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Challenge COMPLETE: Pokemon Crystal: The 207 Challenge
- Thread starter QuentinQuonce
- Start date
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
17
Time for a bit more phone-baiting. After obtaining Arnie's number, I mess with the clock a bit and battle him twice before he finally calls to inform me that Yanma is swarming. Thank you kindly. Once I've caught one I delete his number in favour of Ralph's and - oh, wait. Qwilfish is a 10% encounter with the Super Rod. I'd assumed it was 1% like Yanma. Simpler to just keep fishing than trying to force a swarm, then. After many Magikarp and Tentacool a Qwilfish finally appears. By this game's standards it's pretty straightforward.
Seel is so, so close to level 34 - might as well grind a bit while I look for the next Pokemon. It's another 5% species so I have plenty of opportunity to do so - it evolves into a Dewgong long before I find a Tauros. I accidentally KO the first one I find - doesn't take too long to find another.
And that's that! Pretty sure Tauros was the last wild species I needed. Everything from now on is evolve, hatch, or static.
I've set the clock to a day the Bug-Catching Contest is on, because I need one more Sun Stone. If I can get into a contest in which Cooltrainer Nick isn't present (he's extremely difficult to beat, so best avoided) and catch a Scyther without damaging it, I should be very likely to win. Jumpluff, truly the crutch mon of this run, is ideally-suited for this, as it can outspeed and reliably inflict sleep on Scyther without having to damage it. I'm prepared to soft reset a couple of times, but win with 337 points. Presumably quite narrowly, as Camper Barry also plays and gets a Venonat, which should get him 329 points plus the chance of a 7-point bonus. Be cool if he got it and I won by a single point. Anyway! Ego-stroking aside, I find the Gloom I caught earlier and evolve it into Bellossom. Nifty.
I still have two eggs that need hatching, so I head to the long path in National Park and get going until they pop. Excellent. That hatched Chansey will be the one I eventually evolve, since eggs hatch with higher friendship. For the same reason, I made sure that the Eevee received from Bill was one of the trio that got a stone evolution. I nip over to Kanto and perform the trade with the NPC on Route 14, at last getting the elusive Aerodactyl.
Which brings us neatly on to the evolutions I've been dreading... friendship evolutions. Nah, "dreading" is over-egging it, but they're just going to take a lot of resources. Togepi is up first. I kept it in my party for pretty much the entirety of my time in Johto and was careful never to let it faint, but it still doesn't seem to be where it needs to be. Luckily, I've been saving all the X Items I picked up throughout my travels, and find a weak wild Pidgey I can sit in front of and use them all without worrying about getting knocked out. Seems to do the trick - I level it up once and yep, it evolves into Togetic.
I've got Golbat, Chansey, and Eevee (x2) to evolve as well. Looks like it's time to buy a truckload of X Items, then. Luckily, my frequent bouts with the Elite Four have swelled my moneybag considerably, and that's before you take into account all the valuable items and vitamins I've picked up. I sell all these (yes I could use the vitamins - but it's more cost-effective to sell, especially since there's one other major expense still waiting after this) and buy about 50 each of X Speed, X Defend, and X Special; why does X Attack cost more...?
Cheap and dirty though it be, it's certainly effective. But it's slow. So slow that I decide there's no point in doing this with the Golbat I have; better to catch a fresh one in a Friend Ball. Should have thought of that earlier.
Ugh, but I can't do that until I've got the Celebi event over and done with. Let's focus on the others for now, then.
Pokedex count: 199.
Time for a bit more phone-baiting. After obtaining Arnie's number, I mess with the clock a bit and battle him twice before he finally calls to inform me that Yanma is swarming. Thank you kindly. Once I've caught one I delete his number in favour of Ralph's and - oh, wait. Qwilfish is a 10% encounter with the Super Rod. I'd assumed it was 1% like Yanma. Simpler to just keep fishing than trying to force a swarm, then. After many Magikarp and Tentacool a Qwilfish finally appears. By this game's standards it's pretty straightforward.
