Challenge COMPLETE: Pokemon Gold "Six-of-One" Letterlocke Chosen-by-Committee Challenge

[QuentinQuonce]

Before fighting Karen, I equip Suspicious with a Mysteryberry instead of the Amulet Coin it's had until now. I have a feeling it'll come in handy.

I step into the gloomy cavernous room where Karen stands pale and silent on the platform, and begin.

Bulky Umbreon, nimbly outsped by Suspicious, takes 25% from its super-effective Hidden Power, and chooses to start with Sand-Attack rather than attack directly. Doesn't save it. So far, so good.

Murkrow is up next. I stick with Suspicious to weaken it to start, then do a respectable chunk of damage with TotalClef before letting CPU claim the final blow. Its Faint Attack is hellishly powerful - Spiritguy falls to a single hit, while the others cling on with single digits.

Now then. Karen might say she likes Dark-types, but two of her Pokemon - Gengar and Vileplume - are not Dark-types, and the AI will be unlikely to switch to them over Houndoom given Poison's weakness to Psychic. Sure enough, once Murkrow faints, Karen opts to send out Houndoom next. Having already fought one, I've been dreading the second.

With an utterly devastating Crunch attack capable of OHKOing all of my team, Houndoom is an impenetrable wall of a foe. As ever, I've considered several options of how to overcome it. Boosting with X Items would have been ideal, but Umbreon and Murkrow both know Faint Attack, which easily 2HKOs all of my squad. Even if they didn't, Umbreon's use of Sand Attack and Murkrow's Whirlwind deter any attempts to boost up. So, once again, it looks like the only option is to use up all of Crunch's PP before mounting a counterattack. Crunch has 15 PP and I have a great many Revives, so simply rotating team members in and out seems to be the way to go. I duly do so until 15 uses of Crunch have elapsed, using up nearly all of my Revives - it's painful, but it's the only way.

With Pursuit, Flamethrower, and Roar remaining in Houndoom's moveset, it opts to seemingly use all of them at random. I guess the AI is somewhat stumped by the fact that each remaining move has an aspect that makes them desirable: Pursuit is super-effective but weak, Flamethrower is neutral but powerful, and Roar has a helpful phazing effect.

Suspicious is the squad member with the highest Special Defence (and HP, coincidentally) and can survive a Flamethrower, so I use up a precious Max Revive to get it to full health. Hydro, too, is just bulky enough to tank a hit - and by a nice coincidence, they're the ones I want. They can both also survive Pursuit (though Roar is what I really want Houndoom to be using, as it means I get to strike first). I send out Suspicious and tank a Pursuit before doing some respectable damage, reviving Cyberbear as Houndoom strikes again. Then Hydro gets a powerful hit in with Hidden Power Water, bringing Houndoom into the red zone: it strikes again with Pursuit and faints me, but I (max) revive Hydro once again the following turn and bring it back in. And at last, Houndoom stupidly uses Roar and I drop it with Hidden Power.

Gengar is up next. Thankfully, unlike the others I've fought, it has an utterly abysmal moveset I can work around. Lick does a workable amount of damage, and Hydro's Hidden Power does around the same amount; two hits have us both on 60%. No doubt thinking it's being clever, Gengar uses Curse and Hydro snipes the last 10%.

And finally we have Vileplume. Back to Suspicious, who should be fast and bulky enough to bring it down. It gets in an impressive initial hit, but Petal Dance does a tremendous amount of damage. Well, so much for that. Over to Cyberbear, then - otherwise utterly useless in this fight - who also outspeeds for the KO.

This speech is really hitting me differently right now.
​

Well, that fight was brutal, and my team is a wreck. I check my item stash - I have just enough Revives left to restore all of the squad. Just enough. I revive everyone currently fainted and apply Lemonade and Max Ether to everyone. Okay. I have two Revives still in my bag, and one Max Revive. So that means minimal deaths through the final fight. Tricky. But potentially doable. I still have some X Items, though - maybe, just maybe, I can set up one of the squad into a boosted demi-god and sweep.

Maybe.



Current team

Suspicious the Unown-A (Level 44)
TotalClef the Unown-J (Level 44)
Spiritguy the Unown-C (Level 44)
Cyberbear the Unown-G (Level 45)
CPU the Unown-I (Level 45)
Hydro the Unown-K (Level 45)

 

[QuentinQuonce]

​

Here we go.

