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Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse 2023 l REUTERS

you don't get it, do you?

SO last week i started a pokemon leafgreen file on my childhood cart i've had since my 5th birthday, and one my goals ended up being getting every owned dex entry possible in JUST the one copy of leafgreen without connecting to any other game… and i did. except i forgot one. ENTEI!!

like probably a lot of you reading this i COMPLETELY forgot that one of the johto roaming beasts is in every copy of FRLG. i never even caught any of them as a kid. which roamer you get is based on your starter (squirtle = raikou, bulbasaur = entei, charmander = suicune) and i happened to pick bulbasaur so my roamer was entei. it does actually ROAM in kanto, aka whenever you change locations, the pokemon moves to a new route. obviously this is a pain in the ass, but it gets even more painful because roamers can flee from the battle and they will the instant you encounter them. you get the chance to throw one ball or use one move and that's it… so like in most pokemon games, you would use a trapping move like mean look to keep the roamer in the battle and turn it into a normal legendary encounter, right? HAHA WRONG

raikou and entei are affected by the ROAMER ROAR BUG in FRLG, which means if they use roar to escape the battle (yes, even in mean look, it doesn't stop roar from working) they just disappear from the game. permanently. forever. you can never capture it. suicune is not affected by this because it doesn't have roar, but my roamer was entei, so uh. the odds were stacked against me. did i want to repetitively encounter the roamer over and over, never trapping it, just throwing one ball each time? or did i want to set up a mean look pokemon only to have to soft reset every time entei used roar? neither option sounded fun and i was going to just give up and master ball it despite REALLY wanting it in a luxury ball like all the other kanto legendaries i had already caught… UNTIL!

i am a moderator of the ribbon master discord (a different pokemon challenge) and i was just sorta liveposting my thought process about this annoying roamer when gen 3 rng manipulation extraordinaire ddeeffgg crashes into the chat and suggests this fucking bonkers idea. and his bonkers idea is galaxy brain LET ME EXPLAIN

ariados is available in leafgreen's post game by catching spinarak in pattern bush, and of course electrode is a fairly common kanto pokemon. ariados gets access to spider web, which is basically just mean look with a different name (and i completely forgot it existed), it traps the opponent in the battle. but IMPORTANTLY, it ALSO gets access to BATON PASS… which, in gen 3, passes the trapping effect! usually if you were to use spider web and swap out ariados, the opponent would no longer be trapped, but baton pass solves that! and then electrode has the ability soundproof which prevents roar from working, and it even gets thunder wave (paralysis) and sonicboom (consistent 20 damage with no chance of accidental crits) to assist in easier capture of entei! nice!! awesome!! but getting this setup in order is the most ridiculous shit i've ever done in leafgreen

PROBLEM #1: ariados gets baton pass through egg move. in gen 3, egg moves are only passed down by the father and not the mother, so i had to grab a male ledyba, grind it to a high enough level to learn baton pass, then grab a female spinarak and breed them together. unfortunately this means my ariados would be level 1 and i'd have to train it up quite a bit, which leads into my next problem…

PROBLEM #2: ariados is SLOWWW. its base speed is a measly 40 compared to entei's whopping 100! ariados needs to outspeed entei to use spider web first turn so entei can't just run away! i would have to get ariados to a very high level to outspeed entei, grinding all the way from level 1. the one plus side is that the roamers in FRLG are bugged to always have a 0 IV in defense, special attack, special defense, and speed, which means unless entei has a +speed nature, its speed would always be a predictable and relatively low 105 at level 50, which is what it's encountered at. so i had to get an ariados with a speed of 106 or higher.

to get around both these problems as efficiently as possible, while breeding spinarak, i bred quite a few to get one with a +speed nature, and ended up with a jolly spinarak. everstone doesn't work in FRLG unfortunately, so the nature was completely random each time. soon my DAUGHTER WAS BORN after like 2-3 hours of breeding because FRLG eggs are SLOOOW and i was being stubborn about the nature, which i was getting unlucky on LOL

then i maxed out her speed EVs real quick by fighting picnicker susie on route 13 over and over, who gives 12 speed EVs per battle, 24 with the macho brace, which i was using. this was just to make sure i would reach 106+ speed as fast as possible. then i grinded her levels by repetitively fighting the two trainers right outside the weird chansey dance guy's house in sevault canyon on seven island, right above tanoby ruins. using the vs seeker on them is the best grinding spot in the game since they give 20k experience per fighting both of them and there's a healing spot Right There. i was using exp share and leading with my level 100 jolteon named Egg who i adore with all my heart. ariados, now named koolaid, ended up crossing the speed threshold at level 62! yes this took a while lmao

as for electrode, i wanted one at as high of a level as possible so i hopefully wouldn't have to grind levels. i lucked out as electrode is found at a whopping level 64 in cerulean cave's bottom floor. a 5% encounter rate but as i had already caught numerous 5%s for the pokedex, i didn't really care. however it DOES have explosion and i'd rather not have the electrode explode on me before i could catch it which would then send me on a wild goose chase for ANOTHER 5% electrode… so i grabbed the random level 24 poliwhirl with the damp ability, which prevents explosion from working, out of my PC, and gave it a smoke ball from the celadon game corner so i could lead with her and easily run from each encounter that Wasn't Electrode.