Seel is so, so close to level 34 - might as well grind a bit while I look for the next Pokemon. It's another 5% species so I have plenty of opportunity to do so - it evolves into a Dewgong long before I find a Tauros. I accidentally KO the first one I find - doesn't take too long to find another.
And that's that! Pretty sure Tauros was the last wild species I needed. Everything from now on is evolve, hatch, or static.
I've set the clock to a day the Bug-Catching Contest is on, because I need one more Sun Stone. If I can get into a contest in which Cooltrainer Nick isn't present (he's extremely difficult to beat, so best avoided) and catch a Scyther without damaging it, I should be very likely to win. Jumpluff, truly the crutch mon of this run, is ideally-suited for this, as it can outspeed and reliably inflict sleep on Scyther without having to damage it. I'm prepared to soft reset a couple of times, but win with 337 points. Presumably quite narrowly, as Camper Barry also plays and gets a Venonat, which should get him 329 points plus the chance of a 7-point bonus. Be cool if he got it and I won by a single point. Anyway! Ego-stroking aside, I find the Gloom I caught earlier and evolve it into Bellossom. Nifty.
I still have two eggs that need hatching, so I head to the long path in National Park and get going until they pop. Excellent. That hatched Chansey will be the one I eventually evolve, since eggs hatch with higher friendship. For the same reason, I made sure that the Eevee received from Bill was one of the trio that got a stone evolution. I nip over to Kanto and perform the trade with the NPC on Route 14, at last getting the elusive Aerodactyl.
Which brings us neatly on to the evolutions I've been dreading... friendship evolutions. Nah, "dreading" is over-egging it, but they're just going to take a lot of resources. Togepi is up first. I kept it in my party for pretty much the entirety of my time in Johto and was careful never to let it faint, but it still doesn't seem to be where it needs to be. Luckily, I've been saving all the X Items I picked up throughout my travels, and find a weak wild Pidgey I can sit in front of and use them all without worrying about getting knocked out. Seems to do the trick - I level it up once and yep, it evolves into Togetic.
I've got Golbat, Chansey, and Eevee (x2) to evolve as well. Looks like it's time to buy a truckload of X Items, then. Luckily, my frequent bouts with the Elite Four have swelled my moneybag considerably, and that's before you take into account all the valuable items and vitamins I've picked up. I sell all these (yes I could use the vitamins - but it's more cost-effective to sell, especially since there's one other major expense still waiting after this) and buy about 50 each of X Speed, X Defend, and X Special; why does X Attack cost more...?
Cheap and dirty though it be, it's certainly effective. But it's slow. So slow that I decide there's no point in doing this with the Golbat I have; better to catch a fresh one in a Friend Ball. Should have thought of that earlier.
Ugh, but I can't do that until I've got the Celebi event over and done with. Let's focus on the others for now, then.
Pokedex count: 199.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
18
I continue using steroids to make my two Eevee love me: going onto Route 29, finding a weak Pokemon, using X Items over and over until the opponent has almost KOed me, fleeing, healing, and repeating the process. Eventually, when my stock of items runs out, I run to the friendship rater: they've both got at least 200 points. Okay. The mere act of battling the Elite Four raises your happiness, let alone levelling, so that should work.
So much time wasted, though. Well, there's one Pokemon that'll be very quick to get. Porygon. Bane of many a Pokedex completion challenge. It costs a monumental 5555 coins; fortunately, I am now so wealthy that simply buying them all is no bother. Digital duck acquired, I continue on.
It would have been nice to be able to leave the next Pokemon until last, but we must be practical. After resetting the clock, I speak to Kurt and go into Ilex Forest, where a certain pretty green mythical appears. It's fairly easy to weaken and put to sleep thanks to its low level; my first Great Ball succeeds. Celebi is mine!
Kurt says thanks. Yeah yeah, make me a Friend Ball already.
Pokedex count: 201.
One hour to go.