With only two Revives and one Max Revive, this is going to be one hell of a fight. I square my shoulders and approach the dais where Lance awaits. Let's set the tone with an ominous remix.

I lead with CPU to counter his rough Gyarados, which starts the battle by setting up Rain Dance. A super-effective Hidden Power Electric brings it almost to half of its health - looks like this will be a 3HKO. But then Gyarados fires off a brutal Hyper Beam - which CPU barely survives. Ha! That was an error, as being unable to move the following turn allows me to clinch the 3HKO.

Lance opts to send out one of his Dragonite next, so after some thought I switch to TotalClef. Wary of another Hyper Beam, I apply an X Defend and narrowly survive the incoming strike. Right. I guess I should boost all the way up. Using the rest turn to my advantage, I apply another X Defend. Dragonite uses Thunder, dealing around 75% damage and scoring paralysis to boot. I restore HP, waiting for a miss - but no joy. Not until six more uses, anyway. Eventually, Thunder misses, and I take advantage of the free turn to apply an X Special. Further HP restorations whittle down my item stock, until I only have one Fresh Water left. That's it. When Thunder's PP is extinguished, Dragonite starts using Twister, which surprisingly is too weak to even 4HKO. Further applications of X Special and X Speed follow, and then my last Przcureberry.

​

Now it's time to strike back. Flushed with the added power and speed I've bestowed on it, TotalClef uses Hidden Power Dragon...

...and even at +6, it doesn't OHKO. Fu-

*deep breath*

Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. This makes the rest of the fight a little more daunting, but let's see what happens. Dragonite hits again with Twister, and I knock it out. Lance sends out his second Dragonite, and TotalClef outspeeds and deals around 80% with Hidden Power. Not being at full health, I'm wary of it potentially KOing me with Blizzard, but it opts to let loose another Hyper Beam instead - thankfully, due to the two X Defends from earlier, TotalClef tanks the hit.

I make use of the rest turn to heal and then seal the deal with another Hidden Power. Lance sends out Aerodactyl, who unexpectedly outspeeds even after two X Speeds - argh - and gets in an Ancientpower. Fortunately, no stat boost comes with it. TotalClef deals around 50% with Hidden Power, and Aerodactyl follows the rest of the team in using Hyper Beam - but we survive with 4 HP and KO it.

With only two Pokemon remaining, Lance sends out Charizard. Healing won't help here - its Flamethrower is extremely powerful, and with no X Special Defence I have no way to stymie the damage. Sod it. May as well go for broke. TotalClef deals around 50%, and finally falls to Flamethrower.

Where next? Well, Hydro seems the obvious option. It survives the next hit with a shred of health left and strikes back with Hidden Power, managing to deal enough damage to knock Charizard out.

One Pokemon left - the toughest one, of course. Lance sends out his most powerful Dragonite.

I'm genuinely unsure how to proceed. I guess I'd better revive TotalClef, though. I sacrifice Hydro and use up my final Max Revive, as Dragonite pummels it with another brutally powerful Hyper Beam. That's bought a free turn - better not waste it. I send out CPU and strike some chip damage, doing a surprisingly respectable amount. But Dragonite swiftly uses Outrage for an easy KO. Suspicious - ah, reliable bulky Suspicious - heroically tanks the second Outrage hit and absorbs the third. His sacrifice wasn't in vain, because now Dragonite's confused.

I send out Cyberbear and cross my fingers. As I'd hoped, Dragonite hits itself, which, combined with a hit from Cyberbear, brings it to 50%.

And then Lance - the bastard - uses a Full Restore. Oh, goddammit. Cyberbear hits again for around 10%, but Dragonite goes for another Outrage and leaves it on 2 HP before dropping it. Since Spiritguy has the lowest Special Defence of the squad, I decide not to even bother with it and go for TotalClef, who has at least a slim chance of surviving a hit. But mercifully, Outrage ends on the second turn and Dragonite is confused again.

Something in my brain clicks and I use my last X Defend - and my instinct was right, as Dragonite uses Hyper Beam. The Defence boost means that TotalClef survives with 13 HP - and I hit back with Hidden Power, bringing Dragonite to ~25%.