now you may be wondering how i was going to handle capturing electrode once i was actually in the battle because SURELY it would just use thunderbolt or something and instantly murder my poliwhirl. however funnily enough electrode only has two attacking moves at level 64, swift and explosion. explosion obviously doesn't work, and swift is a physical attack in gen 3 due to all normal type moves being physical, this was before the physical/special split in gen 4. electrode's physical attack stat is a garbage 50 and swift only has a base power of 60 so i honestly wasn't concerned. and best of all, poliwhirl gets the move hypnosis, so i could easily put electrode to sleep and start chucking ultra balls… and the smoke ball ended up being useless because i somehow ran into electrode first try what the fuck LOL

anyways i named them gatorade to match with koolaid. truly the dream entei capturing team. i didn't even feel the need to grind any levels on gatorade, level 64 was more than enough, so i just slapped the two moves i wanted on them - thunder wave through the one-use tutor in silph co, and sonicboom through the move reminder on two island, costing me two tinymushrooms which i thankfully already had and did not have to go out of my way to grind.

however the hours worth of prep ISN'T DONE YET! because uhh…

PROBLEM #3: ariados has to be above entei's level to outspeed it (yes, even if it had a 31 IV in speed AND a speed boosting nature AND maximum speed EVs, it still wouldn't be enough at level 50), which means the repel trick can't be used to encounter it. tracking down the roamer is practically impossible without using repels to cancel out all other wild pokemon, and in gen 3, unlike later gens, you can't put a fainted pokemon in the front of the party for the repel trick instead. and if i DON'T lead with ariados, entei will run away when i try to swap into it. SO i decided i would have to run into entei once first through the repel trick method, which marks it as "seen" in the pokedex, and then i would track its location through the pokedex to encounter it while leading with ariados.

to accomplish this, i simply ran in and out of the building on route 16, going in and out of the grass in the process, which would constantly be randomizing entei's location until it happened to randomize onto route 16. i caught a staryu with illuminate as an ability to raise the chance of entei appearing, which does work while staryu is fainted (wouldn't want to go in and out of the grass while entei was on route 16 without encountering it!) and otherwise led with my level 50 magmar that was on my elite four team named Torch for the repel trick.

i bought a whopping 100 max repels for this task but i ended up getting entei within just a few lol. torch was holding the smoke ball just to be able to run away safely without any shenanigans!

and now entei was in the pokedex and able to be tracked that way!

however, there was still ONE more problem...

PROBLEM #4: luxury balls are a pain in the ASS to get in this game! they can't be bought from any shop. the only way to repeatedly get luxury balls in FRLG is to show a pokemon to selphy, a rich girl who lives in resort gorgeous on five island.

i will mostly skim over this because it's boring, but TLDR i had to continuously talk to her, fly back to the pokemon center, get the pokemon she wanted to see out of the PC because the step limit is 250 before she gets sick of waiting which is like nothing (i already had a living dex of every mon obtainable in leafgreen otherwise so this wasn't hard), surf to her, then spam A through dialogue with her butler in which i had a 70% chance of receiving a luxury ball. i did this over 40 times until i had 30 luxury balls, and sold off all the nuggets and other items she gave me. good lord this took a while

and now with ALL of that setup i was FINALLY ready to capture entei in a luxury ball. this took me literally all day and i was really excited. to consistently encounter entei, i saved in cerulean city and tracked it in the pokedex from there, opening it over and over after changing to any of the four routes connected to the city, and moving to an adjacent route from entei's location when it was close in the hopes of walking onto the same route it moved to when i did. i was following a map made by hangarofroam, he has a video tutorial on how to shiny hunt the FRLG roamers and encounter them as quickly as possible, and i highly recommend looking it up if you want to capture these roamers yourself, but tldr this is the map i was using:

and once i encountered entei i was finally able to use the strategy i had prepped so long to do... and it worked without a hitch!! entei can't try to use roar first turn because it wastes a turn trying to flee, which is prevented by ariados outspeeding and using spider web... then if it tries to use roar the next turn, i've already switched into electrode to block it with soundproof. so from there it's just a matter of whittling down entei's HP to the red with swift/sonicboom and paralyzing it with thunder wave, then tossing luxury balls until success!

and i GOT IT after 3 encounter attempts and 73 luxury balls thrown. and FINALLY i have all 171 national dex entries possible in a single copy of leafgreen with no connection to other games, and all the legendaries are in fancy ass luxury balls. i am winning.

this was ridiculous. please be proud of my accomplishments. i've had this file for less than 2 weeks and i already have over 70 hours of gameplay in it after doing all this AAAAA

also barely related but look at Egg my jolteon he had like no purpose in this story but i took a pic of him in front of entei before going on to capture entei because i love him so much pleas