I continue using steroids to make my two Eevee love me: going onto Route 29, finding a weak Pokemon, using X Items over and over until the opponent has almost KOed me, fleeing, healing, and repeating the process. Eventually, when my stock of items runs out, I run to the friendship rater: they've both got at least 200 points. Okay. The mere act of battling the Elite Four raises your happiness, let alone levelling, so that should work.
So much time wasted, though. Well, there's one Pokemon that'll be very quick to get. Porygon. Bane of many a Pokedex completion challenge. It costs a monumental 5555 coins; fortunately, I am now so wealthy that simply buying them all is no bother. Digital duck acquired, I continue on.
It would have been nice to be able to leave the next Pokemon until last, but we must be practical. After resetting the clock, I speak to Kurt and go into Ilex Forest, where a certain pretty green mythical appears. It's fairly easy to weaken and put to sleep thanks to its low level; my first Great Ball succeeds. Celebi is mine!
Kurt says thanks. Yeah yeah, make me a Friend Ball already.
Pokedex count: 201.
One hour to go.
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QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
19
I give Kurt the Green Apricorn, reset the clock, collect my Friend Ball, and go to Mt Mortar in search of another Golbat. I find a Zubat, but whatever; easier to catch, and the extra levelling up won't hurt.
I still have Chansey to friend-ify, so I sell everything I have and buy a ton of vitamins, reserving one Protein for Tyrogue to push it towards becoming a
Hitmonlee. Time for the Elite Four again; quick as I can. My team is literally Dragonite, Eevee, Eevee, Zubat, Chansey, and Tyrogue: the wrecker and the five who need evolving.
And there's still one missing name in my Pokedex... oh, this is hilarious. I never caught a Caterpie.
Well, let's cleave through the Elite Four and hopefully there'll be time for that. I pawn a few TMs so I can buy a couple of Full Restores, and go for it. Dragonite sweeps Will and Koga with ease, and Tyrogue evolves into a Hitmonlee like I wanted. Beating Bruno, Karen, and Lance is only just enough to make Zubat evolve into Golbat.
Pokedex count: 202.
29 minutes to go - can I do it?!
I give Kurt the Green Apricorn, reset the clock, collect my Friend Ball, and go to Mt Mortar in search of another Golbat. I find a Zubat, but whatever; easier to catch, and the extra levelling up won't hurt.
I still have Chansey to friend-ify, so I sell everything I have and buy a ton of vitamins, reserving one Protein for Tyrogue to push it towards becoming a
Hitmonlee. Time for the Elite Four again; quick as I can. My team is literally Dragonite, Eevee, Eevee, Zubat, Chansey, and Tyrogue: the wrecker and the five who need evolving.
And there's still one missing name in my Pokedex... oh, this is hilarious. I never caught a Caterpie.
Well, let's cleave through the Elite Four and hopefully there'll be time for that. I pawn a few TMs so I can buy a couple of Full Restores, and go for it. Dragonite sweeps Will and Koga with ease, and Tyrogue evolves into a Hitmonlee like I wanted. Beating Bruno, Karen, and Lance is only just enough to make Zubat evolve into Golbat.
Pokedex count: 202.
29 minutes to go - can I do it?!
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
20
Back in New Bark. I quickly get Pidgeot, fly to Goldenrod, buy some more vitamins with my winnings and feed up both my Eevee just in case. Then I fly to Mt Silver and grind - Golbat evolves into Crobat. It's nighttime in-game so when the first of my Eevee pair evolves I get Umbreon.
A quick clock change, and onto route 30 to find and catch a Caterpie. I think Pokeballs will be enough but it breaks out of three; I fly to Blackthorn and frantically sell TMs in order to afford Great Balls, which work.
Only a few minutes left! On the Magnet Train and back to the Elite Four!
Pokedex count: 205.
Back in New Bark. I quickly get Pidgeot, fly to Goldenrod, buy some more vitamins with my winnings and feed up both my Eevee just in case. Then I fly to Mt Silver and grind - Golbat evolves into Crobat. It's nighttime in-game so when the first of my Eevee pair evolves I get Umbreon.
