okay here’s the thing about recruiting kecleon

it’s possible, but just barely. they have a -49.5% recruitment rate, by far the lowest in the entire game. you can boost your recruitment odds in a number of ways. being level 90-100 gives you +25%, and holding the golden mask gives you +24%.

but wait, that still adds up to -0.5% recruitment for kecleon, which is still literally impossible!! well, the Fast Friend iq skill gives you an extra +1% to your rate, giving you a whopping 0.5% chance to recruit kecleon every time you defeat one, given you meet all these requirements. it’s why i’m using celebi here.

more things you absolutely need to do if you want to recruit one:

evasion orbs. like, 10 of them. you need max evasion to stand a chance against the waves.

really, really ludicrously high stats. i’m playing sky, so i used the spinda bar to boost my stats

on top of having high base stats, you need a way to boost yourself. i brought a violent seed on top of that, and celebi has silver wind and ancient power that also have chances to give boosts to all stats. note: some kecleons have screech, if they manage to hit you with it you’re basically dead next time they hit you regardless of how bolstered your defenses are

max elixirs because you’re gonna run out of moves fending off the swarm

the answer to that is a surprising “yes”, its IQ is reset to 0 (like all recruited pokemon) but its stats are ridiculous

the base stats in this game cap at 255 (because they’re counted by signed 8-bit binary) and it was one point off from hitting that cap when i recruited it. its hp is also ridiculously high at 282 despite only being level 42

so this makes it without any contest the single strongest pokemon you can have on your team in this game, stronger than mewtwo, stronger than dialga, everything. keep in mind you have to fight dozens of these at once to get one.

another thing: most pokemon have a small pool of phrases determined by their IQ group, but kecleon seems to have unique dialogue when you talk to it in and out of dungeons.