I think I've done it. I think I've actually done it. If I can just hit one more time -

But Dragonite uses Outrage once again, and TotalClef faints. Damn.

Only Spiritguy is still conscious. It's not at full health so I know for certain that it will not survive a hit from Outrage. I could potentially use this turn to use one of the Revives I have left - but whatever I revive will only be at half health, with no time to restore HP. Oh, what to do. I ponder for a moment and then decide to go for broke. I attack.

And Lance's Dragonite hits itself in confusion, bringing it to 5% and in prime position for Hidden Power Steel to knock it out.

​

I've done it.

​

That... was quite something. A bout for the ages. And the perfect way to end my journey through Johto. Lance congratulates me, Professor Oak and Mary arrive and congratulate me some more, and then Lance congratulates me again.

The credits roll, and I savour my victory.

​

Current team

Suspicious the Unown-A

TotalClef the Unown-J

Spiritguy the Unown-C

Cyberbear the Unown-G

CPU the Unown-I

Hydro the Unown-K


______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
​

Final thoughts

Well... this was a fun challenge. I was prepared for this to be tough, but it wasn't quite as difficult as I was expecting. What surprised me more, though, was how powerful Unown can be in the right conditions. Being that it can only attack directly, it's a much more offensively direct mon than it first appears. So many strategies are closed off to you when you can't use status moves.

But I've grown really attached to these six little guys, working around their type specifications and the way in which their individual stats influenced each battle. I hope you've enjoyed reading about their exploits as much as I have writing about them. Stay tuned for a final post detailing each of the squad's performance in a little more depth, and one final surprise.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

totalclef the goat no cap

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Final thoughts

Well, this was good fun, but it's over now. What, really? Yes. I won't be continuing into Kanto, partly because the level drop in Kanto means that there isn't much challenge from here on in (I'd just be one- or two-shotting most of the things I encounter) and partly because Johto deserves to stand alone for once.

As mentioned, Unown is an unexpectedly offensive mon, so so much of this challenge involved lining it up to get a clean KO. Maybe I should do a Pyukumuku-only run next...

Anyway, here's some thoughts on the team and how they played.

Team analysis

Suspicious
Overall, probably the most reliable member of the team. Against good matchups he was really great - but because Bug is a pretty decent neutral typing, Suspicious was often kind of my go-to for a lot of opponents, like Johto's abundance of Normal-types. It had the highest Special Defence, HP, and Speed of the group, and its Attack was pretty decent too, so it put in a lot of good work and often was able to live through attacks that would OHKO or 2HKO the rest of the squad.

Spiritguy
Defensively somewhat weak - it was routinely OHKO'd by special attacks that the others could survive - but actually proved to be solidly reliable and able to hold its own against neutral matchups. It often lagged behind a bit because Steel finds few opportunities to shine (pun) and has a lot of bad offensive matchups, so I would find myself playing catch-up after the others had all gained a couple of levels. The base power of its move didn't seem to be that high - it generally failed to KO things like wild Geodude and Graveler, which made grinding difficult.

CPU
Middling except for when it had a good matchup, which thankfully was a lot of the time. Being the first of the squad to get its type-boosting item really helped. Electric is great coverage and came in handy a lot of the time. It also had the highest physical Defence of the gang - though not particularly high HP - which made it an asset in crucial fights. Relatively fast compared to the others, too, so was often able to nab kills the other members laid the groundwork for.

TotalClef
Without question the weakest member of the squad. Its stats weren't hugely worse than the others, so I have to conclude that its HP Dragon simply had a very low base power as it often did much less damage than another member's neutral hit would. That said, it frequently got KOed by moves that other members of the team would survive, like Bite. Once it got its type-boosting item, that made it a very little bit better. But it needed serious babying, and rarely achieved any kills unaided.

Hydro
Quite simply consistently very good, and moreso when it got its item. Was able to score OHKOs where the others did not - even trainer-owned Graveler and Onix fell like dominoes to its Hidden Power. I suspect that Hydro had the highest IVs all around - it was on par with Suspicious defensively, and was decently fast. Overall, no complaints with this one.