A quick clock change, and onto route 30 to find and catch a Caterpie. I think Pokeballs will be enough but it breaks out of three; I fly to Blackthorn and frantically sell TMs in order to afford Great Balls, which work.
Only a few minutes left! On the Magnet Train and back to the Elite Four!
Pokedex count: 205.
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QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
21
And... I beat Koga and Will, but Chansey (holding the Exp Share) failed to evolve.
Final Pokedex Count: 205.
And... I beat Koga and Will, but Chansey (holding the Exp Share) failed to evolve.
Final Pokedex Count: 205.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Congratulations Pineapple1001, you were closest to the eventual number - please DM to arrange your prize.
Further analysis to come once I've had a drink, I'm tired
Further analysis to come once I've had a drink, I'm tired
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Final thoughts
That... was gruelling. More so than I remember my Yellow or White challenges being. But then, the Yellow challenge had almost 25% fewer Pokemon in the same amount of time... and White was easier for a number of reasons, being a later gen game and all.
When I was formulating this challenge I considered doing 72 hours but decided to stick at 60. I think I timed it just about right: I had a couple of hours away from this on Sat evening and still made good time. I'm happy with how I did but it's still tantalising to think that, had I even had 30 minutes more, I would have completed it.
Ah well. Maybe that was only because things generally went smoothly. I had some good luck with rarer spawns, like Hypno, Gloom, Miltank, and Dodrio. All of those (and others) appeared pretty quickly without me needing to spend hours looking, which helped a lot. Even the hellish search for Chansey wasn't as long as it could have been. I was kind of dreading raising up both Dragonite and Tyranitar, but in practice both grinds were fairly easy - actually, if Dratini had been available from the Game Corner like in GS, I'd probably have fully evolved it long before I did. But it was really useful to have something powerful enough to sweep the Elite Four and carry weaker Pokemon so effectively.
Also, thank god for clock altering. This challenge would have been completely impossible without it. (Well, not impossible, just more limited. It'd be, like, the 167 challenge or something.)
But yeah, this was fun. Normally if I were going to replay Crystal I'd take my time with it, so forcing myself into a new method of play was novel. But I really enjoyed it!
Definitely going to do something less intense for my next challenge run. But that won't be for a while.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed following along.
That... was gruelling. More so than I remember my Yellow or White challenges being. But then, the Yellow challenge had almost 25% fewer Pokemon in the same amount of time... and White was easier for a number of reasons, being a later gen game and all.
When I was formulating this challenge I considered doing 72 hours but decided to stick at 60. I think I timed it just about right: I had a couple of hours away from this on Sat evening and still made good time. I'm happy with how I did but it's still tantalising to think that, had I even had 30 minutes more, I would have completed it.
Ah well. Maybe that was only because things generally went smoothly. I had some good luck with rarer spawns, like Hypno, Gloom, Miltank, and Dodrio. All of those (and others) appeared pretty quickly without me needing to spend hours looking, which helped a lot. Even the hellish search for Chansey wasn't as long as it could have been. I was kind of dreading raising up both Dragonite and Tyranitar, but in practice both grinds were fairly easy - actually, if Dratini had been available from the Game Corner like in GS, I'd probably have fully evolved it long before I did. But it was really useful to have something powerful enough to sweep the Elite Four and carry weaker Pokemon so effectively.
Also, thank god for clock altering. This challenge would have been completely impossible without it. (Well, not impossible, just more limited. It'd be, like, the 167 challenge or something.)
But yeah, this was fun. Normally if I were going to replay Crystal I'd take my time with it, so forcing myself into a new method of play was novel. But I really enjoyed it!
Definitely going to do something less intense for my next challenge run. But that won't be for a while.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed following along.
If you enjoyed reading this (or indeed any of my other challenge runs, or just... anything I've posted on here) and you're feeling in the mood to show your appreciation - great news, you absolutely can. In some exciting personal news: I wrote a play, and we're taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe this August!
