exp, which is unnecessary since it's at a fine level here. I also catch a Pikachu and Meowth, who are simple enough to find.
And then there's Eevee.
Eevee is a 1% overworld encounter on Route 4. Pretty bad, but fortunately it's overwhelmingly likely to be male for egg move passing. Eevee says damn the odds, though, and the first one I find after 15 minutes is a female. I consider catching it since I can breed a male with it, but since eggs are pretty slow to hatch without a bike, I decide it's probably quicker to just find another one. Oh, how wrong I was...after forty minutes I finally find another, and the worst part?
It's another female!
This time I learned from my mistake and just catch it. Hatching an egg might not be quick, but it's better than this shit.
Supercharging My Team
I have one more substantially easier Pokemon to find. When I go in the mine from the back, I can intercept the roaming Carkol, which I catch because it's the first Pokemon that can have Flame Body, an obvious winner with all the breeding I do! Before I do that, though, I prepare the Pokemon I caught. First, I trade the Meowth for a Kantonian Meowth in Turffield. In-game trades in this game often come with egg moves, and this Meowth has something very nice – Last Resort. I then use my Thunder Stone to evolve my Pikachu. This game also made it so that no Pokemon has a move locked to a prevo, as they simply get added to the next stage's relearn list. This is kind of stupid with Stone evos though, since every move from their initial stage, including those learned even up into the 50s, are available the instant they evolve. In this case, it lets me teach Raichu Discharge immediately. I also use a Leaf Stone on my Nuzleaf and evolve it into Shiftry, letting me easily get Nature Power. I would do a similar thing with Eevee right now if I had a male, but that will have to wait a little bit...
Flying back to the daycare, I first use the Kantonian Meowth to pass Last Resort onto Skwovet, and delete Rollout on it. I then have Raichu pass Discharge onto Yamper, and the Electrike from earlier passes Howl onto it. I also breed the female Eevee and hatch a male on the first egg. I get into a battle to level it up to 5 to learn Sand Attack, then use the Fire Stone to evolve it into Flareon. This lets me relearn Eevee's would-be Level 50 Double-Edge. I take it back to the daycare and have it pass Sand Attack and Double Edge onto Yamper. I also have my Shiftry pass Growth, Fake Out, and Nature Power to Grookey, forgetting Worry Seed. Lastly, Gossifleur forgets Stun Spore and gets Sleep Powder from Oddish. While keeping Worry Seed over Stun Spore might seem weird, I think Stun Spore is redundant with two other status moves. Sleep is obviously the best, and poison can help Gossifleur whittle Pokemon down. Worry Seed can at least be ability suppression that can stack with poison.
To say the least, my team has undergone a massive improvement. Yamper is rocking endgame moves, Skwovet has an unwieldy but still feasible 140 BP move to use, and Gossifleur has the always amazing Sleep Powder. Wooloo is pretty out of place now, so I ditch it, making my team Grookey/Skwovet/Gossifleur/Yamper/Rookidee/Hoothoot. Route 4 is simple enough to deal with, though Yamper's stats being pretty terrible do offset how incredibly good its set is right now. Last Resort from Skwovet is also incredibly strong, but the 5 PP already proves to be an issue – I've never disliked seeing Growl so much...
Turffield Gym
The gym trainers are easy enough and after the very last one Hoothoot evolves into Noctowl. Noctowl can learn Sky Attack from the move relearner which it can then pass to Rookidee. While the forced charge makes it much worse than its 140 BP suggests, it still basically works as an awkward 70 BP Flying move that should make this gym easy. Initially, since I didn't want to leave the gym, I wanted to see if I could beat Milo without Sky Attack while keeping all restrictions intact. Besides Rookidee, almost everything on my team is pretty bad versus Grass types. Gossifleur is useless, Grookey is mediocre, Yamper's Discharge is resisted, and only Skwovet is all that useful. This all adds up to not being able to beat Milo without extreme luck, and I would have to lift the team matching restriction to feasibly do it. If you're interested, the gist of the no team matching strategy is that Grookey beats his Gossifleur, then it and my Gossifleur stall out his Eldegoss's Dynamax turns while Skwovet and Yamper finish it off. Regardless, I do decide to leave the gym and have Rookidee learn Sky Attack. Surprisingly, even that is not enough to do it with team matching, since Rookidee's stats don't even hold a candle to Eldegoss's. So I use the Exp Candy from Motostoke to get it to Level 19 and evolve. I wanted to hold off on its evolution since it's getting new moves right after this gym, but oh well. I need to actually beat the gym to get that far!
Milo
Corvisquire leads off and OHKOs Gossifleur with Sky Attack, while Gossifleur retaliates with Rapid Spin on the charging turn. I give it Leftovers to keep its health high, since it always needs to spend 2 turns to attack. Eldegoss is out, and I swap to Grookey. Dynamax Eldegoss deals way too much damage for Corvisquire to deal with, especially since Max Strike will make it slower. With Sitrus Berry, Grookey almost always survives two attacks. Here, it lives with 1 HP as Eldegoss uses Max Overgrowth into another one. The final Dynamax turn is wasted as Grookey faints. While it could technically peck at Eldegoss's HP with Nature Power (Tri Attack normally, Energy Ball in Grassy Terrain), it does such little damage that the Grassy Terrain heals it back up. So I save time with failed Leech Seeds. Corvisquire comes back in and 2HKOs with Sky Attack. I get very lucky with a flinch and seeing Leafage (why does it know this?), but with the Leftovers Corvisquire has ample HP to survive whatever it sees.
(Team: Corvisquire/
With that, I finally obtain my first badge! Sorry for this being so long. Between the road to the first gym being really long and all the breeding to keep track of, it's very dense. But I really didn't want to end the first post without even getting to the first gym. With my team much more composed and the pacing of the game getting a bit better, updates should be a more reasonable length in the future.
Team Status:
Grookey Level 21
Leech Seed/Fake Out/Nature Power/Growth
Skwovet Level 20 @ Oran Berry
Defense Curl/Last Resort
Gossifleur Level 19 @ Leftovers
Leech Seed/Sleep Powder/Worry Seed/Poison Powder
Corvisquire Level 20 @ Sharp Beak
Sky Attack
Yamper Level 20 @ Silk Scarf
Discharge/Sand Attack/Double-Edge/Howl
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