Cyberbear
I expected a 50% STAB Hidden Power to be a (comparative) nuke, but it, uh... wasn't. Failing to KO Morty's Gastly really was a humiliation from which it never recovered. Like TotalClef, I wonder if its Hidden Power had a low base power - it wasn't slow or defensively weak, just offensively very underwhelming. But it just about coped, although it could really have done with a Twistedspoon to strengthen itself. Very much the mid-grade member of the squad.

And now for the final surprise - I'm putting all of the squad on the GTS! Comment if you'd like to claim one (though Suspicious Derivative, HydrogenHydreigon, CyberBearIV, Total Clefairy,CPU, and SpiritGuy all have priority if you guys want to claim your namesake mons) - cutoff date is Friday at 1PM GMT. Bear in mind that the transition from Gen II to VII will likely alter their Hidden Power types.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to the aforementioned individuals for providing me with the Hidden Power types at the start of the challenge.

That's all for now - till next time.

 

[CyberBearIV]

And now for the final surprise - I'm putting all of the squad on the GTS! Comment if you'd like to claim one (though Suspicious Derivative, HydrogenHydreigon, CyberBearIV, Total Clefairy,CPU, and SpiritGuy all have priority if you guys want to claim your namesake mons) - cutoff date is Friday at 1PM GMT. Bear in mind that the transition from Gen II to VII will likely alter their Hidden Power types.

Is it only Gen VII? If so, I'd like Cyberbear the Unown on Ultra Sun.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Is it only Gen VII? If so, I'd like Cyberbear the Unown on Ultra Sun.

Afraid so - as I don't pay for Home so I can't migrate from VII to VIII. Will get them transported shortly and arrange the trade.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

this has been a really fun challenge to read! a very nice concept for a run that i haven't seen done before.

it would be superb to have my namesake (i haven't traded over the internet for quite some time, so i'll need to reacquaint myself with the process!)

 

[QuentinQuonce]

this has been a really fun challenge to read! a very nice concept for a run that i haven't seen done before.

it would be superb to have my namesake (i haven't traded over the internet for quite some time, so i'll need to reacquaint myself with the process!)

Thanks! I'll DM you shortly to arrange the trade, but no rush.

 

[CPU]

Thanks for the offer, but I'm fine. Hope CPU goes to a good home!

 

[HydrogenHydreigon]

Also would like Hydro on US, though I restarted my game recently so it might take a while until I get to access the GTS.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Congrats on completing this challenge! It was a fun read and it was interesting to see how you handled many of the difficult battles. I am also impressed by your relatively low levels at the end. Whenever I played through any Johto game, I think I always had at least one Pokémon at level 50 before I challenged the E4.

I was wondering if you were going to go through Kanto and then beat Red as well, but I can understand that you don't want to do it since as you say, it would probably not be as challenging. I also agree with you about how Johto deserves to be in the spotlight on its own for once.

Suspicious
Overall, probably the most reliable member of the team. Against good matchups he was really great - but because Bug is a pretty decent neutral typing, Suspicious was often kind of my go-to for a lot of opponents, like Johto's abundance of Normal-types. It had the highest Special Defence, HP, and Speed of the group, and its Attack was pretty decent too, so it put in a lot of good work and often was able to live through attacks that would OHKO or 2HKO the rest of the squad.

Now this was surprising to see. I expected Bug to be one of the worse types, and it felt like you didn't use it much in most important fights, but I guess Bug is a solid offensive type for many regular trainers in Johto.

And now for the final surprise - I'm putting all of the squad on the GTS! Comment if you'd like to claim one (though Suspicious Derivative, HydrogenHydreigon, CyberBearIV, Total Clefairy, CPU, and SpiritGuy all have priority if you guys want to claim your namesake mons) - cutoff date is Friday at 1PM GMT. Bear in mind that the transition from Gen II to VII will likely alter their Hidden Power types.

Really cool idea. I'll gladly take Suspicious in that case to keep as a memory of this challenge. Hit me up and we'll arrange a time for the trade. I have no time for it today but I'm free during the rest of the week.