We're crowdfunding atm to help raise some additional funding and have two weeks to go - if you want to donate, it'd make me extremely happy. No obligation on anyone, but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks again for reading.
https://crowdfund.edfringe.com/p/cant-wait-to-leave-edinburgh-fringe
We're crowdfunding atm to help raise some additional funding and have two weeks to go - if you want to donate, it'd make me extremely happy. No obligation on anyone, but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks again for reading.
https://crowdfund.edfringe.com/p/cant-wait-to-leave-edinburgh-fringe
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Congrats on completing the challenge! It was fun to follow as always. I am really impressed at how far you made it, I didn't expect you to make it all the way past 200! When I made my guess, I was originally going to say 160, but I thought it over for a bit and realized that it was too low. I thought that you would probably do this very efficiently and that you would have several genius ideas of how to get as many as possible in this short amount of time. And that's just what you did! I should have gone for something even higher than 180.
I also noticed one thing about the links in your signature. You seem to have forgotten to link to your Pokemon Pearl National Dex No-Heal Challenge (unless you decided to not include it due to a character/link limit or something).
Once again, congrats!
I also noticed one thing about the links in your signature. You seem to have forgotten to link to your Pokemon Pearl National Dex No-Heal Challenge (unless you decided to not include it due to a character/link limit or something).
Once again, congrats!
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Thanks! To be honest I didn't expect to get over 200 myself. Chansey, Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, all the legends... I didn't think I'd get both Entei and Raikou. But as I said, I had a lot of good luck.
With hindsight, the best thing to do with the Eevees would have been to load them up on vitamins as soon as they hatched. Using X Items was cheaper but much slower and much less efficient. I should also have made getting Friend Balls more of a priority, I changed the clock enough times. Though I doubt Chansey would have been an easy catch with one of those.
Good catch with the signature, thanks. Must have forgotten to add the link back to the text. It's a nightmare to format, every time I add a new challenge it takes forever.
Congrats QuentinQuonce !! As I was reading the last posts I really thought you were gonna pull it off, it's a bit sad that if you'd had a little more time you would've made it but it was still a great run. I honestly don't think there's much you could've done to make it faster, outside of trying to catch Chansey in a Friend Ball but as you said it definitely wouldn't have been easy—it has an even lower catch rate than Tauros!
Also damn, I don't think I ever even bothered to get Porygon so I figured it was still 9999 but it's nice that it was attainable for a change. Being able to find the roamers was definitely key too, as well as getting all the candies for Pupitar.
Very fun run altogether!
Also damn, I don't think I ever even bothered to get Porygon so I figured it was still 9999 but it's nice that it was attainable for a change. Being able to find the roamers was definitely key too, as well as getting all the candies for Pupitar.
Very fun run altogether!
What are those two Pokemon that you couldn;t get?
Blissey and I believe Espeon
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Thank you! I actually wish I'd tried but unless I'd farmed, like, 20 Friend Balls it'd absolutely have been a waste of time. Even with Crobat, I rationalised it was better to make do with catching a Zubat than potentially having to soft reset and try a few times to catch Golbat.
The Jumpluff I made good use of had no way to damage stuff except Leech Seed so I ended up using this to weaken a few species - for stuff with a reasonable catch rate it was fine, but (obviously enough) it ended up backfiring on me once or twice as it puts a timer on each battle and if I couldn't catch something in five or six tries it's a lost cause; this is actually how I lost my first Tauros. When I encountered Chansey I hardly dared damage it at all.
I was expecting to have to resort to playing the slots (luckily in GSC there's a machine with guaranteed high odds, but even so) so being able to buy all the coins was definitely appreciated. Literally part of my criteria for "good Pokemon game" at this point is "does Porygon cost less than 9999 coins?" FireRed bad, LeafGreen good! Red and Yellow bad, Green and Blue good! GS and HGSS bad, Crystal good!
Yep, Blissey and Espeon. Must confess to being a little bitter about Blissey as I literally made sure to hatch the Chansey egg at Indigo Plateau so it'd have the location bonus for friendship when it levelled up, but I just wasn't quick enough.
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