I also promised you that I would read through all of your past challenges that I missed during my hiatus from the forums. Now I have finally gotten around to it. I didn’t read every single word like I did for this run though. Below, some short thoughts on them:

Colosseum Snagless Challenge: It is funny how you decided to do this because I have a memory which relates to this. When a friend of mine first started playing Colosseum, he did not know how to snag Shadow Pokémon, so he failed to catch the ones he encountered and played through the early parts of the game with only Espeon and Umbreon. He later restarted the game though, don’t remember exactly how far he got but probably not very far, I think he restarted before Shadow Furret at least.

From my own playthroughs of Colosseum, I remember that Espeon was really good as it was fast and could hit hard. I don’t remember Umbreon being quite as great though, but it was useful at times as well. It has been a long time since I last played Colosseum… thinking about it brings back memories. I can also see how Colosseum becomes more difficult towards the end of the game if you only have two Pokémon. On the whole, fun challenge.

White 60-Hour N-Style CompleteDex Challenge: Similar to your previous challenge for Yellow, really cool idea to do it for more games. I would never be able to do a timed challenge where the goal is to complete it within a certain amount of hours IRL, it would just stress me out completely. So my props to you for that. This one seemed harder since you did not have a glitch to abuse in Yellow, and like you noted in the thread, many Unova Pokémon evolve at very high levels.

Adventures Platinum Battle Frontier Challenge: The natural follow-up to your previous Emerald challenge. I am super impressed by how you got Gold at the Factory in two days after only 9 attempts. I have yet to get it despite trying so many times. Though I usually tried at Open Level in the past, almost never at Level 50. Even if you didn’t complete this challenge to 100%, I still think what you managed to accomplish was great and very impressive.

As always, I am impressed by all of your creative challenge ideas. Looking forward to your next one!

Reading through this has also made me hyped to start my own challenge... which will happen next month. I want to start it right now but I know that it will be better if I wait since there are other things in real life I need to focus on now, and many of them will be done within a few weeks. But I have been doing a bit of planning for this challenge and that alone is making me excited.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Congrats on completing this challenge! It was a fun read and it was interesting to see how you handled many of the difficult battles. I am also impressed by your relatively low levels at the end. Whenever I played through any Johto game, I think I always had at least one Pokémon at level 50 before I challenged the E4.

I was wondering if you were going to go through Kanto and then beat Red as well, but I can understand that you don't want to do it since as you say, it would probably not be as challenging. I also agree with you about how Johto deserves to be in the spotlight on its own for once.

Now this was surprising to see. I expected Bug to be one of the worse types, and it felt like you didn't use it much in most important fights, but I guess Bug is a solid offensive type for many regular trainers in Johto.

To be honest, I expected Bug to be underwhelming, but I think the lack of strong Bug moves (and Pokemon) in Gens I & II obscures how decent a typing it has the potential to be even in those generations. While a lot of things resist it, it has a lot of neutral matchups against common types like Water, Ground, and Normal, as well as being strong against Grass and Psychic which are relatively common in Johto.

I spent a lot of time wondering what the worst possible typing would be (probably Steel, on reflection) - Rock is definitely a good offensive typing for Johto, but I'm actually surprised that no-one picked Grass or Ghost or Dark since those are generally underwhelming offensive types.

Really cool idea. I'll gladly take Suspicious in that case to keep as a memory of this challenge. Hit me up and we'll arrange a time for the trade. I have no time for it today but I'm free during the rest of the week.

Will do! No rush - will DM in a bit.

As always, I am impressed by all of your creative challenge ideas. Looking forward to your next one!

It'll be a while until the next one I think... trying to decide on where to go next. I mentioned an XD challenge but that's sort of on hold for now - I'm considering seeing if I can emulate it on the PC and potentially stream it. I've not done any challenges in Gen VI yet and I'd like to replay one of the Kalos so I'm mulling over a couple of ideas for a challenge involving those, and I've just acquired a second copy of Pokemon Pearl (sadly fake, but it plays fine) so am considering doing something on that too since Pearl was my first Sinnoh game and it's nostalgic to revisit it.

Reading through this has also made me hyped to start my own challenge... which will happen next month. I want to start it right now but I know that it will be better if I wait since there are other things in real life I need to focus on now, and many of them will be done within a few weeks. But I have been doing a bit of planning for this challenge and that alone is making me excited.

You've been teasing this a LOT and I'm incredibly curious. Looking forward to it!